Monday, April 11, 2005

Anna Ayala, the Las Vegas woman who claims to have found the notorious “chili finger” at a Wendy’s outlet in San Jose, California, has filed lawsuits against other businesses, according to researchers at the Associated Press. Her previous court battles included the national El Pollo Loco chicken-chain, a previous employer, and even General Motors.

Ayala successfully won her suit for medical expenses against El Pollo Loco, after her daughter Genesis contracted salmonella poisoning from eating at the restaurant. However, Ayala lost another suit in 2000 claiming that a wheel fell off her car.

Ayala’s original account of the incident spoke “emotionally and with disgust” to the San Jose Mercury News when she described it to the paper.

“Lies, lies, lies, that’s all I am hearing. They should look at Wendy’s. What are they hiding? Why are we being victimized again and again?” Ayala recently told The Associated Press. Ayala is now in her Las Vegas home, avoiding reporters.

“It doesn’t prove anything,” family spokesman Ken Bono told the San Francisco Chronicle. “My mom has 10 lawsuits. A lot of people have lawsuits. Why would she sue for money? She has plenty of money,” he said.

Nick Muyo, a spokesman for the San Jose Police department, said not to expect new information in the case for at least a week.

“We just want to step back and take a deep breath,” Muyo told Knight Ridder Newspapers. “From a law enforcement point of view, once you establish it is a human finger, you have to wonder is this a case of industrial accident or is this a case of unreported homicide,” he said.

Las Vegas police searched Anna Ayala’s home on Wednesday, retrieving a cooler and other effects from her home, such as a makeup case.

Despite the incident, which has dramatically reduced sales at Northern California Wendy’s outlets, die-hard Wendy’s fans are still turning up for lunch, even at the outlet where the finger was found, at 1405 Monterey Highway, just south of downtown San Jose.

“We’ve eaten here for years,” a police officer told the San Francisco Chronicle under the condition that he remain anonymous. “They’re very nice people. When we work Spartan Stadium, we always eat here,” he said.

San Jose City Council candidate Andrew Diaz still eats the chili. And he witnessed the finger discovery.

“I walked away real slow,” Diaz told the San Francisco Chronicle. “I didn’t want any commotion,” he said.

Monday, January 1, 2007

More bombs went off just after midnight (0500 GMT) on New Year’s Day in Bangkok, injuring eight people near a shopping mall where hours before a New Year’s Eve countdown was cancelled due to a string of six bombings earlier in the evening.

The first bomb exploded at a seafood restaurant on the Saen Saeb Canal near Pratunam Pier just seconds after midnight.

Three foreigners and two Thais were injured. One of the foreigners had her legs amputated by the blast, according to television and local newspaper reports. The foreign tourists were having dinner at the restaurant.

Police said the bomb was hidden in a tire at the pier.

A second bomb exploded in a telephone booth near a pedestrian bridge at CentralWorld, where thousands of people had gathered earlier in the evening for a countdown party and had been urged by authorities to leave the area and go home. Several foreigners were injured and rushed to hospitals.

Another bomb was found and disposed of without incident at Suan Lum Night Bazaar, another late-night venue for tourists.

A possible bomb was investigated at Buddy Bar, a popular music venue on Khaosan Road. It turned out to be a false report. Police had earlier closed the venue and other bars on the street frequented by backpackers, urging people to return to their hotels and guesthouses.

Earlier in the evening, bombs had gone off at six locations across the city, from about 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Twenty-five people were injured and three later died at hospitals from their injuries. The biggest toll was at Victory Monument, where 17 people were injured, two of them dying from their injuries. Other targets were a police booth at Saphan Kwai intersection, where two people were injured, and a market in Khlong Toei, where three people were injured, one fatally. At Seacon Square shopping mall, a bomb was found in a trash can inside the mall and taken to the parking lot, where it exploded without injuring anyone. Police booths on Sukhumvit Soi 62 and in suburban Nonthaburi were also hit, but there were no injuries.

After the bombings, Bangkok Governor Apirak Kosayothin had ordered the cancellation of the countdown celebrations at Central World and Sanam Luang and other smaller ones.

“Due to several bomb explosions in Bangkok and for the sake of peace and security, I would ask all of you to return to your homes now,” Apirak told a crowd of around 5,000 people at CentralWorld. Most of the crowd dispersed quickly and calmly.

Army Commander-in-Chief General Sonthi Boonyaratglin ordered soldiers deployed around the capital. Security was intensified on the Metro and Skytrain rail systems. The Skytrain cancelled plans to run all night and closed at midnight as usual. Department stores closed early.

Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont visited victims at a local hospital. He appeared on television looking tense, telling reporters he didn’t know who was responsible for the attacks.

Surayud was appointed premier after a coup d’état on September 19 in which the military led by Sonthi ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

The Nation newspaper quoted a “security source” as saying “the old power clique” was behind the bombing.

However, there is also the ongoing violence by Muslim separatists in the South Thailand insurgency, which has left 1,900 people dead since 2004.

Tuesday, March 29, 2005A team of Australian surgeons yesterday reattached both hands and one foot to 10-year-old Perth boy, Terry Vo, after a brick wall which collapsed during a game of basketball fell on him, severing the limbs. The wall gave way while Terry performed a slam-dunk, during a game at a friend’s birthday party.

The boy was today awake and smiling, still in some pain but in good spirits and expected to make a full recovery, according to plastic surgeon, Mr Robert Love.

“What we have is parts that are very much alive so the reattached limbs are certainly pink, well perfused and are indeed moving,” Mr Love told reporters today.

“The fact that he is moving his fingers, and of course when he wakes up he will move both fingers and toes, is not a surprise,” Mr Love had said yesterday.

“The question is more the sensory return that he will get in the hand itself and the fine movements he will have in the fingers and the toes, and that will come with time, hopefully. We will assess that over the next 18 months to two years.

“I’m sure that he’ll enjoy a game of basketball in the future.”

The weight and force of the collapse, and the sharp brick edges, resulted in the three limbs being cut through about 7cm above the wrists and ankle.

Terry’s father Tan said of his only child, the injuries were terrible, “I was scared to look at him, a horrible thing.”

The hands and foot were placed in an ice-filled Esky and rushed to hospital with the boy, where three teams of medical experts were assembled, and he was given a blood transfusion after experiencing massive blood loss. Eight hours of complex micro-surgery on Saturday night were followed by a further two hours of skin grafts yesterday.

“What he will lose because it was such a large zone of traumatised skin and muscle and so on, he will lose some of the skin so he’ll certainly require lots of further surgery regardless of whether the skin survives,” said Mr Love said today.

The boy was kept unconscious under anaesthetic between the two procedures. In an interview yesterday, Mr Love explained why:

“He could have actually been woken up the next day. Because we were intending to take him back to theatre for a second look, to look at the traumatised skin flaps, to close more of his wounds and to do split skin grafting, it was felt the best thing to do would be to keep him stable and to keep him anaesthetised.”

Professor Wayne Morrison, director of the respected Bernard O’Brien Institute of Microsurgery and head of plastic and hand surgery at Melbourne’s St Vincent’s Hospital, said he believed the operation to be a world first.

Sunday, September 9, 2012

London, England — Yesterday, Wikinews interviewed Michael Hartung, the Australian Deputy Chef de Mission at the Australian team quarters in the Paralympic Village.

((Hawkeye7)) What does the Deputy Chef de Mission do?

Michael Hartung: Makes the chef look good! (laughter) No, my role here is in support of our Chef de Mission and the team. There’s two of us, myself, and Kate McLoughlin is the other Deputy Chef de Mission. She focuses on the operations side of things, the logistics and travel and all that sort of stuff, the foundations of preparing the team and really getting here and back home safely with all their gear. The part of the team that I look after is the performance side of things, so in my particular area I have guys in the sports science and sports medicine grew, which is managed by Alison Campbell. We have classification in my area which is managed by Geoff Han. We’ve got high performance and coach support, which is Chris Nunn, and the media guys fit under my side of things, and they are managed by Tim Mannion. All of those guys are all staff at the APC, and they’ve been working with us for a considerable amount of time. They are all experts in their areas so as far as the performance elements of the team are concerned we’ve got a great bunch of people that come in here and its a continuation of the the job that we prepare for and that we do every day. So that’s been good, we’re not a bunch of outsiders who’ve come together just for this team. We’re professionals who work in these fields, doing these jobs day in and day out, so we should be experts when we get to the games in how it should be delivered.

((LauraHale)) Is everything going according to plan for you guys? You’ve got more gold medals than you got in Beijing.

Michael Hartung: Yep. Still not there yet in total but we’re happy. Our goal coming into this, one main goal was to finish top five, and we’re just hanging on. It’s tough. That’s the reality of Olympic sport. We’re having a really good games at the moment. The sub goal of ours was to just beat the medal tally at Beijing which we’ve achieved on gold, which is terrific, and we should achieve on total as well if things keep going the way they are for the next couple of days. That’s a terrific result and it just shows the strength of the Paralympic movement, and the strength of our competitors that there are so many nations fighting it out to be in that top five, and we’re certainly not there by any means. The nation that’s just behind us, the USA, is a traditional powerhouse of Paralympic sport, and a nation that has done extremely well over the history of Paralympic sport. So where we are right now is in a really good position and if we stay where we are now, and pick up a few more medals, we’ll be really happy with the performance of the team and where it’s gone on the medal tally.

((LauraHale)) In the lead up to this there was a lot of coverage of how much money the government gave you for stuff like the recovery centre inside here. How fundamental has that government support been towards this?

Michael Hartung: The Federal government provides us with basically all the funding that we give to the sport programs to deliver sport programs to athletes. And without the Federal government’s support, we cannot do the job that we do. It is essential, and without their investment we certainly wouldn’t be seeing the results that we have here. That been said we’ve also had great support in addition to funding from ministers and senators that have come across here and supported the team. Senator Kate Lundy is here. She’s departing tonight, but has been here for most of the games. It’s been terrific for us and the team to have had that sort of support for us here.

((LauraHale)) Classification has been a big issue in these games. To an extent the Americans lost some… Oscar’s classification’s been a big deal… There hasn’t been much Australian news related to classifications.

Michael Hartung: No, which is a really good sign. I think that shows all the work we’ve put in over the years to classification. We’ve got a program that’s been led by Jim MacMahon that we consider to be a world leading program. Which means that our policies and procedures and our work at a national level to ensure that people know where they fit in the classification spectrum, and no doubt early on is very important to us. So we minimise the risk of an athlete turning up and having a change in classification. This is really the Big Show. This is where it really matters, and for athletes to come here and not be 100% sure about their classification is something that we absolutely want to avoid. We should know where they sit, and there is a lot of money that is now invested through Federal funding and through the states’ institutes and academies and so on. A lot of money gets invested and we need some surety about where that investment is going, and which athletes are prospects for medals when they turn up.

((LauraHale)) We’ve talked to the Oceania people who’ve said they’ve got tremendous support from the APC with the Wales thing. Are you guys going to continue to do that support? Because they couldn’t say enough nice things about the APC and the coaches talking to their athletes.

Michael Hartung: Yeah, that’s terrific. I think that we certainly have an ongoing role that we have played and continue to play in Oceania in helping those countries really develop. New Zealand’s doing great and they’re certainly self-sufficient, and here as a great sporting nation, but for some of our other, smaller neighbors, it’s great that we’ve been able to provide support. We’ve provided opportunities for them to come and be part of the Cardiff staging environment we set up for our team. We started preparations for that back in 2007. So they joined us there, and hopefully that’s helped then achieve their great results here, with Fiji winning a gold medal. That’s a tremendous achievement for Oceania as a whole, not just Fiji, and that’s been terrific to know that the staging camp has assisted with that, along with the other support that we provide. We helped establish the Oceania Paralympic Committee not so long ago. We have Paul Bird, one of our Vice Presidents, as the President of the Oceania Paralympic Committee, and so we have a really close working relationship with those nations. It’s terrific to see them succeed, and to be successful.

((LauraHale)) Have you had a chance to see many of your athletes compete? And has there been any performance that has really stood out, Australian or not Australian?

Michael Hartung: Yeah! I’ve been fortunate to see a lot of our guys compete, right across the board. There’s many, many highlights for me. I don’t think there’s been one stand out performance. Natalie Smith getting a bronze medal to get us underway on the first day was such an incredible achievement, knowing where the shooting program was four or five years ago, not really being able to crack the medals, and to finally do it here in the first event, and to be the first medal was wonderful. Jacqui Freney’s performances here to win seven gold medals has been amazing, and she’s had a great meet here. Matt Cowdrey breaking the record and becoming the athlete to win the most gold medals for Australia has been a real achievement. But then seeing some of the things we’ve seen on the track and track cycling, Michael Gallagher and the other guys, they’ve had a great performance here at the games, incredibly well, and I think the most satisfying element of all of those performances is knowing the work that’s gone into supporting those athletes from the the people around them, but the work that those individual athletes have put into achieving success, because coming here, you can see that this is an elite sporting environment, and only the best in the world will achieve success, and you don’t become the best by doing it half arsed; you have to give it 150%, and that’s what it takes. No one wins unless they do that.

((LauraHale)) Anything else that we should know?

Michael Hartung: Apart from what we’ve just spoken about, I think that the London Organising Committee has done a terrific job with these games. They’ve made a sensational environment. Every games has its challenges, but the challenges here have been quite minor, and haven’t caused any major disruptions. It enabled us to create an environment here which is really performance based. That’s what the Australian Paralympic Committee is working on all the time is to create the best environment for our athletes. So that’s been great. The crowds here have been tremendous and the support of the British public, and that started long ago with the acknowledgment of both Olympic and Paralympic. Whenever they say things, they say “Olympic and Paralympic”. It’s not been just about one games, primarily the Olympic Games or whatever, and that’s been really good in terms of the psyche of the British people, because they know about Paralympic sport. They’re a very knowledgeable audience, and that’s been really great for the crowds here. They’ve cheered really loudly for the British athletes, but they’ve also been giving all the other athletes a big cheer as well, which is wonderful. And taking away from these games, the crowd, and the involvement and the support of all the athletes that have competed has been wonderful.

Friday, October 10, 2008

In an attempt to speak with as many candidates as possible during the 2008 Canadian federal election, Wikinews has talked via email with Paul Arbour. Arbour is a candidate in Ontario’s Carleton—Mississippi Mills riding, running under the New Democratic Party (NDP) banner.

The riding is currently represented by Gordon O’Connor, a Conservative. The Minister of National Revenue, O’Connor is up against the NDP’s Arbour, Liberal Justin Mackinnon, and Green Jake Cole. Previous MPs in the riding were Progressive Conservative, Liberal, and Canadian Alliance members. A riding since 1988, Carleton—Mississippi Mills is in the Capital region.

The following is an interview with Arbour, conducted via email. The interview has had very limited editing, to eliminate in-text mentions of website addresses, but is otherwise left exactly as sent to Wikinews.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

The Supreme Court in Lausanne, Switzerland has ruled that Texas hold ’em poker is a game of luck, rather than a game of skill. As a result, only casinos can host poker tournaments in Switzerland. Private games with friends, even where money is at stake, are still permitted under the ruling.

Poker tournaments had been growing in popularity in the country, with many events held in hotels and bars. Such venues do not have to pay the 50% tax on profits levied on licensed casinos, nor comply with regulations combating money laundering and gambling addiction. Poker is now categorised alongside roulette and slot machines, which as games of luck can only be played inside casinos. Mathematics, strategy, and bluffing were less important in determining the result than chance, said the judges, overturning a lower court ruling to the opposite effect, and disagreeing with the stance of the country’s Federal Gaming Commission.

Before the ruling, it had been estimated by the Swiss Federation of Casinos that there were about 100 unlicensed poker tournaments every weekend. A Swiss poker website, SwissPokerTour.ch, has described the result as “a black day for all amateur poker players in Switzerland.”