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Monday, September 12, 2005

A new Newsweek poll shows that President Bush‘s approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of 38%. The drop comes largely in response to the Bush Administration’s — and in particular, FEMA‘s — inability to handle the recent rescue and recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Louisiana.

The poll also shows that 57% of people have lost faith in the Administration’s ability to handle a natural disaster. 52% do not feel Bush has the ability to make good decisions in a time of crisis.

The poll of 1,009 people, which has a margin of error of 4%, also showed that the country is still split on issues such as dealing with terrorism, Homeland Security, and military action in Iraq. An overwhelming 66% are not satisfied with the current direction of the country.

The combination of the above issues are likely contributing to President Bush’s declining approval rating. The strong and vocal criticism from Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans may be one factor in the near-term decline. Nagin has given a number of publicized interviews during the recovery crisis, and the following is from the Sunday, September 11 broadcast of MSNBC Meet The Press:

MR. RUSSERT: What’s the biggest mistake you made?

MAYOR NAGIN: My biggest mistake is having a fundamental assumption that in the state of Louisiana, with an $18 billion budget, in the country of the United States that can move whole fleets of aircraft carriers across the globe in 24 hours, that my fundamental assumption was get as many people to safety as possible, and that the cavalry would be coming within two to three days, and they didn’t come.

Responding to public criticism, President Bush stated he intends “to lead an investigation to find out what went right and what went wrong.” [1] The U.S. Congress is expected to investigate the disaster response on the local, state, and federal level as soon as is practical.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Two passenger trains collided in India early on Wednesday, killing at least 21 people and injuring more than twenty others, reports have said. The accident occurred at around 05.30 local time (00.00 UTC), when a passenger train collided with another train which was waiting at a red signal near the northern city of Agra.

Both the trains were in the final leg of their journey at the time of the collision. They were heading to the capital, New Delhi, which is about 200 kilometers north of the accident site.

Passengers said that they were sleeping when they felt a heavy jolt. One eyewitness told television crews that people on the upper berths of the train came tumbling down due to the impact: “We felt a massive jolt. People sleeping on upper berths fell to the floor.”

“There was a loud bang and we were suddenly thrown out of our seats. There was panic everywhere,” another passenger recounted.

A northern railway spokesman, R. D. Vajpayee, told the Voice of America news agency that the rear coach of the stationary train bore the brunt of the collision’s impact. “We had to rescue, take out the passengers which were trapped in the last coach. And, gas cutters were used, and we had called the army also. They had assisted us and, within a few hours, we had completed with rescue operations.”

An unnamed eyewitness told the CNN-IBN news agency that “there are many people who are injured and many people who are dead. A lot of people fell onto the tracks because of the impact of the collision.”

Railway officials said they are not certain what caused the accident, but one of the trains may have overlooked a signal to stop. An inquiry into the incident has been ordered.

Trains are the most popular mode of long-distance travel in India. India operates one of the most extensive and busiest rail networks in the world; 9,000 passenger trains run every day, carrying more than eighty million people daily across the country. There are about 300 rail accidents in the country every year, prompting calls for improving safety standards on the rail network. Earlier this month, one person was killed when a train derailed. In February, another train accident in eastern India claimed sixteen lives.

Friday, May 26, 2006

In February of 2006, the Savarino Services Construction Corp. proposed the construction of a seven million dollar hotel on Elmwood and Forest Avenues in Buffalo, New York. In order for the hotel to be built, at least five properties containing businesses and residents would have to be destroyed. It was not certain whether the properties were owned by Savarino or by the landlord Hans Mobius. The hotel was designed by Karl Frizlen of the Frizlen Group, and is planned to be a franchise of the Wyndham Hotels group.

Elmwood Avenue is known by the community as a popular shopping center, and Nancy Pollina of Don Apparel (who is “utterly against” the construction) claims it’s the only reason why students from Buffalo State College leave campus. Additionally, Michael Faust of Mondo Video said he did not want to “get kicked out of here [his video store property].”

In 1995, a Walgreens was proposed to be built on the same land, but Walgreens later withdrew its request for a variance because of pressure from the community. More recently, Pano Georgiadis tried to get the rights to demolish the Atwater House next to his restaurant on Elmwood Avenue, but was denied a permit due to the property’s historical value. He has since been an opponent to the hotel construction.

In the process of debating the hotel, it was thought that a hotel had previously existed on the proposed site, however; research done at the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society had shown that no hotel had previously existed on the site.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

For the first time a video showing the interrogation process at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp has been released. According to reports broadcast by Canadian media, the video shows Omar Khadr, one of the prisoners, being questioned by Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) officials. The video was filmed with a hidden camera through an air vent. It shows an interrogation from late February 2003 and it is being released now under a court order obtained by Khadr’s lawyers.

In the video, Khadr can be seen repeatedly crying and telling officials that “you don’t care about me.”

Dennis Edney, lawyer for Omar Khadr, responded by saying Dennis Edney “I hope Canadians will be outraged to see the callous and disgraceful treatment of a Canadian youth.” He also said that “Canadians should demand to know why they’ve been lied to.”

Omar claimed in the video that he was receiving poor medical care. When an official said “I’m not a doctor, but I think you’re getting good medical care,” he responded by saying “No I’m not. You’re not here… I lost my eyes. I lost my feet. Everything!” The official’s response to this was “No, you still have your eyes. Your feet are still at the end of your legs.” CBC News has reported that that Khadr’s comments about his eyes and feet are in reference to effects from the firefight in Afghanistan.

When the crying continued the questioner called for a break and said “Look, I want to take a few minutes. I want you to get yourself together. Relax a bit. Have a bite to eat and we’ll start again.”

Khadr, who is currently aged 21, faces life imprisonment for charges as serious as murder if he is found guilty. He also says that he has faced torture in Bagram air base, Afghanistan.

Prime minister Stephen Harper has repeatedly rejected calls for him to ask the United States for Khadr’s return to Canada.

“Mr. Khadr faces serious charges. There is a judicial process underway to determine Mr. Khadr’s fate. This should continue,” Kory Teneycke, Communication Director at the Office of the Prime Minister, told CBC News.

“We might also add in terms of background that the Government of Canada’s position is consistent with the previous government’s,” Teneycke further said. “This is a judicial process as opposed to a political one.”

Thursday, March 24, 2005

San Jose, California — A woman eating a bowl of chili at a Wendy’s restaurant bit into a chewy bit that turned out to be a human finger. She immediately spat it out, warned other patrons to stop eating, and upon recognizing the object as a finger, vomited.

“I’m more of a Carl’s Jr. person,” the 39-year-old Las Vegas woman, Anna Ayala, told Knight Ridder. She said this incident was her first visit to a Wendy’s restaurant. Ayala described how she found the finger, “Suddenly something crunchy was in my mouth,” she continued, “and I spit it out.”

According to Devina Cordero, 20, after Ayala found the finger, she ran up to her and Cordero’s boyfriend and said, “Don’t eat it! Look, there’s a human finger in our chili.”

“We went up to the counter and they told us it was a vegetable,” Cordero continued. “The people from Wendy’s were poking it with a spoon.”

The restaurant is located at 1405 Monterey Highway, just south of downtown San Jose.

Wikinews reporter David Vasquez drove his car up to the drive-thru menu and found that chili was still on the menu, at a price of US$1.19 for a small serving. He also witnessed workers unloading supplies from a semi-trailer truck in the restaurant’s parking lot, and carting them into the back door of the establishment.

According to Ben Gale, director of environmental health for Santa Clara County, the finger did not come from any of the employees at the restaurant. “We asked everybody to show us they have 10 fingers and everything is OK there,” he said. The found portion of the finger likely belonged to a woman because of its long and manicured fingernail, also found in the food.

Officials seized the food supply at the restaurant and are tracing it back to the manufacturer, where they believe the finger may have gotten mixed in with the raw ingredients used to prepare the chili. The restaurant’s operators were later permitted to re-open after preparing new chili prepared from fresh ingredients.

As this story was filed, there was no mention of the incident on the Wendy’s corporate web site. Wendy’s issued a statement through a spokesman.

“Food safety is of utmost importance to us,” said Wendy’s spokesman Joe Desmond. He referred to the incident as an “unsubstantiated claim.”

“We are cooperating fully with the local police and health departments with their investigation. It’s important not to jump to conclusions. Here at Wendy’s we plan to do right by our customers,” Desmond said.

According to county health officials, the unfortunate woman who bit into the finger is doing fine, despite her initial reaction. Officials also noted that the finger would have been cooked at a high enough temperature to destroy any viruses.

The Santa Clara county medical examiner reported that the finger had a solid fingerprint, although investigators did not say if a search of fingerprint databases would be performed to find the owner of the finger.

Sunday, May 31, 2020

SpaceX successfully launched its first crewed mission at 1922 UTC yesterday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, US with NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley in a Crew Dragon capsule atop a Falcon 9 rocket. This was the first launch of a crewed spacecraft from the United States since NASA’s final Space Shuttle mission in July 2011 — a mission Hurley piloted.

SpaceX, backed by entrepreneur Elon Musk, is the first private company to send astronauts into space. The company has engineered and operated reusable rockets, potentially reducing the overall cost of future space missions. Shortly after the launch, the Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage disengaged and returned to an autonomous spaceport drone ship off the coast, to be refurbished and reused on a future mission. Behnken and Hurley are slated to catch up to the International Space Station (ISS) for a stay of one to four months, docking today at 1429 UTC.

The originally planned launch on Wednesday afternoon, local time, was scrubbed due to inclement weather conditions less than 20 minutes before scheduled launch time, with the schedule pushed back to yesterday. Unlike Wednesday’s scrub, however, yesterday’s launch proceeded without issue. Hurley, on radio following the minutes-long ride to low Earth orbit, said, “It was incredible”.

SpaceX’s launch is the latest development in a program initiated in earnest by NASA’s 2014 selection of SpaceX, along with Boeing, to be an initial commercial contractor providing transportation for NASA astronauts to the ISS. Boeing’s first crewed mission is reportedly expected to launch next year. Since the retirement of the Space Shuttles in 2011, NASA has relied on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to transport its astronauts to the orbiting space station.

Hurley, along with his fellow crew members aboard the final Shuttle mission, had left a small U.S. flag aboard the ISS, to be retrieved when the U.S. space program was once again able to launch astronauts to the outpost. Hurley and Behnken, when they depart, plan to return this flag to Earth after a nearly nine-year hiatus to commemorate the milestone. The exact timing of their return is not set, however, as it depends on the continued performance of the Crew Dragon spacecraft, and on when the next Crew Dragon mission occurs, which NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has said may be ready to launch by late August.

Bridenstine remarked of the remainder of the test flight, “I’m breathing a sigh of relief, but I will also tell you I’m not gonna celebrate until Bob and Doug are home safely.” Hurley, for his part, paraphrased the first U.S. citizen in space, Alan Shepard, commenting before launch on the occasion of the United States’ return to human spaceflight capability: “SpaceX we’re go for launch. Let’s light this candle.”

Thursday, April 30, 2009

On Tuesday, April 28, the Senate of Mexico approved a bill that would decriminalize the possession of small quantities of psychoactive drugs for personal use, including marijuana and cocaine. The proposed law has the support of President Felipe Calderón. It awaits approval by the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Mexico’s legislature.

The bill, which passed with 87 votes and 10 abstentions, would make it legal to carry quantities up to 5 grams of marijuana, 500 milligrams of cocaine, 50 milligrams of heroin, or 40 milligrams of methamphetamines for personal use. Those found with greater quantities or convicted of the intent to distribute or sell any quantity of the specified drugs face a sentence of 5–15 years of prison.

The Mexican Congress passed a similar bill in 2006, but it was vetoed by then-president Vicente Fox under pressure from the administration of former United States president George W. Bush.

The 2009 bill would authorize local authorities to investigate drug trafficking. Previously, the classification of drug trafficking as a federal offense prevented local authorities from enforcing drug laws and made it difficult to convict drug dealers: Mexico’s federal courts are overwhelmed by bigger cases.

The bill would also offer voluntary treatment to drug addicts. Those detained three times for drug possession would be sent to a rehabilitation center for mandatory treatment.