Author: Admin

Friday, October 14, 2005

Chinese archaeologists at the Lajia Ruins in the Qinghai province of China have discovered well-preserved millet noodles dating back to the neolithic age. The 4,000-year-old noodles were found underneath an upturned bowl that had been buried in three meters of sediment, consisting of brownish-yellow clay. The sediment is thought to have been caused by a devastating flood of the upper Mekong.

This discovery significantly reframes the debate over which people first made noodles, establishing Chinese culture—at least for now—as the most likely candidate for having originally developed the idea of making noodles. Previously, Italian, Chinese, and Arab cultures have all been claimed as the originator of noodles. Prior to this discovery, the oldest record of noodles existing in China were from 1900-year-old recipes.

The Lajia Ruins are of a central Qijia settlement, which has been the site of other significant discoveries, such as the largest stone chime ever found in China, and the largest and most intact prehistoric oven found in Northwestern China. The site has also been significant to researchers studying the impact of natural disasters on ancient civilizations—it was the site of a cataclysmic flood, and at least one major earthquake.

Sunday, July 5, 2009

The United Kingdom’s Serious Fraud Office is to launch an investigation into the collapse of car manufacturer MG Rover. The move follows the conclusion of a four-year enquiry started immediately after the firm became insolvent.

The group of four who owned MG Rover — John Towers, Nick Stephenson, Peter Beale and John Edwards — have been accused of asset stripping. The quartet, known as the Phoenix Four, paid a symbolic £10 (approximately €15) for Rover in 2000. At that time the company received an interest-free loan from former owner BMW for £427 million (approximately €700 million) and came with a large amount of unsold stock.

Between then and Rover’s April 2005 bankruptcy, by which time there were unpaid debts of £1 billion (approximately €1.5 billion), the Phoenix Four had removed an estimated £40 million worth of assets including pensions and salaries. An enquiry was launched by ministers that was expected to take a year, but the final report was not delivered to business secretary Lord Mandelson until three weeks ago.

The government used taxpayer’s money to fund a £6 million loan to MG Rover and attempted to negotiate a deal with a Chinese company, but these efforts failed. MG Rover’s collapse caused the loss of an estimated 15,000 jobs, including with various suppliers. A former MG Rover factory does still build a small number of MG sports cars in Longbridge by Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, who bought most of the designs.

The Phoenix Four released a statement criticising the criminal investigation. “There has never been any suggestion of improper conduct by the directors and this was confirmed in a report by the administrators PWC six months after they took over the running of the company. Four years on, any suggestion [of] another further investigation is frankly ridiculous and smacks of kicking this issue into the long grass. If the government has been so concerned to get to the heart of the matter why has it flatly refused more than 30 requests under the Freedom of Information Act which would have revealed correspondence and documents the directors believe would have shed some light on the government’s role in the affair?”

Saturday, August 26, 2006

Elizabeth May has been elected leader of the Green Party of Canada today, winning the position with 2,145 votes or 65.34 per cent of ballot cast. She beat her nearest rival, environmental consultant and Green deputy leader David Chernushenko by a margin of almost 2 to 1. Jim Fannon, the third candidate, finished far back with only 29 votes. The new leader will replace Jim Harris, who stepped down after holding the position since 2003.

In her acceptance speech, May called on the federal government to give notice that Canada will withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement in order to force the United States to renegotiate the treaty.

May, a long-time environmental activist and former executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada takes over the party which received 4.5 per cent of the popular vote in the last federal election, enough to secure over $1 million a year in federal funding but not enough to elect any of its candidates to the Canadian House of Commons. Chernushenko won the highest vote percentage of any Green candidate in the January election winning 10% of the vote in Ottawa Centre.

“We draw pretty much equally from across the entire political spectrum,” Jim Harris told CBC News. “If you were a Progressive Conservative, as I was, where do you go? The Green party supports Kyoto. We were opposed to the war in Iraq and yet at the same time we’re fiscally responsible. This is something that’s attractive to people.”

“What we need to do is clearly build a method and a platform so that they are not voting for ‘none of the above’ but so that they are voting for ‘all my dreams,’ ” said May after her victory.

The race has brought new people to the party with membership rising from 5,517 to 8,694 in recent months.

Monday, August 9, 2010

German authorities have closed a mosque in Hamburg that 9/11 plotters used for meetings, because authorities fear that it is being used again by Islamic extremists. The Taiba mosque, formerly known as the al-Quds mosque, was raided, closed and the association that runs it was also banned. Police officers confiscated computers and other material.

“We have closed the mosque because it was a recruiting and meeting point for Islamic radicals who wanted to participate in so-called jihad or holy war,” Frank Reschreiter, a spokesman for Hamburg’s state interior ministry, said. The spokesman also said that this was the first time the mosque had been shuttered and that for “quite a long time” it had been closely examined and watched by intelligence officers.

A May report by the Interior Ministry also said that the mosque “remains the central attraction for the Jihadist scene”, and a 2009 Hamburg intellegence report stated that many people involved with the Taiba mosque had been getting training by radical Islamic groups, including a group of 11 people who traveled to military training camps at Uzbekistan in March of last year. Their militant group had been formed at the mosque, and the report stated that “a very important factor for the radicalization of the group members was certainly their joint visits to the mosque.”

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

The body of a man was discovered on a street in Lancaster, California around 1:45 a.m PDT (UTC-7) Tuesday morning with an arrow stuck deep into his chest. Sheriff’s deputies who responded to the crime scene at 13th Street and Avenue K initially thought the victim to have been homeless, but he was later identified as Angel Martinez, age 62, who resided in Lancaster.

“Who would want to do something like that to an elderly person?” said Tony Martinez, a local resident who was among those who found the victim. “And what was an elderly man doing out here anyway that late?”

The attacker, who struck by night, is being sought by authorities.

Saturday, September 27, 2008

On October 14, 2008, Canadians will be heading to the polls for the federal election. Liberal candidate Andrew Lang is standing for election in the riding of Toronto—Danforth.

Raised with Liberal values, Andrew attended his first Liberal rally at age 6. He has worked 18 elections since that introduction to the political sphere, but this is his first time as a candidate. A University of Toronto graduate (and player for the Varsity Blues), his career highlights include managing Bill Graham’s constituency office. (A now-retired MP, Graham’s career included serving as Minister of National Defence and Minister of Foreign Affairs, as well as interim Leader of the Liberals and Leader of the Opposition.) He is currently with the Ontario Chiropractic Association.

Wikinews contacted Andrew, 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.

The incumbent in this riding is National Democratic Party (NDP) leader Jack Layton. Other than Lang, trying for the riding are Sharon Howarth (Green), and Christina Perreault (Conservative). Minor party candidates Marie Crawford (Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party of Canada), Marcell Rodden (Marxist-Leninist), and Bahman Yazdanfar (Canadian Action Party) are also running, as is independent John Richardson. The riding has existed federally since 1979, and has the seat has been occupied by Bob Rae (NDP, 1979–1982), Lynn McDonald (NDP, 1982–1988), Dennis Mills (Liberal, 1988–2004), and Layton (NDP, 2004 to present).

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

Thursday, October 29, 2009

According to US health officials, New York state governor David Paterson has declared a state of emergency in the state as a result of the H1N1 swine flu outbreak.

The Associated Press news agency reports that the six-page declaration was issued because at least 75 people have died of H1N1 related illnesses in New York since April. Three have died from H1N1 related illnesses just this past week. The declaration also says that human cases of the virus are on the rise.

Paterson says he issued the declaration because “a disaster has occurred throughout New York State, for which the affected local governments are unable to respond adequately.”

The declaration will allow health officials more access to the H1N1 vaccine and the seasonal flu shot. It will also allow for an increase in the number of vaccine doses available in the state and will allow more health care facilities to administer the vaccine, including dentists and pharmacists. Schools with health centers will also be allowed to administer both vaccines.

Despite the declaration, officials stressed that there is no reason to worry. A spokeswoman for the New York State Department of Health, Claire Pospisil, said that “it [the declaration] helps us to be more prepared.”

The order came shortly after US president Barack Obama declared a national emergency last Saturday, a response to the spreading of the virus, which has now been circulated in 46 states.

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Dove soaps continues their North American “Campaign for Real Beauty” advertising with a television commercial that explores the alterations that can be done on models.

Labeled “a Dove film”, the commercial is entitled “evolution”. Beginning with a woman walking into a photo shoot. From there, she is primped and plucked by hair and makeup artists, then tweaked on a Photoshop-like program.

The photo-manipulation is then posted on a billboard for the fictional “Easel Foundation Makeup” brand. Two young, teenage girls walk past, glancing at the board.

“No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted” ends the ad in text, “Every girl deserves to feel beautiful just the way she is.”

Dove runs the Dove Self-Esteem Fund as a part of their Campaign for Real Beauty. In the marketing campaign, Dove uses “real” women, instead of professional models, in an attempt to instill self-esteem in their customers.

This continuing promotion, launched in 2004, was on the forefront of a current trend in Western culture to abandon the overly idealised images the media portrays of women. Recently some fashion capitals have mandated minimum body mass indexes for runway models. The top rated comedy in the United States and Canada is Ugly Betty, a series that stars an average girl coping at a fashion magazine. The series is based on Betty la Fea, an extremely popular Colombian telenovela, which has been reproduced internationally.

Only two percent of women surveyed worldwide consider themselves beautiful, according to ABC Good Morning America co-anchor Robin Roberts, whose program debuted the commercial this morning at 8:07 am EST.

The ad is currently playing on the Campaign for Real Beauty’s homepage.

Friday, May 10, 2013

George M. Leader, former Governor of the U.S. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, died in Hershey, Pennsylvania yesterday at the age of 95.

Leader’s death, at a retirement community he and his wife founded in 1985, comes after the former governor suffered a short illness. The community’s spokeswoman, Kelly S. Kuntz, announced Leader’s death.

Leader was born in York County, Pennsylvania in 1918. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1939, he joined his father’s poultry business. Shortly thereafter, in World War II, Leader served as an ensign in the U.S. Navy.

After serving in the State Senate for four years, Leader, a Democrat, was elected Governor of Pennsylvania in the 1954 election. Sworn-in in 1955, he served as Governor until 1959.

Upon taking office at the age of 37, Leader became the second-youngest Governor of Pennsylvania behind Robert E. Pattison, who was 32 years old at his 1883 inauguration.

Current Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett mandated state flags be flown at half staff until the evening of Leader’s burial. Corbett also praised Leader, describing him as someone who “defied political labels and conventional thinking in his tireless work for Pennsylvania and its people.”

Former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell also commented on Leader’s death, saying he would be remembered as “a man who cared very deeply about what happened around him.”