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Saturday, April 28, 2012

United States political consultant and gay rights (LGBT) activist Fred Karger of California took some time to discuss his Republican Party presidential campaign with Wikinews reporter William Saturn. Karger holds the distinction as the first openly gay person to seek the presidential nomination of a major U.S. political party.

Before entering electoral politics, Karger worked as an adviser for such prominent Republicans and former U.S. Presidents Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. Since retiring as an adviser in 2004, he has been involved in LGBT issues: opposing California Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in the state; and leading investigations of such same-sex marriage opponents as the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) and the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (The Mormon Church).

In 2010, Karger first announced his intentions to seek the Republican presidential nomination, but did not officially announce until March 2011. One of his early campaign goals was to participate in a GOP presidential debate, but was never invited due to polling thresholds. However, Karger argued that he did meet the requirement for an August debate, but was still excluded after the organizers deemed polls he cited as inadequate.

So far, Karger has appeared on four Republican primary ballots including Puerto Rico, where he was able to top Congressman Ron Paul, who, at the time was one of the four major candidates in the race. Karger will next appear on the ballots in California on June 5, and in Utah on June 26.

Karger brands himself as “a different kind of Republican” that wants to open the party to outsiders. He backs gay marriage, is pro-choice on abortion, and wants to lower the voting age. However, he also holds some traditional Republican views: he favors a strengthening of the private sector and believes the U.S. should be steadfast in its support for the nation of Israel.

In talking to Wikinews, Karger discusses his personal political background and activism, the 2012 presidential election and his GOP campaign, as well as his political views on both domestic and foreign affairs.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Victoria Wyndham was one of the most seasoned and accomplished actresses in daytime soap opera television. She played Rachel Cory, the maven of Another World‘s fictional town, Bay City, from 1972 to 1999 when the show went off the air. Wyndham talks about how she was seen as the anchor of a show, and the political infighting to keep it on the air as NBC wanted to wrest control of the long-running soap from Procter & Gamble. Wyndham fought to keep it on the air, but eventually succumbed to the inevitable. She discusses life on the soap opera, and the seven years she spent wandering “in the woods” of Los Angeles seeking direction, now divorced from a character who had come to define her professional career. Happy, healthy and with a family she is proud of, Wyndham has found life after the death of Another World in painting and animals. Below is David Shankbone’s interview with the soap diva.

Friday, May 2, 2008

The 2008 Taipei CNC Machine Tools & Manufacturing Technology Show (MT duo) and Taiwan International Robot Exhibition (Robot Taiwan 2008) both began yesterday. These events are both taking place in the build up to Taipei International Machine Tool Show (TIMTOS 2009) at TWTC Nangang, which is due to take place next year.

The 2008 MT duo and Robot Taiwan mainly focused on software designed for industry, rather than consumers. This is in contrast to the choice of software displayed in many Japanese Trade Shows, which often displays products designed for consumers.

Robotics is a major industry in Taiwan. As a result the organizer of the event decided to refine “Manufacturing Taipei” and split it into the “Robot & Industrial Automation” of Manufacturing Taipei and “Robot Taiwan”.

There was also a “Taiwan International Robotics Forum” and “Seminars on MT duo” at the event. Both were designed to attract executives from IT, manufacturing, and machinery industries to promote the worldwide use of robotics in industry.

Friday, May 8, 2009

Thomas Sam, 42, and his wife Manju Sam, 36, from Sydney, Australia, are undergoing trial for manslaughter by gross negligence for the death of their nine-month-old child, Gloria. She died from infection caused by severe eczema after they shunned effective conventional medical treatments for homeopathy, a form of alternative medicine that has been described as pseudoscience. Articles in peer-reviewed academic journals including Social Science & Medicine have characterized homeopathy as a form of quackery.

Gloria developed severe eczema at the age of four months and the parents were advised to send the child to a skin specialist. Thomas Sam, a practising homeopath, instead decided to treat his daughter himself. His daughter’s condition deteriorated, to the point that the baby spent all her energy battling the infections caused by the constant breaking of the skin, leading to severe malnutrition and, eventually, her death. By the end, Gloria’s eczema was so severe that her skin broke every time her parents changed her clothes or nappy, and in the words of the Crown prosecutor, Mark Tedeschi, QC, “Gloria spent a lot of the last five months of her life crying, irritable, scratching and the only thing that gave her solace was to suck on her mother’s breast.” Gloria also became unable to move her legs.

Mr. Tedeschi also told the court that, over the last five months of her life, “Gloria’s eczema played a devastating role in her overall health and it is asserted by the Crown that both her parents knew this and discussed it with each other.” However, despite their child’s severe illness, and her lack of improvement, the Sams continued to shun conventional medical treatment, instead seeking help from other homeopaths and naturopaths. Gloria temporarily improved during the rare times they used conventional treatments, but they soon dropped them in favour of homeopathy, and she consistently worsened.

Allegedly, Thomas’ sister pleaded with him to send Gloria to a conventional medical doctor, but he replied “I am not able to do that”. The parents are also accused of putting their social life ahead of their child, taking her on a trip to India and leaving her to servants while embarking on a busy social schedule, and giving her homeopathic drops instead of using the prescription creams they had been given.

Gloria was finally taken to the emergency department shortly before her death. By this time, “her skin was weeping, her body malnourished and her corneas melting”, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Speaking in the parents’ defense, Tom Molomby, SC, said that, as the parents came from India, where homeopathy is in common use, they should be declared not guilty due to cultural differences.

Homeopathy is a form of alternative medicine which treats patients with massively diluted forms of substances that, if given to a healthy person undiluted, would cause symptoms similar to the disease. Typical treatments take the dilutions, with ritualised shaking between each step of the dilution, past the level where any molecules of the original substance are likely to remain; for homeopathic treatments to work, basic well-understood concepts in chemistry and physics would have to be wrong. There is no evidence that homeopathy is more effective than placebo for any condition.

Sunday, December 11, 2005

Halifax, Nova Scotia

Following the first major snow storm of the season, several cars were reported to be ‘entrapped’ by slick ice in the seaside city of Halifax, Nova Scotia. The ice was believed to be created when the snow, which fell during the night of December 9-10, was packed down by successive cars and trucks passing over it. By morning, several areas of the city had patches of slippery, low-traction crystalline water lying in wait for the next unsuspecting motor vehicle to pass over them. Soon enough, your correspondent witnessed cars which had slowed to a stop or were parked find that, try as they might, they were unable to move forward on the ice and were therefore stuck.

Luckily, most of the cars were able to extricate themselves after either slowly accelerating in a low gear, or ‘rocking’ the car back-and-forth to build up momentum. No one was reported injured, and the only damage believed to be done was the excessive wear and tear on the entrapped vehicles.

Saturday, September 10, 2005

On Friday, all six major American television networks; ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, WB, and UPN, along with most PBS stations, united in a rare show of solidarity to air a one hour charity concert called Shelter from the Storm: A Concert for the Gulf Coast.

The concert aired live at 8pm in the Eastern time zone and 7pm in the Central time zone and on tape-delay in the Mountain and Pacific time zones. It was also shown on the Internet and many cable networks such as USA, Bravo and G4.

The show was produced by Joel Gallen, the same man behind the September 11th tribute concert America: A Tribute to Heroes. The show was not censored for political statements but was for obscenities. Gallen did not expect any political statements. Last week, rapper Kayne West made a remark on an NBC charity show A Concert for Hurricane Relief, in which West claimed that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”, which caused controversy.

The concert began with Randy Newman singing “Louisana 1927.” Throughout the concert there were notable acts, such U2 performing “One” with Mary. J Blige. Another moment was Garth Brooks, Trisha Yearwood and the house band from The Late Show with David Letterman doing a cover of John Fogerty’s “Who’ll Stop The Rain”.

Donations were being solicited for the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army.

Telecom company AT&T provided toll-free calling and 10 call centers for the event and MCI provided volunteers from their call centers.

BET also held a charity concert called S.O.S (Saving OurSelves), a half-hour before cutting to the main one.

MTV, MTV Overdrive, VH1 and CMT will air a charity show Saturday called ReAct Now: Music & Relief.

Friday, November 25, 2016

On Tuesday instant messaging application Telegram announced publishing service Telegraph. They also introduced “instant view” and “jump to date” features.

Telegraph offers a simple publishing service without an account. It supports embedding photos, tweets from Twitter, and videos from YouTube and Vimeo by dropping in a link. It allows users to create rich posts with markdown by filling the title, author name and the story. Telegraph is similar to other publishing websites like Medium and Quip.

Unlike Medium and Quip Telegraph does not require a login and thus anyone can use a false name to publish a story. The stories can only be edited from the same browser on the same device if the user accepts the cookie policy and does not clear the cache.

According to Telegram, instant view offers “an elegant way to view articles with zero pageload time”. Links to articles on sites including Medium and TechCrunch shows an instant view option which can be viewed directly within the application which was built to save time and data.

Telegram also introduced a jump to date option to search chats by dates. A calendar icon enables user to choose a date to search old messages. Other features in the new update, version 3.14, include improved camera speed, better video compression and photo viewer, and improved security for passcodes. A new interface for notifications and creating groups for the Android operating system is also included, with Telegram saying “Make Android Great Again!”. Telegram also introduced a feature to view an entire sticker pack by pressing a long hold on the recently sent sticker. Users can also view the list of groups the user shares with a particular contact.