Monday, March 15, 2010

Top-seeded Glenbard East High School was expected to win the Class 4A Neuqua Valley High School Sectional championship on Friday night. Yet with a lot of determination and a strong defense, the Benet Academy varsity boys basketball team defeated the Rams 68–54. 

The game marks Benet’s sixteenth straight victory this season, giving the Redwings a 26–3 overall record. It is also their first sectional championship since the 1982–1983 season, which was the last time Benet advanced to the Class AA state tournament; there they lost to Thornton Township High School in the quarterfinals.

The Redwings’ aggressive man-to-man defense certainly kept the Rams out of their comfort zone amidst the crowds in the sold-out Neuqua gym. As Benet forward Mike Runger said, “We made them play to their weaknesses instead of letting them get comfortable doing what they want to do.”

Benet scored 71 percent of its shots in the first half, while Glenbard East scored only 27. While the Rams led twice in the first few minutes (3–0 and 7–5), the Redwings led 12–7 after the first quarter. A three-point shot made by Dave Sobolewski two seconds before the buzzer gave Benet a 27–16 lead at the end of the first half. 

Glenbard East desperately attempted a comeback in the second half, but Benet maintained a lead ranging from 10 to 18 points. Rams guard made four three-pointers in the fourth quarter, but to no avail. As Benet coach Gene Heidkamp said, “…we knew they were going to come at us and give us a ton of pressure. We were a long, long way from being comfortable at halftime.”

Benet will play Simeon Career Academy from Chicago in the supersectionals at Hinsdale Central High School on Tuesday night. 

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Pakistani security forces, aided by artillery and tanks killed 38 Taliban insurgents today in two separate attacks near the Afghanistan border in the Orakzai district of the North-West Frontier Province of the country, according to government officials.

Security men say that Orakzai, located to the southwest of Peshawar, became a Taliban stronghold since the army led offensives against other Taliban areas in different parts of northwest Pakistan.

An army checkpoint in Sayd Khalil Baba village was attacked by militants early on Sunday. However, security troops killed 26 insurgents with artillery fire, according to Samiullah Khan, a senior administrative official in the area. Sajid Khan, another government official of Orakzai told the Reuters news agency that scores of militants attacked the checkpost in the village on Sunday morning. “They used rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and machine guns, but our soldiers’ response was quick and tough,” he added. Ten militants were wounded in this attack according to the latter, who is based in Kalaya, the district’s principal town.

Within hours, a military convoy was ambushed by Taliban attackers in an adjoining village. At least a dozen insurgents were killed in this attack, according to local authorities. Officials said only Pakistani soldier was injured in the attack. There was no confirmation of the figures provided by administrative officials available news agencies, as journalists are prohibited from entering the area.

Security officials claimed around 250 militants have been killed in several clashes in the Orakzai district. Pakistani Taliban leader {{w|Hakimullah Mehsud]] was believed to have control over this region. The latter is thought to have been killed in an U.S. drone strike in January this year.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Michael Ellis DeBakey, world renowned heart surgeon, has died in Houston, Texas at the age of 99.

He was born Michel Dabaghi on September 7, 1908 in Lake Charles, Louisiana, to Lebanese immigrants Shaker and Raheeja DeBakey.

DeBakey was the chancellor emeritus of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, and director of The DeBakey Heart Center of Baylor and the Methodist Hospital.

DeBakey pioneered the use of Dacron grafts to replace or repair blood vessels. In 1958, to counteract narrowing of an artery caused by an endarterectomy, DeBakey performed the first successful patch-graft angioplasty. This procedure involved patching the slit in the artery from an endarterectomy with a Dacron or vein graft. The patch widened the artery so that when it closed the channel of the artery returned to normal size. The DeBakey artificial graft is now used around the world to replace or repair blood vessels.

Monday, June 19, 2006

2000 Cantabrians are still without power a week after a huge snowstorm struck and took out the electricity in mid and south Canterbury.

Sunday June 18 came and brought more snow to mid and south Canterbury, but just a minuscule amount compared to last weeks.

Civil Defence says “It is keeping an eye on the situation, and welfare work is continuing to make sure everyone is coping. Iroquois helicopters are reportedly on standby at Wigram Air Base if needed,”

Chief executive of Orion (a power company) Roger Sutton says, “Another 20 or 30 homes are without power in the Lake Coleridge area.”

Repair crews were taken out of duty on Sunday because the snow got too deep, but should be back on the job Monday June 19.

NZ Post also reports that they have had to cancel deliveries to some Dunedin suburbs because it got too icy. NZ Post says that deliveries will continue on Tuesday June 20 or if the weather clears up before that.

The MetService has put severe weather warnings for some of the central cities of the North Island.

Barry Stratton, Transit, says that all roads are open in the South Island, but some will have delays.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

It can be difficult to be John Reed.

Christopher Hitchens called him a “Bin Ladenist” and Cathy Young editorialized in The Boston Globe that he “blames the victims of terrorism” when he puts out a novel like Snowball’s Chance, a biting send-up of George Orwell‘s Animal Farm which he was inspired to write after the terrorist attacks on September 11. “The clear references to 9/11 in the apocalyptic ending can only bring Orwell’s name into disrepute in the U.S.,” wrote William Hamilton, the British literary executor of the Orwell estate. That process had already begun: it was revealed Orwell gave the British Foreign Office a list of people he suspected of being “crypto-Communists and fellow travelers,” labeling some of them as Jews and homosexuals. “I really wanted to explode that book,” Reed told The New York Times. “I wanted to completely undermine it.”

Is this man who wants to blow up the classic literary canon taught to children in schools a menace, or a messiah? David Shankbone went to interview him for Wikinews and found that, as often is the case, the answer lies somewhere in the middle.

Reed is electrified by the changes that surround him that channel through a lens of inspiration wrought by his children. “The kids have made me a better writer,” Reed said. In his new untitled work, which he calls a “new play by William Shakespeare,” he takes lines from The Bard‘s classics to form an original tragedy. He began it in 2003, but only with the birth of his children could he finish it. “I didn’t understand the characters who had children. I didn’t really understand them. And once I had had kids, I could approach them differently.”

Taking the old to make it new is a theme in his work and in his world view. Reed foresees new narrative forms being born, Biblical epics that will be played out across print and electronic mediums. He is pulled forward by revolutions of the past, a search for a spiritual sensibility, and a desire to locate himself in the process.

Below is David Shankbone’s conversation with novelist John Reed.

Sunday, June 5, 2005

Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International, compared the United States detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to a Soviet-era gulag in that it is “entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detention in violation of international law,” she said.

The group’s Executive Director William Schulz, on Fox News Sunday, said in response to questioning that they do not “know for sure” whether or not testimonies it has published describing torture and abuse of prisoners by sections of the U.S. military are valid because the U.S. will not give access to the camp to investigate them. [1]

He also said he has no conclusive evidence that U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, ordered torture of detainees at the facility. Schulz had previously referred to “apparent high-level architects of torture,”, and included Donald Rumsfeld in that group. [2]

Director Schulz stated that comparing the installation to a gulag was perhaps not the best choice of words. “…they (detainees) are not in forced labor, they are not being denied food. But,” he continued,” there are some analogies between the gulags and our detention facilities.” Schulz alleged that U.S. officials are “running an archipelago of detention facilities,” some secret. The report also describes “ghost” detainees who “disappear” and the export of prisoners to countries that are known to practice torture.

During his appearance, Schulz argued that his and other human rights groups should be given broader access to the facility. “We don’t know for sure what all is happening at Guantanamo,” he said, “and our whole point is that the United States ought to allow independent human rights organizations to investigate.” The treatment of prisoners at the facility has been in hot dispute recently, with Amnesty International comparing the facility to a “gulag” in its annual human rights report. Bush administration officials condemned the comparison.

On Friday, the U.S. government released documents indicating that both guards and detainees at the facility had on a few occasions abused the Qur’an, the Muslim holy book.

Prisoners and ex-prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have testified that they have been tortured. David Hicks, still being held, filed an affidavit on August 5, 2004 [3] declaring that he had been tortured, abused and ill-treated during his detention by US military authorities, and that he saw and heard similar treatment inflicted on other detainees. Mamdouh Habib, now free, says about his time at Guantanamo Bay that he was told by interrogators that his family had been killed, and that he was tied to the ground while a prostitute menstruated on him. Professor Christopher Tennant of Sydney University also stated he saw an unsigned medical report from Guantanamo Bay that backed up Habib’s claim to have been beaten while in US custody;

“Well, the main feature of the medical report from Guantanamo was that he had had repeatedly blood in his urine, which is a very significant symptom and a worrying symptom, and that was consistent with his reports both to me and to the specialist physician who also examined him, and was consistent with the fact that, on examination, he had evidence of discolouration to his skin on his right loin, just over his kidney, which in turn was consistent with old bruising and possibly due to being beaten.”

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.

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, February 17, 2007

A Delta II rocket blasted off from NASA’s Cape Canaveral launch pad today, carrying five satellites designed to investigate the northern lights and the electromagnetic storms that cause them. The launch had been twice delayed due to bad weather, but was eventually performed at 23:00 UTC.

NASA and the Canadian Space Agency have collectively invested $200 million in the mission, known as the THEMIS Project. Through this mission, they hope to develop better techniques to forecast electromagnetic storms, in order to protect communication satellites, power grids, and spacewalking astronauts. Scientists from the University of Alberta and the University of Calgary also helped with the project.

The Sun continuously sends a stream of charged particles, called the solar wind, at the Earth. We are generally protected from the solar wind by the Earth’s magnetosphere. During substorms, however, the magnetosphere gets overloaded by the solar wind and the magnetic field lines stretch until they eventually snap back, energizing and flinging electrically charged particles towards Earth.

Scientists want to find out what snaps in the overloaded magnetosphere to trigger a substorm.