Saturday, August 5, 2006

Three of Sweden’s ten nuclear reactors have been shut down due to safety concerns following an incident last week at the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant, in which the reactor cooling systems failed. The reactor has since been shut down there. After the incident, the Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate, SKI asked all the nuclear power plants to demonstrate that the same failure could not happen in them. On Wednesday, two more reactors at Oskarshamn were shut down after the operator said their safety could not be guaranteed.

Last week’s incident at the Forsmark plant was triggered by a short circuit that cut power to the reactor cooling system. Two of the four backup generators also failed to start, but the remaining two worked and were sufficient to meet the plant’s needs. Greenpeace reports that the fault in the backup power systems were traced to new equipment installed in 1993.

The spokesman of the Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate Anders Bredfell denied that there was any danger of a meltdown, adding that there was also a backup gas turbine to power the cooling system in an emergency.

However, Lars-Olov Höglund, who was responsible for the nuclear plant Forsmark for many years, said the incident was the most dangerous one since Chernobyl and Three Mile island, and that a meltdown was avoided only by pure luck. His views have however been questioned as he is involved in litigation with the Swedish nuclear industry and is known as an outspoken nuclear critic. Researchers at the Royal Institute of Technology as well as the personnel at the power plant were critical of Höglunds’ view.

Speaking to BBC News, SKI spokesman Anders Bredfell said that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was informed of the incident as required and that the incident classes as a ‘2’ in the 0-7 scale used by the IAEA to assess the severity of the incident.

Another reactor in Forsmark and a fifth at Ringhals nuclear power plant have been offline due to planned maintenance work. With five of its ten reactors down, Sweden’s power generation capacity is down by almost a fifth.

The environmental group Greenpeace called on the government to shut down all reactors and probe whether the fault was a generic one. The Green Party has called for an independent investigation of the incident. Sweden is scheduled to retire all its nuclear power plants in the next few decades, as decided by a referendum in 1980.

Thursday, August 25, 2005

The 30A network has said that it wants to create a carnival atmosphere while protesting at the Forbes Global CEO conference. The protest, which starts on August 30, is expected to attract up to 2,000 protesters. Similar events in the past often had instances of violent confrontations between police and some of the activists. The 30A network is a loose affiliation of groups and individuals co-ordinating the protest.

30A spokesman Bruce Knobloch, of the International Socialist Organisation, made the call for a peaceful protest in a press release last week.

“We want a safe community action showing that people in Sydney oppose Howard¹s plan for a US-style wages system, the war in Iraq and his kow-towing to global corporate chiefs. We pose no threat to the Opera House or the millionaire delegates, or to other users of east Circular Quay,” Mr Knobloch said.

The conference will be held at the Sydney Opera House. The Forbes website says that at the event “senior figures from the world’s leading companies and institutions will discuss the best ways to nurture and capitalize on innovation and reveal the latest global trends.” It was recently announced that George Bush Sr will be attending the conference, along with former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Prime Minister John Howard, and former NSW Premier Bob Carr.

Mr Knobloch described the attendees as “a few hundred neo-conservative corporate chiefs”.

The protesters have been denied access to the Opera House forecourt for the duration of the conference. Mr Knobloch believes that this decision is unjustified. He also accused the police of deliberately creating the conditions for confrontation.

“The police seem intent on creating chaos and confrontation, which is the last thing we need. We’ve urged police to build a barrier in front of the Opera House proper and to allow us to use the public space in the forecourt. By pushing us out into the CBD the police are going to create problems for commuters and business owners,” he said.

30A protestors this week organised a media conference outside Surry Hills Police Station, requesting a meeting to negotiate an agreement. According to an article on Sydney Indymedia, police at the station were unable to discuss the issue, but told 30a representatives that they would be contacted to organise a meeting.

“Minimising the protesters right to peacefully rally dramatically increases police powers and strikes at the heart of protesters’ democratic right to peaceful assembly,” the article said.

ASIO has assessed the conference to be “medium risk”, and this has been used by the police and government to justify the increased security.

Thursday, April 28, 2005

Friday, March 16, 2007

The European Space Agency‘s Mars Express spacecraft has discovered ice deposits in the south pole of Mars that are larger than the state of Texas.

Scientists say that there is enough water in the deposits to cover the entire planet with up to 36 feet of water if the ice was to melt. Some sections of the ice deposits are up to 2.3 – 2.5 miles deep. The ice is composed of carbon dioxide, a little bit of dust, and water (90 percent of the water is estimated to be frozen).

What has caught the attention of the scientists working on the Mars Express project is that this may help reveal whether or not there is any (microbial) life within the ice.

Another perplexing question that scientists are trying to solve is what happened to all the water that produced all the channels on the surface of Mars.

Jeffrey Plaut, who is from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California and who is also leading the study, noted that, “We have this continuing question facing us in studies of Mars, which is: where did all the water go? Even if you took the water in these two (polar) ice caps and added it all up, it’s still not nearly enough to do all of the work that we’ve seen that the water has done across the surface of Mars in its history.”

Currently, only 10 percent of the water is remaining and is located at the poles of Mars. It has been suggested that some of the remaining 90 percent of the water that disappeared could either be underground or could have simply left the atmosphere into space.

Monday, April 11, 2005

Anna Ayala, the Las Vegas woman who claims to have found the notorious “chili finger” at a Wendy’s outlet in San Jose, California, has filed lawsuits against other businesses, according to researchers at the Associated Press. Her previous court battles included the national El Pollo Loco chicken-chain, a previous employer, and even General Motors.

Ayala successfully won her suit for medical expenses against El Pollo Loco, after her daughter Genesis contracted salmonella poisoning from eating at the restaurant. However, Ayala lost another suit in 2000 claiming that a wheel fell off her car.

Ayala’s original account of the incident spoke “emotionally and with disgust” to the San Jose Mercury News when she described it to the paper.

“Lies, lies, lies, that’s all I am hearing. They should look at Wendy’s. What are they hiding? Why are we being victimized again and again?” Ayala recently told The Associated Press. Ayala is now in her Las Vegas home, avoiding reporters.

“It doesn’t prove anything,” family spokesman Ken Bono told the San Francisco Chronicle. “My mom has 10 lawsuits. A lot of people have lawsuits. Why would she sue for money? She has plenty of money,” he said.

Nick Muyo, a spokesman for the San Jose Police department, said not to expect new information in the case for at least a week.

“We just want to step back and take a deep breath,” Muyo told Knight Ridder Newspapers. “From a law enforcement point of view, once you establish it is a human finger, you have to wonder is this a case of industrial accident or is this a case of unreported homicide,” he said.

Las Vegas police searched Anna Ayala’s home on Wednesday, retrieving a cooler and other effects from her home, such as a makeup case.

Despite the incident, which has dramatically reduced sales at Northern California Wendy’s outlets, die-hard Wendy’s fans are still turning up for lunch, even at the outlet where the finger was found, at 1405 Monterey Highway, just south of downtown San Jose.

“We’ve eaten here for years,” a police officer told the San Francisco Chronicle under the condition that he remain anonymous. “They’re very nice people. When we work Spartan Stadium, we always eat here,” he said.

San Jose City Council candidate Andrew Diaz still eats the chili. And he witnessed the finger discovery.

“I walked away real slow,” Diaz told the San Francisco Chronicle. “I didn’t want any commotion,” he said.

Sunday, May 4, 2014

The Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) of Singapore announced yesterday the first arrests made following the listing of New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) as Class A controlled drugs on Thursday, under the First Schedule of the Misuse of Drugs Act. The suspects, two unnamed male Singaporeans, aged 22 and 23, were reportedly arrested at a shopping center in Tampines on Friday evening for possession of synthetic cannabis, also known as “K2”. Authorities recovered 71.7 g of the drug from the suspects.

Under suspicion from the CNB that the 22-year-old suspect was engaged in trafficking of the illegal substance, a further search of his home yielded an additional 22.3 g of synthetic cannabis, raising the total amount of the drug confiscated following the arrests to 94 g.

Synthetic cannabis, listed as an NPS, and known as a “legal high”, is one of a group of designer drugs created to stimulate the effects of controlled drugs including cocaine, Ecstasy, methamphetamine, and heroin. The CNB has linked NPS abuse to symptoms including severe intoxication, hallucinations, paranoia, seizures, cadiovascular problems, renal failure, and death.

Typically having chemical structure very similar but slightly different from controlled drugs, these substances have been illegalized, and their possession, consumption, trafficking, and manufacturing now carry penalties comparable to that of controlled drugs. Last year, under the Fifth Schedule of the Misuse of Drugs Act, designed to study NPSs before their illegalization, they could be confiscated by authorities, but no further penalty would be levied.

The changes to NPS status follow increases over the past year in NPS trafficking and consumption, according to the CNB. Commenting on the move, a spokesperson for the CNB revealed the organization has reported at least thirty NPS seizures in the period from last May through this February. “Thus far,” the spokesperson noted, “synthetic cannabinoids and synthetic cathinones are the two more commonly detected NPS”.

Termed an “alarming new drug problem” by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, its World Drug Report 2013 indicated an increase to 348 NPSs in 2013, up from 251 in 2012. Capitalizing on their legality — which no longer holds in Singapore — NPSs have been known as “legal highs”, “research chemicals”, “plant food”, and “bath salts”.

Commenting on the illegalization of NPSs, Ng Ser Song, the director of the CNB, had this to say. “The drug situation is challenging and the number of repeat drug abusers and young drug abusers remains a concern. With the abuse and trafficking of NPS on the rise, listing these new psychoactive substances as Class A controlled drugs signals our unequivocal stance that these substances are illegal and no different from other controlled drugs.”

Under the recently enacted First Schedule of the Misuse of Drugs Act, if found guilty of drug trafficking, the 22-year-old suspect may be penalized with a minimum of five years in prison and five strokes of the cane. The act also allows the possession or consumption of New Psychoactive Substances to be punished with a maximum of 10 years imprisonment and/or a $20,000 fine.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

The Supreme Court of the United States on Wednesday April 18 has upheld the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. The 5-4 vote reflected the change in vote count resulting from the retirement of Justice O’Connor and the confirmation of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito.

The Intact dilation and extraction procedure, also known as partial birth abortion, involves removing an intact late-term fetus from the womb via the cervix. While it is a relatively rare operation – 0.17% of all abortions in the US in 2000, it has become a focal point in the abortion debate.

The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act bans the procedure in cases where the fetus is terminated during the operation, unless it is performed to to save the life of the mother.

Justice Kennedy wrote in the opinion of the court: “respondents have not demonstrated that the Act would be unconstitutional in a large fraction of relevant cases.” Further, he said, “Respondents have not demonstrated that the Act, as a facial matter, is void for vagueness, or that it imposes an undue burden on a woman’s right to abortion based on its overbreadth or lack of a health exception. For these reasons the judgments of the Courts of Appeals for the Eighth and Ninth Circuits are reversed.”

In a concurring opinion, Justice Thomas stated that he joins “the Court’s opinion because it accurately applies current jurisprudence, including Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833 (1992).”

In dissent Judge Ginsburg wrote: “Today’s decision is alarming. It refuses to take Casey and Stenberg seriously. It tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.”

Justice Kennedy’s words also recall the complicated issues of standing related to such cases. An issue in Roe v. Wade was the impossibility of any individual having standing in a court proceeding regarding abortion rights, since court proceedings take more than the 9 months of pregnancy, retiring any individual plaintiff’s standing before an appeals process can take place. The criterion of “a large fraction of relevant cases” may effectively deny standing to any plaintiffs who wish to litigate particular restrictions in some relevant future cases.

Friday, December 14, 2012

Recently, Wikinews sat down with Australian standing Paralympic skiers Toby Kane, Cameron Rahles-Rahbula, and Mitchell Gourley who were in Vail, Colorado for a training camp for the start of this week’s IPC Nor-Am Cup.

((Wikinews)) I’m interviewing Cameron [Rahles-Rahbula] with a hyphenated last name, Mitchell Gourley, [and] Toby Kane. And they’re in Copper Mountain to compete with the IPC NorAm cup.

Cameron Rahles-Rahbula: Yes.

((WN)) So you guys can qualify for Sochi?

Cameron Rahles-Rahbula: Not this race, but yeah…

Toby Kane: Any races that we kind of do, I think we can qualify, but technically, for the APC it would have to be a world cup first to qualify.

((WN)) Where’s the world cups?

Toby Kane: We have one this year in Italy, in Sestriere, and one in St Moritz, in Switzerland…

Cameron Rahles-Rahbula: and one in Slovenia, in Maribor, and Russia…

Mitchell Gourley: world championships in La Molina in Spain as well, and Russia, the test event is another world cup in Sochi.

((WN)) You guys are all skiers, right?

all (in unison): Yes.

((WN)) None of you, when they said “we’re doing snowboarding”, said “I want to jump ship and do snowboarding”?

Toby Kane: No.

Mitchell Gourley: No.

Cameron Rahles-Rahbula: No.

((WN)) You all love the skiing.((WN)) (to Cameron Rahles-Rahbula): What did you do to your chin [which is taped up]?

Cameron Rahles-Rahbula: I had a crash last week, and I split my chin open. I kneed myself here, so I had stitches.

Toby Kane: Thirteen stitches.

((WN)) Crashed skiing right?

Cameron Rahles-Rahbula: Yeah.

Toby Kane: Our physio probably took out five last night.

((WN)) As somebody who knows very little about Paralympic skiing, I have a question having watched it. There seems to be three types skiiers: the ones who are in the monochairs, the ones who are blind, and the ones with amputations and the ones without arms. I’ve had this debate. Who’s the craziest amongst you? The ones who can’t see, the ones with no arms, or the ones on a mono-ski?

Mitchell Gourley: The completely blind people are a little nuts.

Toby Kane: A B1 is, blacked out goggles…

Cameron Rahles-Rahbula: … who just follows the sound of their guides. So they’re probably, when it comes to speed events, in terms of fear level, that’s pretty intense.

((WN)) Not having arms, you don’t think, would be scarier?

Mitchell Gourley: No.

Cameron Rahles-Rahbula: Yeah, but you can see where you are going. When you have to trust the other person in front of you…

Toby Kane: .. you have to be fairly crazy to do downhill in sit skis.

Cameron Rahles-Rahbula: Those guys, they start crashing, or they have a mistake, they can’t recover in the same way a stand up can, so even though those classes aren’t going as quickly, probably stand ups in general have a bit more control, and to recover.

((WN)) Can you go and tell me your classifications?

Toby Kane: Yeah, we all ski in the standing class. LW6/8-2

((WN)) Like L1…

Mitchell Gourley: These guys are both LW2s because they’ve both got on leg.

Cameron Rahles-Rahbula: So we ski with just one leg, with crutches, whereas you’ve got people who’ve got below-knee amputations, they may have a longer stump and they ski with a prosthetic leg. Toby and I have got to legally ski on one ski.

Toby Kane: And what you were referring to before was the three classes of alpine skiing is standing, sitting, and blind.

((WN)) So you’ve all been to Paralympics before?

Toby Kane: Cam’s been to three, I’ve been to two, and Mitch has been to one.

((WN)) And what was your favorite one? Do you have one?

Mitchell Gourley: Vancouver. (laughter)

Cameron Rahles-Rahbula: Vancouver it would have been.

((WN)) Because you love Canadians?

Cameron Rahles-Rahbula: It’s also, obviously, skiing comes down to results. So, I loved Salt Lake City. I was there for experience, that was great. My second one, I had bit of a disaster Paralympics. I didn’t ski too well. Sestriere in 2006. The last one, I was able to come away with a couple of medals, so it was… I enjoyed that obviously. They all had different aspects.

((WN)) How did the ski slopes compare?

Toby Kane: Vancouver, they’re good slopes.

Cameron Rahles-Rahbula: Salt Lake City, was a little bit flatter. Probably the type of hill… it was still good, it was my first games, I enjoyed it. Yeah, they usually prepare the courses reasonably well, ’cause they’ve got a lot of course workers on the slopes. That has a big influence on condition, not just the actual hill itself. Vancouver was a challenge in the sense that we had terrible weather, terrible conditions and snow, even though it’s a good hill, whereas I think Sestriere we had sunshine virtually every day. So a lot of it comes down to weather as well as the hill, the time of year.

((WN)) In Australia, the big visibility Paralympics are the summer. Do you guys ever feel vaguely — I know it’s the wrong question to ask — but do you ever feel vaguely cheated because you’re doing neglected, you don’t get the attention, the ABC’s like “nah, we don’t want to cover you”?

Cameron Rahles-Rahbula: umm…

Toby Kane: Give us the official answer? (laughter, interjections from elsewhere in the room)

Cameron Rahles-Rahbula: Australia being a summer sport [country], we’re aware that there’s going to be more focus on the summer games and particularly because there’s a larger… there’s more athletes, there more events, there more medals. There will always be more coverage for the summer games. There’s no winter athlete that could walk away with more than five gold medals. There’s not enough events for that. Whereas I think you can get a swimmer who might get eight gold medals. So, it’s a different sort of exposure.

Mitchell Gourley: And realistically, it’s pretty unlikely for anybody in winter sport no matter how good they are, to walk away with more than one or two, just because of the nature of the sport, which is that anyone can crash. You can be a great skier all the year and then crash. [uncertain] can tell you about that in Vancouver. It’s a pretty unpredictable sport.

Toby Kane: The way that our sport moved after Salt Lake City is that instead of Cam and I skiing against each other, and only people with one leg, to being really competitive across those three classes, means that we think that the winter games are really, really competitive. Quite difficult to win a medal. I think, if you took Michael Milton as an example, he won four gold at Salt Lake out of four events. He won one silver in Torino out of four events with the new system, and he compared both events to be equal. So, yeah, I think you’ve got to look at the value of the medals at the winter games now has been quite high.

((WN)) So you guys like the new point system they implemented?

Cameron Rahles-Rahbula: There’s always challenges, because you’ve got different classes, and varied conditions, so they try and adapt the times to fit, but it’ll never be something that can be always right, because we’ve got a sport that’s got different conditions, and different locations, as opposed to a swimming pool, where you know you’ve got fifty metres. So that’s something that’ll always be a challenge, but in saying that, it has raised the bar, in terms of the standard of skiing, which is good. From an Australian perspective, not necessarily the public will be aware of that but I think from an international perspective, the skiing has moved into a more professional area, which is good, and I think that it will be the best thing for the sport moving forward.

((WN)) Evan O’Hanlon at the summer games was talking about the disparity problem between able bodied athletes and athletes with disabilities in terms of sponsorship. You guys have no visibility, is that something that you guys sit there going “we should have the same sponsorship as the great Australian skiers”?

Mitchell Gourley: The problem in that is that in our sport we would probably be the most visible alpine skiers from Australia. The able bodied alpine team is pretty average and has been for a few years now, since a couple of guys retired after Vancouver. So we’re probably, while its still very small, it’s a lot less than the summer guys, even the summer Paralympics guys, were are more visible than the Australian alpine team.

Toby Kane: I think a few of us, well Cam and I and I think Mitch is along the same lines, is that we’re not here for a career as an athlete. so I know I haven’t actively a lot of sponsorships. I have a life away from skiing with what I’m doing at the university and I’m here because I really love to do it, and I love to compete, but I’m not overly fussed about the public recognition of it all. I’m more concerned with skiing with our able-bodied counterparts and showing them what we can do.

((WN)) Do you guys get equal treatment? Your share of the same facilities, same trainers, that sort of stuff?

Toby Kane: We train on the same hills.

Mitchell Gourley: And last week we had pretty much the same races as the able-bodied had the week before on the same hills, and what they ski on next week, and we follow on that, so we don’t have to start. But with a hundred of… that’s why I’m a level below world cup for able-bodied skiers, and skiing on the same hill, and running pretty comparable times, and getting a lot of comments from coaches and athletes there. And yeah that’s what we all, I think, strive for. It’s an awkward thing to ever try and illustrate it to the Australian public, ski racing, and let alone Paralympic ski racing, and what we’re doing. So […] we’ve got to accept that we’re not going to get the recognition publicly probably that we may or may not deserve, and we more look towards our peers, whether they’re able bodied or disabled, and if they respect us, if the best able bodied skiers in the world respect what we are doing, and think that we are doing it bloody well, then we can hold our head high and feel really good. Had one of the best slalom skiers in the world walk up to me a few years ago when we were in training, and say “that’s some of the best slalom skiing that I’ve ever seen, wow that’s incredible. One-legged. I couldn’t do that on one leg”. That kind of thing. So that obviously makes us all feel like we’re doing something that while the recognition might not be there from the public, that we feel as though we are doing a really competitive and really difficult sport, and doing it to a really high level.

((WN)) You mentioned Australia being like a country of summer sports. What attracted you to winter sport in the first place?

Mitchell Gourley: I think it’s a better sport. (laughter)

Cameron Rahles-Rahbula: Australians, considering we don’t have many hills, Australians do love skiing, those that do it. It’s a unique sport in the sense that you get to travel at high speeds, on different mountains all over the world, under your own power, going down a hill at 130 or something k’s an hour, that sort of thing. You don’t get… to me, running up and down a track, or…

Toby Kane: I think to me it’s a fun sport. There aren’t that many sports that people, a lot of people, spend heaps of their own money to go and do, as a pastime. As something that they want to do on the holidays and with their family and all that kind of stuff. It’s kind of cool that that’s what we do. Like, lots of people would spend a sh-tload of money to go skiing, and that’s our sport. Not many people would pay a heap of money to stare at a black line in a pool, or to run around a track against the clock.

Cameron Rahles-Rahbula: Yeah, we love it, and that’s why I’ve done it for so many years, because I love the sport. I mean, racing’s one thing but if I didn’t enjoy skiing I wouldn’t be here and there’s not a day when… I mean you have cold days and weather and stuff, but you don’t… for us to get out and get on the hill isn’t a burden I don’t think in the same way as other sports can be.

Toby Kane: I think the change for me — I think I can speak for Cam as well, ’cause he’s been around for a while — the change between racing in so many classes to racing in so few probably kept us around, I think. It made it a lot more competitive; it made it a lot more of a challenge, that previously it wouldn’t have been, and I think if we took an LW2 class right now we’d be getting similar results to what Michael got in Salt Lake City, so, the fact that it did get a lot more competitive is probably why I’ve been here for so long, in the challenge to keep competing and keep improving and keep performing at the highest level.

((WN)) Are there any skiers that you’re looking forward to racing against this week coming up?

Cameron Rahles-Rahbula: This week I think Australia has a pretty good, strong team from a standing perspective, so we’re probably racing against each other.

((WN)) So you do not care about the Chileans, or whoever, hanging around?

Cameron Rahles-Rahbula: The Canadian and American teams are here, and they’ve got some developing athletes. Probably more the Europeans who are developing who’ve got the highest others skiing in our particular division, and the Americans are very strong with their sit skiers. So this week being just a North American-based race we’ll probably be looking at the other two in terms of racing, but yeah, when we get over to the world cups over in Europe in January, that’s when the whole field’s together, and gives us some idea of what we’re racing against.

((WN)) I feel like we’re almost coming to a close. What do you do outside of skiing? You had some life you said.

Cameron Rahles-Rahbula: I work as a physiotherapist, and I am a family man. Since Vancouver I haven’t skied a huge amount since then. I’ve got a little boy, and so other priorities definitely start to take effect. I think as a skier, it’s a challenge from the travelling perspective when you do have family. I think that’s unlike a lot of summer athletes who have their training base next door. For us, we need to be always on the move, so that’s always one of the challenges with alpine skiing. You get the privilege of travelling but you’re away from your family, so for me, my last year I have focused more on family life and sort of getting back into the skiing this year.

((WN)) What do you do Mitchell?

Mitchell Gourley: I’m still studying. I’m a bit younger than these guys so I’m…

((WN)) Which university?

Mitchell Gourley: I’m at Melbourne University studying. So I’ve got pretty much a year to go now, but that’ll take me two years to do just because of where Sochi is, in March 2014 I’ll cut back this year coming, 2013, and I’ll only do probably about half — I’ll do five subjects as opposed to eight, just because when you’re out travelling during the year and prepping, using your weekend to ski will it getting to you like that. With the schedule, from June to the end September will be pretty much flat skiing. Last time I did that leading into Vancouver, I mean I do that every year but probably a bigger load in the games lead that kind of thing. And I did that in the middle of Year 12 last time, and that was interesting, but now I can actually…

((WN)) You finished your VCEs then?

Mitchell Gourley: I finished that during the…

((WN)) And you did well?

Mitchell Gourley: Yeah, I was happy with how I went, so that was good of me. I moved schools to pursue what I was doing with skiing, to an international school that really helped structure things around me with my environment, and I sort of cut back on subjects and things but managed to make it work those times, but yeah. For me, it’s university for a couple of years, or for a year and a half or so to knock that over. So then I have to think about getting a real job and that’s a scary thought, a real job, or eventually doing further study, based on the Melbourne model, being what it is now that you can’t usually do much with your first degree. (laughter)

((WN)) And Toby, what are..?

Toby Kane: I’m halfway through postgraduate medicine, so I am just trying to balance that and getting in to Russia. And Russia will be my third games, and most probably my last. And then it’ll be the start of my fourth year of medicine so, yeah, I’m a bit like Cam, I’ve skied probably less over the last two years since Vancouver, just with uni and I’m kind of looking forward to putting everything that I’ve got left in me into skiing until Russia.

((WN)) Thank you very, very much. It was much appreciated. ((WN)) Look forward to seeing you guys in Russia!