Technological University Dublin senior lecturer Dr Lorcan Sirr speaks to Wikinews on housing market in Ireland

Wednesday, July 21, 2021

Wikinews correspondent J.J. Liu spoke with Technological University Dublin (TUD) senior lecturer at the School of Surveying & Construction Management, Dr Lorcan Sirr on Friday regarding the supply of housing in the Republic of Ireland and relevant parallels across the rest of Europe, as well as recent developments by the government and private sector that are causing a rise in rents and home prices in the Irish real estate market.

Dr Sirr is a regular contributor to The Irish Times and has provided commentary to Irish radio station Newstalk, national broadcaster Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) and various other publications. In addition to being a chartered planning and development surveyor and assessor to the Society of Chartered Surveyors, Dr Sirr is a Peace Commissioner and former external examiner for the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, according to his profile on Worky.

Dr Sirr was a lecturer and former head of research for the Faculty of the Built Environment at the Dublin Institute of Technology, which entered a merger with two partner institutes to become TUD January 1, 2019. He received his bachelor’s degree in estate management at the University of Greenwich, United Kingdom, and master’s degree in urban design and PhD in town planning at the University of Manchester. He has a second master’s in literature from KU Leuven, Belgium, and speaks French.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

In a New York press conference at 16:15 UTC, June 1st, Fritz Henderson, the Chief Executive Officer of General Motors, which filed for bankruptcy and Chapter 11 protection from its creditors earlier today, outlined a plan for what he called a “New GM”.

Speaking to the press under safe harbor provisions of U.S. law, Henderson described the events of today as a “defining moment” in the history of General Motors. Speaking to the public he said that “The GM that let you down is history,” and described a “New GM” that he expected to result from the bankruptcy process.

Henderson stated that he envisioned the bankruptcy process would take between 60 and 90 days. He stressed several times his view that the process would be one that is executed quickly, saying that not just a sense of urgency but “pure unadulterated speed” was his expectation of the process. He emphasized that “GM remains open for business” during the bankruptcy period, continuing to sell and to support its products, and that day one motions had been filed in the bankruptcy court in order to allow this.

Regarding the bankruptcy process he said, “We will do it right. And we will do it once.”

He stated that the plan for General Motors had the support of the United Auto Workers union, the Canadian Auto Workers union, the GM VEBA, and a majority of the unsecured bondholders of GM. He also mentioned that GM had already received €1.5 million in bridge financing from the German government.

In response to questions about the possibility of the United States federal government, a majority shareholder in the restructured company, dictating future product development and strategy, such as the sale of more fuel-efficient and green vehicles; he first observed that the federal government had already stated to him that it had “no real interest in running our business” and that he expected that still to be his job. Of the specific hypothetical scenario where the management of GM wants to make one type of car, because it thinks that it is the right thing for the business, and the U.S. government wants to make another type of car, he stated that “I don’t think it’s going to happen.” Expanding on that point he stated that he expected the “New GM” to focus upon “highly fuel-efficient and green technology”, and that operating both in accordance with U.S. environmental laws and in response to customer demand would naturally result in the New GM producing the types of vehicles that the U.S. government would encourage.

The “New GM” he also expected to focus on “four core brands”, and will size its dealership to match that. He stated that GM would offer a “deferred termination” package to dealers, to allow them to cease dealing in GM vehicles in a managed and gradual way.

He stated that the bankruptcy filings did not cover General Motors’ businesses in Latin America, Europe and the Middle East, and Asia and the Pacific. Of GM’s profitable ventures in China, specifically, he stated that they were “a critical part of the New GM”. In response to questions of whether the New GM would import cars from China to the U.S., he stated the formative company’s core principle that “We build where we sell” applied in both directions, with GM building in China to sell in China and building in the U.S. to sell in the U.S., stating that this shortened supply chains.

He declined to predict when the New GM would return to profitability, stating that the goal was rather to lower the break-even EBIT point for the company. He also declined to speculate upon when the U.S. government would sell its stake in the company, saying that that was a question “better addressed to the U.S. Treasury”, and merely saying that he expected it to be “years, not months” when the U.S. Treasury felt it would give “the right return for taxpayers.”

Friday, January 20, 2006

In Norway, the Oslo and Akershus County Medical Officer has announced that it is launching an inquiry into a possible scientific hoax, involving cancer researchers from Norway, the U.S. and Finland.

In October 2005, the Norwegian researcher Jon Sudbø along with 13 co-authors published the study in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet. The study claimed to detect a positive effect of ibuprofen in preventing oral cancer in smokers, based on a controlled case-study, entailing several hundred patients. On the basis of this study, a broader prospective multicenter study was to be started in 2006, partly funded by the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

On January 17th 2006 however, the Radium Hospital in Oslo, Norway announced that there were strong suggestions that the whole study was a hoax. The patient material presented appeared to be invented, and thus the whole study seems to be fraudulent.

The Radium Hospital in Oslo has hired an autonomous investigative committee to look into the matter, led by the Swedish epidemiologist Anders Ekbom from the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm. The editor of the Lancet, Richard Horton, said that this was the worst research fraud he has dealt with in his time at The Lancet.

Sunday, June 19, 2016

Microsoft announced on Thursday they are partnering with KIND Financial to help governments track the production and distribution of legal marijuana. Kind Financial, a California-based start-up company, began selling its Agrisoft Seed to Sale software three years ago. Microsoft is admitting Kind’s software on the Government portion of its Azure cloud service.

Although Kind Financial CEO David Dinenberg stressed to The Guardian they “absolutely do not touch the plant”, his company does business with growers and distributors of marijuana, as well as the governments that regulate it. State law in twenty-five US states — but not US federal law — has legalized marijuana, whether medicinally or for recreational use. Kimberly Nelson, Microsoft executive director of state and local government solutions, said they expect significant demand for technology to help states make sure cannabis distribution within their state is done according to their laws.

Kind also provides kiosks similar to automated tellers (ATMs) to facilitate marijuana transactions in dispensaries. The distribution of marijuana is often done only with cash or through machines like the ones Kind offers since many banks in the United States shy away from the marijuana industry entirely. Microsoft is not interacting with this part of Kind’s operations, however.

Microsoft and Kind will apply for contracts with state governments for their software. Currently, they have applied to Puerto Rico, a US territory, where medical marijuana has recently been made legal. BioTrackTHC, a company similar to Kind Financial, already has contracts with Washington, New Mexico, and Illinois.

Dinenberg said his company’s partnership with Microsoft is a major step in advancing the legitimacy of cannabis-related businesses.

Sunday, August 21, 2005

A robotic system at Stanford Medical Center was used to perform a laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery successfully with a theoretically similar rate of complications to that seen in standard operations. However, as there were only 10 people in the experimental group (and another 10 in the control group), this is not a statistically significant sample.

If this surgical procedure is as successful in large-scale studies, it may lead the way for the use of robotic surgery in even more delicate procedures, such as heart surgery. Note that this is not a fully automated system, as a human doctor controls the operation via remote control. Laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery is a treatment for obesity.

There were concerns that doctors, in the future, might only be trained in the remote control procedure. Ronald G. Latimer, M.D., of Santa Barbara, CA, warned “The fact that surgeons may have to open the patient or might actually need to revert to standard laparoscopic techniques demands that this basic training be a requirement before a robot is purchased. Robots do malfunction, so a backup system is imperative. We should not be seduced to buy this instrument to train surgeons if they are not able to do the primary operations themselves.”

There are precedents for just such a problem occurring. A previous “new technology”, the electrocardiogram (ECG), has lead to a lack of basic education on the older technology, the stethoscope. As a result, many heart conditions now go undiagnosed, especially in children and others who rarely undergo an ECG procedure.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Journalist, counselor, painter, and US 2012 Presidential candidate Joe Schriner of Cleveland, Ohio took some time to discuss his campaign with Wikinews in an interview.

Schriner previously ran for president in 2000, 2004, and 2008, but failed to gain much traction in the races. He announced his candidacy for the 2012 race immediately following the 2008 election. Schriner refers to himself as the “Average Joe” candidate, and advocates a pro-life and pro-environmentalist platform. He has been the subject of numerous newspaper articles, and has published public policy papers exploring solutions to American issues.

Wikinews reporter William Saturn? talks with Schriner and discusses his campaign.

Wednesday, July 21, 2021

Wikinews correspondent J.J. Liu spoke with Technological University Dublin (TUD) senior lecturer at the School of Surveying & Construction Management, Dr Lorcan Sirr on Friday regarding the supply of housing in the Republic of Ireland and relevant parallels across the rest of Europe, as well as recent developments by the government and private sector that are causing a rise in rents and home prices in the Irish real estate market.

Dr Sirr is a regular contributor to The Irish Times and has provided commentary to Irish radio station Newstalk, national broadcaster Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) and various other publications. In addition to being a chartered planning and development surveyor and assessor to the Society of Chartered Surveyors, Dr Sirr is a Peace Commissioner and former external examiner for the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, according to his profile on Worky.

Dr Sirr was a lecturer and former head of research for the Faculty of the Built Environment at the Dublin Institute of Technology, which entered a merger with two partner institutes to become TUD January 1, 2019. He received his bachelor’s degree in estate management at the University of Greenwich, United Kingdom, and master’s degree in urban design and PhD in town planning at the University of Manchester. He has a second master’s in literature from KU Leuven, Belgium, and speaks French.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

In Kabul between 100 to 200 women protested the Shia Family Law and were met by a mob of 800 counterdemonstrators who were mainly men and Shia clergy. Many women were prevented from attending the protest by male family members and were denied entry to board buses by public transportation employees. The Shia Family Law was passed for the 3 to 6 million Shia Muslims who reside in Afghanistan. Under the law, women must not refuse the husband’s sexual demands, women must comply to intercourse every four days unless sick, women may not gain employment or receive education without their husband’s permission, wives leaving home must do so with male escort or with permission and they must dress up and wear cosmetics according to the husband’s desires. Refusal to do any of these would be illegal for the woman and can be enforced — the husband may stop feeding her.

“If a woman says no, the man has the right not to feed her,” said Ayatollah Mohammed Asif Mohseni, Shia cleric.

The protest began outside Mohseni’s Khatam Al Nabi mosque and School of the Last Protest, and continued 2 miles (3.2 km) onward to parliament where they delivered a petition to repeal the law. Mohseni, a leading Shiite cleric in Afghanistan, was instrumental in implementing the new law.

“This law is against Islam and it’s against women. It’s against the people of Afghanistan.” said Sima Ghani, an organiser for the women’s protest, “Women have God-given rights. But these men are claiming those rights in the name of culture. It is against everything God has ever given us.”

Women attending Khatam-ul-Nabieen Shia University marched in a separate protest in favour of the Law. The University, which is attached to the Shia mosque, also receives funding from Mohseni.

Counterdemonstrators chanted “Slaves of the Christians”, “Down with the Christians. Down with the apostates”, “Death to the enemies of Islam!”, “We want Islamic law!”, “death to America”, and “Death to the slaves of the Christians!”, and picked up stones and threw them at the women protestors. One man yelled out to the female protestors, “You are a dog! You are not a Shiite woman!” Men shouted “Get out of here, you whores! Get out!” as female protestors were disembarking from a bus.

The Marefat School had windows broken and doors torn down. Teachers were attacked and stoned by counter protestors who believed Aziz Royesh, the headmaster, had assisted the women’s protest.

The United Nations has reported that women have received death threats if they defy the new law. Sitara Achakzai, a Woman’s rights activist and member of Kandahar’s provincial council, was murdered at her home on Sunday, April 12 by Taliban gunmen.

Another woman protestor, Masuma Hasani, said “I am concerned about my future with this law. We want our rights. We don’t want women to just be used.”

“Go home if your mothers and fathers are Muslims. These people will beat you if you stay,” yelled out a Shia cleric.

Women carried banners reading “We want dignity in the law” and “Islam is justice”. Women who participated in the hazardous and rare protest defied customs; some wore jeans, others uncovered their faces.

“We think those who oppose this law in fact oppose the Koran. This law does not approve rape, it is rather about loyalty of wife to husband and husband to wife. Rape is what you can see in the West, where men don’t feel responsibility for their wives and leave them to go with several men.” said Nesa Naseri, counterprotestor and a female student of Sharia Studies.

“Whenever a man wants sex, we cannot refuse. It means a woman is a kind of property, to be used by the man in any way that he wants,” said Fatima Husseini, 26, a female protestor.

The law has had separate interpretations because at one point during the rally both sides chanted “We want honour and dignity for women”, and “Allah Akbar,” or God is great.

Politically it has been said that Afghan President Hamid Karzai signed the legislation as an appeasement to the Shiite religious clerics in the face of the presidential re-elections in August.

The Taliban who ruled Afghanistan for five years ending in 2001 imposed similar laws, when the burqa was imposed for women’s wear and women were required to obtain permission from a male relative to exit the house.

Whereas the Afghan Constitution legally upholds sexual equality, and Afghanistan at one time signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it also upholds its constitutional prerogative to place Islamic beliefs ahead of all other practices.

Karzai has asked the Justice Department to review the law, and the legal enforcement of the law shall be placed on hold. Homayun Hamidzada, a spokesman for Karzai, says the law is not legally binding until it is published in the government register which means it can be modified.

Hamidzada said, “We have no doubt that whatever comes out of this process will be consistent with the rights provided for in the Constitution — equality and the protection of women.”

“We Afghans don’t want a bunch of NATO commanders and foreign ministers telling us what to do,” said Mohammed Hussein Jafaari, a cleric.

Mariam Sajadi said “We don’t want foreigners interfering in our lives. They are the enemy of Afghanistan.”

“We must trust Allah, instead of listening to the Western countries and the European countries who come here to meddle and interfere.” said Sayed Sajat of the counter protest.

“Afghan women have raised their voices and they proved this isn’t what the international community is imposing on Afghanistan, these are the demands of Afghan women,” said Sabrina Saqeb a protest organiser and MP.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

What you are about to read is an American life as lived by renowned author Edmund White. His life has been a crossroads, the fulcrum of high-brow Classicism and low-brow Brett Easton Ellisism. It is not for the faint. He has been the toast of the literary elite in New York, London and Paris, befriending artistic luminaries such as Salman Rushdie and Sir Ian McKellen while writing about a family where he was jealous his sister was having sex with his father as he fought off his mother’s amorous pursuit.

The fact is, Edmund White exists. His life exists. To the casual reader, they may find it disquieting that someone like his father existed in 1950’s America and that White’s work is the progeny of his intimate effort to understand his own experience.

Wikinews reporter David Shankbone understood that an interview with Edmund White, who is professor of creative writing at Princeton University, who wrote the seminal biography of Jean Genet, and who no longer can keep track of how many sex partners he has encountered, meant nothing would be off limits. Nothing was. Late in the interview they were joined by his partner Michael Caroll, who discussed White’s enduring feud with influential writer and activist Larry Kramer.

Thursday, October 22, 2020

2020 Melbourne Lord Mayor candidate Wayne Tseng answered some questions about his campaign for the upcoming election from Wikinews. The Lord Mayor election in the Australian city is scheduled to take place this week.

Tseng runs a firm called eTranslate, which helps software developers to make the software available to the users. In the candidate’s questionnaire, Tseng said eTranslate had led to him working with all three tiers of the government. He previously belonged to the Australian Liberal Party, but has left since then, to run for mayorship as an independent candidate.

Tseng is of Chinese descent, having moved to Australia with his parents from Vietnam. Graduated in Brisbane, Tseng received his PhD in Melbourne and has been living in the city, he told Wikinews. Tseng also formed Chinese Precinct Chamber of Commerce, an organisation responsible for many “community bond building initiatives”, the Lord Mayor candidate told Wikinews.

Tseng discussed his plans for leading Melbourne, recovering from COVID-19, and “Democracy 2.0” to ensure concerns of minorities in the city were also heard. Tseng also focused on the importance of the multi-culture aspect and talked about making Melbourne the capital of the aboriginals. Tseng also explained why he thinks Melbourne is poised to be a world city by 2030.

Tseng’s deputy Lord Mayor candidate Gricol Yang is a Commercial Banker and works for ANZ Banking Group.

Currently, Sally Capp is the Lord Mayor of Melbourne, the Victorian capital. Capp was elected as an interim Lord Mayor in mid-2018 after the former Lord Mayor Robert Doyle resigned from his position after sexual assault allegations. Doyle served as the Lord Mayor of Melbourne for almost a decade since 2008.