Author: Admin

Friday, September 26, 2008

On October 14, 2008, Canadians will be heading to the polls for the federal election. Christian Heritage Party candidate Pastor George D. Campbell is standing for election in the riding of Dartmouth—Cole Harbour.

Wikinews contacted John, to talk about the issues facing Canadians, and what they and their party would do to address them. Wikinews is in the process of contacting every candidate, in every riding across the country, no matter their political stripe. All interviews are conducted over e-mail, and interviews are published unedited, allowing candidates to impart their full message to our readers, uninterrupted.

Michael Savage of the Liberal Party won the riding’s first election in 2004, and serves as the Liberal critic for Human Resources Development. (Note that the riding, with different names and boundaries, has existed in some form since 1968. Its current size includes the Dartmouth and Cole Harbour areas of the Halifax Regional Municipality.) Along with Campbell, challengers for the riding include Brad Pye (NDP), Paul Shreenan (Green), and Wanda Webber (Conservative).

For more information, visit the campaign’s official website, listed below.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

At least 14 United States troops, four crew and ten passengers, were killed in Iraq when their UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter crashed, for unknown reasons. The U.S. military in Iraq are blaming mechanical failure for the crash. One other helicopter was flying with the downed one on a mission the military calls Task Force Lightning.

“There were no indications of hostile fire. Two UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters were on a night operation when one of the aircraft crashed. That helicopter had been carrying four crew members and 10 passengers,” said the U.S. military in a statement to the press.

The military says that this is the worst crash of its kind in Iraq since 2005 when 31 U.S. marines were killed after their chopper crashed.

Friday, July 23, 2021

With five active cases of the Delta variant of COVID-19, South Australia begun a one-week lockdown on Monday. Announcing the lockdown, state Premier Steven Marshall declared “we have no alternative but to impose some fairly heavy and immediate restrictions”.

The first case out of South Australia’s active cases was presented to Modbury Hospital on Sunday night, having returned from Argentina earlier this month. The fifth, which Premier Marshall noted as “far more worrying”, visited The Greek on Halifax restaurant at the same time as someone who was later confirmed to be carrying the virus. Chief Public Health Officer for the state Nicola Spurrier said “if anyone has been at The Greek on Halifax they need to get into quarantine and get tested”.

In accordance with new regulations, there are only five reasons for South Australians to leave home: essential work, shopping for essential goods such as food, exercise, but only with people from the same household and within 2.5 kilometers (2 mi) of home, medical reasons (which includes testing and vaccination against the coronavirus, but excludes elective and cosmetic surgery), and caregiving.

Schools have closed for all but children of essential workers, with online learning having begun on Thursday. Face masks are also be mandated for those who leave home. ABC News reported that “support for businesses is expected to be announced…”, with all non-essential retail required to close under the new regulations.

Thursday, August 18, 2005

Security experts are calling it a “botwar”. Multiple computer worms, with payloads that turn infected computers into sources of spam, viruses and security attacks, are being released by at least two separate groups. Now newer versions of one group’s worm include the ability to disable earlier versions of the other group’s infection. “The W32/Zotob-F worms (also known as Bozori) attempts to remove infections by earlier versions of the Zotob worm and other malware, so it can take control of the compromised computer for itself”, a Sophos news item stated. F-secure’s Weblog confirmed this and added “It seems there are two groups that are fighting: IRCBot and Bozori vs Zotobs and the other Bots.”

Gregg Keizer of TechWeb News draws parallels between the current events and a prior example of criminal activity; “The most notable back-and-forth between [virus and worm writers] was in early 2004, when the writers of the Bagle and Netsky worm families engaged in a long-running tit-for-tat exchange where each tried to delete the other’s code. The battle led to a veritable flood of malicious code that [lasted] weeks.” While some see a repeat of those events, other experts indicate that the current situation is “business as normal” for the criminals that create these “bot networks“.

A statement from Kaspersky Lab stated that confusion over the naming of the worms has combined with overzealous reporting by infected news organisations to create confusion as to the magnitude of the attack. At this stage they are not calling it an epidemic.

All of these worms currently exploit the MS05-039 Plug and Play vulnerability, for which a patch has already been released.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

In response to higher than expected mortgage rate increases last week, Australian treasurer Wayne Swan flagged changes to banking regulations to increase competition between lenders on home mortgages.

Swan announced yesterday he had sought a Treasury report on the banking sector ahead of talks over the next fortnight on reforms to make it easier for bank customers to move mortgages between lenders by forcing banks to reduce exit fees, to “make the market more competitive”.

“Everybody knows we’ve been impacted upon by the U.S. sub-prime mortgage crisis that has pushed up the cost of money,” Swan said.

“But, as I said last week, some of the increases we saw by the banks were not justified. In my view, they were excessive. I urge people to vote with their feet. If there are obstacles to people voting with their feet, switching their accounts, we’ll have a look at those.”

The banking industry, however, insists that loan refinancing is not a complicated process currently, according to the head of the Australian Bankers Association (ABA), David Bell. “There is a competitive marketplace for home loans and the Cannex website shows the many products that are available,” said Bell. “Regarding the switching of transaction accounts, the Australian Payments Clearing Association is conducting a community consultation process on this issue. ABA member banks support this process.”

Saturday, December 26, 2009

A woman attacked Pope Benedict XVI during Christmas Eve Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, causing a disruption to the ceremonies. The pope was unharmed and got to his feet and completed the Mass, although afterwards he was taken to a local hospital for evaluation. French Cardinal Roger Etchegaray also fell down and broke a leg. The accused assailant, Susanna Maiolo, is a 25-year-old Swiss national from the Ticino region, is reported to have psychiatric problems.

Susanna Maiolo also attempted to attack the pope during last years Midnight Mass, although she was stopped by security. During both assaults it appears that she was wearing the same red sweater. Vatican spokesman, Rev Federico Lombardi said that “She is known to the Vatican but she was never thought to have been of any serious danger to the Holy Father.”

Despite the attack the pontiff decided to continue the midnight mass services. Although noticeably shaken, he still delivered the traditional “Urbi et Orbi” speech. In this years speech he mentioned the current financial crisis, conflicts in Africa and Israel, and the state of the Christian minority in Iraq.

Tuesday, December 20, 2022

Russian Wikinews attended a December 8 presentation by Russian traveler and photographer Viktor Pinchuk at the Ilya Selvinsky Museum in Simferopol, Crimea of his textbook “Basics of fine-art photography”, published on English and Russian Wikibooks.

During the speech, Pinchuk took questions from the audience about the textbook, which includes 35 chapters blending instruction and examples and eleven photo exhibitions taken from June 2005 to July 2014. They include photos taken from his extensive travels whilst on ‘hobo tours’, as discussed in a previous lecture.

The practical guide, which includes 35 training pages and 12 optional (where aspects of the author’s creativity are described), has two versions — Russian and English; the material is posted on the international website Wikibooks.

• Flyer advertising the talk.

• Pinchuk speaking.

• Attendees seated.

• Close-up of Pinchuk.

• Pinchuk addressing a slide.

• Conclusion.

A compilation of brief news reports for Wednesday, December 23, 2009.

Friday, July 7, 2017

On Wednesday, automobile company Volvo announced all of its cars to be released in 2019 onwards are to use some form of battery-powered engine, leaving conventional petrol-only vehicles altogether. The decision comes after Volvo announced in May their intent to cease production of diesel vehicles.

The chief executive of Volvo Cars, Håkan Samuelsson, said, “People increasingly demand electrified cars”. Volvo aims to release five new electric vehicle models between 2019 and 2021. While little has yet been revealed about them, the company has stated two of them are to be high-performance electric vehicles, branded as Polestars.

Other car models from 2019 may be plug-in hybrid or 48-volt “mild hybrid” systems. Audi and Mercedes-Benz are also releasing mild hybrid cars for the European market.

“This announcement marks the end of the solely combustion engine-powered car. Volvo Cars has stated that it plans to have sold a total of 1m electrified cars by 2025. When we said it we meant it. This is how we are going to do it,” Samuelsson said. Volvo is owned by Chinese automotive giant Geely, and China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has said by 2025 they want new vehicle sales to be 20 percent “new energy vehicles”.

Sunday, August 5, 2012

The following is the ninth 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 rules of third party candidate polling are examined, a third party activist causes four other parties to lose their place on the Illinois presidential ballot, and the new vice presidential nominee of the Justice Party speaks with Wikinews.