Author: Admin

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Over 60 miners were killed in an abandoned gold mine shaft near Welkom, in the Free State province of South Africa, after a fire broke out inside the mine.

36 bodies from the Harmony Gold mining company Eland mine shaft were brought up earlier on the weekend from depths up to 1.4 kilometers (1 mi). On Tuesday, 25 more bodies were recovered by other illegal workers.

“We suspect there was a fire on the 18th of May. We never saw any smoke. Over the weekend [30 May] we were informed by other illegal miners that people had died,” said Tom Smith, Chief Operating Officer for Harmony’s South Region, “The bodies are not burnt. It seems more of a case of gas or smoke inhalation. I don’t know if there are any more bodies down there, we just have to wait.”

The workers may have died from poisonous gasses, smoke inhalation, suffocation, cave-ins or carbon monoxide poisoning.

Harmony gold mine will not send anyone in to the mine as the conditions are extremely dangerous and abandoned shafts are without safety equipment. Illegal workers may gain access bypassing security at one mine site, and exit via a series of interconnected underground tunnels many miles away.

Harmony is internationally the fifth largest gold mining company and has bought up old, abandoned mines.

Police were seeking relatives to help identify the bodies, and are instigating an investigation into the circumstances.

Almost 300 “gold pirates” were arrested over the past two weeks at the Eland mine shaft alone. Thousands of illegal workers can be underground, and remain working for weeks and months continuously. “These are ex-miners and unemployed people – we need to target the syndicates,” said Smith.

There are over 4.18 million unemployed in South Africa due to the economic decline, and another 1 million may soon join the ranks.

Susan Shabangu, the minister of mining, extended her condolences.

Welkom, with a population of over 400,000 is located 160 kilometers (99 mi) northeast of Bloemfontein, the provincial capital.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

In an apparent coordinated attack, 13 schools were set ablaze late yesterday in southern Thailand, an escalation of violence that authorities are blaming on Muslim insurgents.

The 13 schools were burned in Pattani and Yala, two of the three restive, Muslim-majority Thai provinces on the border of Malaysia.

On Monday in the third province, Narathiwat, three teachers were fatally shot. Two female teachers, both Buddhist, were fatally shot while on lunch break at Bansako School in Si Sakorn. A male teacher from another school was gunned down while buying cigarettes at a store in Ra-ngae. On Tuesday morning in Yala’s Raman district, a 60-year-old Muslim teacher was fatally shot in his pick-up truck on the Raman-Balo road.

Since 2004, more than 200 schools have been burned in arson attacks and 77 teachers killed, education officials say. About 110 schools in Narathiwat and Yala provinces have been temporarily closed, while officials re-assess the security situation.

Teachers and schools, potent symbols of the Buddhist majority Thai central government, are prime targets in the Muslim insurgency in south Thailand, which has seen a steady escalation since 2004, with almost daily fatal shootings and bombings, killing more than 2,300 people.

School staff called on the government to provide better security. Many teachers travel with armed escorts, or have taken to carrying firearms themselves.

“We want school compounds to be safe areas for teachers. Today we have no safe areas for teachers, be they houses, communities or schools,” Vicharn Athikapan, chairman of the Confederation of Southern Teachers, was quoted as saying by the Bangkok Post yesterday. “Although it is difficult to deploy soldiers to protect teachers at schools, the state must do it.”

Today, a Royal Thai Army soldier was seriously injured in the explosion of a roadside bomb, which was placed opposite a vocational college in Narathiwat.

Late yesterday evening (local time), a 44-year-old man was killed in a drive-by shooting in Yala. Earlier, in Narathiwat’s Rueso district, three men were fatally shot, and one was beheaded. The beheading was the 10th this year, and one of 25 in southern Thailand since 2004.

Also yesterday, one soldier was killed and another injured in a roadside bomb near a school in Thung Yang Daeng, Pattani. Another soldier was killed and six others injured in Pattani’s Yarang district when a roadside bomb ripped through the pickup truck they were riding in.

On Tuesday in eastern Thailand‘s Sa Kaeo Province, on the border with Cambodia, police detained 15 Cambodian Muslims after one of the group was found to be carrying items that could be used to make bombs.

The owner of the bag told police he was carrying the items for a friend in southern Thailand, and were to be used to make explosives for catching fish. The items were seized, and all 15 men were sent back to Cambodia.

The incident follows a diplomatic flare-up last weekend between Thailand and Cambodia, after published comments were attributed to Thai General Wattanachai Chaimuenwong, saying Cambodian Muslims have links to the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist organization, as well as the south Thailand insurgency.

Wattanachai, an adviser to Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont, later denied making the statements, after Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen issued an angry rebuke against Thai officials.

“Because of their own weakness, they are now finding others to blame,” Hun Sen was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.

Saturday, October 6, 2007

Torbjorn Zetterlund is running for the Green Party of Ontario in the Ontario provincial election, in the Willowdale 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.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

A group of students at London Metropolitan University (LMU) who had been occupying the graduate centre at their university since the afternoon of Wednesday May 4 were evicted just before midnight on Monday by police, university security and private bailiffs.

Wikinews, in contact with the occupiers, obtained a first-hand interview with one of the occupiers less than two hours after the occupation ended. The students staged the occupation in protest against cutbacks to courses at the university which, if enacted, would close 70% of the courses the university offers.

John Hughes, 35, a mature student born in the North London borough of Hackney and living in Brixton, was one of over twenty students who were sleeping overnight in the university building. A second-year student in sociology and international development, one of the courses at risk, Hughes described the police intervention at around 11:40pm:

As I came in the area we were occupying they came straight in the door…There was no warning. […] We were served the injunction on the spot by two county court sheriffs, four police officers, ten bailiffs and one member of London Met security. We said, ‘we need time to read this’. We were given ten minutes to read it and take our stuff.

The occupiers have not had access to legal advice, although they have had “a bit of advice from some people who are not actually lawyers”. The occupiers complain they were given no notice of the injunction and that it is inaccurate, naming at least one person “who hadn’t committed trespass at all”.

The eviction also pre-empts an agreement, negotiated by London Metropolitan University Students’ Union president Claire Locke, for LMU vice-chancellor Malcolm Gillies to meet with the occupation on Tuesday morning. The occupiers feel certain now that Gillies’ office made this agreement with the Students’ Union and occupiers in bad faith, knowing that an injunction evicting the occupation would be served before then.

The injunction follows a night after the occupation was itself invaded by members of a private security firm hired by the university management. In the early hours of Monday morning, occupiers say security staff kicked open the doors and entered an area where people were sleeping. Security personnel say an alarm was going off in the area; occupiers say there was no such alarm. Private security have also been sexually harassing and verbally intimidating the occupiers, Hughes alleges. “One of the members of the security team said through the doors to a young lady, ‘you should put up a picture of yourself, something that’s more sexy’ and ‘I’m quite a big bloke, and if I wanted to come into the occupation I would. Two young ladies are not going to stop me.'” Occupiers have also heard some racist comments from private security; the occupiers themselves are “a very mixed group” of all ages and ethnicities, “some from London, some from outside London, working class and some middle class.”

If the occupation had not been evicted, Hughes says they could have held out. “We had water, food and drinks for a while. I’m not sure for how long.” Students at Aberystwyth University in Wales occupied two rooms at their university for over a month earlier this year.

Monday, February 28, 2005

Bucharest, Romania — The Romanian Black Sea ports of Constan?a, Midia and Mangalia were closed on Saturday due to heavy fog. The Danube-Black Sea Canal was also caused due to reduced visibility. The canal, which runs for 64 km, is an important part of the European shipping channel that links the North Sea to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.

The port closures left 54 ships in the harbour or stranded at sea, said Alexandru Mezei, the director of shipping navigation at Constan?a Port, the largest port in Romania. However, he claims that the closure was necessary to prevent accidents from occurring, as the fog had reduced visiblity below safe levels.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

US stock markets dropped to twelve-year lows on Thursday, amidst falling confidence in the financial sector and worries over whether the US automobile manufacturer General Motors will be able to keep operating.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by 4.08%, or 280.52 points, at the closing bell, reaching a level of 6595.32, a new 12-year low. The Nasdaq Composite lost 54.15 points, or 4%, to 1299.59, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 plunged by 30.27 points, or 4.25%, closing at 682.60.

Every stock in the Dow Jones, other than Wal-Mart, either lost ground or remained even, and all stocks in the S&P 500 index lost ground.

General Motors’ shares lost 15.5% after the auto firm announced that its auditors had “substantial doubt” over whether it would be able to keep operating.

Shares of financial companies were lower by nine percent, with Bank of America losing 11.7% and Citigroup falling by 9.7%.

“What’s most worrisome is that we haven’t hit the crescendo yet,” said Bill Groeneveld, the head trader for vFinance Investments. “Asset-management divisions are getting calls to just liquidate everything, and we haven’t seen the big players come back in at all.”

“This is one of the worst bear markets in the last 100 years; it started out with the credit crisis and the subprime [loans], but it is like a forest fire that has raced across the clearing and ignited other parts: Autos, auto parts, the insurance companies have been hit very hard. The credit crisis is causing an unraveling of industry after industry because the banks don’t lend,” said David Dreman, the chief investment officer of Dreman Value Management.

European markets were also lower today, with the London’s FTSE index losing 3.2% and the DAX index of Germany falling by five percent.

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

A man missing from a camping ground in southern Utah in the Western US since July 30 was found in Australia. His automobile was found in a campground of Dixie National Forest with a note that he would be back in a few hours. An extensive search and rescue operation was conducted to try to locate this hiker by the Washington County Sheriff’s Office in Utah.

Investigators in the Sheriff’s Office were able to track him down to Cairns, Queensland. Apparently before he was “missing”, he bought a one-way ticket to Australia. Bryan Butas, the missing hiker, apparently had been under a great deal of stress and “got sick of it all”, according to a telephone interview by the Associated Press.

Butas has been charged with insurance fraud, a second-degree felony, by Washington County Attorney Brock Belnap. This was because Butas plotted to obtain a $250,000 life insurance policy before faking his own disappearance. He has also been given a bill for $20,000 by the Washington County Sheriff’s Office for their search and rescue operations on his behalf.

His wife and children have since his disappearance moved to the wife’s parent’s home in Ohio. Butas’s parents came to Southern Utah to help in the search and were “embarrassed and shocked” to learn their son had merely run away from marital and financial difficulties, Washington County Sheriff Kirk Smith said.

Washington County Sheriff Sgt. Jake Adams said his investigation included tracing an application Butas made for a passport, his purchase of a one-way airline ticket to Australia, and the life insurance policy that names his wife and children as beneficiaries. On August 18, Adams said Butas’s mother called him to say her son had called home the evening of August 11, several days after the search was officially called off for the missing man. Butas asked his mother for money and an airline ticket home, which she sent.

Butas has since been checked into the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in Brecksville, Ohio, according to Adams, but will shortly return to Utah.