Author: Admin

Monday, November 26, 2007

In the 18 months since Andrea Muizelaar was crowned winner of the reality TV series Canada’s Next Top Model, her life has been a complete whirlwind. From working in a dollar store in her hometown of Whitby, Ontario, to modeling haute couture in Toronto, she had reached her dream of becoming a true Top Model.

But at what cost? Unknown to casual television viewers, Muizelaar had been enveloped in the eating disorder anorexia nervosa, which inevitably became too much for her to bear. She gave up modeling and moved back to Whitby, where she sought treatment for her disorder, re-entered college, and now works at a bank. Where is she now? Happy and healthy, she says.

Recently Andrea Muizelaar sat down with Wikinews reporter Mike Halterman in a candid interview that stretched to nearly two hours, as she told all about her hopes and aspirations, her battle with anorexia, and just what really happened on Canada’s Next Top Model.

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

Wikinews extended invitations by e-mail on March 23 to multiple candidates running in the Texas’ 6th congressional district special election of May 1 to fill a vacancy left upon the death of Republican congressman Ron Wright. Of them, the office of Democrat Daryl Eddings, Sr. agreed to answer some questions by phone March 30 about their campaigns and policies. The following is the interview with Ms Chatham on behalf of Mr Eddings, Sr.

Eddings is a federal law enforcement officer and senior non-commissioned officer in the US military. His experience as operations officer of an aviation unit in the California National Guard includes working in Los Angeles to control riots sparked by the O. J. Simpson murder case and the police handling of Rodney King, working with drug interdiction teams in Panama and Central America and fighting in the Middle East. He is the founder of Operation Battle Buddy, which has under his leadership kept in touch with over 20 thousand veterans and their families. He was born in California, but moved to Midlothian, Texas. He endeavours to bring “good government, not no government”. Campaign manager Faith Chatham spoke to Wikinews on matters ranging from healthcare to housing.

An Inside Elections poll published on March 18 shows Republican candidate Susan Wright, the widow of Ron Wright, is ahead by 21% followed by Democrat Jana Sanchez with 17% and Republican Jake Ellzey with 8% with a 4.6% margin of error among 450 likely voters. The district is considered “lean Republican” by Inside Elections and voted 51% in favour of Donald Trump in last year’s US presidential election. This is down from 54% for Trump in 2016’s presidential election, the same poll stated.

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Rescuers are searching for the victims of the Tans Peru airliner crash which occurred earlier this month. Emergency services rescued 5 survivors on Thursday morning.

TANS say that 41 people were killed and a further 57 injured in this, the fifth airliner crash worldwide this month. The Boeing 737-200 airliner crash-landed in heavy jungle near the city of Pucallpa, 840 kilometers (522 miles) northeast of Lima, the capital city.

Peruvian authorities have ordered an investigation and have shipped the aircraft’s two flight data recorders, or “black boxes” to the United States for data retrieval.

Jorge Belevan said “We’ve also found five more survivors and that takes the number (of survivors) to 57. Two people are still missing and there are 41 dead,” Local authorities also said that the death toll is likely to rise due to inaccessible location of the crash site. This is the second TANS Peru plane crash in three years, following the January 2003 crash of flight 222 in the Peruvian rainforest. In that plane crash there were no survivors.

Peruvian government lawyer Marco Ochoa said that rescuers are opening the skin of the aircraft to determine whether there are more bodies trapped inside.

Survivors said that the plane was caught in a fierce storm about 10 minutes before the crash. The plane then caught fire and landed in swampland.

Sunday, October 30, 2005

Brazil —Former advisors to Brazilian Minister of Finance Antonio Palocci have claimed that three million US dollars from Cuba were used in the 2002 political campaign of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The accusation was printed by the Brazilian magazine Veja in its issue circulating this week.

According to Veja, Rogério Buratti, Palocci’s secretary in the early 1990s during the period when Palocci was mayor, claims that Ralf Barquete (another advisor to Palocci) had asked him to find a way to bring money from Cuba.

Another source, economist Vladmir Poleto who had also worked for Palocci, claimed to have brought the three million from Brasília to Campinas by plane. He stated the money was hidden in whiskey boxes: Johnnie Walker Red Label and Black Label and Havana Club (a Cuban brand of rum). Barquete received the money at the Campinas airport Viracopos. Afterwards he claims the money was transferred by car to São Paulo and delivered to Workers’ Party treasurer Delubio Soares.

Workers’ Party President Ricardo Berzoini has responded saying that the accusation is false. And Lula’s aide Gilberto Carvalho has said the story is “absurd”.

According to the blog of Folha de S. Paulo reporter Josias de Souza, Palocci and Lula are worried about the interviews being aired on Brazilian television.

The president of the PPS, federal deputy Roberto Freire (Pernambucostate), has stated that his party will ask the Electoral Justice investigatory agency and the Public Ministry to begin a investigation into the charge. The parties PFL and PSDB are also considering demanding an investigation.

Wednesday, July 4, 2007

The U.S. Department of Labor has released data showing that more than 1,000 private military contractors have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, in response to a Freedom of Information request filed by Reuters.

The number is based on insurance claims filed on behalf of contractors that had been killed, and includes both U.S. and foreign contractors.

As of March 2007, an additional 10,569 contractors have been wounded in Iraq and 2,428 in Afghanistan.

There are disputes about the exact number of contractors in Iraq, but it is estimated to be between 130,000 and 180,000 U.S.-paid private military contractors, compared to 157,000 U.S. military personnel.

Despite beliefs that the contractors all belong to large military-oriented groups such as the British intelligence firm Aegis or Blackwater USA which has been labelled “mercenaries”, the jobs of contractors killed have been as varied as electrical engineer Ronald Schulz, translator Kim Sun-il and truck driver Murat Yuce.

Monday, November 28, 2005

SpaceX called off the much-delayed inaugural launch of their new Falcon 1 rocket on Saturday from Kwajalein’s Omelek Island launch site. The intent was to launch the U.S. Air Force Academy’s FalconSat 2 satellite, which will monitor plasma interactions with the Earth’s upper atmosphere and magnetosphere.

The launch was delayed, then finally cancelled after an oxygen boil-off vent had accidentally been left open. The oxygen was unable to cool the helium pressurant, which then proceeded to evaporate faster than it could be replenished. A main computer issue, probably serious enough to cause a scrub on its own, was also discovered.

This long-anticipated flight was originally expected to be launched in January 2005, however a series of setbacks forced a series of delays, with the flight most recently scheduled to be in early 2006. It was intended to be launched from the Kwajalein atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

The maiden voyage was originally intended to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California with a Naval Research Laboratory satellite and a Space Services Incorporated space burial payload.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Satire site Uncyclopedia, a parody of online encyclopedia Wikipedia, has been labeled by the Malaysian government as dangerous. The Internal Security Department of Malaysia issued the warning today, saying that the site has “messages and information insulting Malaysia”.

The warning notes the creation date of the website as being 5 January 2005, and hosted by Wikia, Inc., both of which are correct. However, it claims Wikia owns Wikipedia; Wikipedia is a charitable non-profit website owned by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, while Wikia is an independent, for-profit company.

The report evidently mentions that Uncyclopedia covers Malaysian “history, culture, the political leaders, the government, the national song and the name / history of the national flag,” none of which is “correct”. They accuse the website of helping to reinforce a bad international image of their country.

There are no reports of the site being blocked from access within the country, only this statement, which urges Malaysians not to circulate the content.

Uncyclopedia’s article on Malaysia begins:

The site has fired back with a parody article posted at the site under their UnNews section, titled Uncyclopedia Internal Security Department warns on Malaysia. The article suggests that the “Internal Security Department of the Uncyclomedia Foundation,” which is a facetious and fictitious parent organization of Uncyclopedia, identifies Malaysia “as a dangerous country… It warned its people not to use the country today.”

There are forty-seven individual language editions of Uncyclopedia, including Tolololpedia, which is written in Bahasa Melayu, the Malay language. This is in addition to fictional “language” editions which include Oscar Wilde, Newspeak, N00b, White Supremacist, and Re: PharmaccgRy.

Tuesday, March 29, 2005In a report from the Department of Homeland Security released on Friday, March 25, they allege the US Transportation Security Administration “made inaccurate statements” about its management of personal data belonging to passengers. The report claims, “TSA did not ensure that privacy protections were in place” as it handled data transfers to private contractors for use in the development of a computerized passenger screening application, called CAPPS II. While the report criticizes TSA for its inaccurate statements, it notes the “misstatements were apparently not meant to mischaracterize known facts,” but were instead “premised on an incomplete understanding” of the truth.

According to the report, the data at issue described passengers flying on the following airlines: America West Airlines, American Airlines, Continental Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Frontier Airlines, and JetBlue Airways. In most of the problematic transfers, the privacy violation occurred by allowing third parties to access passenger data that was not anonymized. In one case, passenger information was made public on the internet through a presentation prepared by Torch Concepts. According to the report, “Torch Concepts’ subsequent efforts to remove the presentation from the internet have failed.”

In an AP report, Yahoo! News notes that TSA announced the launch of its “Secure Flight” system, saying, “Congress has said the agency can’t proceed with Secure Flight unless the Government Accountability Office reports that the technology ensures privacy and that the data are protected.” The report from the GAO was to be released Monday, March 27, 2005.

Thursday, October 25, 2012

2012 US presidential election candidates Barack Obama and Mitt Romney took part Monday in their third and final presidential debate at Lynn University in Florida. The topic of the debate was foreign policy and the candidates discussed the Arab Spring, Iran, and Mali, among other issues.

Mr. Obama criticised Mr. Romney’s foreign policy positions as “all over the map”. “Every time you have offered an opinion you have been wrong.” “You said we should have gone into Iraq, despite the fact there were no weapons of mass destruction. You said we should still have troops in Iraq to this day. You said we shouldn’t be passing nuclear treaties with Russia.” Mr. Romney countered saying Mr. Obama had failed to take proper advantage of the Arab Spring: “I congratulate him on taking out Osama bin Laden and going after the leadership of al-Qaeda, but we can’t kill our way out of this mess”.

Mr. Romney said Mr. Obama was proposing military budget cuts. He said “the highest responsibility of the President of the United states … is to maintain the safety of the American people, and I will not cut our military budget by a trillion dollars… That in my view is making our future less certain and less secure”. Mr. Obama accused Mr. Romney of not properly understanding modern defense priorities. “You mention the navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets. Because the nature of the military has changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines”.

Mr. Romney criticized his opponent for visiting the Middle East on an “apology tour”, and said he would be tougher with Iran. “I think from the very beginning, one of the challenges we’ve had with Iran is that they have looked at this administration and felt that the administration was not as strong as it needed to be. We’re four years closer to a nuclear Iran and we should not have wasted these four years.” Mr. Obama said he would stand with Israel against Iranian threats but added that the main national security concern was terrorist networks. He said his administration had focused on “those who actually killed us on 9/11” and said that under his leadership, “al-Qaeda’s core leadership has been decimated”. Mr. Romney said northern Mali had been taken over by “al-Qaeda-type individuals” .

Mr. Romney criticized China for “holding down artificially the value of their currency”. He added “on day one, I will label them a currency manipulator, which allows us to apply tariffs where they’re taking jobs.” Mr. Obama countered saying under Mr. Romney’s policy America would be “buying cars from China instead of selling cars to China”.

A poll, taken by CBS straight after the debate, indicated 53% of voters thought Mr. Obama had done better, while only 23% thought Mr. Romney had done better.

Both candidates now have plans for continued campaigning ahead of the election on November 6. Mr. Obama is to travel through Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Iowa, Colorado, and Nevada as well as appearing on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in a two-day “America Forward Tour”. Mr. Romney is to hold two joint rallies with his vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan in Nevada and Colorado before going on to campaign in Iowa and Ohio. Mr. Romney’s advisers said he would also consider making a speech on government spending and debt in the next few days.

Thursday, June 7, 2007

When the Philadelphia City Council broke its 80 year old building lease with the Cradle of Liberty Council, it set itself on a course to be the largest city in the nation without its own Boy Scout building. The scouts must abandon their building before the end of July. Local scouts now have to go to suburbs for services.