Author: Admin

A compilation of brief news reports for Wednesday, August 18, 2010.

An unemployed, single mother from South Carolina has confessed to suffocating her two toddler children with her bare hands. After suffocating her one year-old and two year-old sons, 29 year-old Shaquan Duley drove her car into a river. Police have identified the suffocated children as Ja’van T. Duley and Devean C. Duley. She faces two murder charges and is scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday.

Duley had apparently argued with her mother the night before the murder. Orangeburg County Sheriff Larry Williams has stated that “We believe this is a direct response [to the argument] from Ms. Duley. I believe she was just fed up with her mother telling her she couldn’t take care of the children and she wasn’t taking care of her children and she just wanted to be free.” Williams also said that Shaquan’s mother “was a very, I guess, firm individual. … She often talked with her daughter about, I guess, maybe being more of a mother or being more reliable.”

Sources

• Lisa Flam. “SC Sheriff: Mother Has Confessed in Toddler Deaths” — AOL News, August 17, 2010
• “Sheriff: Woman suffocated sons before submerging bodies in car” — CNN, August 17, 2010

US officials said Monday that an American, Aijalon Mahli Gomes, sentenced to hard labor in North Korea was visited by a US consular official and two American doctors.

“We requested permission to visit Mr. Gomes. That permission from the North Korean government was granted,” said U.S. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley. Crowley also said that “We requested permission to bring Mr. Gomes home. Unfortunately, he remains in North Korea.”

North Korea said that Gomes was hospitalized after attempting suicide. Gomes was arrested by North Korean authorities and sentenced to eight years of hard labor in January after the 31 year-old man alledgedly attempted to cross the border with China.

Sources

• Brian Walker. “U.S. officials visit American held in North Korea” — CNN, August 17, 2010
• Agence France-Presse. “US medical team visited American held in N.Korea: official” — Google News, August 16, 2010

Related news

• “US prisoner in North Korea ‘attempts suicide'” — Wikinews, July 10, 2010

American car company General Motors (GM) said Tuesday that it will recall 243,000 crossover vehicles due to faulty seat belts. The crossovers recalled include the Saturn Outlook, Buick Enclave, GMC Acadia and Chevrolet Traverse. The damage to the seat belts could happen after the second row seats in the car-based SUVs are returned to a upright position after being folded. The damage causes the seat belt to feel correctly latched when it is possibly not.

Sources

• “GM recalls 243,000 crossover vehicles” — United Press International, August 17, 2010
• Nick Bunkley. “G.M. Recalls 243,000 Crossover Vehicles for Seat Belt Problem” — The New York Times, August 17, 2010

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Another earthquake hit Chile on late Monday, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) has reported. It occurred at 19:09:43 local time (23:09:43 UTC). The epicenter was located 110 kilometers northwest of Temuco; 132 kilometers southwest of Concepción; 203 kilometers north of Valdivia and 558 kilometers southwest of Santiago.

The USGS later determined that the earthquake had a depth of 20.6 kilometers, and the epicenter was located 55 kilometers to the south of Lebu.

The University of Chile Geological Survey reported that the earthquake took place 71 kilometers at the west of Tirúa in the Bío Bío Region and had a depth of 22.9 kilometers.

Wikinews’s Diego Grez reported that the earthquake was clearly felt in Pichilemu, almost 300 kilometers to the north of the epicenter. ONEMI reported no casualties. The area is being monitored by the organization. It has been reported that some telephone lines have collapsed after the earthquake. More than two months after the major 8.8 earthquake, many people continue to live in tents or temporary huts.

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

At least 21,000 gallons of crude oil has spilled into the Gulf of Mexico near the United States mainland coast, about 30 miles off the shore of Galveston, Texas. The U.S. Coast Guard says that oil is still leaking at a rate of 80 to 400 gallons a day.

The High Island Pipeline began to leak on Sunday and was immediately shut down when a pressure loss was detected. The pipeline is owned by Plains All American Pipeline who state that the incident is “under investigation” and that officials are working to “minimize the impact of the incident.”

“A medium crude oil pipeline ruptured 30 miles southeast of Galveston, Texas, and leaked approximately 21,000 gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico Sunday, December 24,” said a press release by Coast Guard.

“There’s a 60-yard-wide oil sheen that extends for about half a mile. It is still leaking slowly, about 80 to 400 gallons a day,” added the Coast Guard.

Reports say that the oil is traveling away from any shoreline and that remaining oil is being suctioned out of the pipeline. Ships in the area have not been diverted.

“All appropriate agencies have been notified. Plains, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the Texas General Land Office are working within a unified command system consisting of Federal and state agencies and oil spill response organizations to manage and mitigate this incident. In addition, Plains has activated its spill response plan to contain and clean up the spill. At present, Plains has mobilized Airborne Support, Inc., Clean Gulf Associates and other additional resources in an effort to minimize the consequences of the incident,” said a press release by the Plains oil company.

So far, no injuries have been reported.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

The name Robert Cailliau may not ring a bell to the general public, but his invention is the reason why you are reading this: Dr. Cailliau together with his colleague Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, making the internet accessible so it could grow from an academic tool to a mass communication medium. Last January Dr. Cailliau retired from CERN, the European particle physics lab where the WWW emerged.

Wikinews offered the engineer a virtual beer from his native country Belgium, and conducted an e-mail interview with him (which started about three weeks ago) about the history and the future of the web and his life and work.

Wikinews: At the start of this interview, we would like to offer you a fresh pint on a terrace, but since this is an e-mail interview, we will limit ourselves to a virtual beer, which you can enjoy here.

Robert Cailliau: Yes, I myself once (at the 2nd international WWW Conference, Chicago) said that there is no such thing as a virtual beer: people will still want to sit together. Anyway, here we go.

Saturday, April 1, 2006

American multi-billionaire Donald Trump has announced plans to build a massive golf complex on an 800-acre site just north of Aberdeen, Scotland.

Speaking last night from the Trump Tower in New York, Trump said that the development will be akin to a “homecoming” for him. The ginger-haired property tycoon’s mother is from the Western Isles of Scotland.

The £300m project at Menie in Aberdeenshire will include both a links course and an inland course, and a 400-bedroom hotel as well as a golfing academy and holiday homes. The facilities are being built with the intention of attracting the Open Championship to the site, officially dubbed Trump International Golf Links, Scotland.

Fields and sand-dunes make up the landscape of the coastal site. Trump said of the location, “As soon as I saw it there was no question about it. I looked at 211 fantastic sites all over Europe, but here it is – the dune size and the ocean front. There is no piece of land that I have ever seen that is comparable to this.” The billionaire claims that the complex, set to be his only development outside the United States, will be the “best course in the world.”

Local and national political figures, including Scottish First Minister Jack McConnell, have welcomed the announcement with open arms, as the project is expected to bring in an additional £157m to the region’s economy within the first ten years. Scottish tourism company VisitScotland is also optimistic, expecting an influx of international visitors to play on (or simply visit) the site. Plans to expand the A90 road running past the site in the near future will enable more road traffic to and around the area. An £60m expansion of Aberdeen Airport will also allow for vastly increased international air links, akin to those operated using Boeing 767 aircraft.

Work on the golf complex itself is set to begin in September this year, with the Trump Organisation hopeful for a Spring 2008 opening date.

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

A Sheriff in Aberdeen yesterday jailed gamekeeper George Mutch for crimes against birds of prey. It is believed to be the first time anybody has been imprisoned for raptor persecution in Scotland.

Mutch, 48, killed a protected goshawk, and used illegal traps to capture a buzzard and a second goshawk. He was convicted last month of four offences, which he committed in 2012 in Aberdeenshire.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) used hidden cameras to record Mutch’s crimes, one of the first times such footage has featured in a Scottish wildlife trial. The video shows Mutch remove a juvenile goshawk from one trap and beat it to death with a stick. He removes the other goshawk and the buzzard, putting them in sacks which he then walks away with. Their fate is unknown.

Sheriff Noel McPartlin called Mutch’s conduct “a determined course of action. Having regard to the gravity of the offence [of killing the goshawk], I am of the view that there is no other method of dealing with you which is appropriate to this case other than the imposition of a custodial sentence.” Sara Shaw, Scotland’s procurator fiscal (prosecutor) for wildlife crime, explained “Goshawks in particular are rare birds: the court heard evidence in this case that there are only about 150 nesting pairs in Scotland.” She said the law was there “to preserve Scotland’s natural heritage, including the wildlife that forms part of it.”

David McKie, defending, detailed other sanctions his client had already suffered. His employers on the Kildrummy Estate have suspended him, and police have seized his guns; he may lose his gun licence because of his conviction. The Scottish Gamekeepers Association separately announced Mutch’s expulsion from the group’s ranks.

RSPB Scotland’s Duncan Orr-Ewing called the sentence a “historic, landmark result” and “a turning point, sending a clear message to those determined to flout our laws”. Landowners’ body Scottish Land and Estates also had no sympathy: “The illegal killing of any bird of prey is unacceptable and anyone who engages in such activity can, rightly, expect to feel the full weight of the law.”

The RSPB said it may be the first such jailing anywhere in the UK. The group said other wildlife crimes, such as against badgers, had previously attracted prison terms. “We would like to thank the Crown Office and Police Scotland for helping to bring this case to a successful conviction, as well as the exemplary work of the RSPB Scotland investigations team” said Orr-Ewing. He added “Wildlife criminals must expect no sympathy from now on.”

Scotland’s goshawk is the northern goshawk, Accipiter gentilis. Internationally, the species has a wide range and a large population through much of Europe, North America, Russia, and northern Asia. It is therefore ranked as least concern by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species. However, the bird does face persecution and nest robbing by humans. Indirect human impacts include deforestation and, according to a 2012 study, wind farm developments. Scotland has invested heavily in wind power over the last decade.