Author: Admin

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.

Friday, August 31, 2007

In just over 24 hours, the Mega Millions lottery jackpot in the United States has risen to US$330,000,000 to make it the third largest lottery jackpot in the world.

On Thursday, the jackpot was at $325 million and it still could rise before the drawing takes place tonight at 8:00 p.m. (pacific time), 11:00 p.m. (eastern time).

Twelve states in the U.S. participate in the lottery and the odds of at least one person winning the jackpot are one in 175,711,536. It costs just one dollar to purchase a ticket and if you win, you can receive the winnings in sums of 36,000 for every million won, each year, or receive it all in one lump sum which totals just under $200 million before taxes.

On March 6, 2007, the Mega Millions jackpot of US$390 million, the highest lottery jackpot ever in the world, was paid out to two individuals who lived in Georgia and New Jersey. If no one wins Friday’s jackpot, which will have rolled over 16 times without a single winner, it could break the record for the largest lottery jackpot ever.

Monday, March 5, 2007

An aerial collision near Zell am See, Austria has killed 8 people, 5 Swiss citizens, 1 French, 1 German and 1 Austrian.

The collision occurred Monday afternoon between a Super Puma helicopter belonging to Helog S.A, based in Küssnacht (Switzerland), and a private Diamond DA20 “Katana” light aircraft which had taken off from the aerodrome at Zell am See.

All 7 of the passengers and crew from the helicopter were pronounced dead at the scene, as was the pilot of the light aircraft, which had no passengers on board.

The debris from the accident spread over a 20 metre radius and bystanders near to the incident reported seeing a “huge ball of fire in the sky”.

The reason for the accident is presently unclear as both craft have been confirmed as passing pre-flight testing at their respective take-off locations. Furthermore, Zell am See tower radioed the helicopter that a plane was taking off, to which the helicopter replied positively. This conversation should have been heard over radio by the pilot of the plane.

The site of the accident is now being guarded by police, pending the arrival of an investigation team and a delegate of the state attorney.

Sunday, January 29, 2017

At 9:00 p.m. U.S. east coast time yesterday (0200 today UTC), a U.S. federal judge in Brooklyn issued an emergency ruling halting deportation of individuals from the U.S. under the ban on individuals from seven majority-Muslim countries entering the United States that president Donald Trump had initiated by executive order on Friday. Another judge in Virginia issued a similar ruling shortly afterward.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit on behalf of two Iraqis who had been detained at John F. Kennedy airport in New York. Judge Ann Donnelly granted the emergency request to halt deportation under the executive order on grounds some of the people who would be deported would face “imminent danger” and “irreparable injury.”

“What I do for this country? They put the cuffs on” said Hameed Khalid Darweesh, who had worked as a translator for the U.S. military for more than ten years and had been issued a visa after extensive background checks. “You know how many soldiers I touch by this hand?”

Earlier yesterday, Trump issued a statement that his executive order was being carried out smoothly: “It’s not a Muslim ban, but we were totally prepared. It’s working out very nicely. You see it at the airports, you see it all over.” The New York Times described the effects of the ban as “upheaval,” and The Verge described them as “widespread confusion.”

Customs agents at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York detained about twelve people. Others were prevented from boarding planes bound for the U.S. This included both individuals coming to the U.S. for the first time and those in possession of a green card as proof of legal residency, such as international students returning for the spring semester and legal residents returning from visits to their home countries. According to Homeland Security, 109 people were in transit when the order was issued and were prevented from entering the U.S. upon arrival and 173 were prevented from boarding planes, of which 81 were later given waivers admitting them to the country.

The stay applies to individuals who are already in the United States and those who are currently traveling to the United States under legal visas but does not clearly apply to anyone who has not yet departed for the U.S. While it prevents these people from being deported, it does not specifically allow them to enter the United States either. It is not clear whether they will be allowed to do so or held in detention.

Trump’s executive order, officially titled “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States,” specifically placed a 90-day halt on immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia; suspended all refugee admissions for 120 days; and suspended all entry of Syrian refugees into the United States without time limit. Although the administration issued a statement indicating the measure was meant to target “countries compromised by terrorism,” National Public Radio‘s Greg Myre remarked it has been more than twenty years since the last time any of the targeted countries was the origin for a fatal Muslim extremist attack in the U.S. The executive order did not apply to any of the countries from which recent such attackers have hailed, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt which were home to many of the 9/11 hijackers.

NPR noted the seven countries named in the executive order are places where Trump’s family has “no business interests” in play, whereas Trump’s family is conducting or planning projects in Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, Dubai, Indonesia and Turkey. Former Obama administration ethics advisor and current fellow at the Brookings Institution Norman Eisen called the decision an “open and notorious violation of the Constitution.”

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Founded in 1999, and the first-ever 24 hour ultra-marathon race in Taiwan, the 7th Soochow International 24H Ultra-Marathon, took place on November 24-25, 2007. Even though the race has been suspended in the past, in 2000 and 2006, due to poor conditions on the track field, several world-class runners participated in the 2007 race.

Sunday, August 21, 2005

A robotic system at Stanford Medical Center was used to perform a laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery successfully with a theoretically similar rate of complications to that seen in standard operations. However, as there were only 10 people in the experimental group (and another 10 in the control group), this is not a statistically significant sample.

If this surgical procedure is as successful in large-scale studies, it may lead the way for the use of robotic surgery in even more delicate procedures, such as heart surgery. Note that this is not a fully automated system, as a human doctor controls the operation via remote control. Laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery is a treatment for obesity.

There were concerns that doctors, in the future, might only be trained in the remote control procedure. Ronald G. Latimer, M.D., of Santa Barbara, CA, warned “The fact that surgeons may have to open the patient or might actually need to revert to standard laparoscopic techniques demands that this basic training be a requirement before a robot is purchased. Robots do malfunction, so a backup system is imperative. We should not be seduced to buy this instrument to train surgeons if they are not able to do the primary operations themselves.”

There are precedents for just such a problem occurring. A previous “new technology”, the electrocardiogram (ECG), has lead to a lack of basic education on the older technology, the stethoscope. As a result, many heart conditions now go undiagnosed, especially in children and others who rarely undergo an ECG procedure.

Friday, February 3, 2012

The following is the third in a monthly series chronicling the U.S. 2012 presidential election. It features original material compiled throughout the previous month after a brief mention of some of the month’s biggest stories.

In this month’s edition on the campaign trail, the challengers to President Barack Obama react to the results of the New Hampshire Democratic Party primary, two new political parties choose their first presidential nominees, and an economist who announced his intentions to seek the nomination of Americans Elect answers a few questions for Wikinews.