Saturday, March 1, 2008

Wikinews held an exclusive interview with Max Riekse, one of the candidates for the Constitution Party nomination for the 2008 United States presidential election.

Riekse is a retired decorated United States Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army who served in both the Vietnam War and the Iraq War. He is also a former public school teacher and Assistant Professor of Military Science at Western Michigan University. He has a B.A. in Political Science and International Relations from the University of South Florida as well as two M.A.s, one in Political Science and International Relations, the other in Eductaion and History. Both are from Western Michigan University.

We asked him if he thinks he has a good shot at winning the Constitution Party nomination and ultimately the presidency. He replied, “I will give it my best shot because I think I can do better then all previous Constitution Party presidential candidates….As to being in the White House in 2009, realistically, its a long shot; but so was Abe Lincoln in the new Republican Party.”

When asked about America’s public school system he said, “Local school boards and the people they are responsible to are the best judge of what is needed; this with state oversight, will help boost public school quality & education.”

Riekse is running for president because he has been “very tired of our Republican and Democratic choices for president for many years. With a population of some 300 million people to draw from, I would think we could do much, much better then we have been doing in regards to having a choice for president.”

Friday, April 1, 2011

The fallout from earthquake and tsunami catastrophes in Japan will cost Australia about A$2 billion in lost export earnings in the near term due to lower Australian exports to Japan, according to estimates in a Treasury brief released Thursday. After China, Japan is Australia’s largest export market, making up 15 percent of its total exports.

“The tragic events in Japan—together with the impact of floods and Cyclone Yasi at home—will clearly mean revenues take a substantial hit in the near term”, Treasurer Wayne Swan said in the brief.

Short term exports of “non-rural bulk commodities” are predicted to be lower as Japanese port facilities, coal-fired power stations and steel-making plants were damaged. Businesses whose export products are designated for Japan must find other customers to replace Japanese clients, the brief said. The loss of Japanese markets has been a contributor to a 6 percent drop in the price of iron ore and an 8 percent drop in the price of coal. Japan imports account for 27 percent of Australia’s iron ore and coal exports.

Also on Thursday, Japan’s manufacturing production index experienced its sharpest fall in the decade since data has been collected, indicating a steep fall in output for most businesses in Japan in March. Recently, Japanese industry seemed to be rebounding from the global financial crisis.

In Asia, concern is mounting that the electricity shortages and other disruptions to Japan’s manufacturing sector will affect manufacturing in various areas of Asia, since the manufacturing of many goods are dependent on the integrated network of supply chains.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

At least 14 United States troops, four crew and ten passengers, were killed in Iraq when their UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter crashed, for unknown reasons. The U.S. military in Iraq are blaming mechanical failure for the crash. One other helicopter was flying with the downed one on a mission the military calls Task Force Lightning.

“There were no indications of hostile fire. Two UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters were on a night operation when one of the aircraft crashed. That helicopter had been carrying four crew members and 10 passengers,” said the U.S. military in a statement to the press.

The military says that this is the worst crash of its kind in Iraq since 2005 when 31 U.S. marines were killed after their chopper crashed.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

On Friday evening, an explosion in Chengdu, China caused partial shutdown of a facility operated by Foxconn, one of the world’s biggest electronics manufacturers and a major supplier to companies like Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Sony, Apple, Motorola and Nokia. Initial investigations now suggest the explosion was caused by poor ventilation, which lead to high concentrations of combustible dust.

The blast happened at 7:18PM, around the time workers change shifts. A fire followed. Emergency services had control by 7:30PM. At least three people were killed, at least fifteen injured. Foxconn halted production to investigate, saying “All operations at the affected workshop remain suspended and production at all other workshops that carry out similar processing functions have also been halted pending the results of the investigation. All other production operations in our facilities in China continue operating normally.”

On Monday, city officials gave the cause as combustible dust in the air at a polishing workshop. Hong Kong-based labor rights group Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior said they reported aluminium dust problems in March when they reviewed working conditions at Foxconn. After the explosion, they commented that workers were complaining “the ventilation of the department is poor. Workers polish the iPad cases to make them shiny. In the process, there is lots of aluminum (aluminium) dust floating in the air. Workers always breathe in aluminum dust even though they put on masks. When workers take off their cotton gloves, their hands are covered with aluminum dust.”

Foxconn responded by saying the group was trying to “capitalize on the tragic accident” and misrepresented “Foxconn’s commitment to the health and safety of our employees.”

Foxconn is responsible for making iPads and iPhones for Apple. Research group IHS iSuppli said the explosion may cause loss of production of 500,000 iPads during this quarter of the year. They said there is a larger facility in Shenzhen, but it cannot cope with re-compensating the possible loss.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Former United States National Football League (NFL) star and Heisman Trophy winner O.J. Simpson has been allowed to post bail after being charged with ten felonies and one gross misdemeanor, in an alleged robbery that occurred in Las Vegas, Nevada on Friday September 14, 2007. Altogether, Simpson is facing 11 charges.

The judge presiding over the case, Justice of the Peace Joe Bonaventure Jr. has granted the prosecutions request that the bail for his release be set at US$125,000, but the bail comes with other conditions as well.

According to one of Simpson’s lawyers Yale Galanter, the bail agreement was reached with the prosecution days before today’s hearing, and Simpson only had to pay $19,000 of the $125,000 to get out of jail.

Simpson must also surrender his passport in 24 hours and is only allowed to travel within the mainland United States. Simpson is also “not allowed to have any contact whatsoever with any witness” or individual on the side of the prosecution which includes “no third-party contacting” and “no carrier pigeons.” Simpson was later released a few hours after the hearing.

After the hearing, during a press conference outside the courtroom Galanter stated that he would “be taking action” against an attorney who appeared on the FOX News Channel on Tuesday night who falsely identified himself as Simpson’s attorney.

“We are his only attorneys,” said Galanter during the press conference.

Simpson’s lawyers had to speak over the large number of bystanders and media, some whom were cheering when Galanter said he would be released shortly. One man standing next to Galanter suddenly yelled “nice job guy! That’s right, up high!,” as he was attempting to give Galanter a ‘high-five.’

Simpson was charged with kidnapping with a deadly weapon robbery, and other charges on September 14 after, according to Simpson, he performed his “own sting operation” to retrieve sports memorabilia items and other “personal” items that allegedly belonged to Simpson. Reports say that the total value of all the items combined is over $100,000.

There are at least seven other individuals facing charges in the alleged robbery. Walter Alexander, Clarence Stewart, Tom Scotto and Michael McClinton are all allegedly accomplices of Simpson. Bruce Fromong and Alfred Beardsley are both dealers in sports memorabilia. Thomas Riccio is the owner of an auction who let Simpson know about the items that were going to be sold. Riccio also has an audio tape of the entire incident, which he recorded.

The next hearing is scheduled for October 22. Clark County District Attorney David Roger will be the presiding prosecutor for the State of Nevada.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

A team of scientists at Stanford University claim to have detected a subtle, missing element of Einstein’s theory of relativity.

In a press release dated February 16th, Robert Kahn, Stanford University’s Public Affairs Coordinator, announced the experimental confirmation of frame dragging, an effect in which the presence of a rotating body causes space itself to be pulled along as the body rotates. While the effect was theorized by Josef Lense and Hans Thirring as far back as 1918, the small scale of the effect, as little as one part in a trillion for a satellite orbiting the Earth, made detecting the effect difficult.

The observation was made by the Gravity Probe B satellite, which carries finely-machined gyroscopes. Scientists looked for small changes in the motion of the gyroscopes to detect the frame dragging effect, as well as the much larger geodetic effect – small corrections to the Earth’s gravitational field due to differences between Einstein’s and Newton’s theories of gravity.

The experiment was conducted on the satellite from 2004 to 2005. However, the complexity of the data analysis along with unforeseen engineering problems have made finding the effect in the experiment’s results difficult. In particular, the presence of small electrical charges on the gyroscopes interfered with their results.

Francis Everitt, the experiment’s Principal Investigator, stresses in an interview with the New York Times that their announcement is only preliminary and that, with further analysis, they hope to improve the precision of their results; currently, they say they have only detected the frame dragging effect to within plus or minus fifteen percent of its expected value.

The theory of general relativity was developed by Albert Einstein in the early 20th century to explain the behavior of moving objects in space, after the discovery that the speed of light was always the same no matter how the person measuring it was moving. While it successfully explains many strange behaviors in space, such as the slow shifting of the orbit of Mercury and the bending of light by massive objects such as black holes, testing the theory on Earth has always been difficult due to the small scale of relativity’s effects in everyday life.