Monday, August 18, 2014

Yesterday the Peshmerga, military of the autonomous region of Kurdistan in Iraq, gained control of parts of the Mosul Dam, as part of their advance against insurgents of the Islamic State. International opposition to the Islamic militant group has grown this week.

The Peshmerga were supported this weekend by US airstrikes in their attempt to push back the Sunni insurgents, and Kurdish officials reported “good progress” in the face of “fierce resistance”. Reuters reported eyewitness accounts of Kurdish forces successfully retaking Batmaiya and Telasqaf, mostly Christian towns as close to Mosul — about 18 miles (30 km) — as they have come since June when government forces were forced out.

Mosul Dam, Iraq’s largest hydroelectric dam, is vital to the region’s irrigation, as well as water and power supplies. It was seized by the insurgents of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, on August 7, as part of their advance across Northern Iraq.

The advance of the Islamic State has prompted responses from many parts of the international community. On Friday the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution targeting the extremist group’s finances and leaders. Six individuals were named and now face travel bans, asset freezes, and arms embargoes. The resolution also warned of the possibility of other sanctions against anyone found to be trading with the Islamic State, in a move aimed at stopping their supply of weapons and economic gain from sale of oil being produced by the oil fields under their control.

On the same day as the Security Council’s resolution, foreign ministers of the European Union’s member states issued a joint statement welcoming the efforts of those European states supporting Kurdish forces. This support includes the supply of military supplies from France, and humanitarian aid from the UK, with Eastern European countries providing military materials also being transported by the UK. Germany and the Netherlands were also reportedly considering the possibility of supplying aid where needed.

The US began launching airstrikes on August 8, and have continued to do so in support of the Kurdish forces and civilians stranded on Mount Sinjar.

The responses from the international community follow reports of brutality against religious minorities in Northern Iraq — such as Yazidis and Christians — accompanying the Islamic State advance across the region.

Rudaw reported from within Kurdistan that the local political parties have put aside their differences and are recruiting volunteers to send to the front. Many of these parties can trace their beginnings back to the 1960s–1990s struggle against the Iraqi army, many of whom continue to maintain militias which are now being deployed to reinforce the Kurdish army in the region. These are reported to have been joined by groups of ethnic Kurds from Iran.

Reports say hundreds of Yazidi volunteers are also being trained inside Kurdistan to help fight the Islamic State’s advance.

Saturday, June 7, 2008

Western Australian Master Builders Association (MBA) yesterday demanded the Carpenter Government call an emergency cabinet meeting to avoid a “state of emergency” over the energy crisis gripping WA. A MBA spokesperson said that hundreds of workers have already been stood down, many without pay, and that the cost of building material is soaring.

The Minister for Energy, Fran Logan has admitted that the gas shortage caused by Tuesday’s fire is damaging the economy as mining, manufacturing and construction industries wind back operations. Western Australia’s two major brick producing companies have shut operations and Wesbeam’s $A100 million Neerabup pine production facility has been closed, their 130 employees have been stood down.

Wesbeam chief executive James Malone said, “It’s an industrial tsunami in my view. It’s a little ripple that has very quickly had a huge multiplying effect on the whole community”.

Michael McLean, Master Building Association director said “It’s a worst-nightmare scenario, and not one we could have imagined in our wildest dreams,” building supplies are expected to start running out by the middle of next week.

Premier Carpenter has announced a meeting of ministers and industry representatives to take place on Sunday to discuss solutions to the growing crisis. Tim Wall, managing director of Apache Corporation has said Apache is conducting a worldwide search for the parts need to repair the pipeline.

Major mining companies and Apache partners BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto have already reported they are suffering with the loss of gas supply; the Chamber of Minerals and Energy has talked down the effect saying that they don’t expect the crisis to take the heat off the booming mining industry.

Opposition leader Troy Buswell has describe the performance of Fran Logan as “absolutely dismal” noting that Mr Logan had experienced a similar incident in January this year, when a fire at Woodsides Karratha operations had a similar effect.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

A bus crash in Victoria, Australia has injured at least 20 people, two of whom are listed as critical. One victim is reported to be still trapped in the wreckage.

The accident occurred between a bus and a semi-trailer on the Princes Highway in the Traralgon area around 10:50am AEST. The La Trobe Valley Busliner bus was traveling east when it collided with the back of a heavy haulage truck.

Those critically injured are being airlifted to a hospital in Melbourne. Others are being transported by Ambulance to La Trobe Valley Hospital in Traralgon.

SES crews are on scene, along with St. John Ambulance and fire crews.

The eastbound lanes of the highway have been blocked by police and traffic is being diverted.

Friday, March 23, 2007

Yesterday, Belgian Archbishop Godfried Danneels visited the Catholic University of Leuven to give a lecture on health care and religion, entitled “Care for the body, care for the mind”. Some 120 people, mainly professors at the University Hospitals, but also clerics and students, attended the conference and following piano recital.

In his introduction speech, Dean of Medicine Bernard Himpens reminded the audience how much the art of medicine had changed since the time of Andreas Vesalius, probably the Faculty’s most famous scientist. The Dean stressed the important role of the Hospital’s Biomedical Ethics Committee, but added that religion continues to be important.

“Some people even believe that good ethics must be carried by faith, and any profound ethics should result in faith,” the Dean noted. He asked the question where the evolution of a merely “passive tolerance for the Christian starting points” would lead the health care system.

In his lecture, the Archbishop acknowledged that the technical aspects of health care were probably the most important to achieve results, but that on the other hand, the medical-technical approach by itself could not guarantee the happiness of the patients.

Wikinews asked Professor Martin Hiele, Chairman of the Commission for Medical Ethics, if he felt there was a need for a lecture on the subject of religion and health care. He replied that

Prof. Bernard Spitz, from the University’s Department of Developmental Biology and head of the Hospital’s Obstetrics Department, told Wikinews that

The lecture was organised by the DeGroof Bank and the Faculty of Medicine. It is the first of three lectures on the subject of religion, spirituality and ethics in health care.

Friday, November 3, 2017

In findings reported on Tuesday, an international team of astronomers discovered an exoplanet, called NGTS-1b, revolving around M-dwarf star NGTS-1, that the team said does not fit existing notions of how stars and planets form. NGTS-1b is a gas giant, similar to Jupiter and of comparable volume and mass, but its parent star is about half the diameter and mass of the Sun, making this the most massive planet orbiting an M-dwarf ever discovered.

NGTS-1b, about 600 light years from the Earth, is so extremely close to its star that a revolution around its star takes only about 2.6 Earth days — 2.647298 ± 0.000020 — and its surface temperature is about 800 K. The planet was discovered by observing periodic fluctuations in the star’s apparent brightness as NGTS-1b passed in front of it. NGTS-1b’s mass is less than Jupiter, about 0.812 MJ (mass of Jupiter), but it has greater volume, with radius about 1.33 RJ (radius of Jupiter). Its density was reported to be 0.42 g cm^-3 (with error: +0.59 to -0.28), meaning Jupiter, whose density is 1.326 g cm^-3, is likely around thrice as dense as the exoplanet.

“The discovery of NGTS-1b was a complete surprise to us,” said lead author Doctor Daniel Bayliss of the University of Warwick, in England. “[S]uch massive planets were not thought to exist around such small stars. This is the first exoplanet we have found with our new NGTS facility and we are already challenging the received wisdom of how planets form.”

The existing understanding of planetary formation, the team explained, says small stars can produce rocky planets but cannot pull in enough mass for larger, gaseous ones like NGTS-1b. Based on the observations, NGTS-1’s radius is 0.573±0.077 R? (solar radius) and using that value, astronomers calculated its weight to be about 0.598 M? (solar mass). The star’s density is almost ten times of the gas giant, 4.4 (with error: +2.4 to -1.4) g cm^-3. In comparison, the Sun’s density is 1.409 g cm^-3.

The research team discovered NGTS-1b using the Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS), an array of telescopes physically located in Chile, which was designed to search for planets around bright stars. NGTS-1 is a relatively dim red M-dwarf, which are very common in the universe, of apparent magnitude 15.52 ± 0.08. University of Warwick professor Peter Wheatley, who runs the NGTS, said, “NGTS-1b was difficult to find, despite being a monster of a planet, because its parent star is small and faint. Small stars are actually the most common in the universe, so it is possible there are many of these giant planets waiting to be found.”

To date, scientists have discovered only three gas giants which revolves around M-dwarf stars. The other two are Kepler-45b and HATS-6b which have masses 0.505 M_J and 0.32 M_{J respectively.}

Tuesday, April 3, 2018

On Sunday, the China Manned Space Engineering Office confirmed the Tiangong-1 space laboratory fell out of orbit, with much of the 10.4-meter structure burning up in Earth’s atmosphere before the remainder crashed into the Pacific Ocean at 8:15 a.m. Beijing time (0015 UTC).

“Through monitoring and analysis by Beijing Aerospace Control Center and related agencies,” reads a statement from the China Manned Space Engineering Office, “Tiangong-1 re-entered the atmosphere at about 8.15am, 2 April, Beijing time (0115 GMT). The re-entry falling area is located in the central region of the south Pacific.” The United States Joint Force Space Component Command and partners from eight other countries confirmed the crash.

Tiangong 1, which means “Heavenly Palace 1,” was China’s first space station. It was launched in 2011 as a stepping stone toward the development of a permanent space station but itself had an expected life of about two years. Authorities recalled the last astronauts in 2013 but continued to use the space station for other purposes until losing navigational control in 2016. Late last year, the Chinese informed the United Nations that they expected the space station would crash sometime in March 2018. Australian National University astrophysicist Brad Tucker described the station as “tumbling and spinning” for a long time before today’s re-entry, which rendered its movements less predictable. The European Space Agency nonetheless described the chance of a person being struck by a piece of Tiangong-1 as extremely less likely than being struck by lightning.

According to U.S. astronaut Leroy Chiao, the original plan had been for China to bring the space station down in a controlled fashion as the Russians did with the Mir space station in 2001. In 1979, the U.S. Skylab space station had an uncontrolled re-entry that scattered small pieces of debris across western Australia. No one was harmed, but the agency was issued a $400 fine for littering.

Several memorials to the space station appeared in China’s media. Public comments on the Weibo blog ranged from critical (“Re-entry? Everyone knows it’s a crash”) to poignant (“Goodbye Tiangong-1. You are our hero”) and other tributes. One Chinese newspaper, the Global Times criticized the portrayal of Tiangong-1’s end in Western media: “It’s normal for spacecraft to re-enter the atmosphere, yet Tiangong-1 received so much attention partly because some western countries are trying to hype and sling mud at China’s fast-growing aerospace industry.”

According to reports, the second Chinese space station, Tiangong-2, remains in orbit. China plans to launch a permanent space station by 2022, whereas the United States is currently debating a plan to withdraw support for the International Space Station as of 2024.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Former Salt Lake City mayor and human rights activist Rocky Anderson took some time to discuss his 2012 U.S. presidential campaign and the newly-created Justice Party with Wikinews reporter William S. Saturn.

Anderson served as mayor of Salt Lake City for eight years (2000–2008) as a member of the Democratic Party. During his tenure, he enacted proposals to reduce the city’s carbon emissions, reformed its criminal justice system, and positioned it as a leading sanctuary for refugees. After leaving office, Anderson grew critical of the Democratic Party’s failure to push for impeachment against President George W. Bush, and for not reversing policies on torture, taxes, and defense spending. He left the party earlier this year and announced that he would form a Third party.

Anderson officially established the Justice Party last week during a press conference in Washington D.C.. He proclaimed “We the people are powerful enough to end the perverse government-to-the-highest-bidder system sustained by the two dominant parties…We are here today for the sake of justice — social justice, environmental justice and economic justice.” The party promotes campaign finance reform and is attempting to appeal to the Occupy Wall Street movement. It is currently working on ballot access efforts, and will hold a Founding Convention in February 2012 in Salt Lake City.

Among other issues, Anderson discussed climate change, health care, education, and civil liberties. He detailed his successes as mayor of Salt Lake City, stressed the importance of executive experience, and expressed his views on President Barack Obama and some of the Republican Party presidential candidates. He spoke in depth about former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, with whom he worked during the 2002 Winter Olympics, and fellow Utahan, former governor and U.S. ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, Jr..