Thursday, January 20, 2005

Several prominent Romanian artists and celebrities will gather at the Radio Hall in Bucharest on Sunday, January 23, to raise money for the victims of the catastrophic Indian Ocean tsunami of December 26, 2004. In an event titled Romanian Artists in Support of Asia, organised by The Reporter Foundation of Romania, artists will auction off their works, as well as personal objects, with all proceeds being donated to the relief efforts for the tsunami victims.

Media celebrities such as the soprano Felicia Filip and singers Angela Similea and Dida Dragan will also be participating, as well as Maia Morgenstern, known internationally for her role in the film The Passion of the Christ. All ambassadors accredited in Bucharest, as well as political personalities, have been invited to participate.

Romanian Artists in Support of Asia is the second major public event organised in Romania to support the victims of the recent Indian Ocean disaster. On Sunday, January 16, the Romanian public raised the equivalent of 395,000 euro in a telethon, while the Romanian Government pledged 150,000 euro for the relief effort.

The artistic event is also part of a campaign by the Bucharest City Hall that seeks to relaunch the image of the Romanian capital as a creative and colourful metropolis. The city will be the first in southeastern Europe to host CowParade, the world’s largest public art event, between June and August this year.

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Saturday, October 23, 2010

In a Wednesday media event, Apple Inc. released a new lineup of MacBook Air laptops and the 2011 version of the company’s iLife software suite. The “Back to the Mac” event also included a preview of Apple’s forthcoming Mac OS X Lion operating system, to be released in mid-2011.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the new products at the Cupertino, California event, saying the company has “been inspired by the work [it has] done on the iPad, and [it wants] to bring it back to the Mac.” Apple has plans to import more features of its iOS mobile operating system to the Mac OS X operating system.

Jobs announced today that the “Lion” release to OS X, which is scheduled for release next summer, will include more support for multitouch and a desktop version of the company’s App Store. He said that the App Store will be available for Apple’s current OS “Snow Leopard” within 90 days, and that applications can be submitted starting next month. Jobs also announced that a beta version of FaceTime, Apple’s IOS video calling application, would be available for OS X users immediately. Several new applications will be added in OS X Lion, dubbed “Mission Control” and “Launchpad.”

In his keynote address Wednesday, Jobs announced the release of Apple’s iLife ’11 software suite, which includes the iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand programs. iPhoto has new slide show templates, while iMovie has added audio editing capabilities. GarageBand now includes several new piano- and guitar-playing lessons. iLife ’11 was released on Wednesday as a US$49 upgrade, and is also available free with new Mac purchases.

In another move to bring iOS functionality to Macintosh computers, Jobs announced an updated MacBook Air series of laptops, on sale now. The new MacBook Air uses flash memory rather than a traditional hard drive, and has no CD/DVD drive, an approach seen on the iPad tablet computer. In addition, the laptop’s battery life has been extended, even though it is only 0.68 in (1.73 cm) thick and weighs less than 3 lbs (1.36 kg). “We think it’s the future of notebooks,” said Jobs. There are now two models of the MacBook Air: an 11.6-inch (29.46-cm) version and a 13.3-inch (33.78-cm) model. Analyst Shawn Wu says the company “priced it really aggressively,” referring to the computer’s base price of US$999.

Jobs said that his company sold 13.7 million Macs last year, totaling US$22 billion. In the last financial quarter, Mac sales increased 22 percent, comprising 24 percent of total revenue for Apple. However, the original MacBook Air did not fare so well. Sales and hype over the first Air decreased soon after its introduction, and the line was overshadowed by the release of Apple’s 13-inch (33.02-cm) MacBook Pro. The MacBook Air had not been significantly updated since 2008.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Dale Ogden, a 2010 California gubernatorial candidate, talks with Wikinews reporter Mike Morales about his platform.

Ogden is a member of the United States’ Libertarian Party.

Monday, March 2, 2009

With a Queensland state election coming up in Australia, many minor parties will be looking to hold balance of power and making the major parties listen to what they have to say. The Socialist Alliance (SA) is one of these parties.

SA is a left-wing political party. There stated describes itself as an anti-capitalist party which believes in “a democratic society that is run by and for working people, not the tiny, greedy, destructive elite that now rules.”

It should be noted that SA is not registered for Queensland elections due to what they describe as “restrictive rules for registration.” Their candidates will run as independents. They are, however, registered for federal elections and elections in other states.

Queensland’s unicameral parliament is up for election on March 21. The election campaign will run for a total of 26 days following the issue of the writs by Governor Penelope Wensley.

Wikinews held an exclusive interview with the SA. Answering on behalf of the party was Queensland State Gonvenor Paul Benedek.

Sunday, May 1, 2005

Eleven years of drilling and blasting using a total 16 tons of explosives were completed Thursday when Swiss engineers detonated the last few yards of granite completing the 21 mile (35 km) Lötschberg tunnel in the Alps. The Lötschberg is now the longest overland tunnel in the world, and the third longest tunnel overall.

“With the breakthrough we have carved out the mountain for all to see. We are moving on,” said Swiss Transport Minister Moritz Leuenberger at a ceremony marking the occasion, attended by about 1,000 people who witnessed the event in the midpoint of the tunnel, about 5,900 feet below the 12,170 foot Balmhorn mountain.

The two halves of the tunnel met with almost perfect exactness. The centers of the bores coming from opposite directions were only about 5 inches apart, and the heights were aligned within less than 1 inch.

The new tunnel connects the Swiss district of Raron with the city of Frutigen, near the capital Bern. Construction on the railway within the new tunnel is expected to be completed by 2007, and should shorten travel time between Germany and the Italian city of Milan by about an hour. The cost of building the tunnel, at US$13 billion (€10 billion) has already overrun budget by US$3 billion, and 11 people died during its construction.

The only two tunnels that are longer than Lötschberg are:

• The Seikan Tunnel, Japan’s tunnel between the islands of Honshu and Hokkaido which passes part of the way underneath the seabed, and is the longest railway tunnel in the world at about 33 miles (54 km).
• The Channel Tunnel, once nicknamed the “Chunnel”, which is the second longest at 31 miles (50 km), extending from Kent, England under the English Channel to northern France.

The Lötschberg tunnel is the longest tunnel that travels entirely over land, surpassing the previous record-holder, Japan’s Hakkoda tunnel, which was completed only two months ago on February 27 at a length of 16 miles (26 km).

At least one future tunnel, Gotthard Base Tunnel, is planned to be the world’s new longest tunnel at a length of 35 miles (57 km); it is also currently under construction in Switzerland, parallel to the Lötschberg with a planned completion date of 2012.

Swiss people make large numbers of train trips compared to other Europeans, with an average of 40 trips per person annually compared to 21 in Germany, 14 in France, and 8 in Italy. A major goal of the ongoing rail tunnel construction is to decrease travel times between popular destinations, with the state-owned Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) predicting a 20% increase in rail traffic by 2020.

Also under consideration are improvement of the rapidly growing crowding of traffic (particularly heavy trucks carrying cargo) in the narrow Swiss highways, auto accidents, and pollution. Since 1980, Swiss highway traffic has increased tenfold, largely due to its geographical position along Europe’s north-south axis.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Nine firefighters were killed on Monday while battling a massive fire at a furniture warehouse in Charleston, South Carolina.

Firefighters were called to the scene of a massive blaze at the Sofa Super Store in Charleston, S.C. at around 6:30 p.m. EST. At around 7 p.m., nine firefighters were sent inside the inferno to rescue people who were trapped inside the building. They rescued two before the ceiling collapsed on top of them. All nine firefighters who were inside the warehouse died. They are:

• Capt. William Hutchinson, 48
• Capt. Mike Benke, 49
• Capt. Louis Mulkey, 34
• FF Mark Kelsey, 40
• FF Bradford Baity, 37
• FF Michael French, 27
• FF James “Earl” Drayton, 56
• FF Brandon Thompson, 27
• FF Melven Champaign, 46

The disaster recalls Worcester Cold Storage Warehouse fire that killed six firefighters on Dec. 3, 1999, in Worcester, Massachusetts. The chief of the Worcester Fire Department flew down to South Carolina for the memorial service.

Monday, June 5, 2017

Conductor Sir Jeffrey Tate died on Friday. He was born on April 28, 1943 in Salisbury, England with spina bfida and kyphosis.

Tate moved with his family to Farnham, Surrey and attended school there. Despite his disabilities, he achieved a four-decade career conducting operatic and symphonic music, following a medical degree from Cambridge and medical residency at St Thomas’ Hospital, London. He began in London Opera Centre with a scholarship and was a Royal Opera House répétiteur in 1971.

He recorded ten complete operas with director Georg Solti. He also assisted Pierre Boulez with Der Ring des Nibelungen at Bayreuth in 1976, and later conducted the complete Ring himself more than twenty times, and the complete Lulu on its premier at the Paris Opera in 1979.

He was knighted six weeks before his death, for his services to music, as part of the 2017 New Year Honours.

He was in Lombardy, Italy when he died, reportedly in rehearsal due to a heart attack, at the age of 74.