Friday, August 20, 2021

On Tuesday, a one-week long suspension of US Senator Rand Paul’s YouTube account ended. The platform removed two of Rand’s videos, one on August 3, and another on August 10, then restricted his upload rights citing its policy against COVID-19 misinformation. Rand labeled the decision as “anti-free speech” and promoted his Rumble channel.

“We removed content from Senator Paul’s channel for including claims that masks are ineffective in preventing the contraction or transmission of Covid-19, in accordance with our Covid-19 medical misinformation policies,” explained a YouTube spokesperson to NBC, adding “This resulted in a first strike on the channel, which means it can’t upload content for a week, per our longstanding three strikes policy”.

In the first video, which was an interview shot by Newsmax, Rand quoted Anthony Fauci’s private comments from the start of the pandemic as “most of the masks you can get over the counter don’t work, because the virus particles are too small and go right through them” and added “That’s still true. They don’t work.” On August 3, after YouTube removed the video, Rand issued a press release denouncing the decision as “censorship”.

In the second video, Rand repeated the above claims and added “saying cloth masks work, when they don’t actually risks lives, as someone may choose to care for a loved one with COVID, while only wearing a cloth mask.” He referred to a 2020 Danish and a 2015 Vietnamese research paper to support his claims.

After YouTube removed his second video and restricted his account from uploading, Rand issued another press release on last Tuesday, saying “this kind of censorship is very dangerous, incredibly anti-free speech, and truly anti-progress of science, which involves skepticism and argumentation to arrive at the truth […] private companies have the right to ban me if they want to, so in this case I’ll just channel that frustration into ensuring the public knows YouTube is acting as an arm of government and censoring their users for contradicting the government”.

Per YouTube policy, the banned account could not upload any videos, live stream, or make community posts, among other things, for one week. Another violation within the same 90-day period will result in a two week suspension, and a third one in a permanent ban.

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Saturday, February 6, 2021

On Wednesday, US country music artist Morgan Wallen was suspended from his recording contract by Big Loud Records indefinitely after he used the racial slur “nigger” in video leaked by TMZ. Wallen stated to TMZ, “I used an unacceptable and inappropriate racial slur that I wish I could take back. There are no excuses to use this type of language, ever. I want to sincerely apologise for using the word. I promise to do better.”

Republic Records, which also distributed Wallen’s music, stood by Big Loud’s decision, saying “such behavior will not be tolerated”. This decision followed the removal of Wallen’s music from some radio stations, including the largest radio station group in the United States, iHeartMedia. On Wednesday Morgan Wallen’s newly released album, entitled Dangerous: The Double Album, was at number 1 on the Billboard 200, having been at the number 1 position for three weeks.

Wallen also faced trouble on streaming services such as Spotify. On Wednesday, while his music remained available for streaming there, his songs were apparently removed from some official Spotify playlists, such as their 50 top Hot Country Songs playlist, as well as some of Apple Music’s country playlists.

Friday, September 2, 2005

An explosion today in Makhachkala, Russia in the Russian region of Dagestan killed one and wounded five others, police say. The bomb detonated in a pile of garbage, where servicemen and a truck had been sent to search for explosives on a street near a military base. When the engineers got out of the truck to search, the bomb went off.

The Dagestani Ministry, reported by the Russian news agency ITAR-Tass, originally stated that the blast killed two servicemen and wounded three others. They later revised this to six servicemen wounded (as well as one civilian), but no fatalities. A police officer told ITAR-Tass news that a brigade had been on patrol when the explosion occurred.

According to RIA-Novosti and Interfax news, medics reported one death and six injuries. RIA-Novosti also reports that the bomb exploded near a trolley bus.

Police and ambulances were immediately brought to the area of the explosion, which was quickly sealed off by police.

The alleged planters of the bomb were followed by police, but escaped after firing at the officers.

This explosion is not surprising, as racial tensions in the Muslim majority region of Dagestan often lead to attacks on officials and police.

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Monday, December 24, 2007

Sporting games are more popular with younger gamers and sporting people with a conjunction from two industries, between sporting and gaming. Although games from the NBA series are not the official games of the World Cyber Games, but with fashions of the NBA, and PC gaming population having a stable scale, the NBA game series attracted not only basketball and game fans but also sporting and gaming media world-wide, and its market was progressively expanded from America and Europe to Asia and other countries.

With those issues in mind, Wikinews Reporter Rico Shen briefly interviewed Event Director of NBA Asia Corporation Ritchie Lai about the sports gaming market developments at the NBA 2K8 Asia Championship Taiwan Qualifier.

Featured articles are selected by the community to represent the best of Wikinews. See the Featured Article Candidates page for nominations and discussions of candidate articles for this page. Or, subscribe to the RSS feed!

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Monday, November 28, 2005

SpaceX called off the much-delayed inaugural launch of their new Falcon 1 rocket on Saturday from Kwajalein’s Omelek Island launch site. The intent was to launch the U.S. Air Force Academy’s FalconSat 2 satellite, which will monitor plasma interactions with the Earth’s upper atmosphere and magnetosphere.

The launch was delayed, then finally cancelled after an oxygen boil-off vent had accidentally been left open. The oxygen was unable to cool the helium pressurant, which then proceeded to evaporate faster than it could be replenished. A main computer issue, probably serious enough to cause a scrub on its own, was also discovered.

This long-anticipated flight was originally expected to be launched in January 2005, however a series of setbacks forced a series of delays, with the flight most recently scheduled to be in early 2006. It was intended to be launched from the Kwajalein atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

The maiden voyage was originally intended to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California with a Naval Research Laboratory satellite and a Space Services Incorporated space burial payload.

Monday, November 28, 2005

SpaceX called off the much-delayed inaugural launch of their new Falcon 1 rocket on Saturday from Kwajalein’s Omelek Island launch site. The intent was to launch the U.S. Air Force Academy’s FalconSat 2 satellite, which will monitor plasma interactions with the Earth’s upper atmosphere and magnetosphere.

The launch was delayed, then finally cancelled after an oxygen boil-off vent had accidentally been left open. The oxygen was unable to cool the helium pressurant, which then proceeded to evaporate faster than it could be replenished. A main computer issue, probably serious enough to cause a scrub on its own, was also discovered.

This long-anticipated flight was originally expected to be launched in January 2005, however a series of setbacks forced a series of delays, with the flight most recently scheduled to be in early 2006. It was intended to be launched from the Kwajalein atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

The maiden voyage was originally intended to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California with a Naval Research Laboratory satellite and a Space Services Incorporated space burial payload.