Author: Admin

Sunday, March 25, 2018

Visual art, fabric art, photography, performance, dance, virtual reality, and music were all the subject of sessions at Furnal Equinox 2018, a conference held from March 16 to 18 at Toronto’s Westin Harbour Castle. Canada’s largest furry convention by attendance, the annual event offers dozens of subculture-specific programs.

The convention’s communications and public relations coordinator for the event, Ronnie, describes furries as “people that enjoy arts and culture centred around animals and animal-themed topics, essentially. Furnal Equinox in particular, we like to celebrate in a very visual and very […] artistic nature, where we have lots of arts and performances and crafts that go on, and people celebrate with lots of socialisation involved.”

Of the attendees, Ronnie told Wikinews “they come from all walks of life. They are people of all ages, sizes, all sorts of backgrounds, and they come together under one mutual interest, which is their love for animal culture.”

“Programming at Furnal Equinox involves[…] a lot of informational panels, so you can find out about topics from art and how to draw, or how to visually incorporate different elements into your artworks. You can also find panels that teach you how to write better, be a better fiction author for example,” explained the event representative.

At one panel Wikinews attended, members of its all-volunteer organising committee spoke of the year-long process of planning the event, and their reasons for committing such a significant amount of their time. Said one panelist, “if you’re happy, we’re happy.”

• Image: Nicholas Moreau.

• Image: Nicholas Moreau.

• Image: Nicholas Moreau.

The largest hub of activity at the convention was a dealer’s room; nicknamed the “Dealer’s Den”, giving it an anthropomorphic twist. Vendors were selling original visual art, wearables like faux fur tails or ears, or things like jewellery or soap with motifs that would interest attendees.

The back area of the room was dedicated to a charity auction, with proceeds benefiting Happily Ever Esther Farm Sanctuary. According to the convention website, the charity is “dedicated to rescuing abused, neglected, and abandoned farmed animals. Their goal is to provide a safe, life-long home for all of their residents, and to educate the public about the true nature of farmed animals through tours, volunteer programs, and community outreach.”

Split into groups, some attendees played “Fursuit Games” in front of an audience, like trying to toss a ball into a garbage can. The activity made harder, of course, by the limited dexterity and vision the most of the costumes entail.

• Image: Nicholas Moreau.

• Image: Nicholas Moreau.

• Berrie Image: Nicholas Moreau.

• Image: Nicholas Moreau.

• Attendees try to catch their own prizes, like t-shirts, after the Games. Image: Nicholas Moreau.

Friday, December 31, 2004

New York City — Actor Jerry Orbach died in his home in Manhattan at age 69. Orbach was a staple of American cinema, stage and television, with his most recent role being in the NBC police drama “Law and Order.”

Orbach is survived by his wife of 25 years, Elaine Cancilla, and his two sons Anthony and Christopher.

Orbach was born in the tough Bronx borough of New York City in 1935 to a family of entertainers. His father Leon Orbach was an vaudeville actor and his mother Emily Orbach was a radio singer and greeting card writer.

The family moved often to keep up with travelling Vaudeville acts, but eventually settled in Waukegan Illinois where Orbach played football at the local high school. After graduation, Orbach got a summer job at the Chevy Chase Country Club in Wheeling doing odd jobs ranging from stagecraft to small acting parts in plays.

He then studied drama at the University of Illinois before transferring to Northwestern where he studied the Stanislavsky Method of drama acting. In 1955, Orbach dropped out of college and moved to New York City where he got a job as an understudy in The Threepenny Opera.

Orbach continued to work in theater, eventually earning roles in broadway musicals, but by 1961 had grown dissatisfied with being typecast as a musical actor. He tried briefly to break into film without success, and eventually returned to broadway where he earned numerous accolades for his roles in such musicals as “Guys and Dolls” and “Chicago“.

Orbach finally broke into television in the 1980s as a recurring character in shows such as the mystery-drama “Murder She Wrote” and the hit sitcom “Golden Girls“.

He earned the lead role as the title character in his own short-lived series “The Law and Harry McGraw”, a spinoff of “Murder She Wrote”. Orbach also scored key roles in a few Hollywood films, including the action thriller “F/X”, and the dance-musical hit “Dirty Dancing”, but continued to find his mainstay in television crime dramas.

In 1990, he picked up a role in the new NBC crime drama “Law and Order” as the acerbic-witted Lennie Briscoe, a role which soon become a regular job. Orbach continued in this role in addition to movie roles and occasional musical appearances until his death this last week.

Orbach was diagnosed with Prostate cancer in Spring of 2004, a fact he kept private until November when he checked into New York’s Memorial Sloan-Ketting Cancer Center for treatment. In spite of the aggressive nature of the treatment, he died on the evening of December 28.

Monday, April 10, 2006The family of a Detroit, Michigan woman plans to file a wrongful-death lawsuit against the city after her six-year-old son’s calls to emergency operators were allegedly dismissed as a prank. The family released the tapes of the emergency calls to the media on Friday.

Sherrill Turner, 46, died on February 20 of complications from an enlarged heart. Her son Robert made two calls to 911 to report the emergency.

“My mom is passed out,” said Robert Turner when he called 911 the first time.

“Where’s Mister Turner at?” asked the operator. Robert replied that his mother was unable to speak.

“Okay, well, I’m going to send the police over to your house to find out what’s going on,” added the operator, before hanging up on the boy. However, the police never came, and an ambulance was never dispatched to the home.

The boy called 911 three hours later, and reports say the operator who answered the call may have been the same operator that answered the first call. The operator asked to speak to the mother before saying “before I send the police over there.” Then she said to the boy, “You shouldn’t be playing on the phone. Now put her on the phone before I send the police over there to knock on the door, and you’re going to be in trouble.”

“It was taking too long,” said Robert.

Delaina Patterson, the boy’s older sister, who lives in Novi, Michigan, said that after 9:00 p.m. help did come, but only the police and no EMS or medical personnel.

The operator, whose name has not been released, remains on the job pending an investigation by city officials.

Thursday, October 22, 2020

2020 Melbourne Lord Mayor candidate Wayne Tseng answered some questions about his campaign for the upcoming election from Wikinews. The Lord Mayor election in the Australian city is scheduled to take place this week.

Tseng runs a firm called eTranslate, which helps software developers to make the software available to the users. In the candidate’s questionnaire, Tseng said eTranslate had led to him working with all three tiers of the government. He previously belonged to the Australian Liberal Party, but has left since then, to run for mayorship as an independent candidate.

Tseng is of Chinese descent, having moved to Australia with his parents from Vietnam. Graduated in Brisbane, Tseng received his PhD in Melbourne and has been living in the city, he told Wikinews. Tseng also formed Chinese Precinct Chamber of Commerce, an organisation responsible for many “community bond building initiatives”, the Lord Mayor candidate told Wikinews.

Tseng discussed his plans for leading Melbourne, recovering from COVID-19, and “Democracy 2.0” to ensure concerns of minorities in the city were also heard. Tseng also focused on the importance of the multi-culture aspect and talked about making Melbourne the capital of the aboriginals. Tseng also explained why he thinks Melbourne is poised to be a world city by 2030.

Tseng’s deputy Lord Mayor candidate Gricol Yang is a Commercial Banker and works for ANZ Banking Group.

Currently, Sally Capp is the Lord Mayor of Melbourne, the Victorian capital. Capp was elected as an interim Lord Mayor in mid-2018 after the former Lord Mayor Robert Doyle resigned from his position after sexual assault allegations. Doyle served as the Lord Mayor of Melbourne for almost a decade since 2008.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Four people are reported killed in Kampala, Uganda, amidst protest marches organised against a government proposal to cut down 7,000 hectares of forest land to expand a private company’s sugarcane plantations.

Two men of Asian descent were stoned to death by a mob, and the deaths of two others were under investigation, according to police sources. A witness said that one of the Asians was attacked after he ran his motorcycle into a crowd. BBC News reported that a looter was shot dead and a bystander wounded by security guards.

Asian businesses and a Hindu temple were attacked by rioters; in response, police deployed armoured cars, used tear gas, and opened fire to quell the violence. A group of Asians trapped in the temple by a mob were rescued by police.

The sugar company is owned by the Mehta Group, established by Indian immigrant Nanji Kalidas Mehta. Asian immigrants formed a prosperous trading community in Uganda before they were expelled by Idi Amin in 1972. Many returned following Amin’s downfall, but some Ugandans view their presence and business with suspicion.

The Mabira reserve forest in south-east Uganda covers about 30,000 hectares and is home to several rare species; it has been a reserve forest since 1932. A primatologist working in the area announced in February that monkeys in the forest previously thought to be Gray-cheeked Mangabey (Lophocebus albigena) were in fact a new species.

President Yoweri Museveni‘s government is considering a proposal to de-notify and transfer 7,000 acres of land to the Sugar Corporation of Uganda Limited (Scoul) to expand its sugarcane plantations. A cabinet paper says the plan will generate 3500 jobs and will contribute 11.5 billion shillings to the treasury.

Scoul bills itself as the largest employer in East Africa, with 7,300 employees manufacturing sugar and industrial alcohol at its 10,000 hectare Lugazi estate. The Ugandan newspaper Monitor reports that Scoul’s plantations have been reduced in acreage after it failed to reach agreement over existing leases with various landlords.

Scoul says that plantations at the Mabira forest will help double its annual production to 110 metric tonnes, and in a newspaper advertisement published on Thursday, said that “anti-development lobby groups” were misleading the public about the Mabira plan. In its environment policy, the company says it is committed to a managing land and wetlands resources in an environmentally sensitive manner.

The plan is opposed by Ugandan MPs because of its environmental impact. An official from the Ugandan National Forestry Authority told the news agency AFP that the plan will destroy the area’s biodiversity and affect locals’ livelihood.

Scoul says the forest land is already being encroached upon by subsistence farmers.

Meanwhile, the group has been offered land in Mengo and by the Anglican church in Mukono as an alternative to the Mabira plan. Scoul Chief Executive S.C Khanna says that he will consider such an alternative if the land is fertile, free of “squatters” and close enough — within 30 km of the sugar factory — so that the cost of transporting sugarcane is viable.

Scoul has increased security after multiple fires destroyed crops at its plantations.

Sunday, May 28, 2006

A 17-year-old student faces expulsion by the Plainfield School District in Plainfield, Illinois as a result of blog posts he made on xanga.com which were critical of the school staff, alleging bullying and intimidation. The student has already been suspended for 10 days for the “inappropriate comments” and “threats” the school felt he had expressed on his blog. The posts were not made on school time or with school equipment.

On May 1, the student posted the following message that apparently initiated the suspension:

“dear plainfield school district 202:

i know you read this. and you suck. suspend me or what ever you would like to do. but this is my fuckin web site and i can put what ever i want on it. kinda goes with the first amendment. by suspending kyle again for his xanga you guys are pathetic and totally irrational. first amendment you fucks. freedom of speech. and who the fuck are you to say what some one can do from there own personal computer. one more thing kiss my ass.”

On May 2, the student continued his passionate rant, giving some background to the controversy:

“you are bully’s. I feel threatened by you. if you don’t like what you see here then do not come here its that simple. I’m pretty sure when you suspended Sam you brought her to tears, you are a bully and you make me sick. there’s nothing you can do about us posting about parties we’ve been to and how much liquor we had or how much pot was smoked, the police need to do a better job, you are not the police. and how is it that you feel threatened what was said that was so threatening. I feel threatened by you, I cant even have a public web page with out you bullying me and telling me what has to be removed. where is this freedom of speech that this government is sworn to uphold? none of this is posted at school, its all posted from our home computers, and once we step foot into our homes we are not on school property any more. you are just power hungry, don’t you ever think? did you stop to think that maybe this will make parents angry that you are bullying their children around? did you ever stop to think that maybe now you really are going to have a threat on your hands now that you have just pissed off kids for voicing their opinions? did you ever stop to think this will start a community backlash? The kids at Columbine did what they did because they were bullied. In my opinion you are the real threat here. None of us ever put in our xanga’s that they were going to kill or bring harm to any one. we voiced our opinions. you are the real threat here. you are depriving us of our right to learn. now stick that in your pipe and smoke it.”

Attorney Carl Buck, who feels the school authorities have overstepped their boundaries, says, “The district is going to take away the student’s education for exercising his freedom of speech… I feel like they are trying to control his freedom of speech. … He is saying, ‘You can’t bully people and we have a right to object and you can’t throw people out of school for voicing their opinions.'”

Other students at the school posted messages of support in their own Xanga blogs. A blogger named Meghan wrote, “As Americans, we have the right to speak our mind.” Another student, Heather, who found out about the possible expulsion through the local news, wrote that “first of all, Xanga is outside of school … second of all … there was no threat towards anyone on his posts.”

In a related case in March 2006, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that an Alaska high school acted improperly by suspending a student for carrying a banner reading “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” across the street from the school.