Tuesday, March 6, 2007

Manchester United will be taking on eleven of the top players in Europe in a celebration match next Tuesday at Old Trafford, and the lineup for the European XI is coming together nicely. The game is a UEFA-Manchester United collaboration created to commemorate not only the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome, but also the 50th anniversary of Manchester United entering into European club competitions. Funds raised in the match will go to support the Manchester United Foundation, which works with local charities as well as UNICEF to aid children in need. Italian Marcello Lippi will be in charge of coaching the European XI side, and his assistant will be Andy Roxburgh. Confirmed players have slowly been filing into the team, but with current Manchester United on-loan striker Henrik Larsson confirmed, the XI is now complete.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

It can be difficult to be John Reed.

Christopher Hitchens called him a “Bin Ladenist” and Cathy Young editorialized in The Boston Globe that he “blames the victims of terrorism” when he puts out a novel like Snowball’s Chance, a biting send-up of George Orwell‘s Animal Farm which he was inspired to write after the terrorist attacks on September 11. “The clear references to 9/11 in the apocalyptic ending can only bring Orwell’s name into disrepute in the U.S.,” wrote William Hamilton, the British literary executor of the Orwell estate. That process had already begun: it was revealed Orwell gave the British Foreign Office a list of people he suspected of being “crypto-Communists and fellow travelers,” labeling some of them as Jews and homosexuals. “I really wanted to explode that book,” Reed told The New York Times. “I wanted to completely undermine it.”

Is this man who wants to blow up the classic literary canon taught to children in schools a menace, or a messiah? David Shankbone went to interview him for Wikinews and found that, as often is the case, the answer lies somewhere in the middle.

Reed is electrified by the changes that surround him that channel through a lens of inspiration wrought by his children. “The kids have made me a better writer,” Reed said. In his new untitled work, which he calls a “new play by William Shakespeare,” he takes lines from The Bard‘s classics to form an original tragedy. He began it in 2003, but only with the birth of his children could he finish it. “I didn’t understand the characters who had children. I didn’t really understand them. And once I had had kids, I could approach them differently.”

Taking the old to make it new is a theme in his work and in his world view. Reed foresees new narrative forms being born, Biblical epics that will be played out across print and electronic mediums. He is pulled forward by revolutions of the past, a search for a spiritual sensibility, and a desire to locate himself in the process.

Below is David Shankbone’s conversation with novelist John Reed.

Friday, December 7, 2007

Many of record store HMV‘s Canadian locations have started to stock iPod portable music players, in a move to stay relevant.

HMV Canada President Humphrey Kadaner commented “While the majority of purchased music continues to be in physical form, it’s clear the listening experience of many Canadians is evolving to also include portable music and for the majority of those consumers the digital player of choice is the iPod. As the country’s leading music retailer, it only makes sense that we provide a full music experience for our customers by selling Canada’s leading digital music player.”

“Many people think the world of CDs and the world of iPod are incompatible and it just isn’t true. Not only are they compatible, they are now cohabitating at many HMV stores across the country. The addition of iPod in HMV stores is another step in HMV’s evolution from a music retailer to an entertainment retailer.”

In mid-November this year, Canadian chain Music World announced it was closing its stores as of the new year. The franchise has 72 stores across the country, and 648 employees who have been able to keep their jobs during liquidation, which is expected to continue through until Christmas. The store’s website now contains nothing but its logo for months.

Previously, the last remaining location of Sam the Record Man closed down, in downtown Toronto. Sam once had 130 stores nationwide, then the record. There is a store in Belleville and Sarnia, once part of the chain, but now simply known as “SAM”.

The last American locations of HMV closed in 2004.

Thursday, May 13, 2021

Wikinews extended invitations by e-mail in the first week of May to Philip Sturm, a candidate running in the mayoral election of the US city of Minneapolis, Minnesota set to take place November 2 alongside that for city council, two seats of the Board of Estimate and Taxation and nine seats of the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board. Sturm discussed information about his campaign and policies with Wikinews.

Sturm is a veteran who served from 1999 to 2003 in the US Marine Corps, stationed on Okinawa Island, Japan before performing operations in the US invasion of Afghanistan and 2003 invasion of Iraq. According to his web site, Sturm has a career in “manufacturing and operations”. According to his web site’s ‘civic vitae’ section, Sturm was co-chair for the DFL (Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party), District 62 in 2005 and a member of Veterans for Kerry.

He was a volunteer special deputy in Hennepin County, Minnesota, a member of the 9-1-1 emergency helpline workgroup for the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD), the 9/11 and GWOT (Global War on Terrorism) Remembrance Task Force with the Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs and the racial equity fund with H.B. Fuller.

According to Minneapolis’ official website Jacob Frey won the last election in 2017 receiving 44.69% in the final round of voting. KSTP-TV reported Frey announced his run for re-election January 21. Sturm registered his candidacy on March 22.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

After an early morning fire began, four out of the nine people living at the Riverview Individual Residential Alternative group home located in Wells, New York were killed by the blaze. The Sunmount Developmental Disabilities Services Office, which supervises the home, told the media that the fire started at approximately 5:30 AM Eastern Daylight Time. Two staff members were at the home at the time, who safely evacuated four of the five survivors.

The names of the residents killed in the fire were not able to be released due to New York’s Mental Hygiene Law, but are able to be identified as two adult men, aged 32 and 52, and two adult women, aged 43 and 60. A 71-year-old male was injured in the fire, and was taken to a hospital in Utica, a nearby city. The other four residents have been relocated to an unnamed group home. Both staff members are also being examined at the hospital.

“On behalf of all New Yorkers, I wish to extend my heartfelt condolences to the families, loved ones and friends of the four victims and to continue to pray for the full recovery of those five people and two staff members who survived this incident. I also want to express my thanks and appreciation for the first responders and volunteers who worked swiftly and diligently to respond to this tragedy,” David Patterson, the governor of New York, said to the media.

The exact cause of the fire has yet to be determined. However, the New York Civil Liberties Union stated that “the blaze appears to have been an electrical fire and the sprinkler system was knocked out immediately.” They also called for “an immediate investigation into the causes of and contributing factors of the fire.”

The New York State Department of State Office of Fire Prevention and Control is currently investigating the causes of the blaze, with help from New York State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation and the New York State Commission on Quality of Care and Advocacy for Persons with Disabilities.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

A sixteen-year-old boy from Santiago, Chile has been charged with the murder of his brother after the pair got in a fight over whose turn it was to use a PlayStation 3. Police reported that the sixteen-year-old had stabbed his eighteen-year-old brother after he turned the PlayStation on without his younger brother’s permission.

It’s reported that the younger brother entered the kitchen and took a knife; he then stabbed his brother in the chest. Chile police reported that the youth said that “things had got out of control”. If convicted, the boy would stay five years in prison.

At the time of the death there was no one else in the building. The boy’s birth mother had abandoned them ten years ago and they had been adopted by a Belgian woman. At the time of the attack, she was visiting her home country.

Friday, July 3, 2009

On Friday, a new generation solar powered cargo vessel, the Auriga Leader has docked in North America for the first time. Toyota Motor Corp will employ this car carrier for automobile shipments to Europe and North America from Japan. The vessel will be operated by the Japanese-based NYK Line.

Auriga Leader has 328 solar panels to provide 40 kilowatts, about 10% of the ship’s power while sitting idling in dock. This amount of energy is the equivalent to the power used by ten average homes.

“This is the first ship to direct the solar power into the ship’s main electrical grid. It’s helping all of the time, and its helping with everything, like the ship’s thrusters and the hydraulics for the steering gear,” said Brian Mason, national manager of marine logistics and export for Toyota.

The panels are installed on the ship’s car-carrier, and then connected to the onboard 440 volt electrical network. Nippon Yusen K.K. and Nippon Oil Corp created the Auriga Leader’s US$ 1.6 million innovative green technology solar power grid. The cargo ship has a length of 200 meters (656 ft) and gross tonnage of 60,000 GT, which is capable of carrying 6,400 automobiles.

Richard Steinke, executive director of the Port of Long Beach said of the joint demonstration project, “From our standpoint, it’s another positive step,” to reduce diesel emissions and the release of greenhouse gas.