Paris hotel fire kills 22
Saturday, April 16, 2005 A Paris fire in a hotel killed 22 people, 10 of whom were children, while injuring 53 — 11 seriously. The hotel was an overcrowded, budget accommodation type of housing. Most of the inhabitants were African, many housed by social services, according to an Associated Press report. The 32 room, six-story Paris Opera hotel, was made to house 61 guests, but 90 were staying at the time of the fire, with 84 of them placed by city or state social services. The fire is thought to have started in the breakfast room at 2:20 am Friday, local time. Along with the Africans, who were mostly refugees, others wounded included French, Senegalese, Portuguese, Americans, Ukrainians, and Tunisians, according to a report from Turkish Zaman.com. The hotel is situated near to La Galerie Lafayette, Printemps shopping center, and Paris Opera. It took nearly 250 fire-fighters to control the…
Violence at Cronulla Beach as 5000 people gather
Monday, December 12, 2005 Cronulla Beach in Sydney, New South Wales was the scene of racist mob-violence yesterday. In what has been described as disgusting, un-Australian and shameful behaviour, participants in a 5000-strong mob assaulted people suspected of being of Lebanese origin. The angry, alcohol-fuelled crowd also turned on anyone who tried to help the victims, including police, security guards and ambulance officers. Following an attack on two lifeguards earlier in the week, allegedly by men of Lebanese descent, a protest had been organised via text messages and a small number of usenet postings. Sutherland Shire Mayor Kevin Schreiber says inflammatory text messages calling for revenge attacks fueled the violence. Mr Schreiber said the heavily-circulated messages ensured troublemakers went to the southern Sydney beach looking for a fight. Police had patrolled the area all weekend after text messages began circulating among the community calling for vigilante responses to unwelcome visitors…
The Onion: An interview with ‘America’s Finest News Source’
Sunday, November 25, 2007 Despite the hopes of many University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) students, The Onion was not named after their student center. “People always ask questions about where the name The Onion came from,” said President Sean Mills in an interview with David Shankbone, “and when I recently asked Tim Keck, who was one of the founders, he told me the name—I’ve never heard this story about ‘see you at the un-yun’—he said it was literally that his Uncle said he should call it The Onion when he saw him and Chris Johnson eating an onion sandwich. They had literally just cut up the onion and put it on bread.” According to Editorial Manager Chet Clem, their food budget was so low when they started the paper that they were down to white bread and onions. Long before The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, Heck and Johnson envisioned…
Second fire in Pakistani office building this year kills one, injures four
Sunday, August 19, 2007 A fire in an office building in Karachi, Pakistan has killed one and injured four. Reports say that the fire was the second at the building, locating near the town’s shipping terminal, in half a year. The building, which is owned by the state-owned Pakistan National Shipping Corporation (PNSC), had suffered a previous fire in February. The first fire, caused by a short circuit, damaged five floors, burning from floors 12 to 16. The building is 17 stories high. Today’s fire destroyed seven more floors, starting on the 4th around 2:30 p.m. and being propelled up to the 10th by strong winds in the area. The deceased was a male shipping company official, who was assisting efforts to extinguish the blaze. According to the International Herald Tribune, he lost consciousness after inhaling smoke and fumes, and was pronounced dead on arrival after being rushed to hospital.…
Open source game developer Perttu Ahola talks about Minetest with Wikinews
Tuesday, June 30, 2020 Recently, Finnish open-source video game developer Perttu Ahola discussed Minetest, his “longest ever project”, with Wikinews. Started in October 2010, Minetest was an attempt by Ahola to create a sandbox game similar to Minecraft. Minecraft is a multi-platform commercial game, which was in alpha version when Ahola challenged himself to create something similar to it from scratch, he told Wikinews. Minetest is an open-source game, which is free for anyone to download and play. It is written in the C++ programming language, and the source code is available on code-hosting site GitHub. According to Ahola, Minetest attempts to run on older hardware, with limited graphics, but to be accessible to more people: those who have outdated technology, and making it available for no cost. Minecraft, on the other hand, is a paid game, currently costing USD 26.95 for its computer version. Minecraft is currently owned by…
US considers taxing earnings from online games
Sunday, October 22, 2006 With online gaming in persistent worlds becoming more prevalent, a US congressional committee has begun to look into the tax implications of these booming online economies. Games such as World of Warcraft and Second Life have large player driven economic systems in which – either following the rules or against them – real world currencies are exchanged for in-game currencies. With the GDP of some of these economies rivaling that of some small countries, the US government is wondering if it is missing out on a potential source of tax revenue: or as some gamers might put it, the IRS is asking “You buy gold?”. In cases where exchange of a real world currency for in-game currency is permitted by the rules of the game, some of these online games such as Second Life require that players report any income generated by these means to his…
Climate change impacts Wyoming
Tuesday, March 18, 2008 Cheek numbing, eye watering winds whip across the plains of the Laramie Basin, Wyoming. The ground is yellow brown with patches of recalcitrant snow. Sheep Mountain is losing its winter coat. All normal affairs for March. The March edition of the Wyoming Basin Outlook Report also reports, based on February accumulations, that Snow Water Equivalent is at 99% of average. The SWE is a measure of the snow pack that feeds the streams, rivers and reservoirs that Wyoming, Nebraska and other states depend upon for water. Current averages are compared to the average SWE for 1971-2000. In recent years, snow pack in this region has been anything but normal. The Outlook Reports are issued January to June. Since March 2000, only five of 46 months have been above normal. While many of the winter months have been near normal, June’s snow pack is far below average.…
Russian reverse engineers Skype; uploads source to public
Saturday, June 11, 2011 A Russian programming researcher Efim Bushmanov uploaded the Skype source on Blogspot, Torrent, and Github last Tuesday. Bushmanov said that his release engineering work is “not finished,” and stated that the purpose of its release is “community involvement.” Bushmanov said that his motivation was a story in the Wall Street Journal which described possible eavesdropping on Skype by governmental agencies. The upload to public would allow people to participate with further work on the reverse engineering which is not yet finished. Skype responded by a promise to support security of the Skype users and to investigate and prevent the attacks this can cause: “This unauthorized use of our application for malicious activities like spamming/phishing infringes on Skype’s intellectual property. We are taking all necessary steps to prevent/defeat nefarious attempts to subvert Skype’s experience. Skype takes its users’ safety and security seriously and we work tirelessly to…
Indian lawyers debate how to execute Mohammad Afzal
Wednesday, October 18, 2006 Even as the debate over whether Mohammad Afzal should be put to death for his role in the foiled 2001 attack on Indian Parliament rages on, lawyers are trying to determine the most humane method by which he may be executed. Some are quoting a Law Commission report that says lethal injection is the most painless way of ending a condemned person’s life. A former member of the Law Commission, N M Ghatate said Hanging is one of the cruelest ways of putting a man to death because he gets strangulated and his eyes pop out. There are many other gory details and he has to be prepared for the punishment. Afzal’s lawyer Gavin Fernandes however rejected the lethal injection idea stating Lethal injection has been held to be cruel, inhuman and degrading. This goes to show that whenever you take a life, whether it is…
South Korea: Fire in hospital housing elderly people kills at least 37
Friday, January 26, 2018 Fire broke out on Friday morning and destroyed the bottom two floors of a six-story hospital in Miryang, South Korea, killing at least 37 people, most of them elderly. More than a hundred injuries were reported, with eighteen people in critical condition. This is the highest death toll from fire in South Korea in almost a decade. The fire is believed to have started at about 7:30 local time, according to fire chief Choi Man-woo. It originated on the ground floor in the emergency room as per various officials. The hospital has 98 beds and a medical staff of about 35, and specializes in long-term care of elderly patients. It adjoins a nursing home, all of whose 94 residents were evacuated. Staff carried some patients out of the hospital on their backs. One patient, Jang Yeong-jae, who told his story to JoongAng Ilbo, said he escaped…