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Friday, June 22, 2007

According to court documents obtained by Wikinews, Randy Squires, an African American male and a former police officer of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia (DCMPD) has filed a lawsuit against the department alleging racial discrimination and harassment by a fellow officer. Squires is also suing the former mayor of D.C., Anthony A. Williams, and the district’s Attorney Generals office. Squires is also suing his superior officer, Robert Atcheson, for racial discrimination and harassment.

“Defendant Atcheson treated Plaintiff differently than similarly situated Caucasian police officers in several respect^[sic], including but not limited to assignments, evaluation, and disciplinary actions, deprivation of overtime and use of departmental vehicles,” stated court papers filed by Squires’ attorneys, Donald M. Temple and Dhamian A. Blue of Temple Law Offices in Washington D.C.

Squires accuses Atcheson, a white-caucasian male and a lieutenant in the Environmental Crimes Unit (ECU) Warrant Squad and the Paternity Warrant Squad, of discriminating against him on the basis of the color of his skin and also harassing him while on the job. Squires originally started to work in DCMPD 1988, and shortly after he was hired, he began to work in the ECU. Atcheson was in control of the unit Squires belonged to.

In court documents, Squires alleges Atcheson treated him with “flagrant racial discriminatory conduct,” like using the word “mope,” which is defined as slang for “nigger,” and that the discrimination was “designed to intimidate, insult, emasculate and humiliate” Squires. In one incident in 2002, during a training exercise, Atcheson allegedly “deprived Squires of appropriate breathing apparatus, which is designed to save life in emergency and hazardous situations,” but that the apparatus was “provided to two other caucasian officers.”

Documents also allege that Atcheson had “falsified” a report to North Carolina State Police after Squires was arrested and wrongfully charged with “unauthorized taking of a police vehicle.” Court documents say that the report to N.C. police states that “Atcheson falsely told Plaintiff (Squires) that he had photographic evidence of the police car outside Plaintiff’s home overnight and of Plaintiff driving the car from his home.”

Court documents also allege that Squires allegedly informed his superior officer of Atcheson, only known as ‘Captain Brito,’ of the incident, but no action was ever taken against Atcheson. Squires initially filed a complaint against Atcheson with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, (EEOC) in a letter on March March 8, 2005.

The Washington D.C. police department has investigated the claims made by Squires, which “revealed inappropriate conduct toward Squires,” but according to documents, no disciplinary action has been taken against Atcheson or his superiors.

The defendants “deny any and all allegations” that Squires has made against them and also state that Squires “failed to exhaust their administrative remedies and/or failed to comply with other mandatory filing requirements.” Defendants also say that “all actions taken by District (Washington D.C.) relating to Plaintiffs were necessary, reasonable, pursuant to lawful authority, and based on legitimate, non-discriminatory reasons” and that “the district denies that any district policymaker adopted, approved, condoned and/or maintained an unconstitutional policy, practice or custom of unlawful employment practices.”

Squires is asking at least US$350,000. Squires and the Defendants also request that a jury be present during the trial, which is scheduled to conclude on June 26.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

NASA’s Cassini–Huygens spacecraft has discovered evidence for a large-scale saltwater reservoir beneath the icy crust of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The data came from the spacecraft’s direct analysis of salt-rich ice grains close to the jets ejected from the moon. The study has been published in this week’s edition of the journal Nature.

Data from Cassini’s cosmic dust analyzer show the grains expelled from fissures, known as tiger stripes, are relatively small and usually low in salt far away from the moon. Closer to the moon’s surface, Cassini found that relatively large grains rich with sodium and potassium dominate the plumes. The salt-rich particles have an “ocean-like” composition and indicate that most, if not all, of the expelled ice and water vapor comes from the evaporation of liquid salt-water. When water freezes, the salt is squeezed out, leaving pure water ice behind.

Cassini’s ultraviolet imaging spectrograph also recently obtained complementary results that support the presence of a subsurface ocean. A team of Cassini researchers led by Candice Hansen of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, measured gas shooting out of distinct jets originating in the moon’s south polar region at five to eight times the speed of sound, several times faster than previously measured. These observations of distinct jets, from a 2010 flyby, are consistent with results showing a difference in composition of ice grains close to the moon’s surface and those that made it out to the E ring, the outermost ring that gets its material primarily from Enceladean jets. If the plumes emanated from ice, they should have very little salt in them.

“There currently is no plausible way to produce a steady outflow of salt-rich grains from solid ice across all the tiger stripes other than salt water under Enceladus’s icy surface,” said Frank Postberg, a Cassini team scientist at the University of Heidelberg in Germany.

The data suggests a layer of water between the moon’s rocky core and its icy mantle, possibly as deep as about 50 miles (80 kilometers) beneath the surface. As this water washes against the rocks, it dissolves salt compounds and rises through fractures in the overlying ice to form reserves nearer the surface. If the outermost layer cracks open, the decrease in pressure from these reserves to space causes a plume to shoot out. Roughly 400 pounds (200 kilograms) of water vapor is lost every second in the plumes, with smaller amounts being lost as ice grains. The team calculates the water reserves must have large evaporating surfaces, or they would freeze easily and stop the plumes.

“We imagine that between the ice and the ice core there is an ocean of depth and this is somehow connected to the surface reservoir,” added Postberg.

The Cassini mission discovered Enceladus’ water-vapor and ice jets in 2005. In 2009, scientists working with the cosmic dust analyzer examined some sodium salts found in ice grains of Saturn’s E ring but the link to subsurface salt water was not definitive. The new paper analyzes three Enceladus flybys in 2008 and 2009 with the same instrument, focusing on the composition of freshly ejected plume grains. In 2008, Cassini discovered a high “density of volatile gases, water vapor, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, as well as organic materials, some 20 times denser than expected” in geysers erupting from the moon. The icy particles hit the detector target at speeds between 15,000 and 39,000 MPH (23,000 and 63,000 KPH), vaporizing instantly. Electrical fields inside the cosmic dust analyzer separated the various constituents of the impact cloud.

“Enceladus has got warmth, water and organic chemicals, some of the essential building blocks needed for life,” said Dennis Matson in 2008, Cassini project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

“This finding is a crucial new piece of evidence showing that environmental conditions favorable to the emergence of life can be sustained on icy bodies orbiting gas giant planets,” said Nicolas Altobelli, the European Space Agency’s project scientist for Cassini.

“If there is water in such an unexpected place, it leaves possibility for the rest of the universe,” said Postberg.

Sunday, August 26, 2007

A one-inch settlement of the roof of The Bay tunnel to the Montreal Metro caused authorities to evacuate 12 blocks of the Montreal downtown core.

Several people noticed water infiltration in the tunnel over the last few days. On Friday, August 24, at 1 p.m., while investigating another water infiltration incident, The Bay employees noticed that the ceiling of the tunnel portion of The Bay’s basement sales area had descended one inch over a 7 meter length. They subsequently called police. The police and firefighters evacuated the basement of the downtown Bay store. The police closed de Maisonneuve Boulevard from Aylmer Street to Union Street, over the area of the crack.

At 4 p.m., firefighters evacuated the Parkade Montreal Building and The Bay Department Store after finding pieces of concrete falling from the Parkade Montreal structure, a multi-story carpark with five levels of offices on top. They also evacuated the downtown portion of the Line 1 / Green Line of the Montreal Metro subway, from Lionel-Groulx to Berri-UQAM stations, and evacuated the McGill metro station, which is situated below The Bay tunnel. After consulting with city engineers, Centre 2001, the loading dock of the Bay and its Hertz car rental agency, Les Promenades Cathedrale underground shopping centre and office tower, and a neighbouring office tower to the Parkade were also evacuated. Police cordoned off an area from Bleury Street in the east to University Street in the west, and from Ste-Catherine Street in the south to President Kennedy Street to the north.

The closure of the Metro caused havoc to the Friday afternoon rush hour, as over 40,000 people regularly use the Green Line (Line 1) every day. Montreal Transit Corporation workers issued directions during the day, though some may not have been informed of a provisionary bus service to replace the lost subway service. Loudspeakers announced that commuters should use the unaffected Orange Line (Line 2), which has lines between 5 and 10 blocks south of Line 1 (Green Line), and also connects to Lionel-Groulx and Berri-UQAM stations.

The downtown area is intended to remain closed for at least the weekend, along with portions of the underground city, or RESO. The tunnel was built in 1966. For the last few days, city work crews have been working above the slab in question, digging a one meter trench to install a median and segregate a new bike path on de Maisonneuve Boulevard. The tunnel roof lies five meters below street level.

Residents of Montreal are frustrated with the crumbling infrastructure in and around the city, including the collapse of the de la Concorde Boulevard overpass over Autoroute 19 expressway last year, the shattering of a column holding up the Autoroute 720 Ville Marie elevated expressway last month, and other incidents.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Christine Comer, former director of the science curriculum for the Texas Education Agency (TEA), is suing the Commissioner Robert Scott for wrongful dismissal. Comer alleges that she was “illegally fired for forwarding an e-mail about a lecture that was critical of the teaching of intelligent design in science classes.” Her suit alleges she was “terminated for contravening an unconstitutional policy” which required “employees to be neutral on the subject of creationism – the biblical interpretation of the origin of humans.”

The Dallas Morning News reported, “The policy was in force even though the federal courts have ruled that teaching creationism as science in public schools is illegal under U.S. Constitution’s provision preventing government establishment or endorsement of religious beliefs.” Among Comer’s supporters is Philosopher and National Center for Science Education speaker Barbara Forrest who was the presenter at the lecture Comer mentioned in the email.

News 8 Austin reported, “The TEA was not available for comment late Wednesday.”

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

New Delhi is experiencing the second day of a strike by traders protesting against the implementation of a Supreme Court order to seal commercial establishments violating zoning rules by operating in residential zones.

The strike has affected a very large area in New Delhi including major markets in Rohini, Chandani Chowk, Karol Bagh and south extension of Delhi. Schools were shut down yesterday but have reopened today.

A group of traders met the union urban development minister S Jaipal Reddy to air their grievances about the government’s response towards the MCD’s sealing drive. Traders also met Delhi Chief minister Sheila Dikshit to submit a memorandum calling for an end to the sealing drive.

Praveen Khandelwal, Secretary General of the Confederation of All India Traders, said, they will call off the strike on Wednesday night and the continue their agitation by hunger-strike and conferences against the sealing drive. Traders refused to move back from the agitation until November 1, when Municipal Corporation of Delhi is likely to resume its sealing drive.

According to official sources, the union government is likely to file a review petition before the Supreme Court to temporarily suspend the drive and resolve this dispute as soon as possible.

After seeing the law-and-order situation in Delhi, the Supreme Court’s Monitoring committee recommended the Supreme Court not to resume the MCD’s sealing drive on November 1.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Retired West Virginia engineer Lowell Jackson “Jack” Fellure won the presidential nomination of the Prohibition Party yesterday at the party’s National Convention in Cullman, Alabama. He won on the second ballot, defeating Thompson Township tax accessor James Hedges of Pennsylvania, who initially ran unopposed. Party Chairman Toby Davis of Mississippi received the vice presidential nomination.

The Prohibition Party is the third oldest existing political party in the United States, having been established in 1869. It reached its height of popularity during the late 19th century. As its name suggests, the party heavily supported the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which banned the sale of alcohol, and resulted in the US period known as Prohibition (1919–33). The party has declined since the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, but has continued to nominate candidates for the presidential election.

Fellure, 79, has run for president in every election since 1988, though usually as a Republican. This run marks his first as a member of the Prohibition Party. On his campaign website, he cites the Authorized 1611 King James Bible as his presidential platform, and calls for the teaching of the Bible in public schools, criminalization of homosexuality, and the elimination of abortion, the liquor industry and pornography. On economics, he supports reducing taxes and balancing the federal budget.

Hedges, the first Prohibition Party member elected to public office since 1959, announced his campaign in February 2010, and was the only candidate until last month. According to Vice Chairman June Griffin: “While Jim has contributed valuable resources to this Party…his positions regarding Environmentalism and passivity toward war forced me to vote for Jack Fellure. As well, his insistence on a moratorium on the building of nuclear plants caused much unrest among the membership. Yet he prevailed to install this plank.”

The ten voting Prohibition Party convention delegates and a few guests met for the National Convention, which began on Monday at the Holiday Inn Express in Cullman. Tuesday featured a short greeting from Cullman Mayor Max Townson, followed by addresses from Libertarian consultant Stephen P. Gordon, Ballot Access News publisher Richard Winger, and Eunie Smith of the Eagle Forum.

Gordon, who previously worked as the e-Campaign manager for the 2008 Bob Barr presidential campaign, jokingly commented that his speech “stunk”. He opened his address with the joke that “the way to pick out the libertarian at a Prohibition Party function is that I’m the one wearing the Jerry Garcia tie.” He discussed how third party candidates could utilize new media to their advantage, but avoided any ideological topics.

Winger, an expert on election law, discussed ballot access and the history of the Prohibition Party. He notably explained how the party had cost the Republicans presidential victories in the elections of 1884 and 1916, which forestalled the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment by Republicans, who wanted to do away with the alcohol issue. Gordon later commented that Winger’s speech was well-received by the audience.

After Winger’s speech, the convention broke for lunch. Afterwards, Smith, the widow of former Congressman Albert L. Smith, Jr., focused on immigration and education in her address. When asked about the Eagle Forum’s participation in the fight against alcohol, she commented that the group was focused on more pressing issues such as gambling.

After the nomination, some party members traveled to the grave of Sidney Catts in Florida. Catts, who died in 1936, was the first and only state governor elected from the Prohibition Party.

The party will now begin ballot access drives in Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, New Jersey, Utah, Colorado, Tennessee and Arkansas. In 2008, the late Gene Amondson appeared on the ballot in Colorado, Florida and Louisiana and picked up a total of 653 votes.

Saturday, August 2, 2008

A 54-year-old German farmer who lost both arms in a farming accident six years ago has become the first patient to receive a complete double arm transplant. The patient, whose name has not been released, underwent the operation at the Klinikum rechts der Isar, part of the Technical University of Munich (Technische Universität München), last week; he is said to be recovering well.

The operation lasted 15 hours and was performed by a team of 40 specialists in Plastic Surgery, Hand Surgery, Orthopedics and Anesthesiology, under the direction of the head of the Plastics and Hand Surgery department, Prof. Hans-Günther Machens, Dr. Christoph Höhnke (Head of Transplants, Senior Physician; Plastics and Hand Surgery) and Prof. Edgar Biemer, the former Chief of Plastic Surgery at the Clinic.

In a press statement released by the clinic, it was revealed that the patient had been thoroughly physically checked and had psychological counselling prior to the surgery to ensure he was mentally stable enough to cope with the procedure. Since completion of the surgery, the patient has been on immuno-suppressant drugs to prevent rejection of the new limbs.

Following the surgery, the press release from the clinic’s press manager, Dr. Tanja Schmidhofer, included the following statement:

Without the immuno-suppressant drugs given to the patient, the risk of there being a Graft-versus-Host Reaction or GvHR, would have been significant due to the upper arm containing a large amount of bone marrow, consisting of ICC’s or Immuno-Competent Cells, which would have triggered a near total rejection of the new limbs. A GvHR is a condition which results in the cells from the transplant attacking the immune system of the body.

Indications from the clinic suggest that the double attachment went well, although it could be up to 2 full years before the patient is able to move the arms.

The donor arms came from an unnamed teenager, who is believed to have died in a car accident.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Toyota announced on Friday that it will recall around 17,000 Lexus vehicles in response to risks of the fuel tank in the cars leaking after a collision.

The Lexus HS 250h model was subjected to the recall following a US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) investigation. Despite previously passing Toyota safety inspections, the conclusions of an NHTSA sub-contracted investigator were that; when the vehicles in question collided with an object at more than fifty-miles-per hour, more than 142 grams of fuel, the maximum allowed by US law, leaked from the crashed car.

According to Toyota, further tests did not show any additional failure of the fuel tank.

In response to the findings, Toyota issued a recall of all affected vehicles, since the company had no solution immediately available. The recall includes 13,000 cars already sold, as well as another 4,000 still at dealerships.

Toyota says it plans to conduct further tests to determine the cause of the leak. A Toyota spokesman, Brian Lyons, said that the company was “still working to determine what the root cause of the condition is.” It’s still unclear when exactly the recall will take place, or when dealerships will be allowed to sell this model again. Lyons said that Toyota is “working feverishly to get this resolved as soon as possible.”

Toyota isn’t aware of any accidents stemming from the leaking fuel tank in the affected vehicles, first introduced in the summer of 2009.

Saturday, December 29, 2018

On Wednesday, lawmakers of German ruling coalition parties — Christian Democratic Union of Germany ^{((de))German language: ?Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands} (CDU), Social Democratic Party of Germany ^{((de))German language: ?Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands} (SPD), and Christian Social Union in Bavaria ^{((de))German language: ?Christlich-Soziale Union in Bayern} (CSU) — announced they were considering imposing new mandatory taxation Muslims would have to pay, which the government would distribute as funding to mosques. The lawmakers said this was a possible solution to stop funding and finance of the mosques in Germany from foreign countries and institutes.

The proposal would introduce taxes for Muslims similar to the mandatory taxes the state collects from practicing Protestants and Catholics in order to fund the churches.

Official estimates indicate Germany has around 4.4 to 4.7 million resident Muslims. Mosques currently receive funding from foreign sources. Press reports indicate Gulf countries provide funding to mosques and imams. Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs ^{((tr))Turkish language: ?Diyanet ??leri Türk-?slam Birli?i} (D?T?B) is reportedly one of the biggest foreign institutes currently funding mosques in Germany. D?T?B is under direction by the Turkish government and reportedly influences over 900 German Muslim communities.

Speaking to Deutsche Welle, Seyran Ates, founder of a progressive mosque in German capital Berlin, said German Islam “has a huge influence from outside, from foreign countries”. Ates went on to say, “They [German Muslims] have to take care about their own religion here in Germany. So Muslims in Germany should do something for Islam in Germany”.

Thorsten Frei of CDU told German daily Die Welt this is an “important step” enabling “Islam in Germany to emancipate itself from foreign states”. CSU’s Michael Frieser said, “Mosques must be open and transparent”.

Describing the idea of the new tax as “worthy of discussion”, Burkhard Lischka of SPD noted: “We need to work with the states on this issue, since the church tax is then responsibility of the states”.

Some other European governments, similarly to Germany, mandate Christians pay church taxes in order to fund the churches; including Austria, Italy, and Sweden.

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Once you get a chance to talk to West Palm Beach, Florida native Whitney Cunningham, who placed seventh on the eighth cycle of the popular reality TV series America’s Next Top Model, you begin to understand what host Tyra Banks meant when she described her as the “full package.”

First of all, she is confident and headstrong, which is a must on these kinds of shows, almost as much as it is to take a beautiful modelesque picture. Second, she turns that confidence into drive. She has been receiving steady work as a model since leaving the show, and still believes that her goal of being the first woman to wear a size ten dress on the cover of Vogue is in reach. Third, and probably most important to television viewers, she obliterates the age-old model stereotype that to be pretty and photograph well, one must also be vapid and without a thought. A graduate of Dartmouth College, Cunningham also dreams of becoming a writer, and is working toward dual goals: a model who can express herself like no other model before her.

Cunningham recently sat down with Wikinews reporter Mike Halterman in an impassioned interview, taking hours to field questions from the reporter as well as from fans of America’s Next Top Model. Always in high spirits, Cunningham shows that she is a distinct personality who has carved her own niche in the Top Model history books. At the same time, she exhibits a joie de vivre that is oddly reminiscent of earlier Top Model fan favorite Toccara Jones, who showed America just how to be “big, black, beautiful and loving it.” However, Cunningham is quick to remind everyone that she isn’t big at all; she is simply a regular woman.

This is the first in a series of interviews with America’s Next Top Model contestants. Interviews will be published sporadically.