Tuesday, December 10, 2013

The British government announced today that marriages in England and Wales between members of the same-sex will be conducted from March 29 of next year. The change follows the passage of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act earlier this year.

The equalities minister Maria Miller said: “Marriage is one of our most important institutions, and from 29 March 2014 it will be open to everyone, irrespective of whether they fall in love with someone of the same sex or opposite sex. This is just another step in the evolution of marriage and I know that many couples up and down the country will be hugely excited that they can now plan for their big day and demonstrate their love and commitment to each other by getting married.”

The government have not given details of how couples already in a civil partnership will be able to convert to a marriage. The government are also working on arrangements for those who wish to change their legally recognised gender while married. Miller said arrangements on both of these issues would be in place by the end of 2014.

Ben Summerskill from the gay rights group Stonewall said: “This historic step will mean that, for the first time, every gay person in England and Wales will finally enjoy exactly the same rights as their heterosexual friends and family.”

The deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, said on Twitter that it was “great news”.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Prince William of Wales has selected his brother Prince Harry to be the best man at his wedding. The announcement was made by a spokesman at St James’s Palace. It has also been revealed that Prince William’s fiancée, Kate Middleton, has asked her sister Philippa to be her Maid of Honour. Prince William and Middleton will marry on April 29th of this year at Westminster Abbey.

When it was announced that William and Kate had become engaged Prince Harry commented saying that: “It means I get a sister, which I have always wanted,” and that he was “delighted”.

As well as the announcements of the best man and Maid of Honour, other plans have been released as well. The four bridesmaids have been announced as the daughter of the Earl and Countess of Wessex, Lady Louise Windsor, who is seven years old. Eight-year-old Margarita Armstrong-Jones, who is the daughter of Viscount and Viscountess Linley, and three-year-old Grace van Cutsem, the daughter of Hugh van Cutsem, who is a close friend to both William and Kate. The three-year-old granddaughter of the Duchess of Cornwall will be the forth bridesmaid.

Two page boys have been announced as William Lowther-Pinkerton and Tom Pettifer. Lowther-Pinkerton is the son of William’s private secretary while Pettifer is the son of William and Harry’s former nanny, Tiggy Legge-Bourke.

However, details of the bridesmaid dresses and page boys uniforms will not be revealed until the day of the wedding.

Monday, June 28, 2010

Traralgon defeated Wonthaggi by five goals at the Wonthaggi Recreation Reserve as they kept in touch with Maffra at the top of the Gippsland Football League in Australia’s state of Victoria. Wonthaggi now sit a game out of the top five.

Maffra (nine wins one loss) are on top a game clear of Traralgon, with Moe a further game back. Morwell (five wins five losses) are two games behind Moe in fourth. Drouin (four wins five losses) sit in fifth ahead of Sale (four wins five losses) and Leongatha (four wins six losses) on percentage. Warragul have not won a game this season. (Sale and Drouin have had one extra bye then the rest of the competition)

The Gippsland League, comprising nine clubs, is the major Australian rules football competition in the rural region between Melbourne and the boundary with New South Wales.

Scores are quoted as goals-behinds (total). Goals are worth six points, behinds one.

The opening quarter was a goal for goal affair with both teams kicking two each. However, Traralgon lead by three points going into the first break.

Traralgon kicked seven goals to one in the second quarter to take a 38 point lead into the third quarter. At half time Traralgon lead 9-6 (60) to 3-4 (22).

Wikinews asked Traralgon statistician Andy Thissling about Wonthaggi’s second half fight back. “Yea[h] kick[ed] 4 goal[s] to 3 in 3[rd] quarter,” Thissling said.

The teams kicked a goal each in the last quarter with the visitors winning 13-13 (91) to 8-13 (61).

Around the grounds, Morwell 14-16 (100) defeated Leongatha 7-10 (52), Sale 12-20 (92) defeated Warragul 2-6 (18) and Maffra 13-15 (93) defeated Moe 6-6 (42). Drouin had the bye.

Thursday, January 3, 2008

The British Foreign Office is advising Britons against all but essential travel to Kenya because of the violence following the disputed presidential elections. The warning and the violence are heavily affecting Kenya’s tourism industry, which relies heavily on European tourists escaping the winter cold.

The travel warning recommends that those already in Kenya stay indoors and exercise extreme caution and seek advice locally either from their tour operator or the local authorities if they want to travel. The Foreign Office also warns against attending political gatherings and large public meetings.

This decision comes at the same time as widespread violence in the country and calls for an investigation into the vote results, after suspicion over vote rigging by the government.

Tour operators in the United Kingdom have suspended holiday packages to Kenya until the situation there improves. Two holiday companies are thought to be flying out empty planes to the country, to bring back British residents from the country.

The Association of British Travel Associations, an umbrella body for travel agents says about four hundred tourists who had been scheduled to fly to Kenya have postponed their trips. Sean Tipton is a spokesperson for the association.

“Clearly holidays can’t count as essential travel, because of that British tour operators have two flights one going out on Friday and another one on Saturday both those flights will still be going, but they will be flying out empty,” he said. “They won’t be taking any more customers out to Kenya. The reason they are being sent is they were due to return people to the UK. There is another charter flight which should go out on Monday at the moment that’s still scheduled to go because the advice to Kenya is changing very rapidly, but if the Foreign Office is still advising against all but essential travel, that flight will also be cancelled.”

Another umbrella body, the Federation of Tour Operators also announced the suspension of holiday trips to Kenya with departures due up to Saturday January 5th.

In a statement it said the situation is being reviewed daily and any changes to departures planned after 5 January will be made over the coming days.

Media reports say there are about 6,000 British citizens currently travelling in Kenya.

Sunday, June 4, 2017

In an analysis published on Friday in Science, scientists announced data collected from the Curiosity Rover show that Mars’s Gale Crater was once a chemically stratified lake, meaning the aquatic environment differed markedly between deep and shallow water. According to the report, “all of the physical, chemical, and energetic conditions necessary to establish a habitable environment were present on Mars between ~3.8 billion and 3.1 billion years ago.”

Analysis shows the chemical index of alteration fluctuated over time in a way that suggested the lake varied between hot, wet periods and colder, drier periods. The shallow water would have been rich in oxidants brought in from the atmosphere and groundwater, and the deeper water would have been oxidant poor. Phosphates, carbon, nitrogen, iron and sulfur, indicating chemistry suitable for life, have also been found there in a variety of compounds.

Lead author Joel Hurowitz of Stony Brook University explained, “These were very different, co-existing environments in the same lake[…] This type of oxidant stratification is a common feature of lakes on Earth, and now we’ve found it on Mars. The diversity of environments in this Martian lake would have provided multiple opportunities for different types of microbes to survive.”

The scientists also evaluated the fineness of the sediment, meaning the sizes of individual particles of dirt, dust and sand. Curiosity found larger grains near the edges of the lake where sediments from incoming rivers and streams would have fed it, and smaller ones in what would have been the deep lakebed, which is consistent with particles dropping out of the water as the current slows down. “We could tell something was going on,” Hurowitz said in a statement. “What was causing iron minerals to be one flavor in one part of the lake and another flavor in another part of the lake? We had an ‘Aha!’ moment when we realized that the mineral information and the bedding-thickness information mapped perfectly onto each other in a way you would expect from a stratified lake with a chemical boundary between shallow water and deeper water.”

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Zaragoza, Spain — On Thursday, Wikinews traveled to Zaragoza, Spain to interview the nation’s most decorated Paralympian and IPC Athlete Council representative Teresa Perales. A wide range of topics about the Paralympics and sport in Spain were discussed including the evolution of Paralympic sport, disability sport classification, funding support across all levels of elite sport including the Paralympics and Olympics, the role of sportspeople in politics, sponsorship issues, and issues of gender in Spanish sport.

Thursday, January 12, 2017

United States President Barack Obama gave his official farewell address on Tuesday night from McCormick Place in Chicago, reflecting on personal and national accomplishments. This is expected to be his last major speech before officially handing the reins to president-elect Donald Trump on January 20.

Obama’s speech was wide-ranging. He thanked his family and the nation, spoke of the need for unity, noted the country’s accomplishments and need for improvement in areas like education and civil rights, and spoke about the need for pride in U.S. accomplishments, citing milestones of U.S. history and of his presidency specifically. “It’s why GIs gave their lives at Omaha Beach and Iwo Jima; Iraq and Afghanistan – and why men and women from Selma to Stonewall were prepared to give theirs as well.”

The president also addressed his country’s troubled history with race and racism, an issue many black citizens feel he has avoided. Despite this, Chauncy Devega of Salon described the president as “a role model of calm, cool reflective black masculinity: a man utterly at home in his own skin.” Obama described the concept of a post-racial U.S. “unrealistic” and particularly cited the need for reform in education and the criminal justice system and greater acceptance of scientific evidence, particularly evidence supporting action to counteract climate change.

However, publications including The Washington Post and Salon have given particular focus to another aspect of the president’s address: the country’s increasing political tensions and controversies involving access to news and information, both accurate and inaccurate. “We become so secure and our bubbles,” said Obama, “that we start accepting only information, whether it’s true or not, that fits our opinions instead of basing our opinions on the evidence that is out there,” calling this trend “a third threat to our democracy.”

The Washington Post characterized Obama’s comment, “If every economic issue is framed as a struggle between a hard-working white middle class and an undeserving minority, then workers of all shades will be left fighting for scraps while the wealthy withdraw further into their private enclaves,” as a “not-so-subtle jab” at the campaign tactics of President-elect Donald Trump. The Telegraph describes Obama’s warnings about the need to protect democracy as “a thinly veiled slight to the divisive rhetoric of Donald Trump’s election campaign, which included attacks on Muslims, the disabled, women and immigrants.” The president went on to call on the public to “reject the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest or to enfeeble the sacred ties that make us one America. We weaken those ties when we allow our political dialogue to become so corrosive […] We weaken those ties when we define some of us as more American than others when we write off the whole system as inevitably corrupt and when we sit back and blame the leaders we elect without examining our own role in electing them. It falls to each of us to be those anxious, jealous guardians of our democracy.”

Despite this, when the mention of Donald Trump brought boos from the crowd, Obama reiterated the importance of the long history of peaceful transfers of power from one president to the next: “No no no no no. […] I committed to President-elect Trump that my administration would ensure the smoothest possible transition, just as President Bush did for me.” However, this was not unaccompanied by a call to action. Near the end of the speech, he insisted citizens dissatisfied with elected officials should “lace up your shoes, grab a clipboard, get some signatures and run for office yourself.”

Overall, the departing president’s speech focused on accomplishment, echoing the “Yes we can” slogan from his 2008 campaign: “If I have told you eight years ago, that America would reverse a great recession, reboot our auto industry, and unleash the longest stretch of job creation in our history. If I had told you, that we would open up a new chapter with the Cuban people, shut down Iran’s nuclear weapons program without firing a shot, take out the mastermind of 9/11[…] If I had told you that we would win a marriage equality and secure the right to health insurance for another twenty million of our fellow citizens. If I had told you all that, you might have said our sights were set a little too high. But that’s what we did.”

But when the crowd began shouting “Four more years! Four more years!” Obama, with a small laugh, answered, “I can’t do that.”

Monday, June 7, 2010

An acrobatic group known by the name of Spelbound has been declared as the winner of Britain’s Got Talent 2010, a televised variety talent show competition broadcast on ITV in the United Kingdom. As the winning act of the show, Spelbound have won £100,000 (US$144,580, €120,313, A$175,079) and a place at The Royal Variety Performance, an annual gala evening that is attended by senior members of the British Royal Family.

In no particular order, the top three acts were revealed to be two dancers known by their stage name of Twist and Pulse, gymnastic group Spelbound and Kieran Gaffney, whose act involves playing on the drum kit. After Kieran Gaffney was revealed to be in third place, Anthony McPartlin, who hosts Britain’s Got Talent with Declan Donnelly, said to Kieran: “Well done Kieran. Kieran, you’re a star, you came back, you got all the way to the final. I know you’ve loved this. You’ve loved this, haven’t you?” In response to this, Kieran Gaffney stated: “Thank you very much. Thank you, everyone for supporting me. Thank you.”

Shortly afterwards, on the episode that was broadcast live on ITV1 on Saturday, Anthony announced: “After tens of thousands of auditons, five semi-finals and an amazing final, this…this is it. One of you is about to walk away with £100,000 and a place at this year’s Royal Variety Performance. The winner of Britain’s Got Talent 2010 is…Spelbound!” Glen Murphy from Twist and Pulse commented about finishing in second place, stating: “Yeah, it’s amazing. I can’t even believe it. I can’t believe it at all.”

Alex Uttley, a 24-year-old member of Spelbound, commented on the gymnastic group’s victory, commenting: “Oh, my god. This is unbelieveable. We just want to say thank you to everyone out there. It just shows that all our hard work has paid off.” One of the coaches of Spelbound, named Neil Griffiths, stated about Spelbound: “Oh, they’ve worked so hard over the last few weeks. Um, since the semi-final, we…we really had to pull out the stops to try and up the game. They’ve not known they’ve worked in the gym from six in the morning till twelve…twelve o’clock of the night. I couldn’t have asked for more. Um, it’s a team of coaches. I don’t take all the credit myself. There’s, uh, two people up there that know who they are who’ve been fantastic.”

Spelbound consists of 24-year-old Alex Uttley, Nicholas Illingworth, aged 24, Adam Buckingham, aged 21, 20-year-old Adam McAssey, 19-year-old Douglas Fordyce, 18-year-old Edward Upcott, 18-year-old Leighanne Cowler, 17-year-old Katie Axten, 17-year-old Lauren Kemp, 15-year-old Jonathan Stranks, Abigail Ralph, aged 15, 13-year-old Hollianne Wood and Amy Mackenzie, aged 12. Bookmakers had previously predicted that Spelbound would be the most likely act to become the winner of the series.

The running order for the final started with Twist and Pulse. The second act to perform was Liam McNally, a 14-year-old singer. The running order subsequently continued with 40-year-old impressionist Paul Burling, singer Christopher Stone, aged 28, Tina & Chandi, a woman and dog dancing act, Connected, a five-piece singing group, Kieran Gaffney, aged 12, 22-year-old Tobias Mead, a dancer, 80-year-old singer Janey Cutler and Spelbound in that particular order.

Earlier on in the final, Britain’s Got Talent judge Amanda Holden has stated to Spelbound: “We are hosting the 2012 Olympics and I think ‘what a brilliant opening act’.” Fellow judge Piers Morgan also commented that “[t]he purpose of this show is to identify hidden great British talent. You are that act.” After Spelbound won in the final, another judge, named Simon Cowell, stated that “the right boys and girls won on the night” and that he could “only say on live TV that that was one of the most astonishing things I have ever seen. Seriously.”