Archive for December, 2021

12
Dec

Texan bystanders kill car passenger after child injured

   Posted by: Admin    in Uncategorized

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

A man who was trying to protect the driver of a vehicle that had hit a child pedestrian was killed by an angry crowd the evening of Wednesday, June 20, in Austin, Texas.

The man was identified today by Austin police as David Rivas Morales, age 40. The driver had just dropped Morales off at his sister’s townhouse moments before. Then while still in the parking lot, he allegedly bumped the toddler with the vehicle. The child was not injured and was not taken to the hospital. A group of 3 or 4 men confronted the driver and Morales came back to assist him. The assailants then turned on Morales. Police indicated the driver, who had escaped the scene of the crime, was cooperating with the investigation. Morales died at the hospital from injuries that included a cracked skull and brain hemorrhaging.

The neighborhood was crowded at the time with some 2,000 to 3,000 people who were participating in the annual Juneteenth celebration, which commemorates the day the emancipation of slaves was announced in Texas. It was not immediately known whether any of the attackers had been part of the celebration.

In a news conference on Wednesday, members of League of United Latin American Citizens called on the community not to assume the killing was racially motivated solely because Juneteenth celebrants are predominately African-American and the victim was Latino. Police officers stated that early reports were incorrect in implying thousands of potential witnesses, as investigations suggested only 10 to 15 people had been in the parking lot when the incident occurred and most of these were residents of apartments nearby.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Texan_bystanders_kill_car_passenger_after_child_injured&oldid=724867”
12
Dec

Baseball’s Pete Rose: “I bet on my team every night”

   Posted by: Admin    in Uncategorized

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

In an interview on ESPN Radio, Pete Rose admitted to hosts Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann that he “bet on [his] team every night” and admitted that the Dowd Report was correct in its assessment.

Pete Rose was given a lifetime ban from any involvement in Major League Baseball in 1989. Rose accepted the lifetime ban in exchange for not returning a finding of fact that Rose did indeed bet on baseball. He initially indicated to MLB commissioner Bud Selig and in his book My Prison Without Bars that he did bet on Major League Baseball games, but that he never bet against his team or used his betting to influence the outcome of any game. The Dowd report concurs with this statement from Rose.

Rose acknowledged his betting in the hopes that Selig would reinstate Rose and thus make him eligible for a number of accolades of which, to this point, he had been deprived. However, Selig refused to reinstate him despite his confession. Among those accolades include a formal retirement of his uniform number 14 and induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. While his number cannot formally be retired, no player since Rose’s retirement has worn the number, and it is unlikely that it will be worn again by any player on the Cincinnati Reds.

Rose appeared on the Dan Patrick Show on ESPN Radio as part of promotion for an exhibit at the Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati detailing the baseball career of Rose. He said that “I bet on my team to win every night because I love my team, I believe in my team. I did everything in my power every night to win that game.”

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Baseball%27s_Pete_Rose:_%22I_bet_on_my_team_every_night%22&oldid=2524396”

Analysis of Lubricants in Internal Combustion Engines

by

immanuelllorens

Motor oil is used to lubricate the various components of an internal combustion engine. Internal combustion engines provide automotives and industrial equipment with mechanical power. Examples of non-road vehicles that rely on motor oil include go-karts, motor boats, aircraft, locomotives, as well as large agricultural and construction equipment. Motor oil lubricants are derived from both petroleum-based and non-petroleum based chemical compounds. Most modern motor oils are blends of hydrocarbons, polyalphaolefins, and polyinternal olefins.

Internal combustion engines include reciprocating engines, spark ignition engines, and two-stroke or four-stroke engines. Internal combustion engines combust fuel with an oxidizer such as air in a high-temperature combustion chamber. The expansion of high temperature and high pressure gases generated by combustion is directly applied to components in the engine such as pistons, turbines blades, and nozzles.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI_y00hr1FY[/youtube]

Combustion engines that employ continuous combustion include gas turbines, jet engines, and rocket engines. To reduce wear and tear among surfaces that interact in close proximity, the components of an internal combustion engine need to be kept well-lubricated. Moving parts in internal combustion engines generate friction, which not only wastes power by converting energy to heat, but also leads to overall engine wear and degradation.

Heightened friction can lower overall engine efficiency, increase fuel consumption, and if left unchecked, may eventually lead to complete engine breakdown. To prevent this from happening, many oil analysis professionals recommend that supervisors conduct regular

engine oil analysis

. Oil analysis is the laboratory-based analysis of a lubricant s properties, wear debris, and rate of contamination.

Motor oil analysis

should be performed during routine preventive maintenance of vehicles and industrial equipment. Regular maintenance can provide accurate and coherent information on the condition of the internal combustion engine and lubricant. By performing regular motor oil analysis, analysts can schedule maintenance downtimes for the engine, which eliminates the need for costly repairs.

Motor oil analysis

can help analysts determine the remaining useful life of the engine lubricant as well as its additives. Supervisors should contact a motor oil analysis firm and send them a sample of the engine lubricant for an accurate assessment. Supervisors should also ensure that analysts have been certified by the International Council of Machinery Lubrication to ensure reliable feedback.

If you have questions, please visit us at www.jglubricantservices.com/ for complete details and answers.

Article Source:

ArticleRich.com

10
Dec

Tornadoes cause millions in damages in Waco, Texas

   Posted by: Admin    in Uncategorized

Saturday, May 6, 2006

Early Saturday morning winds up to 90 miles per hour struck Waco, Texas and central McLennan County, United States, causing widespread damage and leaving many households without electricity.

No deaths or serious injuries have been reported; however, there is a tremendous amount of damage in 15 areas of the city, leading Mayor Virgina DuPuy to declare the city a disaster area.

The hardest hit area was Franklin Avenue, where the Coca-Cola bottling plant’s roof was peeled open as if by a giant can-opener. There were Sprite bottles spread out onto the street. The nearby Furniture Row shopping center was also hit hard. Some furniture was found as far as three-quarters of a mile away. Other hard-hit areas were Robinson, Hewitt, Woodway, and Speegleville. Densely populated Inner Waco was spared of any catastrophic damage, though hundreds, and possibly thousands, of trees have fallen, and roofs destroyed.

The main concern is restoring power to over 23,000 households and businesses. Many gas stations and grocery stores in the disaster areas were closed until power is restored. Those that remained open have had to throw out all perishable items. Also of concern is getting electricity to those with medical needs. The city has provided help to those without power at the Dewey Recreation Center.

The storm is the hardest to hit the area since the tornado that struck on May 11, 1953, which tore through downtown and killed 114 people.

Waco has seen more than its share of tornadoes recently. Only a week ago, an F1 tornado damaged many houses along Orchid and Kendall Lanes. No people were injured, though two horses were killed when their stable collapsed.

The National Weather Service confirmed this morning’s winds were a F2 tornado, where wind speeds may have reached 115 miles per hour in some locations.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Tornadoes_cause_millions_in_damages_in_Waco,_Texas&oldid=2541599”
10
Dec

Las Vegas ‘chili finger’ woman has history of lawsuits

   Posted by: Admin    in Uncategorized

Story sources
  • Barbara Grady, Reuters. “Wendy’s Offer Reward Over Chilli Finger” — xtra msn, April 11, 2005
  • Dave Murphy and Ryan Kim. “Loyalists still visit the Wendy’s, Some even get the chili, although business is down” — San Francisco Chronicle, April 10, 2005
  • Dan Reed, Crystal Carreon. “Scrutiny intensifies for woman who found finger in chili” — AJC, April 10, 2005
  • Ken Ritter, AP. “Wendy’s finger finder has litigious history” — Las Vegas Review-Journal, April 9, 2005
  • Brandon Bailey and Rodney Foo. “Finger-finder involved in other claims” — San Jose Mercury News, April 9, 2005
  • Rachel Konrad, AP. “Woman who claimed to find finger at Wendy’s has litigious history” — San Jose Mercury News, April 8, 2005
  • Brian Haynes. “Chili investigation comes to Las Vegas” — Las Vegas Review-Journal, April 8, 2005

Monday, April 11, 2005

Anna Ayala, the Las Vegas woman who claims to have found the notorious “chili finger” at a Wendy’s outlet in San Jose, California, has filed lawsuits against other businesses, according to researchers at the Associated Press. Her previous court battles included the national El Pollo Loco chicken-chain, a previous employer, and even General Motors.

Ayala successfully won her suit for medical expenses against El Pollo Loco, after her daughter Genesis contracted salmonella poisoning from eating at the restaurant. However, Ayala lost another suit in 2000 claiming that a wheel fell off her car.

Ayala’s original account of the incident spoke “emotionally and with disgust” to the San Jose Mercury News when she described it to the paper.

“Lies, lies, lies, that’s all I am hearing. They should look at Wendy’s. What are they hiding? Why are we being victimized again and again?” Ayala recently told The Associated Press. Ayala is now in her Las Vegas home, avoiding reporters.

“It doesn’t prove anything,” family spokesman Ken Bono told the San Francisco Chronicle. “My mom has 10 lawsuits. A lot of people have lawsuits. Why would she sue for money? She has plenty of money,” he said.

Nick Muyo, a spokesman for the San Jose Police department, said not to expect new information in the case for at least a week.

“We just want to step back and take a deep breath,” Muyo told Knight Ridder Newspapers. “From a law enforcement point of view, once you establish it is a human finger, you have to wonder is this a case of industrial accident or is this a case of unreported homicide,” he said.

Las Vegas police searched Anna Ayala’s home on Wednesday, retrieving a cooler and other effects from her home, such as a makeup case.

Despite the incident, which has dramatically reduced sales at Northern California Wendy’s outlets, die-hard Wendy’s fans are still turning up for lunch, even at the outlet where the finger was found, at 1405 Monterey Highway, just south of downtown San Jose.

“We’ve eaten here for years,” a police officer told the San Francisco Chronicle under the condition that he remain anonymous. “They’re very nice people. When we work Spartan Stadium, we always eat here,” he said.

San Jose City Council candidate Andrew Diaz still eats the chili. And he witnessed the finger discovery.

“I walked away real slow,” Diaz told the San Francisco Chronicle. “I didn’t want any commotion,” he said.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Las_Vegas_%27chili_finger%27_woman_has_history_of_lawsuits&oldid=2262051”

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Robert ‘Bob’ Edmonds, who sued the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG), died Monday in hospital at age 83 of cancer.

“He’ll be remembered as the guy who just wouldn’t go away,” said Ontario Ombudsman André Marin speaking of the loss. “I was the speakerphone and he was the speaker – I merely amplified what he had to say. He deserves the credit for the entire thing.”

Edmonds of Coboconk, Ontario first came to fight the OLG in 2001 when he was “robbed” of his lottery winning of CAN$250,000 by a store clerk. He asked the store clerk’s wife Phyllis LaPlante to check the tickets and she said he did not win but won a free ticket (when someone wins a lottery prize in Canada a small sound goes off in the store). Days after, the couple who owned the store were in the local newspaper saying they had won the jackpot of $250,000. When he contacted the OLG they denied the allegations, and when the couple were arrested for fraud they refused to return his winnings. He sued the LaPlantes for the winnings and settled for $150,000.

In 2002, Edmonds sued the corporation and signed a confidentiality agreement on behalf of the OLG after a judge asked them to rightfully give him the money he won. They gave him $200,000 three years later. Last Friday they gave him $50,000 dollars more, for a total of $250,000.

In October 2006, CBC’s The Fifth Estate showed that more retailers from 1999 to 2006 were winning instead of the customers. After the broadcast OLG’s former CEO called him and personally apologised and the company started to create more security measures for customers.

Following the allegations, 1,000,000 scratch tickets were recalled and on March 23, 2007 CEO Duncan Brown announced he resigned his position. Days later Ontario Ombudsman André Marin sparked up an investingation into the OLG however it is still ongoing.

Edmonds leaves his wife, daughter, and two sons.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Canadian_man_who_found_faults_of_Ontario_Lottery_and_Gaming_Corporation_dies_at_age_83&oldid=1123976”
6
Dec

Lap Band Surgery To Cure Morbid Obesity

   Posted by: Admin    in Weight Loss Surgery

Lap Band Surgery To Cure Morbid Obesity

by

Don Saunders

Although the term lap band is commonly used today when talking about gastric banding surgery, LAP-BAND is in fact the registered trade-mark for just one form of gastric band developed by an American company and approved in 2001 by the FDA for use in the United States.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4avF8APaBc[/youtube]

Gastric banding, which is a type of purely restrictive weight loss surgery (that is to say that it works solely by restricting the quantity of food which can be consumed), includes both vertical banded gastroplasty and adjustable gastric banding. In the case of lap band surgery we are looking only at adjustable gastric banding. The lap band system comprised a silicone ring with an inflatable inner lining which is designed to be placed around the upper section of the stomach. The band is then connected by a length of tubing to an access port which is placed just below the surface of the skin during surgery. The placement of the band high up on the stomach creates a small pouch at the top of the stomach to hold food, with the bulk of the stomach now being below the band. The placement of the band also creates a very small opening, or stoma, between the two sections of the stomach and the size of this opening can be controlled by introducing liquid (normally saline) into, or removing liquid from, the inflatable inner ring of the band through the access port. During lap band surgery the inner band is normally only given a very minimal inflation producing a relatively large opening between the two sections of stomach. Although the term relative is used here it should be noted that the newly created small stomach pouch and the opening between the sections of the stomach are in reality both very small. In the period immediately following lap band surgery, the inner ring will be gradually inflated until a point is reached at which weight loss is optimized and the patient is comfortable with the size and frequency of meals that he/she can eat. Restrictive forms of weight loss surgery are generally easier to perform than other procedures and lap band surgery is often performed laparoscopically which results in a reasonably short stay in hospital and a fairly fast post-operative recovery. This type of surgery also avoids many of the nutritional problems seen in malabsorption surgery (gastric bypass surgery in which food is re-routed through part of the small intestine). Finally, lap band surgery is totally reversible and removal of the band will result in the stomach returning to its normal size.

For more information on

lap band surgery

please visit

Gastric Bypass

Facts today.

Article Source:

ArticleRich.com

Monday, September 24, 2007

Russ Aegard is running for the Green Party of Ontario in the Ontario provincial election, in the Thunder Bay-Atikokan 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.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Ontario_Votes_2007:_Interview_with_Green_candidate_Russ_Aegard,_Thunder_Bay-Atikokan&oldid=518283”

Friday, January 25, 2008

B2B Trade Area of Taipei Game Show, criticized by trade buyers last year, but accompanied with 2008 Taiwan Digital Content Forum, moved to the second floor at Taipei World Trade Center for world-wide participants with a better exchange atmosphere this year.

Not only local OBMs (Softstar Entertainment, Soft-World International Corp., International Games System Corp., …, etc.) but also companies from New Zealand, Canada, Japan, Hong Kong, and South Korea showcased different specialists with multiple styles. Especially on South Korea, participated members from G? Trade Show (Game Show & Trade, All-Round, aka Gstar) showcased gaming industry of South Korea and the G? upcoming at this November with brochures.

In the 2-days Digital Content Forum, world-class experts not only shared industry experiences, members from Taiwan Gaming Industry Association also discussed and forecasted marketing models for gaming industry. With participations from governmental, industrial, and academical executives world-wide, this forum helps them gained precious experiences of digital content industry from several countries.

According to the Taipei Computer Association, the show and forum organizer, the digital content industry in Taiwan was apparently grown up recent years as Minister of Economic Affairs of the Republic of China Steve Ruey-long Chen said at Opening Ceremony yesterday. Without R&Ds from cyber-gaming, and basic conceptions from policies and copyright issues, this (digital content) industry will be fallen down in Taiwan. If this industry wanted to be grown up in sustainability, gaming OBMs in Taiwan should independently produce different and unique games and change market style to market brands and games to the world.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=International_participants_showcase_different_industry_cultures_at_2008_Taipei_Game_Show&oldid=621950”
5
Dec

Mysterious power failure takes down Wikipedia, Wikinews

   Posted by: Admin    in Uncategorized

This article mentions the Wikimedia Foundation, one of its projects, or people related to it. Wikinews is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

On Monday, at 10.14 pm UTC, the Wikimedia server cluster experienced a total power failure, taking down Wikipedia, Wikinews, and all other Wikimedia websites.

The servers are housed in a colocation facility (colo) in Tampa, Florida, USA. They occupy two racks, with each rack receiving electricity from two independent supplies. However, both supplies have circuit-breakers in them, and both opened at the same time, leading to a total power failure. All computers immediately went down. It’s normal for fire safety regulations to prohibit uninterruptible power supplies in colos, with the colo providing its own UPS and generator instead. The circuit breakers were on the computer side of this emergency power system, so none of the computers continued to receive power to survive the breaker trip or shut down safely.

The actual reason why the circuit breakers tripped is currently unknown.

When power was restored, it was discovered that most of the MySQL databases that store the data which makes up Wikipedia et al had been corrupted. The main database and the four slaves had all damaged the data on their hard disk drives beyond the ability of the auto-correction to repair. Only one copy survived safely, on a machine that is used for report generation and maintenance tasks, which remained 31 hours backlogged while catching up after an unusually heavy update load during the previous week.

Volunteer Wikimedia engineers worked through the night rebuilding the databases from the sole good copy onto the other servers. The Wikipedia database is over 180Gb in size, making the copying process last 1.5 – 2 hours for every server it was performed upon.

Regular back-ups of the database of Wikipedia projects are maintained – the encyclopedia in its entirety was not at risk. The last database download was made on February 9; all edits since then could only have been laboriously rebuilt from logs and recovered from the damaged database requiring much more time and effort.

Limited read-only service was established late Tuesday afternoon, with editing becoming possible 24 hours after the power failure. Final repairs continue now, as well as upgrades to prevent similar issues in the future. Server-intensive features, such as categories and ‘watchlists’ that display recent changes to selected articles to registered users, remain disabled to ease the load on the recovering systems.

The process which led to the damage originated with the operating system, disk controllers, or hard drives failing to flush the data correctly.

If the power to a database server is cut mid-write, the database may be corrupted and unreadable, however the operating system, hardware, and software are designed to make this very unlikely. In a previous incident in 2004 power was also lost to a server but the database was undamaged.

To avoid such damage, each database server saves a copy of an edit to be applied to the database on a separate storage system before making the actual update to the database itself. This so-called ‘write-ahead logging’ should ensure that in the event of a system crash, the database can be rebuilt from a ‘last-good’ state by replaying the edits saved in the log.

Earlier this year popular blogging site LiveJournal suffered a similar power failure when another customer at their colocation facility pressed an Emergency Power Off button, intended for use only by firefighters. The company suffered database corruption similar to that seen at Wikimedia.

LiveJournal are now fitting UPS to their servers to ensure that they have time to shut down safely in the event of a power failure. Wikimedia was said to be investigating the possibility of fitting similar equipment at the time of this failure.

Several pundits have suggested that the use of another database, such as the proprietary database Oracle or the free PostgreSQL, would have avoided the database corruption seen at the server cluster. A post-mortem of the incident show the failure was in the operating system, or the hardware, or some combination of the two. LiveJournal, which also uses MySQL, reported similar database corruption after their power cut.

The Wikimedia foundation only allows the use of free software on its systems, and future versions of the Mediawiki software will support the PostgreSQL database.

Users are reminded that during times of system failure or excessive demand, they can still search Wikipedia using Google. The articles may be viewed using Google’s cache.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Mysterious_power_failure_takes_down_Wikipedia,_Wikinews&oldid=4550382”