marathon06.org

Monday, October 12, 2015

Wikinews interviewed Australian painter Pricasso on his unique artwork created using his penis, and how his art relates to freedom of expression and issues of censorship. He is to be featured at the upcoming adult entertainment event Sexpo Australia in Melbourne this November 5 to November 8.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

A 6.0-magnitude earthquake struck Basyurt, in the Elazig province or eastern Turkey at 04:32 AM (02:32 GMT) on Monday. According to local Kandilli observatory, the quake struck at a depth of five kilometres; the epicenter was near Karakocan town in the same province.

The pre-dawn earthquake killed at least 40 people and almost 100 were injured. The village of Okcular was worst hit, claimed the press secretary for the provincial governor, Ozcan Yalcin. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, nearly five hours later, a magnitude-5.5 aftershock hit the province. 40 other aftershocks followed shortly, the highest of them being 4.4 magnitude, according to sources.

While no deaths were immediately reported, the government’s crisis management center soon put the toll at seventeen with another 60 injured according to the officials at Ankara, the capital. It was soon confirmed that at least 39 were dead; the toll is expected to rise. At least four of the victims were children.

Muammer Erol, the provincial governor of Elazig, stated Okcular, Yukari Kanatli and Kayali accounted for majority of the dead. He told CNN Turk that “villages consisting mainly of mud-brick houses have been damaged, but we have minimal damage such as cracks in buildings made of cement or stone”.

Okcular, the largest of the affected villages, accounted for at least seventeen of the dead. The village has a population of 800, and the majority of the dwellers live in mud-brick homes built on hillsides. About 25 to 30 houses were demolished in this village. “The village is totally flattened,” Hasan Demirdag, local administrator, told NTV.

Yadin Apaydin, the administrator of Yukari Kanatli, said his village had been severely affected. “Everything has been knocked down – there is not a stone in place,” he told CNN’s Turkey sister network, CNN Türk.

“Many houses have collapsed. Search and rescue teams have been sent to the area,” said the prime minister’s office in a statement. Injured people are being rushed to local hospitals according to sources. At least 100 people have been taken to hospital. Some who panicked after the first quake jumped from balconies or windows were injured.

Rescue workers, consisting of policemen as well as civilians dug with shovels to rescue people from the debris. The Turkish Red Crescent is also sending tents and blankets to be distributed. Neighboring districts are providing ambulances to assist the victims. Cemil Cicek, deputy Prime Minister of Turkey has left for the disaster area. Health Minister Recep Akdag, Housing Minister Mustafa Demir and State Minister Cevdet Yilmaz are accompanying him.

According to CNN Türk, the tremor of the earthquake was felt in the adjacent provinces of Bitlis and Diyarbakir, causing residents to panic.

Turkey lies on highly active fault lines and earthquakes often hit the nation. A 7.4-magnitude earthquake in Istanbul killed 20,000 people in August 1999. Most of the earthquakes that hit Turkey are usually minor.

Monday, January 7, 2019

An apartment block caught fire on Saturday morning in Badalona, a Catalonian city around ten kilometres from Barcelona. The blaze killed three, including a 92-year-old woman, and injured sixteen, including a baby.

The fire service indicated on Twitter the baby girl was critically ill, while two adults were seriously injured. Local authorities indicated the most seriously injured adults escaped alive by leaping from windows to flee the ten-storey building. As of yesterday, no cause had yet been released for the fire by authorities in the Mediterranean coastal town.

Firefighters put the fire out on Saturday and were subsequently pictured searching the charred apartments. Windows were been broken out on multiple floors, with soot coating the outside of the structure.

A second fire on Saturday, eighteen kilometres away in a another block of flats in La Llagosta, killed another person, according to firefighters.

A compilation of brief news reports for Saturday, August 8, 2009.

Friday, October 13, 2017

On Tuesday, Dutch football winger and captain Arjen Robben announced retirement from international play after Netherlands failed to qualify for next year’s World Cup in Russia. Oranje defeated Sweden 2–1 at home, but failed to qualify for a second consecutive major tournament, after last year’s UEFA Euro tournament.

Robben, playing his 96th international match on Tuesday, made his international debut in April 2003. Netherlands played Sweden at the Amsterdam ArenA in the Dutch capital, and were awarded a penalty kick in the sixteenth minute after a handball from Swedish defender Victor Lindelöf in the penalty area. Robben scored from the spot, netting his 36th international goal from a Panenka kick. In the 40th minute, Robben scored his second of the night, from outside the box. The scoreline remained 2–0 at the end of full time.

Netherlands dominated in ball possession having 69%. The win gave the Oranjes three points, tying with Sweden with nineteen points from all the group stage matches. However, Sweden finished second in the Group A table above Netherlands, leading in goals scored. In order to play the play-offs for the World Cup, Netherlands needed to defeat Sweden by a seven-goal margin.

Robben’s second goal brings his tally of international goals to 37, and is fourth in the list of top scorers for Netherlands, tied with Denis Bergkamp. Robben has featured in the FIFA World Cup tournaments of 2006, 2010 and 2014. He has won a silver medal at the 2010 World Cup, losing to Spain in extra time, and a bronze medal finishing third in 2014’s World Cup in Brazil.After the match, Robben said, “I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. I’ve thought about stopping, but I’ve continued. I’m 33 years old, I’m playing in a top club in Europe, so you have to make choices. I’m going to concentrate completely on my club now. This is a good time to leave it to someone else.” ^{((nl))Dutch language: ?Ik heb hier lang over nagedacht. Een hele tijd terug heb ik al overwogen te stoppen, maar toen ben ik toch doorgegaan. Ik ben nu 33 jaar, ik speel bij een topclub in Europa, dan moet je keuzes maken. Ik ga me nu vol concentreren op mijn club. Dit is een goed moment om het stokje over te geven.}

His Bayern Munich teammate Robert Lewandowski and Poland qualified for the World Cup on Sunday. Lewandowski scored a goal against Montenegro in Warsaw, which was his sixteenth in the qualification stage becoming the first European player to net sixteen in one FIFA World Cup qualifying tournament. On the same day, Egypt defeated Congo 2–1 with Mohamed Salah scoring both goals including the match winning last minute penalty kick for Egypt. Egypt previously featured in the World Cup 28 years ago in 1990, which was their second ever World Cup tournament.

On Monday, Iceland secured a place for their maiden World Cup. Iceland became the smallest nation to to qualify for the FIFA tournament, in country population. France defeated Belarus 2–1 at home, and Portugal defeated Switzerland two goals to none, qualifying for the World Cup as well.

Friday, November 3, 2006

On November 13, Torontonians will be heading to the polls to vote for their ward’s councillor and for mayor. Among Toronto’s ridings is Don Valley West (Ward 26). Four candidates responded to Wikinews’ requests for an interview. This ward’s candidates include Muhammad Alam, Bahar Aminvaziri, Orhan Aybars, Michele Carroll-Smith, Mohamed Dhanani, Abdul Ingar, Geoff Kettel, Debbie Lechter, Natalie Maniates, John Masterson, John Parker, David Thomas, Csaba Vegh, and Fred Williams.

For more information on the election, read Toronto municipal election, 2006.

Friday, March 30, 2007

At Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, students are finding that popular MP3 players, such as Apple’s iPod, are very convenient devices for listening to music at the gym, while traveling on foot, and in the car.

In a recent ad-hoc survey conducted by Wikinews contributor Darren Mar, 150 students were randomly pulled aside in the hallways of the university, and asked if they own an MP3 player. 94 of the 150 students (62.66%) did in fact own MP3 devices, most of who were found to be carrying it on them when questioned. There was one simple follow up question for those who had a player: “If it were possible to have complete and safe control of the device on the steering wheel of a car, would you rather listen to your device, or the radio?” There were three answers possible, yes, no or both. Of the 94, 78 (82.98%) said yes, eleven (11.70%) said no, and five (5.32%) said both. The reporting took place primarily on March 16, 2007. The reasons for those who would listen to their device were commercial free music, personalized choice of music, and complete control of what you are listening to.

This study was motivated by the new design of 2006+ model cars. Many are being built with auxiliary jacks for the stock radio, allowing the driver to easily connect any audio playing device to the car’s sound system with a simple 3.5mm plug. What’s more, cars in the upper price echelon are being built with (1) a custom made area in the dash for MP3 players (iPod’s being the most popular), and (2) implementing audio device control right onto the steering wheel. A good example of this is the Ford Fusion or the 2007 Lexus IS250: “The centre console input port allows an iPod, MP3 or Windows Media Audio player to be plugged into the IS audio system.”

Thursday, April 6, 2006

The Frugalware Development Team describes ­­Frugalware as a general purpose Linux distribution, designed for intermediate users who are not afraid of text mode. Frugalware also plans to offer a live CD with desktop options, to be developed by one of its teams. A live CD enables running the Linux software on most compatible Intel and AMD chipset architectures, without having to partition a drive.

A freelance journalist writing for Wikinews interviewed the founder of Frugalware Linux, Miklós Vajna.

Wikinews: Frugalware is a slack distribution at present. Are there plans for developing binary package management platforms of it?

Miklós Vajna: Our package manager is called pacman, and its primary purpose is to install binary packages. If you want to install packages from source, you can use our “repoman” tool.

Wikinews: What are your visions for the future of Frugalware, do you plan to globally distribute it as a product, and would you consider allowing a major corporation to sponsor your efforts?

Miklós Vajna: The second. Frugalware is free, but maintaining it needs hardware, mirrors, money. We got several donations already (build servers), and we continuously need them. If a corporation want to sponsor us, I think that is totally O.K. 🙂

Wikinews: What is Arch Linux in relationship to your project? And how do their efforts fit into your game plan?

Miklós Vajna: The common [thing] in Arch Linux and Frugalware is the package manager. (To be strict: nothing else.) Developing our package manager is a common effort. If anyone [is] interested in its development, he/she can subscribe to the pacman development mailing list.

Wikinews: I’ve successfully installed Frugalware, OpenSUSE, and WinXP on the same box. Do you see a lot of people doing this sort of thing in the future?

Miklós Vajna: We support having more than one operating system on a single machine — though this matters only in case Frugalware is the last installed operating system. We do not have any statistics about what operating systems do other people use besides Frugalware, if they have more than one.

Wikinews: Is it possible that PearPC and Frugalware may have a relationship to distribute the PearPC Emulator with Frugalware in the future?

Miklós Vajna: It is already available [1].

Wikinews: What kinds of software might you include with further editions of Frugalware? Is Muse part of the base package for electronic musicians, or will you have those sorts of things?

Miklós Vajna: No [2]. It is not available at the moment. You can request a package by filing a feature request to our Bug Tracking System, at [3].

Wikinews: Is the autoupdating feature of Frugalware unique to Frugalware and perhaps a keystone to future developments?

Miklós Vajna: I have never tried other autoupdating features. What one can see is that upgrading even from the previous stable release — which means installing 6 months of update at once — requires only a few tricks, and these are documented. So it works as it should, and we always pay attention not to break this great feature.

Wikinews: What can new users of Frugalware do to test and relay infotmation back to the developers through the correct channels?

Miklós Vajna: We have released stable versions two times a year. There are testing releases every two months. If one would like to help us, then download these releases, test them, and if something is broken, then file a bug report to the BTS (mentioned above already).

Frugalware has new X Windows video drivers that provide a major speed improvement over available patches for previous editions of Linux. Alex Smith has been working on them as a developer.

In addition, the PearPC emulator mentioned above, which comes with the package manager, may, with proper tuning and installation of a legal copy of Mac OSX, enable many Intel and AMD Frugalware users to use the Apple OS on their desktops. Alex Smith is also a contact person for the PearPC project, which can also be found in irc://irc.freenode.net and at http://www.pearpc.net.

The official release time of the latest edition frugalware-0.4 was Mar 30 07:42:21. The developers can be reached for comment through IRC at #frugalware in the irc.freenode.net network.

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Last week, U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) held a press conference on the National Mall in Washington, DC, warning consumers of the dangers of fireworks, and advising them of safe handling. They were joined by representatives from the the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF); Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA); the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP); and other national safety agencies. Fireworks are often used to celebrate the United States’ July 4, 1776 independence from Great Britain. The Fourth of July is a time when many US families get together to celebrate, by holding reunions, picnics, barbecues, baseball games and firework displays; however, celebrations often turn sour due to injury or even death, caused by the mishandling of fireworks. In 2009, nearly 19,000 fireworks-related injuries were treated in hospitals, doctors’ offices and clinics all over the country. Around 9,000 of those were to children aged under 18, and 6,000 occurred during the 30 days surrounding Independence Day.

CPSC chairman, Inez Tenenbaum, said that burns and cuts to limbs, the face and head were the most common injuries, and over half of them were due to firecrackers, rockets and sparklers. The agencies were joined at the news conference by Jason Henderson, who was injured in 2007 after building home-made fireworks. He had found instructions online detailing how to build M-80-style fireworks, and after purchasing the chemicals, began assembling them; however, the mixture exploded which resulted in him losing both hands and his right eye, and shrapnel caused multiple lacerations and puncture wounds to his entire body. “Don’t be the show, go and enjoy the show. I want to get people to move away from putting on their own displays and just go and enjoy the free shows. I mean they are free,” Henderson said. “You might as well take advantage of them while they are there. You can spend time with your family instead of being the one to light them and taking that risk.” Henderson also appears in a public-service announcement recently released by the ATF to YouTube, that shows how he has now been fitted with bionic arms.

Agencies recommend attending community fireworks shows held by city or county officials, which are held in a more controlled and professional environment. Additionally, many jurisdictions outlaw either all fireworks, or certain types, such as rockets and firecrackers.

Fireworks increase demands on fire departments and personnel at this time of year, acting U.S. Fire Administrator Glenn Gaines noted. “Four firefighters [have been killed] as a result of illegal fireworks. Calls to EMS [Emergency Medical Services] and fire departments increased as individuals continue to be injured and burned.” The dry weather and heat that many areas are experiencing also elevate the risk of brush and structure fires. The National Fire Protection Association said that over 22,500 fires started from fireworks in 2008.

Consumers who do purchase fireworks are encouraged to follow the following common sense rules: always read and follow directions; always supervise older children and teenagers if they are permitted to use fireworks; never allow young children to play with or ignite fireworks, child-friendly sparklers and “party-poppers” are a fun and safe alternative for them; keep animals inside or well away from the fireworks, the noise will often scare them; never light any fireworks inside buildings; light fireworks on a smooth, flat surface away from houses, dry leaves, and flammable materials; never ignite fireworks in metal or glass containers; light one firework at a time; move away to a safe distance immediately after lighting a firework; never return to a firework that has not ignited properly; never throw fireworks at another person, animal, or property; do not consume alcohol when using fireworks; keep a bucket of water or a hose in close proximity in case of fire, dispose of use fireworks in the bucket of water; buy from reliable dealers; only use legal fireworks; and follow the laws of your jurisdiction.

Saturday, January 15, 2005

Jeff Tweiten, a 27-year-old graphic artist, is encamped in front of the Cinerama Theatre, on a blue sofa, in the northwest city of Seattle, Washington. Tweiten plans to wait 139 days for the premiere of “Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith,” which opens May 19, 2005.

He has received help from a community of friends and local business people who have supplied changes of clothes, coffee, food, and a nearby restroom.

City authorities have chosen not to enforce vagrancy laws that would force Tweiten to move between the hours of 7AM and 9PM local time.

Tweiten also camped out for the previous two episodes of the Star Wars movies, “Episode I” and “Episode II”.