Saturday, April 26, 2008

Today at 11:07 GMT (07:07 local time), US Space Shuttle Discovery departed its hangar at the Kennedy Space Center Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF), and was towed into the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), arriving at 12:05 GMT (08:05 local time). Its next scheduled launch, STS-124, is currently targeted for the end of May.

This procedure, known as a rollover, occurs around five to six weeks ahead of launch, and is followed by stacking, or attachment of Discovery to an External Tank and a pair of Solid Rocket Boosters, which are waiting in the VAB. Once this has been completed, electrical tests will be conducted on the Shuttle, and then it will be rolled out to Launch Complex 39A in a week’s time.

Discovery’s next mission, STS-124, will carry seven astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), and deliver the main component of the Japanese Experiment Module. The crew who are scheduled to fly aboard Discovery are Mission Commander Mark E. Kelly, Pilot Kenneth Ham, Mission Specialists Karen L. Nyberg, Ronald J. Garan, Michael E. Fossum and Akihiko Hoshide, and Expedition 17 ISS crewmember Gregory Chamitoff.

Monday, February 7, 2005

Feel free to use the Wikimedia sites to solve our Wikinews crossword. Please do not fill it out online as it would spoil it for other people; print it out and fill it in at your own leisure!

< Previous crossword.

Wednesday, February 1, 2006

Comscore Media Metrix Canada has reported that Online Retailers in Canada have seen significant increase in traffic to their websites. In December 2005, 17.9 million shopped retail web sites, an increase of 13 percent over December 2004.

At the top of the list is eBay with 10.9 million visitors, an increase of 16 percent over December 2004. Amazon was next with 6.5 million, an increase of 21 percent.

Best Buy, Canadian Tire, Apple, Sears, and Walmart are among the retailers who all saw an increase in online retail sales.

Flowers and home furnishings purchases also showed big increases from a year ago.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Over 40 children have died in an outbreak of hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) in China, and the country’s capital of Beijing reported its first death due to the disease on Wednesday. According to Xinhua News Agency, Beijing Health Bureau spokeswoman Deng Xiaohong said that the 13-month-old boy died Sunday while en route to the hospital. Health authorities state that 24,934 children in mainland China are afflicted with the disease, and 42 children have died from it. The cause of the disease has been identified as Enterovirus 71 (EV-71). HFMD can also be caused by Coxsackievirus.

Another child infected with the virus died Monday, but as he died in Hebei province his death was counted there. Xinhua News Agency also reported that a 21-month-old boy died Monday of the virus in Hubei province. After an order was given last week by the Ministry of Health of the People’s Republic of China that all cases must be reported, the count of those infected has increased markedly.

Eastern China saw a large number of cases in early March, but this information was not made public until late April. In March, Children under age six in eastern Anhui province began being admitted to hospitals with symptoms of the virus, and the outbreak spread quickly after that. The city of Fuyang in Anhui province was especially hard-hit by the outbreak. “The majority of patients who were in critical condition have recovered,” said a Health Ministry official in a statement on Monday. As of Monday, 3,606 HFMD infections had been reported in Beijing. Deaths have occurred in the provinces of Anhui, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Hunan, Zhejiang, Beijing and Hubei.

“What I know is the death rate has gone down drastically since early May. There are very, very few cases with complications — 99 percent of these are mild cases,” said World Health Organization (WHO) China representative Hans Troedsson in a statement on Wednesday. Incidents of the disease are expected to peak in June and July.

Children with mild cases of the disease generally recover rapidly after manifesting a rash and a fever. Other symptoms include diarrhea, cold-like symptoms, and sores on the extremities and mouth. In severe cases, fluid may accumulate in the brain, and result in meningitis, encephalitis, pulmonary edema, paralysis and death. The EV-71 virus is spread through contact with fluid secreted from blisters, nose and throat mucus, feces and saliva. There is no specific treatment or vaccine for the virus. The disease is unrelated to foot-and-mouth disease, which affects livestock.

United States Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt was visiting in the country, and said in a statement Monday in Shanghai that the U.S. is assisting China fight the outbreak. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, symptomatic treatment can be given to address possible fever and aches and pains. The CDC advises children and adults to practice proper hand washing technique, and to wash and disinfect contaminated items and surfaces using diluted solution of chlorine-containing bleach.

China is also dealing with a magnitude-7.9 earthquake which hit the country Monday and has killed almost 15,000. The outbreak is a concern to the government, as the country prepares for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing this August. “We are confident the potential outbreak will not affect the Beijing Olympic Games,” China’s Health Ministry spokesman Mao Qunan stated. And at a joint press conference held by China’s Ministry of Health and the WHO, he further noted that, “China is confident that it can control the spread of the disease with effective prevention methods.”

Friday, August 25, 2006

India summoned the Ambassador of the Netherlands, Eric Niehe to the Ministry of External Affairs today, following the detention of 12 Indian nationals in Amsterdam because of their alleged “suspicious” behaviour onboard a NorthWest Airlines flight headed for Mumbai. Minister of External Affairs Anand Sharma said that the Indian Government’s views had been communicated to their Dutch counterparts at the “highest level” and that India’s envoy in that country was also in touch with the officials there.

U.S. air marshalls were guarding the flight from Amsterdam to India and according to a Tennessee politician,John Duncan, the American air marshalls “..felt that there were passengers on the plane that were acting in a suspicious way, they conferred with both the flight attendants and the captain and they decided to turn the plane around and bring it back to the airport,” Duncan said.

The Ministry’s secretary (Western relations), Mrs. Shashi Tripathi met Niehe at the South Block and conveyed to him that India had taken the detention of the Indian citizens “very seriously”. India has asked its Ambassador in The Hague to submit a detailed report of the incident to the Government for further analysis of the issue.

Niehe expressed his regret over the incident and clarified that his government had had nothing to do with the detentions. He said the passengers were arrested after they allegedly behaved in an “unruly” manner and were released after being interrogated. He said that the arrests of the 12 Muslims, who according to eye-witnesses, sported beards and spoke Urdu, had nothing to do with racism. The detainees, who had gone to Tobago on business, have since left for their homes in Mumbai and are expected to reach by Friday night. The detainees and their family, however allege that they were unfairly targeted on racist grounds.

Sharma rejected claims that the government had mishandled the issue, saying his officials had acted quickly to get the Indian citizens out of custody within 30 hours of their arrest. He also pointed out that consular access had been provided to them much before the 48 hour time limit stipulated by the Vienna Convention.

Thursday, September 6, 2012

London, England— Tuesday, following her team’s 62–37 win over Mexico in the quarter-finals at the North Greewich Arena, Wikinews interviewed Amber Merrit of the Australian women’s national wheelchair basketball team.

In their next match, the Gliders will face the victors from the United States versus Canada, having suffered their first loss of this year’s Games to Canada on Sunday night by seven points.

((Laura Hale)) I’m excited to see you in London, because you were so fantastic in that interview.

[Wikinews previously interviewed Merrit, and teammates in July. —Ed.]

Amber Merrit: Thank you.

((WN)) Which state are you from?

AM: I’m from WA. [Western Australia —Ed.]

((WN)) You wheel change! What was wrong with your wheel?

AM: I smashed out three spokes. Someone hit me, and I lost three spokes in my chair.

((WN)) was that because you were playing really aggressively against Mexico?

AM: Yeah, or they were playing really aggressive against us.

((WN)) Watching that game it didn’t seem that they were playing that aggressive, in terms of they came in with set pieces; they weren’t doing the full-court press; they didn’t seem prepared for your offensive and defensive tenacity. ((Hawkeye7)) You kept on all holding them out, where they weren’t even getting across the centre line

AM: I think we have a really physical style of basketball where we’re going to press, and when we press we try to stop chairs and make sure they don’t get over that halfway line. They’re going to come out and play as hard as they can against us and sometimes there is that odd mishap where they might smash a few spokes cause they hit us. It happens.

((WN)) You tipped a lot in previous games. You haven’t tipped so much in this series.

AM: No, I’ve managed to keep my balance this time. Or maybe they haven’t hit me hard enough to put me down on the floor.

((WN)) Part of the appeal of wheelchair basketball, and I feel guilty admitting it, it watching you guys tip.

AM: And fall out. It’s embarrassing but I like it.

((WN)) You’ve got your next game coming up, which is going to be against the winner of the United States or Canada later today

AM: We’re not 100% sure yet who that’s going to be.

((WN)) Looking forward to meeting them?

AM: Yeah! Looking forward to coming up against them.

((WN)) Who would you prefer?

AM: I don’t know if I have a preference, to be honest. Whoever its going to be, we’re still going to go out there and play as hard as we can and take it to them as a team.

((WN)) Do you think you’ve been adequately prepared coming in to this, with your tournament in Sydney, your tournament in the Netherlands?

AM: Yeah, I think we’ve come in very well prepared for this tournament. We’ve been together for a while now as a team. Of course we had the Gliders and Rollers world challenge. We also went to Arnheim in the Netherlands for a pre-tournament, and we’ve trained together in Cardiff. And then after Cardiff we came in to London; so we’ve had that time together as a team and we’re doing really well.

((WN)) Does that give you an advantage over other teams?

AM: I’m not sure, because I don’t know what other teams have been doing behind the scenes as their training.

((WN)) Thank you very much.

AM: No worries!

Sunday, May 8, 2005

Mars rover engineers have built a test bed simulating the condition of the Mars Rover Opportunity, which became stuck in a Martian sand dune on April 26. The test bed uses a combination of materials including play sand for children’s sandboxes, diatomaceous earth for swimming pool filters, and mortar clay powder.

Opportunity dug into soft sand to wheel-hub depth as it drove over a dune about one-third meter (one foot) tall and 2.5 meters (8 feet) wide. “We’ve climbed over dozens of ripples, but this one is different in that it seems to be a little taller and to have a steeper slope, about 15 degrees on part of its face,” said Mark Maimone, a Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) rover mobility engineer. Tests will be conducted using an Earth-bound twin of the rover and the simulated Martian dune to determine how to best maneuver Opportunity out of the predicament before transmitting commands to the actual vehicle.

“We choose to proceed cautiously, so we don’t expect to begin actually driving out of the dune before next week, possibly later,” said Jim Erickson, rover project manager at JPL. “Both Opportunity and Spirit have already provided many more months of scientific exploration than anyone expected. By taking good care of them, we hope to keep them exploring for more months to come. Tests so far have sustained our optimism about Opportunity’s ability to drive out of this dune, but we have more testing ahead to understand how robust that capability is.”

Engineers constructed a simulated dune last week using sand that was already at JPL’s rover testing facility and put a test rover into a similar dug-in position. The test rover had no difficulty driving away, even when sunk belly-deep. However, that sand offered better traction than the finer, looser material that appears to make up the surface at Opportunity’s current position. “We needed to do tests using material more like what Opportunity is in, something that has a fluffier texture and cakes onto the wheels,” said JPL rover engineer Rick Welch, who is leading the tests.

Based on images of wheels and wheel tracks from Mars, Dr. Robert Sullivan of Cornell University, a rover science team member, working with engineers in the JPL test bed, helped match the properties of the test sand as closely as possible with those of the sand beneath Opportunity, “We found that when the wheels dig in, the material we’re using does stick to the wheels and fills the gaps between the cleats, but it doesn’t stick when you’re just driving over it. That’s good because it’s the same as what we see in the images from Opportunity,” Sullivan said. Experiments show that the test rover, after some initial wheel-spinning, can drive out of the more powdery material.

The team went to several home supply and hardware stores to find enough bags and boxes of the ingredients to make more than 2 tons of the simulated Mars sand for the more realistic mobility tests, according to JPL rover mobility engineer Jeff Biesiadeckia.

Monday, October 26, 2009

According to the Zimbabwean finance minister, a building belonging to Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party was raided by police on Friday. The police had reportedly been searching for weapons.

The MDC secretary-general, Tendai Biti, said that the house, located in a suburb of Zimbabwe’s capital Harare, was “ransacked” by several dozen armed policemen after dark on Friday. One of the rooms in the building had been searched, and police confiscated what Biti called “valuable party documents”.

The secretary-general accused President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party of being behind the raid, wanting the country’s unity government to fail, describing it as “provocation”. “They are behind this attack. Our decision of pulling out of the inclusive government infuriated ZANU-PF and this is the price we now pay for that decision,” he said.

The police have not yet released a statement regarding the raid.

Tsvangirai and his MDC party had pulled out of the coalition government last week, accusing Mugabe’s party of not complying with the unity government deal made last year, and oppressing opponents. Mugabe, however, dismissed the boycott, calling it a “non-event”, and said that his party would not alter its plans or agree to the MDC’s demands.

Sunday, March 29, 2009

A New Jersey congressman says restrictions on federal stimulus money are hurting gaming destinations like Atlantic City, and he is seeking to repeal a provision banning the use of funds for casinos or other gaming establishments.

“The demonization of gaming destinations such as Las Vegas and Atlantic City for business travel is wrong, wrong, wrong,” U.S. Rep Frank LoBiondo said Friday during a press conference in front of Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City.

The $787 billion federal stimulus bill passed in February specifically prohibits casinos from applying for funds for infrastructure improvements and other similar projects. LoBiondo said Atlantic City is losing millions of dollars in business as a result of that provision.

Casinos’ revenues dropped 19.2 percent in February 2009 month compared to February 2008, according to the New Jersey Casino Control Commission. LoBiondo said $160 million worth of business and 120,000 visitors have chosen other cities for their tourism plans due to the stimulus bill, according to Atlantic City Convention Center figures.

The administration also recently determined other groups like nonprofit organizations and local governments may not spend their stimulus money at casino properties. State officials said the rules are damaging a major pillar of the New Jersey economy.

“Are those jobs somehow less important or less meaningful than those in the manufacturing, retail or financial industries?” said Ken Calemmo, chairman-elect of the Greater Atlantic City Chamber.

Anti-gambling officials said the stimulus law does not prohibit casinos from taking advantage of tax breaks, and Atlantic City officials should not complain about the stimulus bill because the city is too reliant on an unreliable revenue stream.

“There isn’t a state, including New Jersey or Nevada, that could gamble themselves rich, any more than an individual could gamble themselves rich,” said Tom Grey, field director for StopPredatoryGambling.org. “They should’ve diversified (the economy) instead of chasing their loss.”

But Joe Kelly, chamber president, said 35,000 people work at New Jersey casinos, and thousands more around the state work for outside vendors that depend on casinos for their business.

“It is not just an Atlantic County issue. It is not just a Cape May issue,” Kelly said. “There’s purchasing done by every county.”

LoBiondo is working to repeal the provision with U.S. Rep Shelly Berkley, co-chair of the Congressional Gaming Cascus, and has reached out to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has a history of representing the interests of the gaming industry.