Edmund White on writing, incest, life and Larry Kramer
Thursday, November 8, 2007 Edmund WhiteAll photos: David Shankbone What you are about to read is an American life as lived by renowned author Edmund White. His life has been a crossroads, the fulcrum of high-brow Classicism and low-brow Brett Easton Ellisism. It is not for the faint. He has been the toast of the literary elite in New York, London and Paris, befriending artistic luminaries such as Salman Rushdie and Sir Ian McKellen while writing about a family where he was jealous his sister was having sex with his father as he fought off his mother’s amorous pursuit. The fact is, Edmund White exists. His life exists. To the casual reader, they may find it disquieting that someone like his father existed in 1950’s America and that White’s work is the progeny of his intimate effort to understand his own experience. Wikinews reporter David Shankbone understood that an interview…
‘The Gates’ opens in New York City
Wednesday, February 16, 2005 New York, New York —On February 12, 2005, at 8:30 a.m., New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg dropped the first piece of fabric in The Gates, a land art project by Christo and Jeanne Claude. The artists installed 7,500 metal “gates” along 23 miles of pathways in New York City’s Central Park. Each gate supported a flag-shaped piece of saffron fabric. The project is scheduled to run from Feb. 12, 2005 through Feb. 27, 2005. The project is sometimes referred to as “The Gates, Central Park, New York, 1979-2005″ in reference to the time between the artists’ initial proposal and the present day. Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=%27The_Gates%27_opens_in_New_York_City&oldid=1089693”
Cleveland, Ohio clinic performs US’s first face transplant
Thursday, December 18, 2008 A team of eight transplant surgeons in Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, USA, led by reconstructive surgeon Dr. Maria Siemionow, age 58, have successfully performed the first almost total face transplant in the US, and the fourth globally, on a woman so horribly disfigured due to trauma, that cost her an eye. Two weeks ago Dr. Siemionow, in a 23-hour marathon surgery, replaced 80 percent of her face, by transplanting or grafting bone, nerve, blood vessels, muscles and skin harvested from a female donor’s cadaver. The Clinic surgeons, in Wednesday’s news conference, described the details of the transplant but upon request, the team did not publish her name, age and cause of injury nor the donor’s identity. The patient’s family desired the reason for her transplant to remain confidential. The Los Angeles Times reported that the patient “had no upper jaw, nose, cheeks or lower eyelids and…
Surgeons reattach boy’s three severed limbs
Tuesday, March 29, 2005A team of Australian surgeons yesterday reattached both hands and one foot to 10-year-old Perth boy, Terry Vo, after a brick wall which collapsed during a game of basketball fell on him, severing the limbs. The wall gave way while Terry performed a slam-dunk, during a game at a friend’s birthday party. The boy was today awake and smiling, still in some pain but in good spirits and expected to make a full recovery, according to plastic surgeon, Mr Robert Love. “What we have is parts that are very much alive so the reattached limbs are certainly pink, well perfused and are indeed moving,” Mr Love told reporters today. “The fact that he is moving his fingers, and of course when he wakes up he will move both fingers and toes, is not a surprise,” Mr Love had said yesterday. “The question is more the sensory return…
Gambian President Yahya Jammeh concedes electoral defeat
Saturday, December 3, 2016 Yayha JammehImage: IISD/Earth Negotiations Bulletin. Gambian President Yahya Jammeh yesterday conceded defeat to now-President Elect Adama Barrow. Jammeh, 51, took power 22 years ago in a bloodless coup. He had claimed a billion-year mandate. Barrow, 51, is a property developer without political experience. According to the electoral commission yesterday, he won 263,515 votes, equating to 45.5%, while Jammeh won 36.7%, 212,099 votes. A third candidate accounted for 17.8%. Jammeh is the nation’s second president since independence in 1965. In a public broadcast he hailed “the most transparent election in the whole world,” and congratulated Barrow on “a clear victory[…] You Gambians have decided.” Born in Basse in 1965, Barrow spent several years working as a security guard in London. He returned home in 2006 and began property development, which he still does. He expressed disappointment he did not win by a larger margin. Barrow represents a…
Alaskan Governor and Republican U.S. vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s email account hacked
Saturday, September 20, 2008 A hacker who has claimed to be loosely associated with internet group Anonymous managed to hack into the email account of Alaskan Governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin in the early morning hours of Wednesday, September 16. Partial contents of her email account – including two family photos, email messages and contact lists – were subsequently hosted online at Wikileaks.org, a website that anonymously hosts leaked government and corporate documents. Anonymous, who were responsible for attacks on Scientology in the past, have claimed credit for the intrusion. The email account has been used by Palin for conducting government business and communication, circumventing transparency laws. The hacker gained access to Palin’s account by answering Yahoo!’s security questions, finding the answers on websites like Wikipedia.org. The hacker was apparently careless and frightened, and posted the new password on 4chan.org as well as a few hasty screenshots. In…
Slippery business: Materials scientists invent new coating for self-cleaning, water-efficient toilets
Thursday, November 21, 2019 In findings published on Monday in Nature Sustainability, researchers mostly from Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) in the U.S. reported the invention of a new coating that could reduce bacterial growth, water waste, and odor when sprayed onto an ordinary house toilet by rendering its surface too slippery for anything to remain attached for long. A nice clean toilet. Image: Usein. According to the research team, half of all people worldwide are affected by limits on their water supply, while daily fresh water usage to flush the planet’s roughly 1 billion toilets and flush urinals is upwards of 141 billion liters (about 37 billion U.S. gallons, 31 billion imperial gallons); which they note is several times larger than the total rate of water consumption for the continent of Africa. Inventions that render the facilities more water-efficient, they reason, could have a profound impact on wastewater management,…
Hungary rebukes other EU members for their negative stance towards Croatia
Saturday, April 16, 2005 Hungary is one of Croatia’s biggest supporters within the EU The Prime Minister of Hungary, Ferenc Gyurcsány, has heavily criticised the governments of several other European Union countries over the decision not to start EU accession talks with Croatia in March. Hungary is one of the biggest supporters within the EU of Croatia joining the organisation. Croatia, which has the status of candidate country within the EU, said in 2004 that its target is to join the EU in 2007, along with Bulgaria and Romania, even though the EU has as of yet refused to start accession negotiations, which usually take in excess of two years. For this reason, the earliest Croatia could feasibly join is in early 2010, with accession negotiations ending in late 2007 and a further two full years during which the Accession Treaty is signed and the country prepares for final EU…
Blues musician Pinetop Perkins dies at age 97
Tuesday, March 22, 2011 Perkins in 2008 American blues musician Pinetop Perkins, a first generation Delta bluesman, died in Austin, Texas, on Monday at the age of 97. His death was announced by his agent, Hugh Southard. Perkins suffered from a cardiac arrest as he took a nap and paramedics failed resuscitate him. During his 80-year career Perkins remained active until the end, even performing publicly as recently as last month. A boogie-woogie piano player, he was a guitarist until a knife fight damaged his left arm. He was primarily a sideman. Throughout his career he worked with several big names including Sonny Boy Williamson, Ike Turner and slide guitarist Robert Nighthawk. He worked for Muddy Waters for more than a decade, including playing on Muddy’s great comeback albums of the late 1970s. He was 75 before an album was released under his own name. Perkins also made history this…
Wikinews interviews Joe Schriner, Independent U.S. presidential candidate
Saturday, April 17, 2010 Journalist, counselor, painter, and US 2012 Presidential candidate Joe Schriner of Cleveland, Ohio took some time to discuss his campaign with Wikinews in an interview. Schriner previously ran for president in 2000, 2004, and 2008, but failed to gain much traction in the races. He announced his candidacy for the 2012 race immediately following the 2008 election. Schriner refers to himself as the “Average Joe” candidate, and advocates a pro-life and pro-environmentalist platform. He has been the subject of numerous newspaper articles, and has published public policy papers exploring solutions to American issues. Wikinews reporter William Saturn? talks with Schriner and discusses his campaign. Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Wikinews_interviews_Joe_Schriner,_Independent_U.S._presidential_candidate&oldid=4497624”