Saturday, May 6, 2006

Early Saturday morning winds up to 90 miles per hour struck Waco, Texas and central McLennan County, United States, causing widespread damage and leaving many households without electricity.

No deaths or serious injuries have been reported; however, there is a tremendous amount of damage in 15 areas of the city, leading Mayor Virgina DuPuy to declare the city a disaster area.

The hardest hit area was Franklin Avenue, where the Coca-Cola bottling plant’s roof was peeled open as if by a giant can-opener. There were Sprite bottles spread out onto the street. The nearby Furniture Row shopping center was also hit hard. Some furniture was found as far as three-quarters of a mile away. Other hard-hit areas were Robinson, Hewitt, Woodway, and Speegleville. Densely populated Inner Waco was spared of any catastrophic damage, though hundreds, and possibly thousands, of trees have fallen, and roofs destroyed.

The main concern is restoring power to over 23,000 households and businesses. Many gas stations and grocery stores in the disaster areas were closed until power is restored. Those that remained open have had to throw out all perishable items. Also of concern is getting electricity to those with medical needs. The city has provided help to those without power at the Dewey Recreation Center.

The storm is the hardest to hit the area since the tornado that struck on May 11, 1953, which tore through downtown and killed 114 people.

Waco has seen more than its share of tornadoes recently. Only a week ago, an F1 tornado damaged many houses along Orchid and Kendall Lanes. No people were injured, though two horses were killed when their stable collapsed.

The National Weather Service confirmed this morning’s winds were a F2 tornado, where wind speeds may have reached 115 miles per hour in some locations.

Sunday, March 13, 2016

Wikinews spoke with three people associated with the early political career of U.S. businessman Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican Party’s 2016 presidential nomination. Those interviewed include longtime political operative Roger Stone, a close associate of Trump and director of Trump’s 2000 presidential exploratory committee; journalist Dave Shiflett, co-writer of Trump’s 2000 campaign book The America We Deserve; and political consultant Russ Verney, who served as chairman of the Reform Party of the United States of America which Trump briefly joined.

In Trump’s highly publicized 2016 campaign, he has run under the banner of Make America Great Again, advocating a Mexican-funded wall along the U.S.–Mexico border, renegotiation of trade terms with other nations, and a temporary halt on the immigration of Muslims to the United States. He holds a considerable lead in Republican National Convention delegates over his opponents, winning 15 of the first 24 primary and caucus contests. Though this is Trump’s most visible campaign, it is not his first foray into electoral politics. He flirted with Republican presidential runs: first in 1987, when he purchased newspaper advertisements on foreign policy and delivered a campaign-like speech in the first-in-the-nation primary state of New Hampshire; and then in 2011, when he briefly led nationwide opinion polls for the presidential nomination after questioning the citizenship of President Barack Obama. Trump’s most extensive campaign before now came during the 2000 presidential election when he opened an exploratory committee to consider seeking the presidential nomination of the Reform Party.

For 2000, Trump conducted various speeches and media appearances in support of his potential presidential campaign. He placed Stone in charge of his exploratory committee and hired Shiflett to work on what would become The America We Deserve. His chief opponent for the nomination was paleoconservative icon and eventual nominee Pat Buchanan who entered the race after ending his third unsuccessful campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. Based on Buchanan’s comments against American involvement in World War II, Trump attacked Buchanan as a “Hitler lover” and anti-Semite. Trump’s campaign received support from then-Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura, the highest ranking elected official in the Reform Party. This placed Trump at odds with the faction of industrialist Ross Perot, the party’s founder and two time presidential candidate. Verney, a Perot confidante, was chairman of the party during Trump’s exploration. Though initially dismissive of the campaign, Verney eventually welcomed Trump into the race. However, the deep divisions within the party precipitated the exit of Ventura, and Trump did not seek the nomination. Despite leaving the race, Trump still appeared on Reform Party presidential primary ballots in California and Michigan, winning both states.

Over a five month period, Wikinews reporter William S. Saturn contacted the three previously involved in Trump’s politics to get their thoughts on his current presidential campaign, learn more about Trump’s political past including the true nature of his 2000 effort, and obtain details on his personality.

Friday, June 1, 2007

U.S. Democratic Party presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton has been asking webizens to vote on her official campaign song. Campaign Manager Patti Solis Doyle sent an email today to previous voters, urging them to choose a song in the second and final round of voting.

Clinton, as many of the other candidates, have been using “Web 2.0” applications like YouTube, Flickr, MySpace, Facebook, and blogs to try and engage young voters.

The top five songs in Round One were “Suddenly I See” by KT Tunstall, “Rock This Country!” by Shania Twain, “Beautiful Day” by U2, “Get Ready” by The Temptations, and “I’m a Believer” by Smash Mouth. Five top write-ins were also added to the list of round 2 nominees: “Are You Gonna Go My Way” by Lenny Kravitz, “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now” by McFadden & Whitehead, “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” by The Police, “You and I” by Celine Dion, and “The Best” by Tina Turner.

Many of the nominated songs are from international artists; Tunstall is Scottish, Twain is Canadian, and U2 are Irish.

Monday, January 15, 2007

Legendary Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan has confirmed that his son Abhishek and former Miss World Aishwarya Rai were engaged last evening at a private ceremony at the Bachchans’ residence in Mumbai.

It is believed that the younger Bachchan proposed to his bride-to-be in New York, soon after the Toronto premiere of his new movie Guru. The media had been following the romance between the two closely for some time past, but this is the first time they have come out in the open about their relationship. Rumours that the couple were planning to spread the know began to spread in November last year, when they visited the Sankat Mochan Temple together, with some even saying that they had already been married even earlier at the Meenakshi temple in Madurai

According to one daily, the wedding will take place either on February 19 or March 7 at the Hyatt Mumbai. “The children have decided. We are very happy and thought we should go ahead with the ‘roka’ ceremony. It was held in the evening.”, Amitabh Bachchan said of the ceremony, which was attended by the family’s close friends, including Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh, Aishwarya’s parents, and industrialist Anil Ambani and the latter’s wife Tina Ambani. The couple have now flown to Ujjain to take a holy dip in the Ganga.

Sunday, February 13, 2005

New York –”Buy cheap Viagra through us – no prescription required!” Anyone with an active email account will recognize lines like this one. According to some reports, unsolicited advertisements (spam) for Viagra and similar drugs account for one in four spam messages.

Ever since pharmaceutical giant Pfizer promised to cure erectile dysfunction once and for all with its blue pills containing the drug sildenafil citrate, spammers have tried to tap into male anxiety by offering prescription-free sales of unapproved “generic” Viagra and clones such as Cialis soft tabs. Legislation like the U.S. CAN-SPAM act has done little to stem the tide of email advertising the products.

Now Pfizer has entered a pledge with Microsoft Corporation, the world’s largest software company, to address the problem. The joint effort will focus on lawsuits against spammers as well as the companies they advertise. “Pfizer is joining with Microsoft on these actions as part of our shared pledge to reduce the sale of these products and to fight the senders of unsolicited e-mail that overwhelms people’s inboxes,” said Jeff Kindler, executive vice president at Pfizer.

Microsoft has filed civil actions against spammers advertising the websites CanadianPharmacy and E-Pharmacy Direct. Pfizer has filed lawsuits against the two companies, and has taken actions against websites which use the word “Viagra” in their domain names. Sales of controlled drugs from Canadian pharmacies to the United States are illegal, but most drugs sold in Canada have nevertheless undergone testing by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. This is not the case for many of the Viagra clones sold by Internet companies and manufactured in countries like China and India. While it was not clear that CanadianPharmacy was actually shipping drugs from Canada, Pfizer’s general counsel, Beth Levine, claimed that the company filled orders using a call center in Montreal, reported the Toronto Star.

For Microsoft’s part, they allege that the joint effort with Pfizer is part of their “multi-pronged attack on the barrage of spam.” As the creator of the popular email program Outlook, Microsoft has been criticized in the past for the product’s spam filtering process. Recently, Microsoft added anti-spam measures to its popular Exchange server. Exchange 2003 now includes support for accessing so-called real-time block lists, or RTBLs. An RTBL is a list of the IP addresses maintained by a third party; the addresses on the list are those of mailservers thought to have sent spam recently. Exchange 2003 can query the list for each message it receives.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), a militant Islamic fundamentalist group based in Pakistan, has been implicated in last week’s Mumbai attacks in India.

Rakesh Maria, a commissioner with the Mumbai Police, said that the sole surviving attacker, whom he identified as Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, has admitted spending three months in a Lashkar-e-Toiba camp preparing the attacks. Kasab, who is reported to be 21 years old, told police that he spent a total of eighteen months training at various LeT camps.

Meanwhile, John Michael McConnell, the United States Director of National Intelligence, indirectly implicated LeT. In a speech at Harvard University, he said that the same group responsible for the 2006 Mumbai train bombings was behind last week’s attacks. LeT has also been blamed for the attack on the Parliament of India in late 2001

“The same group that we believe is responsible for Mumbai had a similar attack in 2006 on a train and killed a similar number of people,” said McConnell without naming LeT. “If you examine the groups we think are responsible, the philosophical underpinnings are very similar to what Al-Qaeda puts out as their view of how the world should be. It is a continuation.”

Commissioner Maria said that the training took place in Muzaffarabad, Pakistan, near the disputed Kashmir region. Kasab received very specific instructions, according to Maria.

“He was told things like, ‘You’ll come in through this door, then go over here, then go out through that door,'” Maria told CNN‘s Nic Robertson. “Very, very detailed, explicit instructions. The gunmen were hand-picked, but there were no examinations per se.”

India has also said that Kasab named known LeT leader, Yusuf Muzammil, as the mastermind behind the attacks.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited the Indian capital of New Delhi on Wednesday.

“Pakistan needs to act with resolve and urgency and cooperate fully and transparently,” said Rice. “That message has been delivered and will be delivered to Pakistan.”

Analysts cited by Reuters are saying that India will not resort to a military response over the Mumbai attacks.

“The military option has never been an option, because the military can’t guarantee you an outcome,” said Manoj Joshi, an editor at the Mail Today. “We have been there, done it, and it doesn’t work.” In 2002, India threatened military action after the parliament attack.

“If you want a solution to Afghanistan, you have to lean on Pakistan to shut down all jihadist operations,” said Siddharth Varadarajan, an editor at The Hindu. “You have to tackle the root cause, which is the attitude of the Pakistani military. That is the silver bullet.”

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

The Australian Greens have attacked the governments green energy targets. Prime Minister John Howard announced the national targets yesterday, requiring that by 2020, 30,000 gigawatt hours of electricity each year comes from low emissions sources. The Greens claim that the targets do not go far enough. “John Howard’s 15% ‘clean’ target by 2020 is too little, too late,” said Greens Senate candidate for South Australia, Sarah Hanson-Young.

The Greens also claim that the inclusion of clean coal technology in the definition of “green energy” is misleading. “Howard’s spin doctors have been at it again. The target is misleading – it includes the unproven ‘clean coal’ technology, so the proportion of genuine clean, renewable energy generated is far less than we are led to believe,” Ms Hanson-Young said.

The clean energy target is part of the government’s A$3.5 billion climate change strategy.

Saturday, April 9, 2005

The top money grossing entertainers in Australia in 2005 were not Kylie Minogue, Nicole Kidman, or Russell Crowe. In fact, it was four tot-time entertainers, the Wiggles, with their preference for bright colours and sing-along dance numbers. Their earnings level was estimated at AU$45 million over the last year by Australian publication Business Review Weekly (BRW), in its yearly who’s-who ranking of the nation’s top 50 entertainment earners.

“They got into the market early, they took time to understand their audience, not only children but the parents who pay for everything,” BRW managing editor Tony Featherstone, said.

Though almost doubling her earnings from the previous year, Nicole Kidman only made second place, at AU$40m. And Crowe came in third, at “only” AU$27m. Fourth place was long-time heavy metal favourites, AC/DC, whose estimated income was AU$18m.

Another children’s entertainment band, Hi-5 came in sixth with $15m, after Naomi Watts.