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Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Pro-wrestling, a sport derived from Greco-Roman freestyle wrestling, is often connected with the idea of sports-entertainment. Popularized by Japanese and American federations (e.g. World Wrestling Entertainment, New Japan Pro Wrestling, etc.) the ongoing events and news are often discussed on the Internet. As such, television programs and other mass media focused on pro-wrestling are commonplace in Japan, America, and Europe.

In Taiwan, fans do not simply watch the TV shows and discuss them via the Internet, but some of them participate in the sport of wrestling through communities from the Internet or colleges. Although a Taiwanese wrestler recently won a world-class pro-wrestling title, due to policies that focused only on promoting key athletic sports like baseball, billiards, basketball, and taekwondo (i.e. those with more possibilities to win a gold medal in the Asian Games or Olympics), governmental officials lost a great opportunity to promote sports like wrestling, which has many potential participants.

What’s the vision of wrestling in Taiwan? How did the communities drive TV spectators and wrestling fans and government officials pay more attention in wrestling? Is wrestling a future key sport in Taiwan? Wikinews Journalist Rico Shen visited the “2008 IWL Spring Festival”, organised by a fan community and interviewed “Mr. Orange”, well-known commentator of WWE TV shows broadcasted by VideoLand Max TV in Taiwan, to prospect the future of wrestling.

Friday, January 20, 2006

A recently created Danish clothing company is selling on the internet T-shirts in order to support the clandestine radio station of the Colombian guerrilla group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the graphical workshop of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). In fact the money will be used by these groups to carry on their terrorist activities. FARC activities include kidnappings, masacres, bombs, extortions and the drug trade.

Fighters and Lovers is selling the T-shirts at 170 DKK (US$27.6), from which 35 DKK (US$5.7) are to be destinated to support both armed groups.

Anna Duever, Fighters and Lovers PR chief, said to Spanish news agency EFE that their objective is to “defend freedom and social justice, which is FARC and PFLP are fighting for”. Duever believes the fact the FARC has been included by the EU in its terrorist group list is a “political game”. “We pay our taxes in Denmark, and that money is used for financing the troops our government has sent to Iraq. That’s terrorism. Besides, in Colombia there’s a regime oppressing population and torturing and killing its people”, she said.

Colombian Foreign Affairs Minister, Carolina Barco, said to local media that “financing terrorist groups is unacceptable and goes against all the international norms. Yesterday [Tuesday 19] our ambassador contacted the Danish government, we sent a protest note and have demanded an explanation.”

A year ago, a Danish NGO named Oprør (“Rebelion”) stated it had donated money to the Colombian guerrilla. A new antiterrorism law in Denmark may punish it.

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Yesterday, in front of the USS Wisconsin in Norfolk, Virginia, presumptive Republican presidential nominee, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney selected Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin as his running mate.

After an introduction from Virginia governor Bob McDonnell, who himself had been considered a potential running mate, Romney officially made the announcement. He referred to Ryan as “an intellectual leader of the Republican Party” and initially labeled Ryan as the “next president of the United States” before correcting himself after Ryan reached the podium.

Ryan, 42, has represented Wisconsin’s 1st congressional district since 1999 and serves as chairman of the House Budget Committee. Last year, he authored the budget proposal, The Path to Prosperity, which promotes reductions in federal spending of $6.2 trillion from the Obama plan through a repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a reformation of Medicare, and capping of federal discretionary spending.

During his acceptance speech, Ryan said that his “record of getting things done in Congress will be a very helpful complement to Governor Romney’s executive and private sector success outside of Washington.” He added that the campaign “won’t duck the tough issues—we will lead” and went after the record of President Barack Obama, arguing that his policies “didn’t make things better.”

On the announcement, senior Obama staffers explained that Ryan’s selection “makes clear that Romney would be a rubber stamp for the congressional GOP” and that the choice provides the Obama campaign with “clear advantages”.

According to Reuters, Romney made the decision on August 1 after returning from his international trip. Four days later, Ryan was secretly flown to Brookline, Massachusetts to meet Romney at the home of Beth Myers, who was running the vice presidential search. Ryan was supposed to be announced on Friday in New Hampshire, but he had to return to Wisconsin to attend a memorial for victims of the 2012 Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting.

Thereafter, the campaign decided to make the announcement in Virginia, and so Ryan was once again secretly flown, this time to Elizabeth City, North Carolina near Norfolk, where he met with Romney and prepared his acceptance speech.

NBC News first announced the decision, and the Romney campaign announced the news to supporters through a phone application at seven a.m., a couple of hours before the official announcement.

Friday, June 30, 2017

On Wednesday, thousands of citizens gathered in New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar and other cities across India to protest against mob violence against minority communities of Muslims and Dalits, which has increased in recent years. Documentary film-maker Saba Dewan asked for “protest against the lynchings” via a Facebook post on June 24, after a teenage Muslim boy, Junaid Khan, and his brothers were reportedly racially abused, and Junaid allegedly stabbed and killed by a mob, after a dispute last week in Haryana.

About 2000 people gathered for the protest — Not in my Name — in the Indian capital, while several others protested in Bombay, Allahabad, Lucknow, Patna, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Thiruvananthapuram, Chandigarh, Kochi, and Jaipur. There were protests held in London as well. The protests came after several instances where people were killed due to mob violence, the victims mostly from the minority communities of Muslims and Dalits. Protesters held placards with messages such as “No Place for Islamophobia”, “Break the Silence”, and “Shed Hate not Blood”. Saba Dewan said, “the protest is against this systematic violence against Muslims and Dalits that is going on in our country at the moment”. The protesters presented poems, songs and danced on stage on the Jantar Manter to express their views. Manish Sisodia, New Delhi’s deputy chief minister, also took part in the protest. In Bombay, protesters were permitted till 7 PM.

“Shouldn’t there be protests against the lynchings especially after the murder yesterday in Delhi NCR by a mob of a 16 year old Muslim boy? If not now then when? Why wait for political formations to organize a demonstration ? Why can’t all of us as citizens repulsed by the violence get together in protest at the earliest next week at Jantar Mantar under the banner – Not in my Name”, Dewan posted on Facebook.

Junaid’s brother Hasseem said the people “were pointing at a packet which had food and saying we should not be allowed to sit since we were carrying beef” even though he told they were not carrying beef. The mob, reportedly threw Junaid’s skull cap, and called them “beef eaters” and “anti-nationalists”. About twenty people were involved in the violence. One man, who was held for the violence told NDTV he was “told by his friends to attack the Muslim boys because they ate beef”. Police arrested four people on Wednesday accused for the violence, police superintendent Kamaldeep Goel told the Press Trust of India.

There have been several instances where people were harassed or killed due to mob violence. At least ten Muslims have been reported victims of the mob violence in the past two years, for beef consumption or transporting cows. Cow is considered sacred in Hinduism and many Hindus in the country view cow as a god or mother. Beef is banned in several states of India and a person found guilty for killing a cow can face a prison term up to ten years. But often, the “gau rakshaks” (cow protectors) have taken the law in their hands and lynched the accused. Some of the claims turned out to be false.

Though India is a secular state, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which shares Hindu nationalist views, vowed to ban beef across India. In 2015, ex-Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said, “Do I assault everyone who eats pork or alcohol?” after Rashid Ahmed was beaten by BJP members for serving beef in a private party. Pork and alcohol are considered haram and hence, their consumption is prohibited in Islam.

“Killing people in the name of ‘gau bhakti’ [cow devotion] is not acceptable”, Modi said yesterday.

Sunday, June 23, 2013

A device known as the Mosquito, set to be trialed in New South Wales (NSW), Australia by RailCorp in a bid to deter vandals from areas frequently the target of graffiti, is attracting criticism. Wikinews reached out to several people about the trials.

The units work by emitting a high-pitched buzz, similar to that of a mosquito, which is generally only audible to those under the age of about 24. The aim is to repel young people who become irritated by the noise, as a prevention method against graffiti, loitering, and other crimes like theft.

The initiative was announced last month, but RailCorp has not revealed when it intends to test the technology to crack down on graffiti.

In an interview with Wikinews, President of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties Cameron Murphy this week labeled the strategy “ridiculous”. “All they’re going to do is wear headphones and these [devices] will make no difference at all.”

Thousands of units have been set up in the UK since they first became available about seven years ago, where they’re used to stop youths gathering near public areas like shops and train stations. The technology has a high usage rate in the UK, and the Council of Europe has called for a ban on grounds it violates human rights, calling it “highly offensive”.

A RailCorp spokesperson confirmed to Wikinews the devices would only be situated on railway land away from public areas.

Mr Murphy maintains the NSW government’s policy is “based upon discrimination” and it assumes the youth affected by the noise are those doing graffiti, without solid evidence to prove this.

NSW Liberal MP Gareth Ward told Wikinews, “very few crime fighting techniques are fool-proof,” and as people have found ways to get around CCTV, they’re like to do the same with this, which is why it’s only being trialed at this stage. He acknowledged the devices will be situated in areas where the general public shouldn’t be hanging around. “There are certain areas in the network where trains may not be travelling at a particular time and that’s when those devices will be turned on […] and I think that’s perfectly reasonable.” He remarked, “any young person who feels they’ve been aggrieved […] should feel free to contact the Minster for Transport.”

A mobile phone message tone based on the same mosquito sound has been touted as teacher-proof because teens should be the only ones able to hear it if it goes off during class.

Sunday, January 15, 2017

In research released on Thursday in Cell, scientists from Yale University report they managed to trigger instinctive hunting behavior in mice using optogenetics, a manner of priming cells within an organism’s brain to switch on when exposed to a laser.

The research team used an engineered virus to target and alter specific sets of neurons. Then they fitted the mice with intracranial optical fibers so they could expose their brains to blue light at will. The system excited two different sets of neurons, both located in the amygdala, which is the part of the brain associated with emotion and aggression. One set stimulated prey pursuit behavior, such as stalking, and the other stimulated the animal to use its jaw and neck muscles. When exposed to the laser, the primed mice would first stalk and then pounce on and bite any object in their enclosure, even objects without any food scent or prey value, like sticks and bottle caps.

“We’d turn the laser on and they’d jump on an object, hold it with their paws and intensively bite it as if they were trying to capture and kill it,” says lead investigator and Yale Associated Professor of Psychiatry Ivan de Araujo. The mice behaved normally at all other times.

The work was inspired by Araujo’s desire to study natural feeding behavior, as opposed to animals passively munching on food pellets. The study covered many parts of the brain already known to be associated with feeding, and the results suggested some areas are associated with both hunting and feeding and others only with just one behavior. Stimulation of the periaqueductal gray (PAG) portion of the brain controlled stalking and stimulation of the reticular formation controlled biting. The researchers say this shows the amygdala is likely to control hunting and biting behavior across many or all jawed vertebrates. The experiments were funded by national research organizations in the United States and China and the government of Brazil.

The findings inspired comparisons by the research team and the press to zombies from The Walking Dead, especially since the behavior was more pronounced when the animals were hungry. Researchers noted the subjects did not attack any of the other mice. The scientists say this shows they were stimulating predatory behavior specifically and not making the animals generally more angry or aggressive.

However, the study did not state whether the laser resembled the light of a full moon.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Pakistani officials have said that at least 100 people were killed and over 200 injured after a car bomb exploded in a marketplace in the city of Peshawar on Wednesday. The attack was the deadliest in the country in this year.

Initially, large fires were reported to be burning around the marketplace, which was crowded with people. The flames spread easily because there were many stores in the area selling flammable fabrics. Police said the blast was heard throughout most of the city, and the explosion reportedly left a hole in the ground up to ten feet wide.

The Associated Press reported that many of the victims are women.

“There was a huge blast. There was smoke and dust everywhere. I saw people dying and screaming on the road,” said an eyewitness, Mohammad Siddique, to the Agence France-Presse news agency.

Several buildings collapsed as a result of the detonation, and rescue workers searched through the rubble looking for survivors beneath the debris.

Muzamil Hussain, a member of local medical staff, described his experiences to the Associated Press: “There were a lot of wounded people. We tried to help them but there were no ambulances so we took the victims on rickshaws and other vehicles. There were no police. The police and government didn’t help us, the police even opened fire on us.”

“Bodies are scattered and badly burned because of the fire caused by the explosion. The explosion took place in a very crowded market,” Mohammed Naeem, a spokesman for a local ambulance service, said.

Some people expressed anger that the bombings managed to be carried out in broad daylight in a crowded area. “What kind of security alert is this? It was an explosives-packed car. Look at the mosque, it ceases to exist anymore. For God’s sake, do something,” said a local middle-aged shopkeeper, as quoted by the CNN news agency.

A state of emergency at the Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar, where many of the wounded people were hospitalised, was called soon after the explosion. Hospital officials appealed to the public and to other medical centres for blood donations.

The bomb attack happened just hours after Hillary Clinton, the United States Secretary of State, flew to the nation to discuss peace with Pakistan’s military commanders and political figures. Clinton will be in Islamabad for three days.

Clinton condemned the attack. “These attacks on innocent people are cowardly. They are not courageous. If the people behind these attacks were so sure of their beliefs, let them join the political process,” she said.

The bombing also comes just days after Pakistani military forces captured the town of Kotkai, the hometown of Taliban Chief Hakimullah Mehsud, and one of his top officers, Qari Hussain.

Saturday, February 3, 2007

At least 19 people have been killed in central Florida in the city of Lady Lake and Paisley after severe storms and a tornado ripped through the cities in the middle of the night. Eleven of those killed were in Paisley and three were in Lady Lake.

The death toll is expected to rise as rescue crews resume tomorrow morning.

Volusia, Sumter, Lake and Seminole counties have all been declared a state of an emergency as dozens of houses, mobile homes and a church were destroyed. Clothes and furniture are scattered around the wrecked houses and pieces of trees are scattered about. Cars are reported to have been turned over or thrown around in the air.

“Our priority today is search and rescue,” said Gov. of Florida, Charlie Crist. Rescuers are still looking through the wreckage to find survivors of those who might have been killed.

A spokeman for the emergency response team of Lake county, Chris Patton calls the damage “devastating” and worse than “hurricanes in 2004.”

“We have complete devastation of homes, of businesses, religious institutions. It was unlike even perhaps the hurricanes of 2004 when we had minor roof damage, screen damage, pool damage. This is way far more devastating,” said Patton.

The storms hit at about 3:15 [EST] a.m. on Friday morning. At least 20,000-30,000 people are without power.

Friday, January 29, 2010

The survivors from the recent 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti are now facing increasing insecurity from human traffickers and convicts escaped from collapsed prisons, officials have cautioned, even as aid is flowing into the country. The acting head of the UN’s Haitian mission, meanwhile, says that that full reconstruction could take several decades. As many as 200,000 people were killed by the tremors, which struck on January 12, and 1.5 million people have been left without homes.

Anthony Banbury, the deputy head of the UN mission in the earthquake-ravaged country, commented to the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency that survivors queuing for aid sometimes turned violent. He commented that while the aid is vital for the country, “it can be a source of insecurity because it attracts big crowds and there can be disorder around food distribution.”

“[It is] absolutely necessary that we get enough food, enough water, enough shelter for the people, and enough security. I don’t think any of us are anywhere near being close to being satisfied, because so much more needs to be done,” he added. “[We must] do things smart, as well as fast, and that’s a big challenge for us now.”

The Haitian national police chief, Mario Andresol, remarked that electricity blackouts resulted in “bandits […] taking advantage to harass and rape women and young girls under the tents,” adding that 7,000 inmates of prisons escaped after the quake. “It took us five years to apprehend them. Today they are running wild.”

Further exacerbating the security situation was that the Haitian police force was largely crippled by the disaster, with hundreds of policemen either killed or missing.

“At night, people take things. But I don’t have a problem. I don’t have anything to steal.” said one local resident, Omen Cola, to AFP.

Child trafficking, meanwhile, is also an issue; it had been a chronic problem even before the earthquake. The Red Cross has started to register orphaned children, and temporarily sending some to orphanages for shelter, according to a senior advisor for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Bo Viktor Nylund.

UNICEF press official Roshan Khadivi told the Xinhua news agency on Wednesday that “we are taking photos and filling in forms to get the children’s full details on file. Experience has shown us that there is at least one family member left usually. UNICEF does not believe in institutionalization in orphanages. Children need to be connected with their communities.” Khadivi noted that considering adoption would only be done if the child’s parents are not found after several months.

Sixty orphaned children, meanwhile, were transported earlier by plane to Germany, where they are to be adopted; six of them were hospitalised for fatigue and dehydration.

Edmond Mulet, the acting head of the UN mission for Haiti, told the BBC that it could take decades to fully reconstruct the country, and any recent development had been negated by the quake. “I think this is going to take many more decades than only ten years, and this is an enormous backwards step in Haiti’s development. We will not have to start from zero but from below zero,” he said.

Mulet, who is also the UN’s assistant peacekeeping operations secretary-general, said that the aid logistics were a “nightmare”. However, he said he believed the capacity to provide help was improving, saying: “All this is coming together right now. Every day you can see more and more Haitian national police on the ground, working with our troops and more and more water being distributed, so it’s a matter of time and putting all these elements together,” as quoted by the BBC.

According to the head, 200,000 heavy-duty tents had been ordered, to help people cope with the rainy season, which generally starts in May. “Of course, 200,000 family-sized tents – solid ones that can withstand a hurricane season – are not available in the market just like that, so they have to be made. It’s going to take a few days and weeks before they can arrive, but all this is coming,” Mulet noted.

The Haitian president, Rene Preval, earlier this week asked for 200,000 tents and 26 million ready-to-eat meals to be airdropped.

Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Ewing, commander of Canada’s Disaster Assistance Response Team, meanwhile, was concerned whether there was enough management in relief operations. “Everyone is trying to help, but it’s not as coordinated as it should be. We’re not getting aid to where it needs to go as effectively as it should be,” he told AFP.

Earlier this week, Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, described the reconstruction process as being a “colossal work of reconstruction.”

“In 30 seconds, we lost nearly 60 percent of our gross domestic product, because all of Haiti’s resources were concentrated in a small area around our seat of government,” he said. “We have to decentralise. It’s the only way to be efficient. It’s also the only way to avoid the same problems happening in Haiti again.”

The UN, meanwhile, reports that international funding and aid pledges for the country have now surpassed US$2 billion worth.