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Saturday, July 2, 2005

Massive music concerts took place around the planet under the Live 8 banner in an effort to put pressure on the leaders of the eight richest countries in the world to end global poverty.

All concerts were timed to take place between noon and 10pm local time, with over a million people expected to attend concerts in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the US, Canada, South Africa and Russia. The events were broadcast to a potential audience of five and a half billion people world-wide.

The largest concert was in the US in Philadelphia where, over the course of 7 hours, hundreds of thousands of people gathered to watch Stevie Wonder, Kanye West, Destiny’s Child, Dave Matthews Band, and Black Eyed Peas among others. Philadelphia native Will Smith both performed and was the opening presenter. Peak attendance, the maximum amount of people believed to be watching Live 8 on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway at a given time, is estimated to have been between 600,000 and 800,000.

In Hyde Park in London, 205,000 people watched acts including Elton John, Madonna, Coldplay, Robbie Williams and Pink Floyd. The concert was opened by Sir Paul McCartney and U2 playing Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – the first time the song has ever been performed live by a Beatle. It ended at 11.58pm with all of the acts coming on stage to sing one last time.

Bill Gates – founder of Microsoft and the richest man in the world (owning $46.5 billion) – appeared on the London stage to discuss the challenges facing the world, before introducing Dido. Later, Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General of the UN addressed the audience, thanking them for their support.

However, the first concert to open – in Japan – only drew 10,000 spectators, disappointing many.

The concerts follow on 20 years after the Live Aid concert organised by Bob Geldof, which was created to raise money for famine victims in Ethopia.

By contrast, the aim of Live 8 – also organised by Geldof – is not fund-raising but instead to apply pressure to the leaders of the G8 to end world poverty, which claims the lives of 50,000 every day.

The Live 8 organisers are urging the G8 to:

1. Double the aid sent to the world’s poorest countries,
2. Fully cancel their debts,
3. Change the trade laws so that they can build their own future.

The Finance Ministers of the G8 agreed a plan last month to cancel the debt of 18 of the poorest countries to the IMF, the World Bank and the African Development Fund, but are requiring other countries to end political and financial corruption before they become elegible for debt relief.

On Thursday the President of the United States, George W. Bush, announced that the US will double US aid to Africa by 2010 – increasing to $8.6 billion a year. Bob Geldof welcomed the news, saying “This is the first time we have heard this sort of language.

“This is very, very positive indeed.”

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Tim Hortons, a popular Canadian express coffee and doughnut chain, has announced that they will be co-branding with another popular chain, Cold Stone Creamery, an American ice cream parlor chain.

The deal includes a total of 100 new stores, at CA$121,690 (US$100,000) each. Each company will have 50 stores that they will build as, or convert into, dual-operation franchises. Each of the 50 stores will offer menus from each company and be located in 7 states, mostly in the Northeastern U.S..

Executives at Tim Hortons believe that mixing the two together is perfect because Tim Hortons makes most of their profit in the morning, while the Creameries are more popular in the evening. The idea proved successful when tested for three months in Rhode Island, in two different stores.

“We’re very excited about the complementary daypart piece. It’s something unique in what we see from a co-branding perspective,” said Tim Hortons chief of operations, David Clanachan. Construction has already started and stores are expected to open in May.

Tim Hortons was founded by Canadian ice hockey player Tim Horton. The first store opened in Hamilton, Ontario in 1964. In July of 2007, there were over 2,700 locations in Canada and 500 in the U.S.. Cold Stone Creamery was founded in 1988 in Scottsdale, Arizona. There are over 1,400 operation, in locations such as Japan, South Korea and the U.S..

Thursday, June 23, 2011

NASA’s Cassini–Huygens spacecraft has discovered evidence for a large-scale saltwater reservoir beneath the icy crust of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The data came from the spacecraft’s direct analysis of salt-rich ice grains close to the jets ejected from the moon. The study has been published in this week’s edition of the journal Nature.

Data from Cassini’s cosmic dust analyzer show the grains expelled from fissures, known as tiger stripes, are relatively small and usually low in salt far away from the moon. Closer to the moon’s surface, Cassini found that relatively large grains rich with sodium and potassium dominate the plumes. The salt-rich particles have an “ocean-like” composition and indicate that most, if not all, of the expelled ice and water vapor comes from the evaporation of liquid salt-water. When water freezes, the salt is squeezed out, leaving pure water ice behind.

Cassini’s ultraviolet imaging spectrograph also recently obtained complementary results that support the presence of a subsurface ocean. A team of Cassini researchers led by Candice Hansen of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, measured gas shooting out of distinct jets originating in the moon’s south polar region at five to eight times the speed of sound, several times faster than previously measured. These observations of distinct jets, from a 2010 flyby, are consistent with results showing a difference in composition of ice grains close to the moon’s surface and those that made it out to the E ring, the outermost ring that gets its material primarily from Enceladean jets. If the plumes emanated from ice, they should have very little salt in them.

“There currently is no plausible way to produce a steady outflow of salt-rich grains from solid ice across all the tiger stripes other than salt water under Enceladus’s icy surface,” said Frank Postberg, a Cassini team scientist at the University of Heidelberg in Germany.

The data suggests a layer of water between the moon’s rocky core and its icy mantle, possibly as deep as about 50 miles (80 kilometers) beneath the surface. As this water washes against the rocks, it dissolves salt compounds and rises through fractures in the overlying ice to form reserves nearer the surface. If the outermost layer cracks open, the decrease in pressure from these reserves to space causes a plume to shoot out. Roughly 400 pounds (200 kilograms) of water vapor is lost every second in the plumes, with smaller amounts being lost as ice grains. The team calculates the water reserves must have large evaporating surfaces, or they would freeze easily and stop the plumes.

“We imagine that between the ice and the ice core there is an ocean of depth and this is somehow connected to the surface reservoir,” added Postberg.

The Cassini mission discovered Enceladus’ water-vapor and ice jets in 2005. In 2009, scientists working with the cosmic dust analyzer examined some sodium salts found in ice grains of Saturn’s E ring but the link to subsurface salt water was not definitive. The new paper analyzes three Enceladus flybys in 2008 and 2009 with the same instrument, focusing on the composition of freshly ejected plume grains. In 2008, Cassini discovered a high “density of volatile gases, water vapor, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, as well as organic materials, some 20 times denser than expected” in geysers erupting from the moon. The icy particles hit the detector target at speeds between 15,000 and 39,000 MPH (23,000 and 63,000 KPH), vaporizing instantly. Electrical fields inside the cosmic dust analyzer separated the various constituents of the impact cloud.

“Enceladus has got warmth, water and organic chemicals, some of the essential building blocks needed for life,” said Dennis Matson in 2008, Cassini project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

“This finding is a crucial new piece of evidence showing that environmental conditions favorable to the emergence of life can be sustained on icy bodies orbiting gas giant planets,” said Nicolas Altobelli, the European Space Agency’s project scientist for Cassini.

“If there is water in such an unexpected place, it leaves possibility for the rest of the universe,” said Postberg.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Three men are currently seeking the presidential nomination of the Reform Party of the United States of America: small business owner Andre Barnett, Earth Intelligence Network CEO Robert Steele, and former college football coach Robby Wells. Wikinews reached out to these candidates and asked each of them five questions about their campaigns. There were no space limits placed on the responses, and no candidate was exposed to another’s responses before making their own. The answers are posted below in unedited form for comparison of the candidates.

The Reform Party is a United States third party that was founded in 1995 by industrialist Ross Perot. Perot ran as the party’s first presidential nominee in 1996, and won over eight percent of the popular vote, the highest percentage for a third party candidate since. In 1998, professional wrestler Jesse Ventura ran on the Reform Party ticket and was elected Governor of Minnesota. The party fell in prominence during the lead-up to the 2000 presidential election when it was plagued by infighting between ideological factions. In 2000, paleoconservative Pat Buchanan won the presidential nomination, and went on to receive only 0.4 percent of the popular vote in the general election. In 2004, the party opted to endorse consumer advocate Ralph Nader, but ended the year nearly bankrupt. In 2008, Ted Weill won the party’s presidential nomination, but appeared on the ballot in only one state and won a total of 481 votes.

The party is currently trying to rebuild and has opened several new state chapters. They will attempt to appear on the ballot in more states for the 2012 presidential election. The party is expected to nominate its presidential ticket during the National Convention this summer.

Monday, November 8, 2010

Haile Gebrselassie, a 37-year-old Ethiopian road-running athlete, announced his retirement from the sport on Sunday, after leaving the New York City Marathon with an inflamed knee. Gebrselassie is widely considered “one of the greatest distance runners in history.”

“I never think about to retire. But for the first time, this is the day. […] Let me stop and do other work after this,” Gebrselassie said during a press conference. The athlete dropped out of the competition after running 25 kilometers. “Why should I retire? Why should I say I will retire in three or four years? You retire the very moment you utter those words,” he added.

New York Road Runners President Mary Wittenberg said on Saturday that “he had his knee drained and was given cortisone,” and that “it was unlikely Gebrselassie would even start the race.”

Monday, May 5, 2008

Computers and technology make our modern lifestyle more convenient, but they also create new risks like computer viruses and hacking. Many people want to enjoy the convenience of new technology, but they may not be aware of its problems.

WiMAX is being promoted in Taiwan by the Taipei Computer Association, the Industrial Technology Research Institute and the Ministry of Economic Affairs of the Republic of China. It is considered by some to be the communication standard for the next generation of mobile devices.

Information security companies are concerned increasingly by Internet crime, and some of them question the security of WiMAX. After all, everyone wants to welcome this new technology but is afraid of its potential to cause security issues.

Some companies have analyzed potential security issues which threaten the success of WiMAX. But what have they found?

Taking the opportunity of two press conferences in Taiwan, Wikinews Journalist Rico Shen briefly interviewed both Hsiao-wen Hung, President of Microsoft Research Asia and Li Chang, Deputy Secretary General of Taipei Computer Association. With their experience in the IT industry, they agreed to comment on this question.