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Thursday, March 16, 2006

Anti-war demonstrators in Sydney, Australia on Thursday dubbed U.S. Secretary of State Dr Condoleezza Rice a “war criminal” and “murderer.” Two protesters were evicted and five people were arrested during protests against the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Dr Rice, on a three-day trip to Australia, said she understood why people found it hard to be positive about Iraq when all they saw on their television screens was violence.

Soon after Rice began her speech at the University of Sydney’s Conservatorium of Music, two protesters shouted from the rear of the auditorium, “Condoleezza Rice, you are a war criminal,” and “Iraqi blood is on your hands and you cannot wash that blood away.” Standing with their palms towards her, the young man and woman repeated their accusation until security intervened to remove them from the hall.

About 15 minutes into Rice’s address, a third protester appeared at a balcony door, interrupting her speech as she referred to freedom. “What kind of freedom are you talking about? You are a murderer,” said the demonstrator before he was quietly escorted from the hall. “I’m very glad to see that democracy is well and alive here at the university,” she said.

In her speech, Rice sought to justify the U.S. occupation of Iraq, describing Iraqis as now more free. One student asked about abuses committed by U.S. forces at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. She said the abuses had made her “sick to her stomach.” However, she defended Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where human rights groups say detainees are held in inhumane conditions and in detention flouting international laws.

Before Rice began her speech, about 50 protesters were gathered at the front gates of the Conservatorium. The group were confronted by police on horseback and by police dogs. Police used the horses to charge into the group of activists and push them back, as a police helicopter hovered.

A police spokeswoman said the group was blocking pedestrian access to the building and that police had spent more than 20 minutes warning them to move. The police then moved in and pushed the crowd back 20 metres. Police say five people have been charged with “hindering police in the execution of their duties.”

The “Stop the War Coalition” says Rice is a “war criminal” and is not welcome in Australia. The group’s spokeswoman, Anna Samson, says the protest is one of many planned in the lead-up to the third anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq on March 20.

Paddy Gibson, from the University of Sydney’s Student’s Council, says the protest is in opposition to the Iraq war, and to the use of the University of Sydney’s campus to host Rice, “the most powerful woman in the world,” who they say is a war criminal. “They’re saying, ‘… you’ve got Sydney Uni’s support to stand up and peddle your murderous hate speeches,’ which is what we see it,” he said.

“You’ve got 180,000 people killed, as we said, for no other reason than strategic control of the region’s oil resources. And the anti-Muslim racism that’s been whipped up to justify this war is being felt by Sydney University students,” said Mr Gibson.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

200,000 litres of oil leaked into waters off the coast of Brisbane from the Pacific Adventurer when their fuel tanks were damaged in rough seas on Wednesday. The figure is about ten times higher than the original estimate of twenty thousand litres of oil. The devastating diesel oil spill has spread along 60 kilometres (37 miles) of the Queensland coast. In addition, 31 containers with 620 tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertiliser flew overboard during the violent storm.

Questions are being asked why the Hong Kong cargo ship was out in seas with nine meter waves caused by Cyclone Hamish, a Category 5 tropical cyclone, as well as why the fertiliser containers were not properly secured. One of the overboard containers ruptured the hull of the Pacific Adventurer, causing between 30 to 100 tonnes of oil to spew from the severely damaged ship.

If the ammonium nitrate mixes with the heavy oil, an explosion could occur. None of the containers have been recovered. Some of these may float, but it is believed that they may have sunk which then may cause algal blooms.

Disaster zones have been declared at Bribie and Moreton Islands, and along the Sunshine coast.

The vessel’s owner, Swire Shipping, reported that a second leak began on Friday, when the ship began listing after docking at Hamilton for repairs. “As full soundings of the vessel’s tanks were being taken at the port to determine how much oil had leaked from the vessel, a small quantity of fuel oil escaped from the Pacific Adventurer,” it stated. The ship was brought upright, and a recovery vessel was used to suck up the oil from the water. The leak produced a 500m-long oil slick down the Brisbane River. Booms were placed around this oil spill so that a skimmer could clean up the second spill.

Swire Shipping could face clean up costs of AU$100,000 a day as well as fines up to AU$1.5million (US$977,000; £703,000) if found guilty of environmental breaches or negligence.

Sunshine Coast beaches are slowly starting to be reopened. The beach of Mooloolaba was still closed following reports of burning sensations from swimmers. 12 beaches remain closed; however, 13 have been reopened.

Over 300 state government and council workers are using buckets, rakes and spades in the clean up effort. Sunshine Coast Mayor Bob Abbott says the majority will be gone by Sunday afternoon. The full environmental impact on wildlife is not yet known. One turtle and seven pelicans have been found covered in oil.

There are concerns that the drinking water of Moreton Island is at risk, as the island uses water from the underground water table near the oil spill site.

“Every bucketload of contaminated sand has to be removed from the island by barge, and each bucketload from a front-end loader weighs about one tonne. It’s just an impossible task,” said Mr Trevor Hassard of the Tangalooma Dolphin Education Centre.

The commercial fishing industry has suffered from the incident. Trawlers won’t resume operations until Sunday evening, and any catches will be tested for human consumption.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) selected Pyeongchang, South Korea as host of the 2018 Winter Games today. The committee meeting in Durban, South Africa, made its selection in the first round of voting. The South Korean city won over Munich, Germany and Annecy, France after failing in two previous tries.

It was an emphatic success for South Korea after its unsuccessful applications for the 2010 and 2014 Winter Olympics. This time its hour-long presentation to the committee focused on the sports with the theme “New Horizons” rather than geopolitical location and included South Korean president Lee Myung-bak and Kim Yu-na, the winner of the 2010 Olympic figure skating gold medal winner. On the first round of secret ballots, cast by the IOC’s 95 voting members from 76 countries, Pyeongchang received 63 votes to Munich’s 25 and 7 for Annecy.

IOC President Jacques Rogge opened the sealed envelope and made the announcement in front of the entire IOC membership and the representatives from the three candidate cities. A loud cheer erupted from the Pyeongchang detachment, as they jumped up, hugged each other, and waved South Korean flags.

The host for the Winter Olympics was awarded on the first ballot in 1995 to Salt Lake City, Utah for the 2002 winter games, the last time the host was selected on the first ballot. Only twice before have the Winter Games been awarded to a country in Asia, both times to Japan.

The 2016 Summer Games have previously been awarded to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which will be the first South American city to host the games. Sochi, Russia was selected in 2007 for the 2014 Winter Games, giving Russia its first hosting of the Winter Games.

Saturday, June 13, 2015

Famed English actor, singer and author Sir Christopher Lee died last Sunday morning in London aged 93, after being admitted to Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for heart failure and respiratory problems. News of his death only became public on Thursday, as his wife of 54 years, Birgit Krøncke Lee, wished first to inform friends and family.

A spokesman for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea confirmed the issuing of his death certificate.

Lee first rose to prominence in the 1950s starring in Hammer Horror films as the classic movie monsters Dracula and Frankenstein and was more recently seen as Saruman the White in the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films as well as portraying the villainous Count Dooku in the Star Wars films Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith.

In 2010 Lee released a heavy metal album titled Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross followed by another metal album in 2013, Charlemagne: The Omens of Death and several collections of Heavy Metal cover songs including A Heavy Metal Christmas, A Heavy Metal Christmas Too and Metal Knight.

In 2008 Lee was knighted for services to drama and charity, and in 2001 received a Bafta Fellowship.

Lee is survived by his wife Birgit and daughter Christina.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Besides becoming a political stomping ground for the Pan-Green and Pan-Blue coalitions, there are other changes from past years of Taipei Audio Video Fair (TAVF). With those changes in mind, Wikinews reporter Rico Shen interviewed You-peng Wang, chairman of the Taipei Electrical Commercial Association (TECA), the main organizer of TAVF, about the 60th year anniversary of TECA and the changes to the show.

Monday, April 23, 2018

March 20, Mark Meechan of Scotland was found guilty of “being grossly offensive” in violation of the Communications Act of 2003. Meechan, who goes by “Count Dankula” on YouTube, posted a video on the social media site in which he trained a pug, a small companion dog, to respond to spoken words such as “Sieg Heil” and “Gas the Jews”. Sentencing for Meechan has been scheduled for <L>April 23</L>.

In April of 2016, Meechan uploaded a video titled “M8 Yer Dugs A Nazi” to YouTube in which he trained the dog to respond to certain spoken commands. The dog, which belongs to his girlfriend Suzanne Kelly, learned to raise its front paw when the “Sieg Hitler” command was given, and jumped for joy when the words “Gas the Jews” were spoken. The video was viewed three million times before it was put on ‘restricted mode’ on YouTube. In the video, which runs 2m:23s, Meechan states that he is not a racist. The prosecution called the video “an odious criminal act that was dressed up to look like a joke.”

Meechan’s defense, led by attorney Ross Brown, centered around the video being a joke. Meechan wanted to annoy his girlfriend because he didn’t really like the dog. Brown further argued that Meechan expected the video to be viewed only by Kelly and a few other friends and didn’t expect it to go viral. Kelly testified to Meechan never expressing any antisemitic views.

Director of the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities Ephraim Borowski, testified for the prosecution. “In many ways, the bit I found most offensive was the repetition of ‘gas the Jews’ rather than the dog itself,” said Borowski. “Material of this kind goes to normalize the antisemitic views that frankly we thought we had seen the last of… The Holocaust is not a subject for jocular content.”

The sheriff court with Derek O’Carroll presiding in Airdrie, North Lanarkshire found that Meechan was guilty because the video was “anti-Semitic and racist in nature”. O’Carroll elaborated: “This court has taken the freedom of expression into consideration, but the right to freedom of expression also comes with responsibility.”

O’Carroll further said, “The accused is quite obviously an intelligent and articulate man. The accused knew that the material was offensive and knew why it was offensive. Despite that the accused made a video containing anti-Semitic content and he would have known it was grossly offensive to many Jewish people.”

After the conviction, some British comedians voiced their support for Meechan. Ricky Gervais tweeted: “If you don’t believe in a person’s right to say things that you might find “grossly offensive”, then you don’t believe in Freedom of Speech.” David Baddiel also tweeted, saying “an actual Nazi would not be teaching his *pug* to Hitler salute.”

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Saturday, May 12, 2007

An object that fell through the roof of a New Jersey home in January was not a meteorite, according to Jeremy Delaney, a geologist at Rutgers University. Instead, it appears the object was space junk or orbital debris.

“Basically, it’s a piece of stainless steel. There’s huge amounts of material that have been left by the various space programs of the world,” said Delaney.

The meteorite shaped object was not from a naturally occurring substance and had a silver like reflection. It weighed about the same as a small can of soup, 13 ounces (about 370 grams), but was no bigger than a golf ball.

Earlier during the incident, scientists from Rutgers examined the object visually along with police who were at the scene, and determined it was a meteorite. But further tests by geologists confirmed that it was not a meteorite, but probably a metal piece from a rocket or satellite. They had earlier thought it was made of iron.

“That’s the nature of science. If the conclusion from the test says it’s not a meteorite, then it’s not a meteorite. We have to move forward,” said Srinivasan Nageswaran, a member of the family that found the object.