Thursday, October 5, 2017

At the age of 66, US rock musician Tom Petty suffered cardiac arrest on Monday morning and died that evening at the UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica in California, according to reports.

Petty, born in Gainesville, Florida in 1950, was best known as the lead singer of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. With the Heartbreakers and as a solo artist, Petty recorded a number of hit singles. He was one of the best-selling music artists of all time, selling more than 80 million records worldwide over the course of his career. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002. Petty also co-founded the late 1980s supergroup the Traveling Wilburys.

Petty had a number of acting roles on film and television, playing a the mayor of a post-apocalyptic town in the 1997 Kevin Costner film The Postman. In 2002, Petty appeared on The Simpsons episode “How I Spent My Strummer Vacation” and from 2004 to 2009 voiced character Lucky on King of the Hill.

Petty married Jane Benyo in 1974, and they divorced in 1996. With Benyo, Petty had two daughters, Adria and Annakim. He married Dana York in 2001, acquiring a stepson named Dylan from her earlier marriage. He is also survived by a younger brother, Bruce, and a granddaughter, Everly.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

A Louisiana representative has proposed a controversial solution to “generational welfare,” which would pay women on welfare to get sterilization. Republican John LaBruzzo said he thought of the idea because of his constituents’ outrage over paying for welfare.

“You have these people who are just fed up with working their buns off to try to provide for their own family and being forced by the government [to] provide for others’ families who just want to have unlimited kids”, he commented. He is currently working with Baton Rouge to gather data in support of his proposal.

The idea, which LaBruzzo has not finished forming, would award any woman on government assistance a check of $1,000 if she gets a tubal ligation operation. LaBruzzo is also considering rewarding sterilization in poor men and giving tax incentives for higher-income families to have more children.

LaBruzzo, who is pro-life, said that the people “on the other side of the political spectrum are pro-choice. Well, let’s give these people the ability to choose.”

While LaBruzzo has stated that he has received an outpouring of support over his idea, the ACLU spoke out against the proposal and called it a “meanspirited attempt to eliminate the poor.” Planned Parenthood representative Julie Mickelberry called it a “bribery”, suggesting a solution which attacked the root of the problem was needed and that the representative needed to “go back to addressing issues of education about unintended pregnancy and opening healthcare access.”

Sunday, January 21, 2007

In the United Kingdom, an anti-pollution operation is under way after the stricken ship MSC Napoli started to leak dangerous heavy fuel oil.

The heavy fuel oil that is leaking from the beached Italian ship is extremely dangerous for the environment. Fear of pollution increased after the ship was further damaged during storms last Thursday. MSC Napoli was beached by Devon coastguards after it suffered heavy structual damage in the gale force storms of Thursday, 18 January 2007, that wreaked havoc across Northern Europe. The ship, which contains 160 containers of hazardous chemical substances, is listing at 35 degrees.

The entire 26-man crew was rescued by navy helicopters Thursday after severe gales. Cracks were found on both sides of the ship, but the current oil leak was not expected.

Around 2,400 containers were carried by the 62,000 tonne ship, some of which contain potentially dangerous hazardous chemicals.

The Coastguards have reported that up to 200 of the containers carrying materials such as perfume and battery acid are loose from the ship and they are looking for missing containers. South African stainless steel producer Columbus Stainless confirmed on Friday that there was at least 1,000 tonnes of nickel on board MSC Napoli.

A hole in the ship flooded the engine room and there’s now fears that the ship will break up. Saturday MSC Napoli was towed to Portland when a ”structural failure” forced the salvage team to beach it. As the storms have continued MSC Napoli has been further damaged.

The authorities have warned people about the pollution, which already has reached the beaches at Devon, but many want to see it on their own. Police have closed Branscombe Beach as more than 20 containers have broken up scattering their contents along the beach.

Sky News reported Sunday that the costs of the accident might be very high as thousands of pounds worth of BMW motorbikes, car parts, empty oak barrels and perfume might get lost in flooding containers.

Tuesday, February 1, 2005

Feel free to use the Wikimedia sites to solve our Wikinews crossword (Please do not fill it out online as it would spoil it for other people, print it out and fill it in at you own leisure!)

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Today’s crossword in Across Lite TEXT format (warning – contains answers!).

< Yesterday’s crossword.

Friday, June 20, 2008

The third annual Taste of Taiwan Cuisine opened on Wednesday of June 18, 2008 and runs until June 21. Organized by Taiwan External Trade Development Council to promote the culinary culture of Taiwan, the tradeshow featured three main shows for food and food packaging industries: “Food Taipei”, “Foodtech Taipei”, and “Taipei Pack”.

Twenty-seven countries including United States, South Korea, Canada, Japan, Sri Lanka, Austria, Philippines, Chile, Malaysia, Spain, Fiji, Poland, and six nations from Africa, grouped their own national pavilions for sourcing and procurement. In addition, the Taiwan Pavilion featured sections on culture, product image, brand design, and agriculture verification in Food Taipei.

Industrial solutions including medical applications, packaging machines, food CNCs, and bar-code printers are showcased in the “Foodtech Taipei” and “Taipei Pack”. Seminars and forums from security, global marketing, and policies for food, machinery, and packaging industries are also held during show hours.

After the 3-in-1 show in Taipei, the Kaohsiung International Food Show will be scheduled for November.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Former Argentine professional wrestler and basketball player Jorge ‘Giant’ González has died at the age of 44. González died in his hometown of San Martin, Argentina. The cause of death was established to be complications of diabetes. González had suffered with the illness for several years and was wheelchair bound.

Standing over 7.5 feet (2.3 metres) tall, González was originally a basketball player before becoming a wrestler. Upon moving to the United States, he was drafted in the third round of the 1988 NBA draft by the Atlanta Hawks. After his basketball career ended, he joined World Championship Wrestling (WCW). During his time there, he wrestled as El Gigante for two years, then joining the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), now World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE).

During his time with the WWF, González feuded with The Undertaker. He debuted at the 1993 Royal Rumble where he eliminated Undertaker from the Royal Rumble match. He spent the entire of his time at with the WWF feuding with Undertaker and left the company in July 1993 after losing a Rest in Peace match to him. After leaving the company, he wrestled in Japan before retiring in 1995 after suffering from sciatic nerve pain.

González is the latest in a line of former WWE wrestlers to die in the last two months. In August, both Lance Cade and Luna Vachon passed away, while Mike ‘Bastion Booger’ Shaw died at the age of 53 earlier this month.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

According to the state of Wisconsin, Wal-Mart has avoided paying millions of dollars in state taxes by paying rent on 87 Wisconsin properties. The Wisconsin State Department of Revenue call this behavior “abusive and distortion of income.”

Wal-Mart is doing this by setting up one subsidiary to run all its stores and setting up another subsidiary to own its real estate. The operating subsidiary then pays the rental cost to the real estate subsidiary and takes a tax deduction for the rent. This money will, however, end up in the corporation’s own pocket.

As a result of Wal-Mart’s actions, the state tax auditors say that Wal-Mart owes more than $17.7 million in back corporate income taxes, interest and penalties from 1998-2000.

The Wal-Mart corporation claims that they are doing nothing wrong, rather they are taking advantage of an overlap of state and federal tax laws in an effort to reduce their taxes and costs.