blackstoneharness.com

Friday, May 5, 2006

There has been a riot in Santiago, a small town 25 kilometers from Mexico City. Violence exploded when three flower sellers were arrested on suspicion of trading without permits.

Rioters attacked the police with sticks, machetes and petrol bombs.

Thousands of police quelled the crowd with tear gas and batons. Dozens were arrested. The arrested include peasant leader, Ignacio del Valle.

All 11 police officers held hostage by rioters were released.

Javier Cortes Santiago, a fourteen year old boy, was killed in the riots.

In 2002 rioters managed to cancel plans to build an airport in the town.

Saturday, June 25, 2005

Seven months after suspicions were first raised, United States Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns confirmed that a second American cow has tested positive for BSE (also known as ‘mad cow disease’), as determined by a lab in Weybridge, England. The department believes that this cow was born in the United States.

The delay in confirmation followed two conflicting test results from last November. The “Western blot” test, which is a more sophisticated test, could have helped reach a final determination, but the U.S. refused to perform it in November. The department’s inspector general, Phyllis Fong, ordered the Western blot test in June without advising Johanns and by the time Johanns found out about it, the testing was under way.

Johanns was annoyed that the round of testing which confirmed “Mad Cow” had been ordered without him being consulted first.”I was asked by the Senate and the president to operate the department,” Johanns said. “I believe, in this area, very clearly, the secretary should be consulted, whoever the secretary is, before testing is undertaken. From my standpoint, I believe I was put there to operate the department and was very disappointed.”

A senior research associate with Consumers Union, Michael Hansen, said USDA officials “almost sound like some Keystone Kops.”

Johanns reassured Americans that they should not be afraid of eating beef, saying: “This animal was blocked from entering the food supply because of the firewalls we have in place. Americans have every reason to continue to be confident in the safety of our beef.”

On June 17, the Associated Press reported: “American cattle are eating chicken litter, cattle blood and restaurant leftovers that could help transmit mad cow disease — a gap in the U.S. defense that the Bush administration promised to close nearly 18 months ago.”

John Stauber, co-author of “Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare Happen Here?” said: “Once the cameras were turned off and the media coverage dissipated, then it’s been business as usual, no real reform, just keep feeding slaughterhouse waste. The entire U.S. policy is designed to protect the livestock industry’s access to slaughterhouse waste as cheap feed.”

Critics of the U.S. testing regimen said the fumbles this time increase their concerns about America’s screening process.

“How can we be sure they were really negative?” Craig Culp, a spokesman for the Center for Food Safety asked; “After all, (here is a cow that was) negative in November that is positive in June.”

The companies which render slaughter waste say new restrictions are not warranted. “We process about 50 billion pounds of product annually — in visual terms, that is a convoy of semi trucks, four lanes wide, running from New York to L.A. every year,” said Jim Hodges, president of the American Meat Institute Foundation.

[edit]

Tuesday, April 25, 2006File:Tu 16019.jpg

A senior Russian air force commander has claimed that new, upgraded Tu-160 bomber aircraft were unchallenged by US air defense systems when they penetrated a radar zone near the Canadian coast in US territory during an April training exercise, reports the Russian news agency RIA Novosti.

Commander of Russia’s long-range strategic bombers, Lieutenant General Igor Khvorov said that the bombers successfully carried out four mock Tu-95MS cruise missile launches, 200 mock bombings, and 53 mock sorties during the exercise. The RIA Novosti reported that the United States Air Force is currently investigating how the Tu-160’s escaped detection.

Lieutenant General Igor Khvorov said, “They were unable to detect the planes either with radars or visually.”

Khvorov denies any link of the tests to the current US-Iranian tension, saying, “Of course, our exercises did not have anything to do with the situation in Iran, but their organization indirectly echoed in that region.”

The Tupolev Tu-160 is a strategic bomber introduced in 1987. It resembles the North American B-1B Lancer, but is larger and faster, being powered by four NK-32 afterburning turbofans, the largest in any combat aircraft. It is not considered to be a stealth aircraft due to its exposed engine inlets and broad wing gloves.

According to Khvorov over the course of this year, two additional Tu-160s will be commissioned for the long-range strategic bomber fleet with the numerous upgrades, including the ability to launch cruise missiles, aviation bombs, and satellite communication.

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Sen. Larry Craig held a news conference Tuesday in Boise, Idaho to issue a public statement about his arrest in June, 2007 and subsequent guilty plea, August 8, to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct.

In his statement, Sen. Craig indicated that when he pled guilty to the charge, two months after the fact, he didn’t understand at the time what he was signing and declared himself innocent of any wrongdoing at the Minneapolis airport on June 11, 2007.

According to the arresting officer, Sgt. Dave Karsnia, who was dressed in civilian clothes at the time of the incident, he was using a bathroom stall when Sen. Craig entered the stall next to his. Karsnia reported the Senator tapped his right foot, and then stretched his foot over to touch the officer’s left foot. Sen. Craig also ran his hand along the bottom of the stall’s dividing wall. According to CNN, that type of behavior is known in the Gay community as a signal that the person wants to engage in lewd behavior. The officer subsequently showed Sen. Craig his badge. Using his other hand, Karsnia directed Craig to move toward the door. After some words and Sen. Craig’s refusal to cooperate with the officer, he was placed under arrest.

An additional charge against Sen. Craig, interference with privacy, had been thrown out. Sen. Craig received a ten-day suspended jail sentence, was fined US$500, and was given one year probation.

Sen. Craig admitted that he did not mention his arrest to the Senate Ethics Committee, which is not required by law, and also didn’t tell his wife and other immediate family members about his arrest until recent days.

Wednesday, March 1, 2006

The Sizzler Restaurant franchise in Australia has closed the salad bars in all of its 29 restaurants across the country, after rat poison was discovered in food at two of the chain’s outlets in Brisbane. Self-serve salad bars at the restaurants have been closed in response to a sabotage scare. Sizzler Australia Managing Director Bo Ryan said customer safety was always the restaurant chain’s first priority.

A media release on the Sizzler website states: “As a precautionary measure and because customer health and safety is our number one priority, we have temporarily closed salad bars in all Sizzler Restaurants. We sincerely apologise for this major inconvenience.”

Police said green pellets were found in pasta sauce at a Sizzler restaurant in Brisbane’s inner-west on January 20. A regular customer at the Toowong restaurant told Sizzler staff she had found something odd in her bolognese pasta sauce. Similar pellets were found in a vegetable soup at Sizzler’s Myer Centre outlet in the city about 5pm on Saturday.

Bo Ryan said the decision to close all of its Australian salad bars was made after laboratory tests confirmed that the substance in the pasta sauce was indeed rat poison. He said trainees who tasted the poisoned soup had been been taken to hospital by ambulance as a precaution, but had suffered no ill effects.

Queensland Police Inspector Bob Hytch said no one had been reported ill as a result of eating the poisoned food and there had been no extortion threats. Sarah Kenny, a university student, said she and two friends had eaten spaghetti bolognese that “tasted really weird”.

“The inconvenience to customers and the economic impact on the company and its 1600 employees will be severe, but as a family restaurant our first priority is the welfare of our diners,” said Bo Ryan. “Steak and seafood and a limited range of salads would continue to be available.” He hopes that customers will understand the action was taken in their best interests, and that “they can be patient while temporary product security procedures are developed and implemented in all restaurants.”

The 29 Australian Sizzler Restaurants, along with 107 Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets are operated by the Collins Foods Group, a wholly owned subsidiary of Worldwide Restaurant Concepts Inc. Mr Ryan said Sizzler was assessing measures which could be taken to prevent a recurrence of the sabotage. “As soon as new measures are introduced, over and above existing strict protocols, we will reassess the situation,” he said.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

What you are about to read is an American life as lived by renowned author Edmund White. His life has been a crossroads, the fulcrum of high-brow Classicism and low-brow Brett Easton Ellisism. It is not for the faint. He has been the toast of the literary elite in New York, London and Paris, befriending artistic luminaries such as Salman Rushdie and Sir Ian McKellen while writing about a family where he was jealous his sister was having sex with his father as he fought off his mother’s amorous pursuit.

The fact is, Edmund White exists. His life exists. To the casual reader, they may find it disquieting that someone like his father existed in 1950’s America and that White’s work is the progeny of his intimate effort to understand his own experience.

Wikinews reporter David Shankbone understood that an interview with Edmund White, who is professor of creative writing at Princeton University, who wrote the seminal biography of Jean Genet, and who no longer can keep track of how many sex partners he has encountered, meant nothing would be off limits. Nothing was. Late in the interview they were joined by his partner Michael Caroll, who discussed White’s enduring feud with influential writer and activist Larry Kramer.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

A fire has broken out at the Moscow State Institute of State and Corporate Management, a five-story university, claiming at least six lives. More than two dozen are said to be injured.

The fire started around 13:00 (09:00 GMT). Some students and teachers were trapped and had to climb out onto trees, jump four or five stories onto nets held by firefighters, or climb down drainpipes to escape.

Helicopters were called in to evacuate the injured and engage in aerial firefighting activities.

Spokesman for the Emergency Situations Ministry, Viktor Beltsov, said that six died and 30 were treated for smoke inhalation, burns and other injuries. The International Herald Tribune says that seven were killed and 35 injured, although it also quotes its figures from Mr Beltsov.

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Following an explosion in November of 2005, China’s Songhua river was contaminated with nitrobenzene and similar chemicals. Its clean-up by The State Environmental Protection Administration and others was covered previously on Wikinews.

The State Environmental Protection Administration Minister Zhou Shengxian has said that “The water quality of the Songhua River will not exceed national standards on a large scale during the spring thaw, and fish in the river and from pounds along the banks are safe to eat.” Zhou further guaranteed that livestock near the river banks and products from such livestock to be safe to eat, and that the growth of crops will not be inhibited by use of water from the Songhua River for irrigation.

Concerns of residents that the possible release of remnants of nitrobenzene that may have been trapped in the ice and in the sediment might occur and endanger the safe utilization of the river after the influence of a period of being frozen have been settled.

Zhou said that research indicated only a small amounts of the toxic chemical within the ice and that the quantity that could be entrapped in the sediment was limited by its structure as composed mostly of sand. These characteristics and the inevitable high flow rate of the river once the winter’s ice melts in the spring will allow the water to be safe said Zhou, referencing an interim assessment of the river spill done by a consortium which began the assessment on December 13 2005.

Chen Jining of Tsinghua University’s Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, commented that “Even in the rare cases when levels are beyond standards in some places, we also have the technology in place for example, activated carbon to ensure safe drinking water supplies.”

Zhou has also stated that the joint program with Russia to monitor boundary rivers will continue. The front of the pollution from the explosion has been predicted to reach the estuary of the Armur river in Russia near the end of January 2006.