Saturday, September 22, 2007

The Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office said yesterday that pop music super-star Britney Spears was facing charges for a hit and run offence and driving without a valid drivers’ license.

Charges were filed following an accident in which police allege Spears smashed her car into another vehicle in a parking area in August of 2007.

She could face a maximum of six months in jail and US$2,000 in fines if convicted.

A group of paparazzi recorded a video Britney steering her car into another vehicle on August 6 as she tried to pull into a parking spot in a Studio City lot.

Kim Robard-Rifkin was the owner of the other car and she filed a police report three days after the accident. The 59-year-old nurse found out that it was Spears who ran into her car after watching a video on a celebrity website.

Robard-Rifkin said, “I simply want my car fixed, the same as I would fix somebody’s car if I had done that.”

Spears will be arraigned on October 10.

Wednesday, July 21, 2021

Wikinews correspondent J.J. Liu spoke with Technological University Dublin (TUD) senior lecturer at the School of Surveying & Construction Management, Dr Lorcan Sirr on Friday regarding the supply of housing in the Republic of Ireland and relevant parallels across the rest of Europe, as well as recent developments by the government and private sector that are causing a rise in rents and home prices in the Irish real estate market.

Dr Sirr is a regular contributor to The Irish Times and has provided commentary to Irish radio station Newstalk, national broadcaster Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) and various other publications. In addition to being a chartered planning and development surveyor and assessor to the Society of Chartered Surveyors, Dr Sirr is a Peace Commissioner and former external examiner for the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, according to his profile on Worky.

Dr Sirr was a lecturer and former head of research for the Faculty of the Built Environment at the Dublin Institute of Technology, which entered a merger with two partner institutes to become TUD January 1, 2019. He received his bachelor’s degree in estate management at the University of Greenwich, United Kingdom, and master’s degree in urban design and PhD in town planning at the University of Manchester. He has a second master’s in literature from KU Leuven, Belgium, and speaks French.

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.

Sunday, November 6, 2016

The following is the sixth and final edition of a monthly series chronicling the U.S. 2016 presidential election. It features original material compiled throughout the previous month after an overview of the month’s biggest stories.

In this month’s edition on the campaign trail: the Free & Equal Foundation holds a presidential debate with three little-known candidates; three additional candidates give their final pleas to voters; and past Wikinews interviewees provide their electoral predictions ahead of the November 8 election.

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Dell Inc. announced on Tuesday that it will partner up with the Microsoft-Nortel Innovative communications alliance (ICA) team to sell Unified Communications and VoIP products.

The announcement on Tuesday the 16th of October 2007 includes Dell selling VoIP, data and wireless networking products from Nortel and the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and other unified communications products.

The partnership with both manufacturers should allow Dell to provide a pre-integrated solution.

In March 2007, competitors IBM and Cisco announced they would join in the competition for developing unified communications applications and the development of open technologies around the unified communications and collaboration (UC2) client platform an application programming interfaces (APIs) offered by IBM as a subset of Lotus Sametime.

“We want to make it simple for our customers to deploy unified communications so their end users can get access to all their messages in one place – whether its e-mail, phone or mobile device. This will pave the way for more business-ready productivity tools,” said vice president of solutions, Dell Product Group, Rick Becker.

• Customers have four options:
  • Core Office Communication Server 2007 – provides instant messaging and on-premise Microsoft Live Meeting.
  • Office Communication Server: Telephony – enables call routing tracking and management, VoIP gateway and public branch exchange (PBX) integration.
  • Audio and Video Conferencing – allows point-to-point conference, video conference and VoIP audio conference.
  • Exchange Unified Messaging – provides voicemail, e-mail and fax in Microsoft Outlook, and anywhere access of Microsoft Outlook Inbox and Calendar.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Members of Australia’s Health Services Union (HSU) will go on strike in Victoria next week in a dispute over stalled wage and career structure negotiations. Over 5000 physiotherapists, speech pathologists and radiation therapists will walk off the job next week, effectively closing the state’s 68 largest health services.

The strike will force the closure of intensive care units and emergency departments across the state.

It is feared the strike could continue into Easter.

National secretary of the HSU, Kathy Jackson said admissions would be crippled, while intensive care patients would have to be evacuated to New South Wales, Tasmania and South Australia as hospitals will not be able to perform tests or administer treatment.

“When an ambulance shows up you can’t admit a patient without an X-ray being available, you can’t intubate them and you can’t operate on them,” she said.

“If something goes wrong in an ICU you need to be able to X-ray, use nuclear medicine or any diagnostic procedure,” said Ms Jackson.

Ms Jackson said the HSU offered arbitration last year, but the state government refused. “They’re not interested in settling disputes, they hope that we are just going to go away.”

“We’re not going away, we’ve gone back and balloted the whole public health workforce in Victoria, those ballots were successful, 97 percent approval rating,” she said.

The HSU is urging the government to commence serious negotiations to resolve the dispute before industrial action commenced.

The government has offered the union a 3.25 per cent pay increase, in line with other public sector workers but the union has demanded more, but stopped short of specifying a figure.

Victorian Premier John Brumby said the claim would be settled according to the government’s wages policy. “The Government is always willing and wanting to sit down and negotiate with the relevant organisations . . . we have a wages policy based around an increase of 3.25 per cent and, above that, productivity offset,” he told parliament.

The union claims it is also arguing against a lack of career structure, which has caused many professionals to leave the health service. Ms Jackson said wages and career structures in Victoria were behind other states.

Victorian Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu said he was not in support of the proposed strike and called on the government to meet with unions. “There could not be a more serious threat to our health system than has been announced today.”

“We now have to do whatever is possible to stop this strike from proceeding,” he said.

The opposition leader will meet with the union at 11:30 AM today.

Victorian Hospitals Industry Association industrial relations services manager Simon Chant said hospitals were looking at the possible impact and warned that patients may have to be evacuated interstate if the strike goes ahead.

Monday, May 21, 2012

Bruce, Canberra — This past week, an overstocked Australian Opals, the women’s national basketball team, prepared for the 2012 Olympic Games in London with a weeklong training camp at the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) to be used to help narrow the nineteen member Opals squad down to the twelve that go to the Games, and provide players who rarely play together an extended period of time to play together in order to improve on court dynamics.

Camp started on Sunday, with players arriving from hometowns around Australia including Cairns, MacKay, Gladstone, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Melbourne.

The defending champions, the United States women’s national basketball team, are perceived as the Australian Opals’ main competitors. In the last three Olympic Games the Opals got silver medals. In each of these cases the United States got first place. Coach Carrie Graf said “thinking about the US too soon in inappropriate”, “Our focus is first and foremost, game by game winning our pool”. Amongst the Australian Opals’ competitors in the pool are Brazil, Russia, and Great Britain. Carrie Graf said Great Britain “will put up a fight on home turf” but there is a “world class [AIS] facility” and “world class medical support staff” supporting the team.

Australian Opal player Penny Taylor recently suffered injury from a torn anterior cruciate ligament, meaning she cannot play Olympics this year. In regards to the situation player Lauren Jackson, who is going into her fourth Olympics, said “you would never wish that upon anybody.” She says as a team they have to “move on, move through that” and “come together” to pick up their offence and defense. Despite the loss of one of their key players she says “we definitely have the talent there” and the team is all “on the same page.” She feels “pretty confident” and speaks of “very exciting” times ahead. Jenna O’Hea is going into her first Olympics with the team. She is still “pinching” herself and says she is taking it “day by day”.

A typical day at the camp might start with a 7.00am – 8.30am breakfast at the AIS Dining hall, before one and a half or two hours of court, gym, or swimming training. The middle of each day might consist of media meetings, medical checks, team meetings, and time to practise shooting. Around 12.00pm, the players meet to eat lunch and recover from the morning. The afternoon typically consists of more training, and some scrimmage games. Players usually finish around 7.00pm for dinner, and perhaps a massage.

The nineteen players in attendance this week at training camp were Suzy Batkovic, Abby Bishop, Elizabeth Cambage, Rohanee Cox, Cayla Francis, Kristi Harrower, Laura Hodges, Natalie Hurst, Lauren Jackson, Rachel Jarry, Kathleen MacLeod, Jenna O’Hea, Samantha Richards, Jennifer Screen, Belinda Snell, Marianna Tolo, Kristen Veal, Carly Wilson, and Hanna Zavecz. Basketball Australia has named fifteen players that are to attend the second phase of the camp: Suzy Batkovic, Abby Bishop, Elizabeth Cambage, Kristi Harrower, Laura Hodges, Lauren Jackson, Rachel Jarry, Kathleen MacLeod, Jenna O’Hea, Erin Phillips, Samantha Richards, Jennifer Screen, Belinda Snell, Marianna Tolo, and Hanna Zavecz.

Friday, February 3, 2006

Computer security experts warn that a malicious computer worm, dubbed “Kama Sutra,” is set to wreak havoc this Friday, February 3rd on Microsoft Windows computers worldwide. Kama Sutra is designed to destroy files that end in .doc, .zip and .pdf.

The Kama Sutra worm has been spreading through cyberspace since January 16, packaged in emails with subject headings such as: “give me a kiss” and “crazy illegal sex.”

When users click an email attachment, their PCs become infected with destructive, self-replicating software. The worm affects Microsoft Windows operating systems and is programmed to go to work on the third of every month, overwriting or corrupting Microsoft files and others such as Portable Document Format (PDF) files.

“This one can damage your office files, your Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and your PowerPoint presentations,” Tino Klironomos, a computer retailer, said. “(The files will be) all gone, history.”

Computer security company LURHQ reports that there may be hundreds of thousands of machines already infected with the worm, which also goes by the monikers “BlackWorm,” “CME-24,” “Blackmal,” “Mywife.E” and “Nyxem.”

To prevent the worm, Windows users should arm themselves with anti-virus software. People can also protect their PC with up-to-date anti-virus gear and firewall protection. Free anti-virus tools are available from many anti-virus organisations. These tools can detect and remove the Kama Sutra worm from an infected machine.

Experts say: “Make sure your virus definitions are up to date. Besides being careful about opening email messages and attachments, users should back up their most valuable computer files on an external device such as a CD, zip drive or DVD.”

Steve Bass at PC World says: “Stop worrying. If you update your virus program signatures regularly, and do a weekly AV scan, I don’t think you have much to worry about…”

Other advice is not to open any messages with the subject headers “crazy, illegal sex”, “give me a kiss” and “hot movie.”

The worm will not affect machines running on non-Windows operating systems such as Mac OS X or GNU/Linux.

Many security systems reported a very small amount of vandalism, even though the threats were very high.

Friday, April 22, 2016

Musician Prince died at home in Minnesota, United States yesterday.

A publicist confirmed his death.”It is with profound sadness that I am confirming that the legendary, iconic performer, Prince Rogers Nelson has died”.

A statement from the Carver County Sheriff’s office said Prince was found in an elevator at his home at Paisley Park Studio. Emergency workers were called, but after they were unable to revive him, he was pronounced dead.

Following Prince’s first album in 1978, he came to prominence in the 1980s. His 1980s releases included 1999, Kiss, Purple Rain, and Sign o’ the Times. He went on to record more than 30 albums.During his career he sold more than 100 million records and had 47 songs reach the US Billboard top 100. Five of those songs, When Doves Cry, Kiss, Let’s Go Crazy, Cream, and Batdance, went to number one. The song When Doves Cry was number one for five weeks.

In 1984 Prince starred in the movie Purple Rain, which was based on his album. The movie’s song score won Prince an Academy Award for best original song score. Prince won seven Grammy awards and in 2004 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.He also wrote songs released successfully by other artists, such as Manic Monday released in 1986 by the Bangles and Nothing Compares 2 U released in 1990 by Sinéad O’Connor.

The Minnesota Star Tribune reported an autopsy will be conducted to determine Prince’s cause of death.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Two US Marshals and one officer of the St. Louis, Missouri Metropolitan Police Department were shot during a gunfight while trying to apprehend a suspect on Tuesday morning. All three were taken to local hospitals for treatment, where one US Marshal later died. The suspect, identified by his family as 35-year-old Carlos Boles, was shot and killed by authorities returning fire.

Eight law enforcement officials arrived at Bole’s St. Louis, Missouri home to serve a felony arrest warrant. Upon entering the house, they were fired at with a semi-automatic firearm, according to ABC News. The shooter reportedly said, “I’m only going out in a body bag.” After the shootings occurred, a SWAT team was requested because police did not know whether any other individuals were in the home. Three children, belonging to Bole’s sister, had left the home before police initially moved in around 6:50 a.m. CST (12:50 UTC).

The wounded officer of the St. Louis Police Department was taken to Barnes-Jewish Hospital after being grazed by a bullet that was stopped by his bulletproof vest, and then falling down. A spokesperson for the police department described the officer, who had been with the department for 34 years, as responsive and communicating.

The two injured marshals were taken to St. Louis University Hospital. A statement released by the US Marshals Service said one of the marshals, 48-year-old Deputy Marshal John Perry had died around 7:00 pm CST (01:00 UTC) after being shot in the head. Perry was a ten-year veteran of the US Marshals Service. The other US Marshal, 31-year-old Theodore Abegg, was reported to be in fair condition, shot in the ankle and is expected to survive. Francis Slay, Mayor of St. Louis, talked to the victims’ families at the hospital.

“Our deputies and law enforcement partners face danger every day in the pursuit of justice for the citizens of this great nation,” said Director Stacia A. Hylton of the US Marshals Service. “Our people and our partners are well trained and prepared, but it is impossible to predict when a wanted individual will make a fateful choice that results in the loss of life or injury. When that happens, and the life lost is a law enforcement officer or other public servant, it is an immeasurable tragedy felt by all. Today, unfortunately, we again feel that pain. Our thoughts and prayers are with our fallen deputy as well as the injured and their families.”

The suspect’s sister said he was not returning to jail, in which he had already served ten years. In December, records show Boles pleaded guilty to burglary, armed criminal action and assault charges. He was living in the 3100 block of Osage Street in the St. Louis suburb of Dutchtown. Boles was wanted for assault on a law enforcement officer in the second degree, three counts of possession of a controlled substance, and resisting arrest. The FBI is now conducting the investigation, per standard procedure.