Saturday, April 7, 2007

The former State Lunatic Hospital at Danvers better known as Danvers State Hospital in Danvers, Massachusetts suffered a major fire last night that could be seen for miles and led to temporary shut down of US Route 1 and Interstate 95 in the area.

The infamous American former mental hospital has been closed since 1992 is the site of a new condominium and apartment buliding complex being developed by Avalon Bay Communities. Four apartment units and four utilities bulidings went in up in smoke in the four-alarm fire. The units were not occupied, however, two were nearing completion which is a major financial setback for Avalon Bay. The fire did not spread to the famous Kirkbride building though, which is being renovated into apartments, aside from a cupola due to radiant heat.

Calls started coming just before 2:00 am EDT Saturday morning to report a fire on the hospital’s grounds which before the development sat unused, decaying and abandoned and became a popular target for ghost-hunters, vandals and urban explorers and also served as the focus of the 2001 thriller/horror film, Session 9 which brought renewed attention to infamous hospital which led to increased security at the site over the years. Reports of explosions before the fire started were noted by neighbors and residents.

About 20 residents on the other side of the 77-acre property were evacuated to Danvers High School as a precaution, they are expected to return later today. Their homes were not harmed by the fire, nor were any injuries reported from them. However, about seven firefighters suffered some minor burns from battling the fire, which took seven hours to bring under control. Firefighters will remain on the scene to make sure no hot spots flare up as the fire is still smoldering.

The cause of the fire is not yet known.

Monday, August 29, 2005

On July 18, 2005 CN Rail notified the CAW that they intend to cancel the CN-CAW previously Negotiated Health & Safety Plan. The CAW will be going to arbitration this fall to address the issue. The CAW has asked that employees notify their Health and Safety Rep about any safety concerns at the work place.

One terminal has lost 5-6 full-time positions. CN Rail used to have part-time positions filled as well, but at this time there are no part-time employees to cover work if a full-time employee is absent. Overtime is necessary to keep the trains running on time. Intermodal traffic goes up, but staff goes down. CN Rail expects the trains to go out on time, and in a safe condition, but staff is overworked, because there are not enough of them. In fact, one worker noticed that most of the rail cars that contained 40 foot overseas containers did not have their loading guides in place. Trains are not allowed to go out without these guides placed into the cars (the guides stop the loads from swaying from side to side in the cars), important for safety with double stacked containers, but it seems that in this case the lack of employees forced the train to leave without them.

Some recent derailments have come to the attention of the media and politicians.

On August 3rd 2005 there was a derailment in Wabamun Lake Alberta that spilled toxins into the lake. 2 days later there was a derailment in Cheakamus River near Squamish BC. Both derailments spilled hazardous materials into the water. Many are saying that CN took too long to notify people of the toxic spills.

The Conductor on each train carries with him the shipping manifest with him and has access to that information at all times. Almost any CN terminal that has a clerk working at it with access to the CN Intranet can get this information within minutes.

CTV news has said that this is the 5th derailment for CN this month.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Despite the hopes of many University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) students, The Onion was not named after their student center. “People always ask questions about where the name The Onion came from,” said President Sean Mills in an interview with David Shankbone, “and when I recently asked Tim Keck, who was one of the founders, he told me the name—I’ve never heard this story about ‘see you at the un-yun’—he said it was literally that his Uncle said he should call it The Onion when he saw him and Chris Johnson eating an onion sandwich. They had literally just cut up the onion and put it on bread.” According to Editorial Manager Chet Clem, their food budget was so low when they started the paper that they were down to white bread and onions.

Long before The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, Heck and Johnson envisioned a publication that would parody the news—and news reporting—when they were students at UW in 1988. Since its inception, The Onion has become a veritable news parody empire, with a print edition, a website that drew 5,000,000 unique visitors in the month of October, personal ads, a 24 hour news network, podcasts, and a recently launched world atlas called Our Dumb World. Al Gore and General Tommy Franks casually rattle off their favorite headlines (Gore’s was when The Onion reported he and Tipper were having the best sex of their lives after his 2000 Electoral College defeat). Many of their writers have gone on to wield great influence on Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert‘s news parody shows.

And we are sorry to break the news to all you amateur headline writers: your submissions do not even get read.

Below is David Shankbone’s interview with Chet Clem and Sean Mills about the news empire that has become The Onion.

Friday, August 19, 2022

Three people were injured Sunday night, August 14, at a Six Flags amusement park after a drive-by shooting in Gurnee, Illinois. The theme park, Six Flags Great America, was evacuated after gunfire was reported around 7:50pm.

An early summary stated that the shooters had jumped out of a white sedan and shot at guests in the parking lot, and drove off. Two victims were transported to Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville, Illinois. Another victim declined transportation to the hospital, and instead was treated on-site. The victims, ranging from ages 17-19, suffered non-life threatening injuries.

Guests inside the park had uploaded video to social media, showing guests hiding in restaurant kitchens and ride lines, while others were escaping through backstage areas.

A spokeswoman for the theme park released a statement to the press, saying that “shots were fired from a single vehicle,” and that “[p]ark security personnel and officers… responded immediately.” Gurnee police clarified that the incident was not an active shooter incident inside the park, but it was a targeted shooting. No one was in custody as of Sunday night and at that time, the situation remained under investigation.

The park re-opened on Monday morning and the hospitalized victims were released.

Monday, September 5, 2005

At least 200 New Orleans law officers have left the force following the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina. Some had notified their superiors, but others did not. A few officers simply threw their badges out the window and attempted to drive a squad car to northern Louisiana after the storm.

Some of the reasons given were because of lack of support from the local government in dealing with the crisis, others such as psychological problems with being in armed confrontation with people foraging for food and water in a desperate situation, where they were left alone but called looters and thugs by the authorities if they helped themselves, and losing their own families might have driven at least two officers to commit suicide.

Reports are that some officers resorted to using their own personal firearms because of the severe equipment shortage, even before the coastal region was devastated by the hurricane. The morale of the police force, which has dealt with the highest number of murders per capita in the United States, is not a new issue. This natural disaster may have exacerbated long-standing tensions in the force that were already present.

Sunday, October 7, 2007

Lloyd Helferty is running for the Green Party of Ontario in the Ontario provincial election, in the Thornhill riding. Wikinews’ Nick Moreau interviewed him regarding his values, his experience, and his campaign.

Stay tuned for further interviews; every candidate from every party is eligible, and will be contacted. Expect interviews from Liberals, Progressive Conservatives, New Democratic Party members, Ontario Greens, as well as members from the Family Coalition, Freedom, Communist, Libertarian, and Confederation of Regions parties, as well as independents.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

“Localization of ‘SEMI Safety Guideline'”, executed by Safety and Health Technology Center of Taiwan (SAHTECH) and supervised by Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI), was announced today in Hsinchu, Taiwan.

This localization included several fields on health and safety of semiconductor manufacturing, certification testing on electrical devices, evaluations on fire or natural diseases, and environmental issues on semiconductor manufacturing devices, etc.. Companies and manufacturers from the semiconductor industry also paid more attentions on this guideline because issues on carbon-savings, earthquakes, fire diseases, and environment-efficiencies were included into this guideline.

On the other side of the incoming trade show of 2008 SecuTech Expo, scheduled after 2 weeks at Taipei World Trade Center, not only main fields on security devices, information security, and fire & disease preventions, the digital monitoring will be a hot topic in security industry. For applications on fire & disease preventions, because its issues contained industrial applications and ESH (Environmental, Safety & Health) managements, if a company want to decrease the ratio of fire disease or earthquake, companies from safety and related industries should pay more attentions on disease preventions.

Monday, September 5, 2005

Brazil —The Post Office and Vote Buying parliamentary commissions of investigation unanimously approved on Thursday (1) their first joint preliminary report of activities. The text was prepared by their redactors, Osmar Serraglio (PMDB) and Ibrahim Abi-Ackel (PP), from Post Office and Vote Buying commissions respectively.

The deputies cited in the report are: Carlos Rodrigues (PL–RJ), José Janene (PP-PR), Pedro Correia (PP-PE), Pedro Henry (PP-MS), Sandro Mabel (PL-GO), João Magno (PT–MG), João Paulo Cunha (PT-SP), José Borba (PMDB-PR), Josias Gomes da Silva (PT-BA), Paulo Rocha (PT-BA), Professor Luizinho (PT-SP), Romeu Queiroz (PTB-MG), Vadão Gomes (PP-SP), Vanderval Santos (PL-SP), José Mentor (PT-SP), Roberto Brant (PFL-MG), José Dirceu (PT-SP) and Roberto Jefferson (PTB-RJ).

The report indicts 18 Brazilian deputies and the former deputy Valdemar Costa Neto [who resigned on August 1]. They are accused of illegal campaign finance activities, of placing cronies in strategic positions in government enterprises and getting kickbacks from them, and of receiving cash payments in exchange for voting in line with the government in the Brazilian Congress.

The redactors called the allegation made by some parliamentarians that the resources were used to settle debts with electoral campaigns a “lame excuse”. According to them it is “perfectly plausible” that the loans taken by the businessman Marcos Valerio at the Banco Rural and the BMG for the ruling Workers’ Party (PT) were false and created to make the illegal funds seem legal.

In regards to the denunciations done by deputy Roberto Jefferson (PTB) the report says:

• Everything which he said that could be investigated showed to be true, including confessions against himself .
• Everything that must be compared to other testimonies showed a great degree of truth. As a matter of fact, all of who, hurriedly, questioned him, saw their defenses collapse, before the successive discoveries.

According to the report, the businessman Marcos Valério is a not reliable person because of his contraditory testmonies.

The report says that several documents were identified and reviewed proving that large sums of money were withdrawn from agencies of the Rural Bank, in Brasilia and Belo Horizonte, as well as from bank accounts of the enterprises SMPB and DNA Propaganda. According to the documents the beneficiaries were federal deputies who received the money in person or through relatives, advisers, or persons nominated by Marcos Valério.

The report affirms that it is possible that some payments were made on a monthly basis, and others more or less frequently. Nevertheless, according to the report the periodicity of the payments is the less important fact.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

London, England — Yesterday, with less than a day before the start of the 2012 Summer Paralympics, the Turkey men’s national wheelchair basketball team practiced at the Basketball Arena in London’s Olympic Park. Turkey’s campaign starts on Thursday in a game against the United States men’s national wheelchair basketball team.

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Grameen Bank of Bangladesh has made the first loans to U.S. citizens who do not have a bank account. Grameen Bank is experienced in micro-financing in its home country, lending money to poor women that want to start small businesses.

Since the start of the mortgage-crisis more people in the U.S. tend to turn to fringe financial institutions bypassing the mainstream bank institutes. “Now is a good time because of … the subprime crisis and that highlights the issue that the financial system is not perfect,” , says the bank’s founder and 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus. Grameen Bank started in 1976 by lending a total amount of $27.00 to 42 Bangladesh women. To date the bank has made over $6.5 billion in loans to 7 million people in Bangladesh.

Grameen Bank’s first loans of approximately $50,000.00 in total in the U.S. was to a group of women in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York City. Garmeen Bank plans to offer $176 million in loans in New York City the next five years, and after that expanding into business as remittances and mortgages all over the U.S., as it has done in Bangladesh.