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Wednesday, August 2, 2006

On July 19th, 2006, Philadelphia police took a 21-year old student, Neftaly Cruz into custody for photographing the arrest of an alleged drug dealer in his neighborhood.

Roused by commotion in his neighborhood, Cruz saw the street outside his house lined with police vehicles and proceeded to photograph the event with his camera phone. Soon after, one of the police officers walked onto his property, grabbed his hand, placed him in handcuffs and drove off with him. Gerrell Martin, a neighborhood woman, witnessed and confirmed these events. She recalls the officer said to Cruz while restraining him, “You should have just went in the house and minded your own business instead of trying to take pictures off your picture phone.”

According to Cruz, “They threatened to charge me with conspiracy, impeding an investigation, obstruction of an investigation. They said, ‘You were impeding this investigation.’ (I asked,) ‘By doing what?’ (The officer said,) ‘By taking a picture of the police officers with a camera phone.'”

After detaining him for over an hour, Philadelphia Police finally released him with a warning that, according to Cruz, “if the supervisor was there I wouldn’t be a free man and that he is letting me go because he felt that I was a good person.”

Wednesday, May 31, 2006Terrorists in Kashmir threw a grenade at a tourist bus in the heart of Srinagar, killing one person and injuring 21 others. Eyewitnesses say that the vehicle, in which were travelling tourists from West Bengal was attacked near the Dal Gate. The injured are being treated at the Kashmir Institute for Medical Sciences.

No terrorist outfit has yet claimed responsibility for this attack, which is the fourth incident this week. This is also the second time tourists were the targets. The number of militant attacks this month has increased after Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh decided to hold a round table conference with the moderate parties in Kashmir.

State Tourism Director Farooq Ahmed Shah condemned the attack saying, “It is a very unfortunate incident and we are trying our level best to improve the situation. However, it is unfair to say that tourists are unsafe in the Valley. Such incidents take place all over the world.” Tour operators however are concerned that attacks such as this one will result in customers calling off trips to Kashmir.

Monday, August 27, 2012

London, England — As Paralympians ready for the Games which are set to open later this week, they have access to a world class fitness center inside the Paralympic Village which is designed to maximise their pre-Game preparations.

According to volunteers staffing the center, instead of being a single large room, as in Beijing, the building has numerous rooms. It, along with the adjacent Village Services Centre, is designed to be converted into a school after the games conclude. Rooms have been structured as a gym, an auditorium, and science laboratories.

Gym equipment is supplied by Technogym, an Italian firm that has supplied gym equipment for the Olympics since 2000. Equipment has been provided not just for for the Fitness Centre, but for gyms at all the Olympic venues. The newest equipment is oriented toward maximum flexibility, allowing athletes to exercise the particular muscles that they most require for their sport.

In addition to the equipment, the Fitness Centre also provides instructors trained in the use of the equipment, the likes of which athletes from many countries have never seen before. There are also a number of instructors available to provide motivational training.

Monday, February 11, 2008

Brazilian aircraft maker Embraer on Friday announced it has signed a firm order with Air Moldova for one Embraer 190 jet, to be delivered in March 2010. The contract includes an option on another plane of the same model, Embraer said in a statement. The value of the deal was not disclosed.

At present, renowned companies such as Air France, Lufthansa group and Spanish Iberia Airlines own Embraer 190 jets, specified the representative of Air Moldova. The same source specified that Embraer 190 jet is one of the most economic and optimal aircrafts for operation, and it will be configured in a single-class cabin with 114 seats.

Air Moldova, which links the Moldovan capital, Chi?in?u, to cities in Europe and the Middle East, intends to use the new plane to open new markets.

The Embraer 190 is one of the four members of the E-Jets family. On December 31, the Embraer 170/190 E-Jets had logged 764 firm orders and 786 options.

Embraer is the world’s fourth-largest commercial plane maker. It finished 2007 with a firm order backlog of US$18.8 billion.

Thursday, July 7, 2005

A Florida man is being charged with 3rd degree felony for logging into a private Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity) Internet access point without permission. Benjamin Smith III, 41, is set for a pre-trial hearing this month in the first case of its kind in the United States.

This kind of activity occurs frequently, but often goes undetected by the owners of these wireless access points (WAPs). Unauthorized users range from casual Web browsers, to users sending e-mails, to users involved in pornography or even illegal endeavours.

According to Richard Dinon, owner of the WAP Smith allegedly broke into, Smith was using a laptop in an automobile while parked outside Dinon’s residence.

There are many steps an owner of one of these access points can take to secure them from outside users. Dinon reportedly knew how to take these steps, but had not bothered because his “neighbors are older.”

Sunday, July 1, 2007

A young woman was killed Friday night after an accident occurred on a gyrating ride at the Playland amusement park in Rye, New York in the United States. The woman, Gabriela Garin, was a worker at the amusement park, and had worked there for the past seven years.

The accident occurred near the end of Garin’s shift; as she was loading riders onto the ride. The ride’s new operator, unaware of Garin’s presence, started the ride while Garin was still on it. The new operator then noticed Garin, and shut the ride down in 20 seconds, but Garin had already been ejected from the ride and killed, according to a park spokesperson.

The ride is an attraction that spins people around in two-seat cars, inside a darkened tent to flashing lights and music.

This incident is not the first in the ride’s history. In 2004, a seven-year-old from Connecticut managed to free herself from the ride’s restraining bars, and climb onto the front edge of her seat. She fell soon after the ride started. A safety precaution was put in place after this incident, however, the spokesperson acknowledged that it was not followed when Garin was killed.

The company which owns the ride shut it down, along with two other rides it owns at the park.

This is the fourth fatality in the park’s history. The park features more than 50 rides, a pool, and a beach. It attracts more than 1 million visitors annually.

Monday, April 6, 2009

Over 1,600 volunteers registered to help build approximately 65,000 of the 500,000 sandbags to create dikes 20.5 feet (6.2 meters) high to protect the City of Winnipeg, Manitoba in the war against the Red River of the North flood.

700 volunteers answered at the rural municipality of St. Andrews alone. Once sandbags are filled for West St. Paul, St. Andrews, and Selkirk, then frozen culverts must be cleared.

The height of the river is expected to be Thursday, and predictions are that it will be less than Flood of the Century of 1997. There is no precipitation in the forecast, and snow in the province should be melted by the end of the week.

“The fear right now is we have to get that ice out of the river. The Amphibex [Excavators] are still working and breaking the ice apart, and everyday we buy with the warm weather and the current, it is thinning the ice down a bit, so when it does start to move, the better chance it’ll move right out into the lake,” said Paul Guyder, the emergency coordinator for the RMs of St. Andrews and St. Clements.

“I feel that we’ve done everything humanly possible to get ready,” said Gary Doer, Premier of Manitoba, “But … there are fallibilities with human behaviour. We can take every preventative measure as human beings possible and we can still get Mother Nature proving again she is superior.”

Communities with ring diking will partially or fully close their dikes at the beginning of the week. Provincial officials are considering opening the Red River Floodway gates around mid-week before ice is fully melted.

Ice jams could cause flooding within the city, however opening the gates could spare neighbourhood flooding when the river rises to the estimated 6.3 meters (20.7 feet) height. The province does have back up plans for dealing with ice jams within the city if they do occur. The unpredictability of ice jams and the ensuing water level rise may cause neighbourhood flooding. The city is raising dikes where the river has jammed with ice in the past such as on tight curves and past bridges. Likewise there are excavators and backhoes positioned at these points.

Vulnerable neighbourhoods on the river banks have been reinforced with sandbag dikes at vulnerable areas from the massive volunteer effort over the weekend. Guyader feels no more extra volunteers are needed, however volunteers are still being asked to leave their names and number in case of unpredicted need. Existing personnel will assess roads, and help with clean up.

Approximately 400 of the 800 people who evacuated the Roseau River Anishinabe First Nation have returned to their homes.

Former Premier, Dufferin Roblin, brought forward the floodway as a protection for Winnipeg residents and economy following the 1950 Red River Flood. The Red River floodway, “Duff’s Ditch” was finally finished in 1968, and its floodway gates have been opened 20 times saving Winnipeg from an estimated CA$10 billion in damages. The floodway expansion began in 2005 at a price of $665 million.

Polish and Chinese experts have come to survey the Red River Floodway, and Dennis Walaker, mayor of Fargo, North Dakota recognises the need for Red River flood defences down river. “Every town that you drive by from the Canadian line up to Winnipeg is either elevated or ring-diked,” said Walaker.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Wikinews interviewed author Amy Scobee about her book Scientology – Abuse at the Top, and asked her about her experiences working as an executive within the organization. Scobee joined the organization at age 14, and worked at Scientology’s international management headquarters for several years before leaving in 2005. She served as a Scientology executive in multiple high-ranking positions, working out of the international headquarters of Scientology known as “Gold Base”, located in Gilman Hot Springs near Hemet, California.