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Tuesday, February 19, 2008

While nearly all cover of the 2008 Presidential election has focused on the Democratic and Republican candidates, the race for the White House also includes independents and third party candidates. These parties represent a variety of views that may not be acknowledged by the major party platforms.

As a non-partisan news source, Wikinews has impartially reached out to these candidates, throughout the campaign. The most recent of our interviews is Laurens, South Carolina‘s John Taylor Bowles. Mr. Bowles is running with the endorsement of the National Socialist Order of America, a Minnesota-based Neo-Nazi party created after a recent rift in the National Socialist Movement.

Monday, June 23, 2008

2008 COMPUTEX Taipei, the largest trade fair since its inception in 1982, featured several seminars and forums, expansions on show spaces to TWTC Nangang, great transformations for theme pavilions, and WiMAX Taipei Expo, mainly promoted by Taipei Computer Association (TCA). Besides of ICT industry, “design” progressively became the critical factor for the future of the other industries. To promote innovative “Made In Taiwan” products, pavilions from “Best Choice of COMPUTEX”, “Taiwan Excellence Awards”, and newly-set “Design and Innovation (d & i) Award of COMPUTEX”, demonstrated the power of Taiwan’s designs in 2008 COMPUTEX Taipei.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Wikinews interviewed one of the owners of a New York City bar about a popular new politically-themed cocktail drink called Santorum. The beverage was inspired by the santorum neologism coined in advice columnist Dan Savage’s column Savage Love in response to comments made by former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum about homosexuality; Savage’s readers voted to define santorum as: “the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.”

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

The French government confirmed on Wednesday that it has expelled illegal Afghan immigrants in its first joint deportation flight with the UK, in a move criticised by the opposition and human rights groups.

The deportation was widely anticipated, but the French government had refused to confirm that it would be expelling Afghan illegal immigrants until Wednesday. Immigration Minister Eric Besson told Europe One radio that three Afghan men had been put on a plane that had been chartered by the British government. The plane was also carrying illegal Afghan immigrants living in Britain.

Besson said a fourth Afghan had been slated to be expelled as well, but was held back at the last minute. He said those expelled had lost their appeals against deportation, including one before the European Court of Human Rights. He said that he will not rule out future deportation flights with Britain.

The expulsions have sparked widespread outcry on the part of human rights groups and opposition politicians, including Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe. The French rights group France Terre d’Asile has gathered thousands of signatures in a petition against deportation.

Marie-Helene Senay, communications director for France Terre d’Asile, said she opposed the deporting of Afghans back to their country, which has been torn by conflict, even if they do not meet asylum requirements in France.

“We think the situation in Afghanistan does not [warrant] the return of Afghan people in good security. We know the situation over there is the worst we have ever known since 2001,” she said. “We know there is still war everywhere, that the police and the security forces cannot maintain the country in a stable position. So we really wonder what kind of security we can [have] for the people we send back there.”

The French government, however, has argued that it is only trying to crack down on human smuggling rings and that illegal immigrants are given every legal recourse to remain in France. Immigration Minister Besson defended the decision, saying that “if France never sends people back, it becomes the target for people traffickers.” He added that the three men put on the flight were from the Afghan capital of Kabul, “where there is no risk for them”, and would be given monetary assistance to help them settle back into Afghanistan.

Monday, June 23, 2008

2008 COMPUTEX Taipei, the largest trade fair since its inception in 1982, featured several seminars and forums, expansions on show spaces to TWTC Nangang, great transformations for theme pavilions, and WiMAX Taipei Expo, mainly promoted by Taipei Computer Association (TCA). Besides of ICT industry, “design” progressively became the critical factor for the future of the other industries. To promote innovative “Made In Taiwan” products, pavilions from “Best Choice of COMPUTEX”, “Taiwan Excellence Awards”, and newly-set “Design and Innovation (d & i) Award of COMPUTEX”, demonstrated the power of Taiwan’s designs in 2008 COMPUTEX Taipei.

Thursday, May 25, 2006

A family visiting Christchurch, New Zealand from Australia was minutes away from being burnt to death.

They were staying in the Meadow Park Holiday Park, Papanui.

The fire started about 3 a.m. NZST and Station officer Paul Rodwell said, “From the description, they were a few minutes away from perishing.”

New Zealand-born Elaine Puku is on life support in Christchurch Hospital’s intensive-care unit after receiving internal and external second-degree burns while trying to rescue her children.

Other family members – Malcolm Puku, 47, and sons Jeremy, 17, Matthew, 13, and Jordan, 10 – were also in the fire, but escaped grievous injury. They are currently recovering from minor cuts and smoke inhalation.

“I opened up the door into the lounge and the room was like a big volcano, so red and bright and yellow, and all this billowing black smoke,” Malcolm Puku said.

There were no smoke alarms in the unit.

“It doesn’t have any fire-protection smoke alarms because it’s an old place,” Rodwell said.

Fire safety officer Graham Davies said that the accommodation is exempt since it was built before fire detectors became compulsory.

The motel is now under investigation by the Fire Service.

Saturday, September 1, 2007

Mega Millions officials have stated that there are four winners in Friday’s US$330,000,000 lottery drawing in the United States. The tickets matched the drawn number balls of 8, 18, 22, 40, 44 with the Mega Ball of 11.

The lucky winners bought their tickets in four different states. The only winning ticket purchase location to be identified so far was Walther Liquors in Nottingham, Maryland located in Baltimore County and the winner from that purchase has yet to come forward. Lottery officials said the winner bought five tickets, for $1 each, just after 5:00 p.m. Friday, all as a ‘quick pick’ ticket, which is when the computer randomly selects the numbers. The other winners bought their tickets in Virginia, Texas and New Jersey, though the specific retailers had not been revealed.

But the jackpot winners are not the only lucky ones. 36 other individuals had winning tickets that matched all five numbers, without matching the Mega Ball. Those numbers are good for a prize of $250,000. The luck kept spreading though, as 215 others had four winning numbers while also matching the Mega Ball. Those ticket holders will receive a prize of $10,000.

The odds of at least one person winning the jackpot were one in 175,711,536. It was the third largest lottery jackpot in the world.

“You have a better chance of being hit by lightning at the same place and time every day for a week,” said Buddy Roogow, the director of the Maryland Lottery division of Mega Millions.

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.