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The time is 23:00 (UTC) on July 18th, 2006 and this is Audio Wikinews News Briefs.

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Friday, May 23, 2008

A tornado that has caused 28 miles (45 km) of destruction throughout Weld County, Colorado, has killed one and injured 100. The man killed was inside a vehicle that was destroyed in the storm, west of Greeley, which is about 60 miles (97 km) north of Denver.

A state trooper says that multiple car accidents occurred on highways throughout the county. U.S. Route 85 was closed after two semi-trailers were flipped over, though the drivers were not injured. Dozens of houses and vehicles were badly damaged by the tornado as it passed through. The town of Windsor had hundreds of homes and businesses damaged, including the town hall, in addition to trees down and electricity outages. In response to the disaster, Colorado Governor Bill Ritter declared a state of emergency and activated the Colorado National Guard in the badly damaged Weld County.

Severe storms also hit Laramie, Wyoming, 145 miles northwest of Denver, knocking out electricity to 7,300 customers and damaging buildings. One damaged building, the Quadra Dangle Square Dance Club, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, had its roof and porch ripped off. The Associated Press reports Brian Chapman of the National Weather Service in Cheyenne as saying that “indicators are very strongly in favor of it being a tornado,” but no confirmation is possible until the damage is fully assessed. Governor Dave Freudenthal of Wyoming has also authorized a crew of eight National Guardsman to help clean up the damage. Another twister touched down just east of Cheyenne, Wyoming. The local fire department responded to a call after the storm damaged a barn and a house just south of I-80.

Rain, hail and snow pelted the entire region, and more storms are predicted for today. The National Weather Service in Cheyenne reports, “Severe thunderstorms are likely again this afternoon into early this evening mainly east of the Laramie Range…with the greatest threat east of Cheyenne across the southern Nebraska panhandle. Locally heavy rainfall is also possible which may cause some localized flooding especially in areas that received heavy rainfall Thursday.” Winds are expected to gust above 40mph throughout the day. At 7:40am MST weather conditions were calm and partly cloudly just west of Laramie, Wyoming

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Officials in France have issued a pollution alert after an unladen freighter grounded on a breakwater at Anglet, Basque yesterday. The vessel split in two and is leaking fuel oil.

The Luno had 120–160 cubic metres of fuel aboard when it broke down and high winds and waves pushed it into the breakwater. Helicopters rescued the twelve crewmembers and the only injury was a broken nose. The 100-metre ship was en route to pick up its usual fertiliser cargo and initially officials feared the vessel could spill a load.

The ship has split around the breakwater, one part remaining on the rocks at one side and the other pushed almost to the beach on the other. Junior transport, seas, and fishing minister Frederic Cuvillier is heading to Anglet. Anglet is near the Spanish border, with the ship registered in Spain.

One eyewitness, commenting to BBC News, called the rescuers “brave considering the state of the sea”. She said the ship had tried to anchor itself but broke away.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Chinese officials have said that their country’s exports surged last December to edge out Germany as the world’s biggest exporter.

The official Xinhua news agency reported today that figures from the General Administration for Customs showed that exports jumped 17.7% in December from a year earlier. Over the whole of 2009 total Chinese exports reached US$1.2 trillion, above Germany’s forecast $1.17 trillion.

Huang Guohua, a statistics official with the customs administration, said the December exports rebound was an important turning point for China’s export sector. He commented that the jump was an indication that exporters have emerged from their downslide.

“We can say that China’s export enterprises have completely emerged from their all-time low in exports,” he said.

However, although China overtook Germany in exports, China’s total foreign trade — both exports and imports — fell 13.9% last year.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

The European Union (EU) competitions commission has announced its decision to fine the Microsoft Corporation €899 million (US$1.35 billion), approximately 1/10th of the company’s gross yearly earnings, for failing to comply with the 2004 antitrust order. It is the highest ever fine charged by the EU (also being the largest fine of its kind ever imposed upon a company), and the first time that the EU has fined a company because of non-compliance with an antitrust decision.

The first decision in this antitrust case was given in 2004 citing that Microsoft withheld needed interoperability information from rival software companies which prevented them from making software compatible with Windows. The commission ordered Microsoft to provide this information. Microsoft agreed to this, providing the information for royalty fees of 6.5% of the licensee’s revenues for the product on grounds of innovation (specifically, 3.87% for the patent license and of 2.98% for the information license). The EU found these royalty fees unreasonable and Microsoft was ordered to lower them. Microsoft complied with this, adjusting the royalty rates to 1.2% (changing the rates for the licenses to 0.7% and 0.5%, respectively) in the European Union, while keeping the rate the same for the rest of the world. The EU still saw this as an unreasonable rate, and Microsoft, two month after lowering the rates, reduced the rates yet again to a flat rate of €10000 or a royalty of 0.4% applicable worldwide. Microsoft’s royalty rates, which were deemed unreasonable for the period of 15 months between June 21, 2006 and October 21, 2007 are the cause for the fine. So far, the EU has fined Microsoft €1.68 billion in 3 separate fines in this case. This fine will go towards the European Union annual budget.

The European Anti-trust commissioner Neelie Kroes stated that the fine was “reasonable and proportionate”, as the figure could have gone up as high as €1.5 billion, the maximum that the EU commission can impose. She also said that it should act as “a signal to the outside world, and especially Microsoft, that they should stick to the rules” and that “Talk is cheap. Flouting the rules is expensive”. Although she also expressed hope that “today’s decision closes a dark chapter in Microsoft’s record of non-compliance with the Commission”.

There is no certainty whether Microsoft will appeal this decision, a Microsoft Spokesperson has stated that Microsoft will review this latest fine, citing that “The commission announced in October 2007 that Microsoft was in full compliance with the 2004 decision, so these fines are about the past issues that have been resolved.” Microsoft`s General Counsel Brad Smith commented “It’s clearly very important to us as a company that we comply with our obligations under European law. We’ll study this decision carefully, and if there are additional steps that we need to take in order to comply with it, we will take them.” Microsoft had appealed to fines by the EU before, but all the charges were defeated. If Microsoft does not appeal the decision, the company will have 3 month (starting February 27th) to pay the fine in full. The fine must be paid in Euros.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer stated that the company had news that the fine was pending. “We knew it was pending,” Ballmer told interviewers. “We didn’t know it was this week, but we knew it was coming at some point.”

This may not be the end of Microsoft’s troubles with the European Union yet, as the commission is currently investigating two other complaints about the company’s anti-competition practices.

The decisions came after Microsoft announced they were disclosing 30,000 pages of previously secret software code last Thursday (February 21st). The EU competition commissioner’s commented that this move “does not necessarily equal a change in business practice.”

Microsoft was set to launch three new products: Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 at its “Heroes Happen Here” event today. Microsoft shares slipped 12 cents to $28.26 on NASDAQ after news of the fine.

Friday, November 7, 2014Albuquerque, New Mexico —Online entertainment is a booming market, and plenty of players are making their play; back in March of this year The Walt Disney Company bought the multi-channel network Maker Studios. What is web entertainment, and the arts therein? And, who are the people venturing into this field? Wikinews interviewed Mario Lucero and Isabel Ruiz, the founders of Heaven Sent Gaming, a small entertainment team. This group has been responsible for several publications, within several different media formats; one successful example was aywv, a gaming news website, which was #1 in Gaming on YouTube in 2009, from September to November; Heaven Sent Gaming was also the subject of a referential book, released in 2014, entitled Internet Legends – Heaven Sent Gaming.

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Wednesday, April 18, 2007

The Supreme Court of the United States on Wednesday April 18 has upheld the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. The 5-4 vote reflected the change in vote count resulting from the retirement of Justice O’Connor and the confirmation of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito.

The Intact dilation and extraction procedure, also known as partial birth abortion, involves removing an intact late-term fetus from the womb via the cervix. While it is a relatively rare operation – 0.17% of all abortions in the US in 2000, it has become a focal point in the abortion debate.

The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act bans the procedure in cases where the fetus is terminated during the operation, unless it is performed to to save the life of the mother.

Justice Kennedy wrote in the opinion of the court: “respondents have not demonstrated that the Act would be unconstitutional in a large fraction of relevant cases.” Further, he said, “Respondents have not demonstrated that the Act, as a facial matter, is void for vagueness, or that it imposes an undue burden on a woman’s right to abortion based on its overbreadth or lack of a health exception. For these reasons the judgments of the Courts of Appeals for the Eighth and Ninth Circuits are reversed.”

In a concurring opinion, Justice Thomas stated that he joins “the Court’s opinion because it accurately applies current jurisprudence, including Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833 (1992).”

In dissent Judge Ginsburg wrote: “Today’s decision is alarming. It refuses to take Casey and Stenberg seriously. It tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.”

Justice Kennedy’s words also recall the complicated issues of standing related to such cases. An issue in Roe v. Wade was the impossibility of any individual having standing in a court proceeding regarding abortion rights, since court proceedings take more than the 9 months of pregnancy, retiring any individual plaintiff’s standing before an appeals process can take place. The criterion of “a large fraction of relevant cases” may effectively deny standing to any plaintiffs who wish to litigate particular restrictions in some relevant future cases.

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