Sunday, July 22, 2007

Virginia – Joshua Brady, a former Sprint Nextel customer, has had his cellular phone account shut off, but not because he wasn’t paying the phone bill, or even because he was late on payments, but because a customer service representative who assisted him, began to call him outside of her job, and make death threats to him in September of 2006. She was never fired for her actions, Brady says.

Brady has agreed to be interviewed by Wikinews to tell his story. All information and claims have been logged with Brady’s attorney and federal authorities.

The representative from Sprint Nextel, who for safety reasons is only being identified as Jessica, was working at the company’s call center in Ontario, Canada where Brady’s call to customer service was directed. According to Brady, Jessica then began to call him outside of her job duties at the call center after their first contact.

Brady called the center around 6:00 p.m. (eastern time) on a Saturday and attempted to receive help on a billing question and to find a way to stop prank calls. Brady requested a “soc code”, a code placed into the phone, that would allow for the number that was pranking him to be blocked. Unfortunately, Jessica did not know what that was, but tried unsuccessfully to find it. According to Brady, the only thing she could find was “the ANI feature call centers have.”

Brady then described to Jessica the billing issue he was having. He was being charged “for text messages I was not making”, even though he had unlimited text messaging with his billing plan. Meanwhile, Jessica called for a supervisor to help locate the code. As this customer service request over the phone was taking quite a bit of time, the two of them then started to discuss what two people would normally discuss if just chatting; sports, the weather, movies and music and if Virginia was a nice place to go on vacation. The supervisor then came by Jessica’s station with no luck on finding a code.

Later that night, around 10:30 p.m., Brady received a call. He answered it and much to his surprise, it was Jessica. He answered the phone with the usual “hello” and the voice on the other end answered with “hello Josh.” Brady was “surprised” that she had not said “hello Mr. Brady.”

“I then asked who it was, and she said Jessica. She told me about her day, and hoped that I did not mind her calling.” Then according to Brady, she started to describe how much she hated working in a call center, and how the job “pays the bills”, and asked if she could “come visit me sometime”. Brady said that he “immediately started to record” the call. Brady also stated that Jessica was not aware she was being recorded, and that further conversations were recorded without her knowing.

The call lasted about 15 minutes, but Brady said she “spoke so fast and moved along through things” that he “didn’t have a chance to talk if I wanted to. It [the call] ended with me interrupting her and telling her I had to go to dinner with a friend.”

Brady immediately called customer care back and reported Jessica’s actions to a supervisor (Jason), and the Floor Manager (Also named Jessica) at the Coos Bay call center, which is where his call happened to be directed. The advice he received was to “play along” and continue to report her actions until they could locate someone “better equipped” to handle the situation.

Jessica then began to call “about every other day or so” which turned out to be almost 30 calls, according to Brady who reported each call she made to Sprint Nextel.

Sprint Nextel then told Jessica to cease and desist all contact with Brady, but that didn’t stop Jessica from contacting him. She somehow found out the screen-name of his AOL Instant Messenger account, and left messages threatening to kill him. Brady logged the messages and faxed them to Sprint, who about a week later sent Brady a letter, saying that his accounts have been terminated.

“The purpose of this letter is to inform our that our office has received a complaint regarding your recent questionable interactions with our customer care group. Recent interactions with our company have prompted us to formally contact you. Sprint Nextel terms and conditions state that “termination of services. consistent with this agreement…”, said the letter from Sprint Nextel.

Brady states that Jessica is still employed with Sprint Nextel, despite the fact that all instant messages left by Jessica were forwarded to Sprint Nextel.

As recently as July 10, 2007, as many as 1,000 accounts were terminated by Sprint Nextel because customers were complaining too much and asking too many questions about billing.

“While we have worked to resolve your issues and questions to the best of our ability, the number of inquiries you have made to us during this time had led us to determine that we are unable to meet your current wireless needs,” said one letter to a sprint customer as recent as June 29, 2007. The letter states that the service will be terminated just one day after the letter was written despite saying they “understand switching to a new carrier causes an inconvenience.”

Two weeks ago, Sprint addressed the media about the mass-cancellations. “These accounts have been researched very carefully,” Sprint spokeswoman Roni Singleton said. “We feel strongly that the decisions we made, we stand by them. These decisions weren’t made lightly.”

“If the average person is calling less than once per month and these people are calling 40 or 50 times more, that takes away from customer service,” Singleton said. “Our priority is to improve the customer experience.”

Wikinews sent e-mails to Sprint Nextel on July 20 regarding the Brady incident; to date no response has been received.

Update: On July 23, 2007, Wikinews received an email response from a Sprint representative, going to some length to explain the termination of the customers who were calling up to hundreds of times a month. No information was given on the Brady case covered in this article; “customer privacy considerations” were cited as the reason and “no comment” was Sprint’s reply.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

The year 2007 marks the meeting of the major representatives of the watch and jewelry industry at BaselWorld Show, Basel, Switzerland. The Show will take place in the period of April 12 – 19, 2007. The international event is to attract over 2000 companies from 45 countries and about 90,000 visitors.

At present day the luxury goods business holds quite strong positions in the world industry and is still developing at high rates due to appropriate economic climate. Thus, BaselWorld is perceived by watch and jewelry producers and their partners as favorable new grounds for their further development.

BaselWorld is organized annually by MCH Swiss Exhibition (Basel) Ltd with a purpose to provide new business opportunities for the participants who are expected to exhibit their latest products in the exhibition area of about 160,000 m2. Visitors come to BaselWorld to keep aware of the current trends of watch and jewelry making, while retailers and wholesalers discover new partners and strengthen their links with well-established ones.

The exhibition is divided into product sectors presented in the six exhibition halls, among them there are the Hall of Universe and the Hall of Elements. This year the management of the Show has taken care of updating and redecorating the design of the halls.

All the participants of the event will be able to expand their business contacts beyond the fair in the BaselWorld Village located nearby. The ‘village’ comprises special facilities for partners to discuss their matters in informal atmosphere.

Friday, April 16, 2010

US President Barack Obama unveiled on Thursday plans for the future of American space exploration, committing to sending American astronauts to Mars by the mid-2030s.

The president was speaking at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida during a speech to lay out his plans for the future of American space agency NASA. His comments included assurances that America was not abandoning space exploration, contrary to claims he was doing so after he announced the US’s budget for 2011, which would have ended most of NASA’s current projects, including the development of new heavy-launch rockets called the Constellation Program.

Under Obama’s latest program, NASA would receive US $6 billion as supplementary funding over the next five years to develop new projects, which Obama emphasized, saying NASA was in the unusual position of having an expanded budget while other government agencies must comply to financial restrictions or cuts in efforts to reduce the US public debt. With the additional funding, NASA would extend the life of the International Space Station (ISS) by four years further, to at least 2020, design a new series of heavy-lift rockets by 2015, and continue development of the Orion crew capsule, a major part of the Constellation program. Initially, the capsule would serve only as a rescue vehicle for the ISS, but would later serve as the “technological foundation for advanced spacecraft to be used in future deep space missions.” The proposed project would also retain plans for private operators to service the ISS, despite criticism that such operators were not reliable enough for the task.

The centerpiece of the plan would be manned missions to the moon and beyond, beginning with missions to asteroids around 2025, with missions to Mars following within a decade. Initially, Mars missions would consist of sending humans to orbit Mars, with missions to land on the surface of the planet coming shortly after. Obama said that under the plan, “we will push the boundaries not only of where we can go but what we can do.”

Obama said that under his new plan, NASA would be able to achieve more in a shorter amount of time than it would have under the Constellation Program. He also said that, contrary to fears that changes in NASA would result in job losses in Florida, where most space missions are launched from, under his new plan, a total of 2,500 jobs would be created in the area.

The new plan would, according to Obama, lead to “major breakthroughs” in the US space program. He said that the goal of the new program would be “no longer just a destination to reach. Our goal is the capacity for people to work and learn, operate and live safely beyond the Earth for extended periods of time, ultimately in ways that are more sustainable and even indefinite.” The president also emphasized the need for continued innovation, saying that “we’ve got to do it [space exploration] in a smart way and we can’t just keep on doing the same old things we’ve been doing and thinking that’s going to get us where we want to go.”

Wednesday, May 23, 2018

On Monday, Belgian midfielder Radja Nainggolan announced his retirement from international football after he was left out of the national team squad for the 2018 FIFA World Cup upcoming in June.

Radja Nainggolan, who plays for Italian club AS Roma, posted on Twitter saying, “Very reluctantly my international career comes to an end…I’ve always done everything I could to represent my country[…] Being yourself can be bothering …From this day on I will be the first fan” ^{((nl))Dutch language: ?Met veel pijn in het hart maak ik een einde aan men internationale carriere… ik heb er altijd alles aangedaan om er bij te zijn en belgie te vertegenwoordigen[…] spijtig genoeg is ECHT zijn niet goed voor SOMMIGE… En vanaf vandaag zal ik de eerste supporter zijn}.

Nainggolan announced his decision soon after Roberto Martinez, Belgium team manager, shortlisted 28 players for the Russia World Cup. Martinez travelled to Rome to inform Nainggolan about his decision before announcing the shortlisted players. Nainggolan, who turned 30 earlier this month, scored two goals for AS Roma against English club Liverpool FC in the second leg of the UEFA Champions League semi-final. In 2017, Roma club supporters voted Nainggolan the club’s Player of the Season.

Explaining his decision to leave out Nainggolan, manager Martinez said, “It was a sad and difficult decision. He is a player with a lot of class and he was voted Roma’s best player, but I’ve made my decision for purely tactical reasons.” The Spaniard added, “We know that Radja has a very important role in his club and we cannot give him that role in our squad”.

Martinez is to finalise and submit a 23-man squad for the World Cup tournament on June 4, after his team plays against Portugal in a friendly scheduled for June 2 in the Belgian capital Brussels. After Nainggolan was left out of the squad, former Belgian international Philippe Albert said, “We must be the only country in the world to be making the trip without one of the best players in the world”.

Belgium is in Group G for the World Cup, along with England, Panama, and Tunisia. Belgium is currently world number three in the FIFA rankings.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Ren and Stimpy. Bugs Bunny. Philip J. Fry and Professor Hubert Farnsworth on Futurama. Sparx. Bi-Polar Bear. Popeye the Sailor Man. Woody Woodpecker. You may not think you have ever heard Billy West, but chances are on a television program, a movie, a commercial, or as Howard Stern’s voice guru in the 1990’s, you have heard him. West’s talent for creating personalities by twisting his voice has made him one of a handful of voice actors—Hank Azaria and the late Mel Blanc come to mind—who have achieved celebrity for their talent. Indeed, West is one of the few voice actors who can impersonate Blanc in his prime, including characterizations of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd and other characters from Warner Bros. cartoons.

What is the fulcrum in Mr. West’s life that led him to realize a talent to shape personalities with his voice, and how did the discovery of that gift shape him? Wikinews reporter David Shankbone found that like many great comedians, West faced more sour early in life than he did sweet. The sour came from a physically and emotionally abusive alcoholic father (“I could tell you the kind of night I was going to have from the sound of the key in the door or the way the car pulled up.”), to his own problems with drug and alcohol use (“There is a point that you can reach in your life where you don’t want to live, but you haven’t made the decision to die.”).

If sin, suffering and redemption feel like the stages of an endless cycle of American existence, West’s own redemption from his brutalized childhood is what helped shape his gift. He performed little bits to cheer up his cowed mother, ravaged by the fact she could not stop her husband’s abuse of young West. “I was the whipping boy and she would just be reduced to tears a lot of times, and I would come in and say stuff, and I would put out little bits just to pull her out of it.”

But West has also enjoyed the sweet. His career blossomed as his talent for creating entire histories behind fictional characters and creatures simply by exploring nuance in his voice landed him at the top of his craft. You may never again be able to forget that behind the voice of your favorite character, there is often an extraordinary life.

Below is David Shankbone’s interview with renowned voice actor Billy West, who for the first time publicly talks about the horrors he faced in his childhood; his misguided search for answers in anger, drugs and alcohol; and the peace he has achieved as one of America’s most recognizable voice actors.

Saturday, April 16, 2005

A premier for the Netherlands, a special 2.6 kilometer pedestrian route was opened last Friday in the “Drents-Friese Wold” national park, designed specially for the elderly and the impaired.

For the hearing-impaired, sound amplifiers have been implanted on several points along the route. These amplifiers repeat nature sounds specific to the point at a much louder volume. These sounds are changed according to the season.

For the visually impaired, special guide-lines have been placed along the route, leading to special signposts with braille and normal texts.

The route was built with level cement as to make it accessible to wheelchairs and other aids. For the elderly, benches have been placed at 50 meter intervals. A toilet for the disabled is also available.

Funding to cover the 300,000 euro costs were provided by Staatsbosbeheer (national forest administration) and funding by private and commercial sectors.

Thursday, September 12, 2019

On Tuesday, United States President Donald Trump announced he had asked for national security advisor John R. Bolton’s resignation Monday night, and that Bolton tendered it the next morning.

Bolton had held the position since April 2018 and was the third official to serve in that office during the Trump administration since 2017.

“I informed John Bolton last night that his services are no longer needed at the White House. I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration,” wrote Trump on Twitter, “and therefore I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning. I thank John very much for his service. I will be naming a new National Security Advisor next week.”

Bolton gave a different account of events, also speaking via Twitter: “I offered to resign last night and President Trump said, ‘Let’s talk about it tomorrow.’?”

Reportedly, Trump and Bolton have been at odds over the president’s handling of issues with North Korea, Iran and the Afghan Taliban. Bolton was also much more of a critic of Russia than was Trump. Reportedly also, Bolton often had disagreements with Mike Pompeo who is the secretary of state.

“I don’t think that any leader around the world should make any assumption that because some one of us departs that President Trump’s foreign policy will change in a material way”, Pompeo told the press on Tuesday. “There were many times that Ambassador Bolton and I disagreed. That’s to be sure.”

Bolton previously served as the US ambassador to the United Nations under former president George W. Bush.

Friday, January 27, 2006

A oil spill in Queensland, Australia has been described as a tragedy for the area’s marine life and the biggest oil spill in 35 years. The clean-up is expected to take up to a week and cost more than AU$3 million.

The spill occurred in Gladstone Harbour on the central Queensland coast, late on Tuesday night, after 25,000 litres of heavy fuel poured from a coal carrier. The accident happened when a tug rammed into a Korean coal carrier, rupturing its fuel tank.

Several government agencies and four skimmer vessels were called in after the “Tom Tough” struck the Korean-owned, Panamanian-registered bulk coal carrier “Global Peace” – puncturing its fuel tank as it was about to berth.

“It’ll just annihilate the stocks plus everything up and down the food chain in relation to what the different fishermen catch,” local fishing spokesman Warwick Sheldon said. “It’s right in the middle of the commercial banana prawn fishing season at the moment – this has the potential to just wipe out their stocks.”

Queensland Premier Peter Beattie said an investigation was under way to determine whether anyone would be prosecuted. “There will be no cost to the taxpayer because of the law,” he said. The clean-up costs will be met by the ship’s owners in accordance with international maritime law.

The Wildlife Protection Association of Australia (WPAA) says the spill inside the harbour occurred in the worst place possible. “It’s probably the worst place that we could ever have a spill because it’s inside the harbour,” said WPAA president Pat O’Brien. “It’s an area where there’s a whole range of animals there that’ll be affected by it. There’s dugongs and porpoises and animals like that, that breathe air, that come to the surface regularly. Turtles again too, they’ll finish up with oil all over them.”

It is the worst oil spill in Queensland since the Oceanic Grandeur ran aground in the Torres Strait in 1970 and the second spill in Gladstone’s Harbour within a week. About a tonne of oil spilled in the harbour last week.

A marine investigator from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) is investigating the incident. Investigation leader Peter Foley says the type of oil involved has added to problem. “It’s certainly more difficult to control than perhaps crude oil because it tends to be around the same specific gravity or same density as sea water,” he said.