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Friday, May 12, 2006

Israeli company Dor Energy, the sole supplier of gasoline and cooking gas to the Palestinian territories, cut off all deliveries on Wednesday, citing US$27 million in unpaid bills.

Mujahed Salameh, director general of the Palestinian Petroleum Agency, predicted an “economic catastrophe” which would cripple factories and transportation as many people would be unable to work.

He said that the Palestinian Authority does not maintain petroleum reserves and that gasoline supplies would run out in many areas by Thursday. The Associated Press reported long lines at gas stations in the Gaza Strip, and gasoline stations through the West Bank have begun rationing.

Dor Energy had threatened supply cutoffs twice before 2006, which were averted when the Palestinians made last-minute payments.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is reportedly in talks with U.S. and European Union officials in an attempt to get Israel to resume delivery of fuel. For Israel’s part, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that the Israeli government would “absolutely not” bail out the Palestinians.

The gasoline shortage is expected to deepen an economic and humanitarian crisis in the Palestianian territories since the U.S. and EU cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority after Hamas won parliamentary elections.

Friday, April 17, 2015

On Wednesday, the Mississippi State Board of Medical Licensure chose to let Doctor Carroll Frazier Landrum keep his physician’s license, following an investigation sparked by an anonymous complaint. Media reported the Mississippi doctor has been working out of his Toyota Camry for about two years, making house calls to see patients.

The investigation, started earlier this year, reportedly centered around Dr. Landrum having no physical office thus possibly being unable to properly store patient records.

Volunteers are presently renovating the former post office in the town of Edwards, Mississippi, United States for the doctor to have an office. Estimations indicate the new office should be ready by early next month. Landrum, 89, closed his Edwards office two years ago. Landrum has routinely seen three or four patients per day since that time. Reportedly, illegal drug activity in the vicinity of his office placed him in danger. The doctor stated he was told his physical safety was in jeopardy.

Becoming tearful, Dr. Landrum told reporters he’s glad he’s been able to help so many people and “give them some hope and relief, and help them survive.” Landrum has assured the medical board he will refresh his training with a medical record-keeping course. According to Landrum’s attorneys, at first the board were unwilling to release their investigative records, although ultimately they did release some of the documents.

Monday, January 14, 2008

A construction worker died after falling thirty feet from a New York hotel yesterday, police say.

The accident occurred at the Trump SoHo construction site in SoHo, New York. Witnesses at the scene reported that a load being lifted by a crane collided with the building, possibly causing scaffolding to collapse.

Police indicated that the dead worker had fallen at least 30 feet. A second worker sustained injuries after falling several storeys into some netting. The injured worker was lowered to street level by crane and transported to hospital as a large number of ambulances and fire engines gathered on the scene.

The Trump SoHo building is a 46 storey, 400 unit hotel condominium. According to its website, the building is a joint venture between the Trump Organization, the Sapir Organization, and the Bayrock Group LLC. The site is scheduled to open in Spring 2009.

Friday, March 18, 2005

The White House announced the selection of Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank, replacing John Wolfensohn who retires as acting president after 10 years. The switch is expected to occur sometime in June.

The choice of Wolfowitz is raising controversy in Europe and developing nations. Known as hawkish and outspoken, Wolfowitz was a pro-Iraqi war neo-conservative in his role as deputy Secretary of Defense, and a chief architect in the build up to war with Iraq. Some question whether Wolfowitz, who was criticized for brushing aside European and NATO calls for caution before the Iraq war, would use the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as tool to extend U.S. foreign policy interests.

Historically, it has been the White House’s prerogative to name the candidate because the U.S. holds a majority on the 24 member board, but board members from nations other than the U.S. are seeking their own interviews to qualify the candidate before a change is made. “The executive directors have agreed to conduct informal meetings over the coming days with the US nominee as part of the consultative process.” the IMF said in a statement. “Thereafter, the executive directors will meet in a formal session to select the president at which time an official announcement of the outcome will be made,” it said. The vote is set for March 31, the same day Wolfensohn retires.

Rob Nichols, the US Treasury spokesperson, said Wolfowitz has begun scheduling meetings with board members and that, “Our nominee… looks forward to meeting with and listening to members of the World Bank board.” Reuters reported. In the meantime, Wolfowitz has worked to assure those with concerns of him, saying he would come with an open mind and no political program.

Thursday, October 22, 2020

U.S. Prohibition Party presidential nominee Phil Collins took some time to answer a few questions about his 2020 presidential campaign from Wikinews accredited reporter William S. Saturn.

Collins is currently chairman of the Prohibition Party. Previously, he served as a trustee of Libertyville Township (Illinois) and as chairman of the Prohibition Party of Illinois. After moving to Nevada, he ran for Mayor of Las Vegas in 2019, and finished in second place overall.  He was not the Prohibition Party’s first choice for the 2020 presidential nomination. In November 2018, the party nominated a ticket of Bill Bayes for President and C.L. Gammon for Vice President. Bayes withdrew in March 2019. Gammon assumed the presidential nomination and the party nominated Collins for Vice President the next month. Gammon withdrew due to health reasons around August 2019 and Collins took over as the presidential nominee. The party picked anti-alcohol activist Billy Joe Parker as Collins’s new running mate.  Parker spoke to Wikinews back in July.

After securing the Prohibition Party presidential nomination, Collins sought the nominations of the American Independent Party (AIP) and the Reform Party for ballot access in California and Florida, respectively. Despite winning the AIP California Presidential Primary in March, Collins lost the nomination to businessman Rocky De La Fuente in August. He also fell short of De La Fuente for the Reform Party presidential nomination in June. Nevertheless, the Prohibition Party has attained ballot access in Colorado, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Vermont.  The last presidential election in which the party appeared on at least four state ballots was in 1984 with nominee Earl Dodge.

The Prohibition Party is the third oldest existing political party in the US, having been established in 1869. It reached its height of popularity during the late nineteenth century. As its name suggests, the party supported the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which banned the sale of alcohol, and resulted in the period known as Prohibition (1919–33).  Since the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, the party has declined.  It stays afloat, in part due to the George L. Pennock Trust established in 1939, which pays the party’s operating expenses. It continues to nominate candidates for president as well.  Wikinews has previously interviewed two of those nominees: 2004 and 2008 presidential nominee Gene Amondson and 2016 presidential nominee James (Jim) Hedges.  Collins makes it three.

With Wikinews, Collins discusses his background, the COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on his campaign, presidential nominations, gridlock, climate change, foreign policy, and race relations.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

A 182-page report issued September 1 by the United States National Research Council warns that the amount of debris in space is reaching “a tipping point”, and could cause damage to satellites or spacecraft. The report calls for regulations to reduce the amount of debris, and suggests that scientists increase research into methods to remove some of the debris from orbit, though it makes no recommendations about how to do so.

NASA sponsored the study.

A statement released along with the report warns that, according to some computer models, the debris “has reached a tipping point, with enough currently in orbit to continually collide and create even more debris, raising the risk of spacecraft failures”. According to the Satellite Industry Association, there are now about 1,000 working satellites in Earth orbit, and industry revenues last year were US$168 billion (£104.33 billion,€119.01 billion).

The debris consists of various objects, such as decommissioned satellites and exhausted boosters, but the vast majority of the particles are less than one centimetre across. 16,094 pieces of debris were being tracked as of July, although estimates put the current number at over 22,000. The total number of fragments is thought to be as high as tens of millions. While most of the debris is very small, some of it is travelling at speeds as high as 17,500 mi h^-1 (28,164 km h^-1; 7,823.3 m s^-1).

The International Space Station sometimes has to dodge larger fragments, and in June its crew was forced to prepare to evacuate due to a close encounter with debris.

The UK Space Agency told Wikinews that space flight “is likely to be made more difficult” by the debris. However, communications will “[n]ot directly” be affected, “but if the GEO ring became unusable, there is no other altitude at which objects appear [‘]geo-stationary[‘] and so all antennas on the ground would then have to move in order to track the motion of the satellites”.

Donald J. Kessler, the lead researcher and former head of NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office, said that “[t]he current space environment is growing increasingly hazardous to spacecraft and astronauts,” and suggested that “NASA needs to determine the best path forward for tackling the multifaceted problems caused by meteoroids and orbital debris that put human and robotic space operations at risk.”

Two events are thought to be the largest individual sources of space debris. Kessler said that “[t]hose two single events doubled the amount of fragments in Earth orbit and completely wiped out what we had done in the last 25 years”.

The first of these was a controversial 2007 Chinese anti-satellite weapon test, which smashed the decommissioned weather satellite Fengyun-1C into approximately 150,000 fragments over a centimetre in size—making up roughly twenty percent of all tracked objects—537 miles above the Earth’s surface.

The Chinese government has so far failed to respond to Wikinews’s queries regarding the incident.

The other is a 2009 collision between twelve-year-old active satellite Iridium 33 and the defunct Russian Strela-2M satellite Kosmos-2251—both weighing in excess of 1,000 lbs (454 kg)—that occurred 490 miles over Siberia, the first such collision. The Iridium satellite was replaced within 22 days, according to Iridium Communications, who operated it.

In a statement released to Wikinews, Iridium Communications said that they “received no warning of the impending collision. Although commercial projections of close encounters (commonly called conjunctions) were available, the accuracy of those projections was not sufficient to allow collision avoidance action to be taken.” They also made the assurance that the Air Force Space Command and United States Strategic Command now provide them with information through the Joint Space Operations Center, and that “when necessary, [they] maneuver [their] satellites based on this information to avoid potential collisions. [They] believe this is a substantial first step in better information sharing between the government and industry and support even more robust interaction which can provide better and more efficient constellation operation.”

Iridium expressed their support for “[l]ong-term investment to improve Space Situational Awareness” and “[i]mproved information sharing between industry and the U.S. government”, as well as more “[g]overnment support for policy and processes which would permit sharing of high-accuracy data as required to allow reliable assessment and warning” and “[i]ncreased cooperation between the government and U.S. and foreign commercial operators.”

They maintained that “the Iridium constellation is uniquely designed to withstand such an event. Because of the resilient and distributed nature of the Iridium constellation, the effects of the loss of a single satellite were relatively minor”, and that “any other system, commercial or military, which experienced the loss of a satellite, would have suffered significant operational degradation for a period of months if not years.” Nonetheless, the company is “concerned over the increasing level of risk to operations resulting from the debris in space.”

The report makes more than thirty findings, and more than twenty recommendations to NASA. None of the recommendations regard how to clean up the debris. However, it does cite a report by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which suggested various possible techniques for catching and removing space debris, such as magnetic nets.

However, international law does not allow one country to collect another’s debris. George J. Gleghorn, vice chair of the committee, observed that “[t]he Cold War is over, but the acute sensitivity regarding satellite technology remains”.

The debris will, in time, be pulled into the earth’s atmosphere—where it will burn up—by gravity, but more debris is being created faster than this can happen.

The report recommends collaborating with the United States Department of State on “economic, technological, political, and legal considerations.” As already mentioned, international law does not allow one country to collect another’s debris.

According to the report, “[t]he problem of space debris is similar to a host of other environmental problems and public concerns characterized by possibly significant differences between the short- and long-run damage accruing to society … Each has small short-run effects but, if left unaddressed, will have much larger impacts on society in the future.”

A spokesperson for the UK Space Agency told Wikinews that the organisation “does not have any plans to get directly involved with [the clean-up] initiative but through its involvement with NASA in the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee, it is conducting studies to identify which objects present the biggest hazard and how many objects may need to be removed and from where.” It says that the viability of such an operation is “a question of treating the symptom or the cause of the problem. Building more physical protection is costly and if the environment deteriorates too far, becomes unviable. It is best to treat the root cause, the presence of debris in orbit, and remove the large objects before they can break up into many thousands of uncontrolled fragments capable of destroying a satellite on impact.”

The spokesperson also pointed out that “[u]nder current licensing regimes (such as in the UK), countries are now obliging operators to remove satellites from crowded regions of space at the end of operational life”.

Friday, October 17, 2008

The left wing of the Industrial Palace (Pr?myslový palác) – central building of the Prague Exhibition Grounds (Výstavišt?) in the capital city of Czech Republic was destroyed by fire yesterday night. The fire began at the roof and flames were visible from kilometers away. Two hundred firefighters fought the fire and got it under control in less than three hours. Two firefighters suffered minor injuries.

The left wing of the Art Nouveau building was destroyed, the roof and most of enclosure walls collapsed. The amount of damage can rise up to 1 billion Czech crowns (approx. 40 million euro). Although a student music festival was organized in close surroundings, none were injured.

Mayor of Prague Pavel Bém promised the city will rebuild the Palace, but refused to comment immediately on the view of the new or renewed building.

The Industrial Palace was inaugurated in 1891. It was the biggest building on the exhibition grounds. Architect Bed?ich Münzberger used the glassed-in steel structures for the first time in the Czech lands. The building was 238 meters long and its main tower was 51 meters tall. It was used mainly for trade fairs and exhibitions, but also for concerts and other culture events.

The cause of the fire is under investigation, and could take a week to discover the cause. Press reports suggest the fire is connected to the October 9 murder of businessman Václav Ko?ka junior, whose father is engaged in the Incheba company and has been leasing the exhibition grounds since 2001. Václav Ko?ka senior is a friend of former Czech prime minister Ji?í Paroubek. However, authorities mentioned an accident – explosion of pressure gas cylinder – was the probable cause. Incheba said they have video of the explosion recorded from the security cameras.