Tuesday, March 7, 2006

After this weekend, Texas can celebrate not only bringing home the Big 12 Conference trophy but also having the All-Big 12 Player of the Year, P.J. Tucker, and the first recipient of the Defensive Player of the Year award, LaMarcus Aldridge.

Rival Kansas, who tied with Texas for the No. 1 slot in the conference but was denied the trophy, had coach Bill Self named Coach of the Year and Brandon Rush named Freshman of the Year. Michael Neal of Oklahoma was named Newcomer of the Year.

The All-Big 12 awards are selected by the league’s head coaches, who are not allowed to vote for their own players.

Tucker, a unanimous All-Big 12 First Team choice, is the first Longhorn to earn Big 12 Player of the Year recognition. He leads the team and ranks sixth overall in the conference in scoring (16.1), while leading the league in rebounding (9.0). He is also fourth in field goal percentage with a .531 mark. He has led UT in scoring seven times in league play and is second in the Big 12 overall with 10 double-doubles.

Aldridge wins the first defensive honor awarded by the Big 12. He is first in the Big 12 with 59 blocks overall, including 27 in conference games. He has 81 defensive rebounds in 2005-06, ranking third in the league. Aldridge can score as well, leading the Big 12 with 13 double-doubles.

Neal is the second-straight Sooner and fourth overall to win Newcomer of the Year. One of the top long-range threats in the Big 12, the junior college transfer ranks first in conference games in 3-point field goal percentage (.495) and 3-point field goals per game (3.86). He is also averaging a team-best 14.8 points in league action. He has shot 50.0 percent or better from beyond the arc 11 times this season.

Rush is the first freshman in conference history to be named to the All-Big 12 First Team. The top scoring freshman in the conference with 15.1 points per game, Rush also ranks seventh with a 6.6 rebounding average. He is the fourth KU player to surpass 400 points (408) in his freshman season. The native of Kansas City, Mo. is the second Jayhawk to win freshman accolades (Jeff Boschee, 1998-99).

Self wins his first Big 12 coaching honor and the third for a Jayhawk mentor. After returning just 21.2 percent of his scoring from a year ago, Self guided KU to a share of the Big 12 regular season championship, its sixth in league annals. Starting three freshmen and two sophomores, Kansas recorded its 18th straight season with at least 22 victories.

The All-Big 12 First, Second, Third and Honorable Mention teams were also announced, while conference coaches also selected All-Defensive and All-Rookie Teams for the first time.

Friday, January 27, 2006

Chantelle Houghton has won the British reality TV show Celebrity Big Brother. Michael Barrymore came in second place.

Houghton, 22, was the only non-celebrity on the show and was given a secret mission for four days by Big Brother to convince the other housemates she was a member of the fictional band “Kandy Floss”.

The television show, aired on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom is a spin off of the popular series shown around the world. This series of the show started on 5 January 2006 and lasted for 23 days. There were 11 housemates, six of whom were evicted on the 27 January 2006.

Unknown to either the audience nor the winner until her exit interview, Houghton won £25,000 for winning the show and not being a Celebrity.

Also evicted on the 27th were:

• Chantelle Houghton (non-celebrity promotions girl and Paris Hilton look-a-like) – Winner
• Michael Barrymore (television broadcaster and comedian) – Runner Up: 2nd Place
• Maggot (member of Goldie Lookin’ Chain) – Runner Up: 3rd Place
• Samuel Preston (lead singer of The Ordinary Boys) – Runner Up: 4th Place
• Pete Burns (former Dead or Alive singer) – Runner Up: 5th Place
• Traci Bingham (actress from Baywatch and model) – Runner Up: 6th Place

Thursday, October 22, 2020

2020 Melbourne Lord Mayor candidate Wayne Tseng answered some questions about his campaign for the upcoming election from Wikinews. The Lord Mayor election in the Australian city is scheduled to take place this week.

Tseng runs a firm called eTranslate, which helps software developers to make the software available to the users. In the candidate’s questionnaire, Tseng said eTranslate had led to him working with all three tiers of the government. He previously belonged to the Australian Liberal Party, but has left since then, to run for mayorship as an independent candidate.

Tseng is of Chinese descent, having moved to Australia with his parents from Vietnam. Graduated in Brisbane, Tseng received his PhD in Melbourne and has been living in the city, he told Wikinews. Tseng also formed Chinese Precinct Chamber of Commerce, an organisation responsible for many “community bond building initiatives”, the Lord Mayor candidate told Wikinews.

Tseng discussed his plans for leading Melbourne, recovering from COVID-19, and “Democracy 2.0” to ensure concerns of minorities in the city were also heard. Tseng also focused on the importance of the multi-culture aspect and talked about making Melbourne the capital of the aboriginals. Tseng also explained why he thinks Melbourne is poised to be a world city by 2030.

Tseng’s deputy Lord Mayor candidate Gricol Yang is a Commercial Banker and works for ANZ Banking Group.

Currently, Sally Capp is the Lord Mayor of Melbourne, the Victorian capital. Capp was elected as an interim Lord Mayor in mid-2018 after the former Lord Mayor Robert Doyle resigned from his position after sexual assault allegations. Doyle served as the Lord Mayor of Melbourne for almost a decade since 2008.

Friday, April 6, 2007

The Montreal Heart Institute (MHI) notified the public, through a news release Wednesday, that a recent high volume of patients has put a strain on the hospital’s resources. The MHI requested that the public avoid its emergency department and find alternate care, if possible. It did indicate that acute care emergency patients would not be turned away.

The notice was to be in place for 24 hours from Wednesday. On Thursday, the MHI issued a extension to the public notice for an additional 24-hour period.

The number of patients that visited the MHI over the past few months had been abnormally high and reached a peak in the past two weeks, according to the head of emergency services. Alain Vadeboncoeur indicated that it was unusual for the MHI to put out such an advisory, but assured the public that the hospital would “always take the big emergencies.”

The hospital treats 45 to 50 emergency patients per day, typically, but that number jumped to as many as 70 patients per day in the past two weeks. The MHI maintains 153 beds, including 42 in medical intensive care and 29 in surgical intensive care and performs 1,850 cardiac surgeries yearly.

It was suggested by the MHI that people requiring non-emergency care contact their regional Info-Santé for telephone-based advice, or visit a local clinic.

Founded in 1954, the MHI specializes in cardiovascular treatment, with an emphasis on prevention, specialized care, research, and assessment of new technologies. The MHI is a teaching facility affiliated with the University of Montreal.

[edit]

Friday, January 15, 2010

Countries and relief organisations around the world are sending aid to Haiti, which was hit by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake on Tuesday, affecting up to three million people, most of them in the capital, Port-au-Prince. Relief efforts, however, have been hampered by damaged or destroyed infrastructure, lack of shelter, and communications difficulties.

As of today, at least 300,000 people were estimated to be homeless in the capital, according to the United Nations; the organisation reports that one in ten buildings completely collapsed due to the tremors and resulting aftershocks. The UN said it believes 45,000 to 50,000 people were killed by the quake, while Haitian President Rene Preval said that seven thousand bodies were buried in a mass grave.

Port-au-Prince’s main airport remained open as of today, and relief airplanes were arriving faster than they could be unloaded, prompting fears that planes could run out of fuel while waiting their turn to land. As a result, all non-military flights out of the airport were restricted. Air traffic controllers from the US were present to help handle the flow.

The main port, meanwhile, was severely damaged, and unable to handle any cargo.

To see more images related to the disaster, you may wish to look at the companion article Haitian earthquake: in pictures.

Even with the amount of aid coming in, it is proving difficult to deliver it where it is needed; many roads have been blocked by rubble. Alejandro Lopez-Chicheri, a senior spokesman for the World Food Programme (WFP), commented: “The roads, many of them are still to be opened, and on the ones that are open there are still people concentrated on the sides of the roads.” He described Haiti as being “completely on the ground”.

“This is a logistical challenge. Before the earthquake struck we were already assisting one million people here, we are considering it will be at least double that after this earthquake,” he told the Al Jazeera news agency.

The WFP has estimated that two million people will need food aid; however, only four thousand have so far been fed.

“The physical destruction is so great that physically getting from point A to B with the supplies is not an easy task,” said a WFP spokeswoman in Geneva at a news conference.

Transporting supplies was made even harder due to lack of communications. Telephone lines were down. “There have been a lot of criticism from local authorities about the relief efforts, but in all fairness, if we could catch a break and get some communication up and running, things would go a lot faster,” commented Louis Belanger, spokesman with the humanitarian aid group Oxfam International.

Looting has also been an issue. Delfin Antonio Rodriguez, the rescue commander from adjacent Dominican Republic, said to the Agency France-Presse news agency earlier today that “[o]ur biggest problem is insecurity. Yesterday they tried to hijack some of our trucks. Today we were barely able to work in some places because of that.”

Elisabeth Byrs, a UN humanitarian spokeswoman in Geneva described the desperation of those in the capital. “People who have not been eating or drinking for almost 50 hours and are already in a very poor situation. If they see a truck with something, or if they see a supermarket which has collapsed, they just rush to get something to eat.”

The WFP initially reported that its warehouses in the capital were looted, but this was later retracted. WFP spokeswoman Caroline Hurford told the BBC that “[a]pparently there were unconfirmed reports of looting taking place but once our teams got down to the dockside they were able to see that there was some mistake.”

The earthquake also destroyed Port-au-Prince’s main prison. According to International Red Cross spokesman Marcal Izard, 4,000 inmates escaped the jail and are now on the city streets. “They obviously took advantage of this disaster,” he said.

Haitian police were “not visible at all,” according to a UN spokesman, probably because they had to deal with lost family members and homes, further exacerbating the situation. Around 3,000 international UN peacekeeping troops were present to try to maintain law and order in lieu of the local police force.

According to a reporter for Al Jazeera, frustration among Port-au-Prince’s residents was increasing because they were not receiving enough help, and there was an exodus out of the city to try and find areas with more supplies. “A lot of people have simply grown tired of waiting for those emergency workers to get to them,” said Sebastian Walker. “Thousands of people are streaming out of the city towards the provinces to try to find supplies of food and water, supplies that are running out in the city.”

A spokesman for the Brazilian-commanded UN peacekeeping force, David Wimhurst, also commented that “unfortunately, they’re slowly getting more angry and impatient. I fear, we are all aware that the situation is getting more tense as the poorest people who need so much, are waiting for deliveries. I think tempers might be frayed.”

Photographer Shaul Schwarz for the TIME magazine reported seeing at least two roadblocks downtown, made of rocks and corpses. “They are starting to block the roads with bodies. It’s getting ugly out there. People are fed up with getting no help,” he said.

“We hear on the radio that rescue teams are coming from the outside, but nothing is coming,” said one resident, Jean-Baptiste Lafontin Wilfried, as quoted by the BBC.

“We need food. The people are suffering. My neighbors and friends are suffering,” said another resident, Sylvain Angerlotte, aged 22, as quoted by the Associated Press. “We don’t have money. We don’t have nothing to eat. We need pure water.”

Due to lack of buildings or shelter, many relief members were facing the same difficulties as were residents. “Even the aid workers themselves are sleeping in cars or in tents on the streets,” said Jamieson Davies, the international programmes director of the Caritas relief organisation, to Al Jazeera. She described the situation as being “extremely difficult”.

Sunday, February 18, 2018

On Thursday, Phil Scott of Vermont became the fourth governor in the United States to sign an executive order requiring all companies providing Internet access to state agencies to abide by net neutrality for all customers in his state. He said he did this because Vermonters rely on Internet access without blocking, throttling and paid prioritization, threatened by the December 14 decision of the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the matter of “Restoring Internet freedom”. The first state governor to challenge the FCC in this way was Steve Bulllock of Montana, who did so on January 22. Andrew Cuomo of New York followed two days later. Philip Murphy of New Jersey signed a similar executive order on February 5. These four executive orders differ in details, but all require that state agencies purchase Internet access services only from companies with an enforceable commitment to net neutrality for all customers in their state.

This is part of a flurry of state-level net neutrality actions. The New York State Assembly introduced bill A01958 on January 17, 2017, three days before the inauguration of Donald Trump as President of the United States, anticipating action by him to overturn the 2015 “Title II Order” that made net neutrality enforceable in the US. Two other bills were introduced into the Washington House of Representatives in the ten days before the official decision of Trump’s FCC on this issue. In addition to these, 63 other state-level responses by net neutrality supporters were documented by Fight for the Future (FFTF) by February 16, 2018, including at least 27 bills introduced into the legislatures of 17 states with others reportedly under consideration.

These bills are in addition to the lawsuit filed on January 16 by the Attorney General of New York on behalf of 21 states and the District of Columbia claiming this FCC decision was “arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion within the meaning of the Administrative Procedure Act” (APA) of 1946 and other grounds. These states were New York, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington state. New Jersey reportedly later committed to join the suit.

These four executive orders are the only actions on FFTF’s list of actions by net neutrality supporters that seem immediately enforceable. All others require approval by democratic bodies. The four executive orders might be challenged in courts as conflicting with “Preemption authority” claimed by the US Federal Communications Commission’s “Declaratory ruling, report and order” adopted December 14 and released January 4. The FCC order was described by dissenting Commissioner Clyburn as “Destroying Internet Freedom” rather than “Restoring Internet Freedom” as the order is titled. She wrote that this order “will put profits and shareholder returns above what is best for” consumers.