Saturday, October 27, 2007

Gay Talese wants to go to Iraq. “It so happens there is someone that’s working on such a thing right now for me,” the 75-year-old legendary journalist and author told David Shankbone. “Even if I was on Al-Jazeera with a gun to my head, I wouldn’t be pleading with those bastards! I’d say, ‘Go ahead. Make my day.'”

Few reporters will ever reach the stature of Talese. His 1966 profile of Frank Sinatra, Frank Sinatra Has a Cold, was not only cited by The Economist as the greatest profile of Sinatra ever written, but is considered the greatest of any celebrity profile ever written. In the 70th anniversary issue of Esquire in October 2003, the editors declared the piece the “Best Story Esquire Ever Published.”

Talese helped create and define a new style of literary reporting called New Journalism. Talese himself told National Public Radio he rejects this label (“The term new journalism became very fashionable on college campuses in the 1970s and some of its practitioners tended to be a little loose with the facts. And that’s where I wanted to part company.”)

He is not bothered by the Bancrofts selling The Wall Street Journal—”It’s not like we should lament the passing of some noble dynasty!”—to Rupert Murdoch, but he is bothered by how the press supported and sold the Iraq War to the American people. “The press in Washington got us into this war as much as the people that are controlling it,” said Talese. “They took information that was second-hand information, and they went along with it.” He wants to see the Washington press corp disbanded and sent around the country to get back in touch with the people it covers; that the press should not be so focused on–and in bed with–the federal government.

Augusten Burroughs once said that writers are experience junkies, and Talese fits the bill. Talese–who has been married to Nan Talese (she edited James Frey‘s Million Little Piece) for fifty years–can be found at baseball games in Cuba or the gay bars of Beijing, wanting to see humanity in all its experience.

Below is Wikinews reporter David Shankbone’s interview with Gay Talese.

Monday, December 3, 2007

At Thanksgiving dinner David Shankbone told his white middle class family that he was to interview Reverend Al Sharpton that Saturday. The announcement caused an impassioned discussion about the civil rights leader’s work, the problems facing the black community and whether Sharpton helps or hurts his cause. Opinion was divided. “He’s an opportunist.” “He only stirs things up.” “Why do I always see his face when there’s a problem?”

Shankbone went to the National Action Network’s headquarters in Harlem with this Thanksgiving discussion to inform the conversation. Below is his interview with Al Sharpton on everything from Tawana Brawley, his purported feud with Barack Obama, criticism by influential African Americans such as Clarence Page, his experience running for President, to how he never expected he would see fifty (he is now 53). “People would say to me, ‘Now that I hear you, even if I disagree with you I don’t think you’re as bad as I thought,'” said Sharpton. “I would say, ‘Let me ask you a question: what was “bad as you thought”?’ And they couldn’t say. They don’t know why they think you’re bad, they just know you’re supposed to be bad because the right wing tells them you’re bad.”

Friday, March 20, 2009

The owner of a New Jersey real estate investment firm has been charged with using $2 million of his company’s money for construction at his home and other projects not related to work.

Gary Klein, owner of the Asbury Park-based REI Group Inc., surrendered himself to police after a Monmouth County grand jury indicted him on one count of theft by deception charges.

The charges were the result of a three-year investigation into his practices. Klein, 45, of Colts Neck Township, faces up to 10 years in state prison if convicted. Klein was released Friday after posting $75,000 bail.

Klein attracted clients by telling them he would invest their money in projects that would result in returns of 12 and 85 percent. Prosecutors said the actions mirrored those of a Ponzi scheme.

Robert Weir, Klein’s attorney, said the operation was not a Ponzi scheme, but legitimate business investments that went bad as the economy declined. Weir also said Klein hired a receiver to try and return the investors’ money once the investments started to go sour.

“It’s a shame that a business that experienced a turn in the real estate market is now being treated as a criminal problem. That was not Mr. Klein’s intent,” Weir said to The Star-Ledger.

Weir said the investments were used for building rehabilitation projects in Asbury Park and the construction of Florida condominium complexes, but authorities said Klein used the money to repay earlier investors who were cashing out, as well to help build his own home.

Tuesday, May 25, 2021

On Saturday, Italy won its third victory at the Eurovision Song Competition, held this year at the Rotterdam Ahoy arena in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The Italian rock band Måneskin’s song Zitti E Buoni won 524 points from public and professional judges. French singer Barbara Pravi’s song Voilà received 499 points, and Swiss singer Gjon’s Tears Tout l’univers got 432 points; finishing second and third respectively.

Out of 39 countries participating this time, 26 countries including hosts Netherlands and the Big Five — France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom — competed in the finals. The competition began on May 18. Three of the Big Five, and the hosts finished at the very bottom of the vote ranking. Netherlands got 11, Spain got six, Germany bagged three and the UK received zero points. All four received zero points from the audience.

Dutch singer Duncan Laurence won the 2019 edition of Eurovision in Tel Aviv winning 498 points for his song Arcade. That victory meant Netherlands was to host the competition 2020, which was cancelled because of “escalating spread of COVID-19 throughout Europe”. This year, 3500 people were in audience, multiple reports stated. They all were tested negative to be eligible for attending the event, Eurovision stated.

Iceland’s Daði Freyr could not perform live in both semi-finals and the final, having tested positive of the virus. A pre-recorded performance of Daði og Gagnamagnið was played, which finished fourth, receiving 378 points, 12 more than Ukrainian singer Go_A’s song Shum.

Switzerland finished at top, during the jury voting, receiving 267 points. France finished second during the national jury voting with 248 points. During the jury voting, when France and Switzerland were very close to each other, Pravi said, “I think it is crazy that two French songs are on the top, thank you!”

National juries of both Switzerland and the UK awarded 12 points to France. Pravi uttered “Merci!” ^{((fr))French language: ?Thank you!}, clapped and blew a kiss towards the Swiss team, upon receiving 12 points from the Swiss jury.

Italy received 318 points from the audience, putting them on top. That sufficed them to win the competition. Upon winning, Måneskin’s lead vocalist Damiano David said, “We just want to say to the whole Europe, to the whole world, rock and roll never dies.”

As the winner of this year’s competition, Italy is to host next year’s Eurovision Song Competition. Italy had previously won Eurovision in 1990. Måneskin is the first band to win the competition since 2006, the BBC noted.

Monday, September 27, 2021

Since June 2019, the people of South Gippsland Shire, located at the southernmost tip of Australia, have been without a local council, after a state government inquiry found “high levels of tension” within the council. Administrators were appointed by the Victorian state government in July 2019, who have governed the shire since then. However, South Gippsland’s council is scheduled to be restored with an election to be held via post from October 5–22, 2021.

Wikinews interviewed one of the candidates standing in this election, David Liebelt, an independent candidate running in the Coastal-Promontory Ward. The Coastal-Promontory ward covers towns such as Venus Bay, Waratah Bay, Yanakie, Foster, Port Welshpool, and Toora, and elects three councillors to the South Gippsland Shire Council.

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

A team of scientists from Australia and US has found a solution for a challenging problem in climate research. Climate models predicted more greenhouse gases would weaken the equatorial Pacific trade winds.However, over the past two decades, observations showed this Walker circulation was getting stronger, accelerating sea level rise in the western Pacific, and consequent changes in global climate.The researcher team reports, “The answer to the puzzle is that recent rapid Atlantic Ocean warming has affected climate in the Pacific”.Their study, “Recent Walker circulation strengthening and Pacific cooling amplified by Atlantic warming”, was published on Sunday in Nature Climate Change.

While previous research supposed natural variability alone accounted for cooling in the eastern Pacific, this study highlights a previously overlooked climate feedback: as the Atlantic warms, it alters the winds over the Pacific, depressing the ocean temperature there.As coauthor Shayne McGregor of the University of New South Wales explains, “the main cause of the Pacific wind, temperature, and sea level trends over the past 20 years lies in the Atlantic Ocean […] We saw that the rapid Atlantic surface warming observed since the early 1990s, induced partly by greenhouse gases, has generated unusually low sea level pressure over the tropical Atlantic. This, in turn, produces an upward motion of the overlying air parcels. These parcels move westward aloft and then sink again in the eastern equatorial Pacific, where their sinking creates a high pressure system. The resulting Atlantic–Pacific pressure difference strengthens the Pacific trade winds.”

Coauthor Malte Stuecker of the University of Hawaii Meteorology Department reports that “Our study documents that some of the largest tropical and subtropical climate trends of the past 20 years are all linked: Strengthening of the Pacific trade winds, acceleration of sea level rise [three times faster than the global average] in the western Pacific, eastern Pacific surface cooling, the global warming hiatus, and even the massive droughts in California”. His colleague cauthor Fei-Fei Jin adds, “We are just starting to grasp the scope of the impacts of this global atmospheric reorganization and of the out-of phase temperature trends in the Atlantic and Pacific regions”.Work earlier this year by coauthor Matthew England, University of New South Wales, showed the stronger winds have churned up the waters of the Western Pacific Ocean, so more heat flows from the winds into the water. This appears to explain why global surface temperatures have recently risen more slowly.

Coauthor Axel Timmermann of the University of Hawaii notes a further amplifying effect: “Stronger trade winds in the equatorial Pacific also increase the upwelling of cold waters to the surface. The resulting near-surface cooling in the eastern Pacific amplifies the Atlantic–Pacific pressure seesaw, thus further intensifying the trade winds […] It turns out that the current generation of climate models underestimates the extent of the Atlantic–Pacific coupling, which means that they cannot properly capture the observed eastern Pacific cooling, which has contributed significantly to the leveling off, or the hiatus, in global warming.”As Professor England said, “It will be difficult to predict when the Pacific cooling trend and its contribution to the global hiatus in surface temperatures will come to an end. […] However, a large El Niño event is one candidate that has the potential to drive the system back to a more synchronized Atlantic/Pacific warming situation.”