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, January 12, 2007

The U.S. armed forces detained five Iranians working at a “liaison office” located in Erbil, Iraq before dawn on Friday. Sources said that the U.S. forces first landed their helicopters around the building, then broke through the office’s gate, disarmed the guards, confiscated some documents and certain objects, arrested five suspected terrorists, and then left for an undisclosed location.

However, there was no raid on the Iranian Consulate General as earlier reported. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told Agence France-Presse that the building raided was “not a consulate or a government building”, which appears to be confirmed by the Iraqi foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, who said the Iranians were working at an office that had government approval and was in the process of being approved as a consulate, but was not a Consulate nor the Iranian Consulate General. The US is strategically insisting that they raided a “liaison office” instead of a Consulate to avoid being found in violation of Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.

Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Mikhail Kamynin said that the raid was absolutely unacceptable and was a violation of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. The Kurdistan Regional Government also expressed their shock and disapproval of the raid.

On Thursday’s hearing on Iraq, Senator Joseph Biden (D-Delware), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the Bush Administration did not have the authority to send U.S. troops on cross-border raids. Biden said, “I believe the present authorization granted the president to use force in Iraq does not cover that, and he does need congressional authority to do that. I just want to set that marker.” After the meeting, Biden sent a follow-up letter to the White House asking for an explanation from the Bush Administration on the matter.

On Thursday morning, Iran’s foreign ministry official sent a letter to Iraq’s foreign ministry asking Iraq to stop the Bush Administration from interfering with Iraq-Iran relations, and has protested the raid on its liaison office. The official said, “We expect the Iraqi government to take immediate measures to set the aforesaid individuals free and to condemn the U.S. troopers for the measure. Following up on the case and releasing the arrestees is a responsibility of primarily the Iraqi government and then the local government and officials of the Iraqi Kurdistan.”

Friday, November 25, 2011

U.S. Democratic Party presidential candidate Darcy Richardson of Florida took some time to answer a few questions from Wikinews reporter William S. Saturn.

Richardson, 55, is a political activist that helped form the New Democrats in 1989 and founded the progressive Battleground Blog earlier this year. He is also a political historian, and has authored six books covering third parties and presidential elections, including A Nation Divided: The 1968 Presidential Campaign (2002). His current work, The Spirit of ’76: Eugene McCarthy’s Struggle for Open Politics, chronicles the late Democratic Senator Eugene McCarthy’s 1976 presidential campaign for which he volunteered. Richardson admires McCarthy, and served as manager for his 1988 presidential run. Recently, Richardson advised Brian Moore’s Socialist Party USA presidential campaign in 2008.

In addition, Richardson himself has sought political office, albeit unsuccessfully. In 1980, he ran for Pennsylvania Auditor General, and in 1988, vied for one of Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate seats as a member of the Consumer Party. Last year, he ran for Lieutenant Governor of Florida as the running mate of gubernatorial candidate Farid Khavari.

Richardson has criticized President Barack Obama’s policies for being too similar to those of former President George W. Bush. He hoped to convince several prominent progressives to challenge Obama in the Democratic primaries, but none were available to do so. Last month, Richardson decided to begin a campaign himself and announced through his Battleground Blog that he would challenge Obama in the Democratic Party primaries as a progressive candidate. So far, he has qualified for the New Hampshire primary in January and the Missouri primary in February. In an interview with the Independent Political Report, Richardson proclaimed his campaign slogan as “no fourth term for George W. Bush.”

Friday, December 11, 2009

New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority is proposing to make service cuts to close its expected US$343 million (€234m, GBP £211m) budget deficit. The plan includes the elimination of multiple bus lines in The Bronx, Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn, the elimination of the W (Astoria, Queens to Lower Manhattan) and the Z (Jamaica, Queens to Lower Manhattan via Brooklyn) train services. Also included in the plan are cuts of nighttime bus and train service.

“We’re not going to rely on anyone else to do anything for us. We’re going to rely on ourselves.” MTA board member Mitchell Pally said, commenting on the New York state’s budget plan cutting $143 million of tax revenue from the agency. MTA Chairman Jay Walder has said in the past that he would not raise fares ahead of schedule.

Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign, a commuter advocacy group, said that the agency should take money from its current construction and maintenance fund, and put it into maintaining these services.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

What you are about to read is an American life as lived by renowned author Edmund White. His life has been a crossroads, the fulcrum of high-brow Classicism and low-brow Brett Easton Ellisism. It is not for the faint. He has been the toast of the literary elite in New York, London and Paris, befriending artistic luminaries such as Salman Rushdie and Sir Ian McKellen while writing about a family where he was jealous his sister was having sex with his father as he fought off his mother’s amorous pursuit.

The fact is, Edmund White exists. His life exists. To the casual reader, they may find it disquieting that someone like his father existed in 1950’s America and that White’s work is the progeny of his intimate effort to understand his own experience.

Wikinews reporter David Shankbone understood that an interview with Edmund White, who is professor of creative writing at Princeton University, who wrote the seminal biography of Jean Genet, and who no longer can keep track of how many sex partners he has encountered, meant nothing would be off limits. Nothing was. Late in the interview they were joined by his partner Michael Caroll, who discussed White’s enduring feud with influential writer and activist Larry Kramer.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has announced its first national authority for scientific research (NASR) to coordinate and fund scientific research in the country.

The national authority for scientific research was announced on March 7 by Shaikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, UAE minister for higher education and scientific research. NASR will begin with an annual budget of AED100 million (approximately US$27.2 million). The authority hopes to receive additional contributions from the public and the private sector.

NASR will look to fund research projects in various fields, including engineering, technology, medicine, water and agriculture, proposing specific projects to be competed for by researchers at universities and private research institutes.

“Projects are going to be selected to help promote scientific research and the growth of UAE society and we will compare them with international scientific research criteria,” Gulf News quoted Al Nahyan as saying at the launch.

NASR will also train scientists and develop programmes for promoting public science awareness. It will also coordinate with government authorities on the issue of intellectual property rights, by providing advice on how companies and research centres should go about protecting their discoveries in the form of patents or licenses. It will also provide scholarships for researchers in the UAE to work on international research programmes, and organise national scientific conferences. NASR forms part of the UAE’s strategic plan to improve higher education and scientific research.

Zakaria Maamar, associate professor at the College of Information Technology at Zayed University, UAE, told Science and Development Network (SciDev.Net) that, “This initiative is another boost to the research and development activities that are carried out in the UAE. It will definitely provide researchers with the appropriate funds to sustain such activities and promote best practices in the community.”

Said Elnaffar, assistant professor at the college of information technology at the United Arab Emirates University, told SciDev.Net that, with this initiative, the UAE is taking the lead and setting a good example by building a strong development infrastructure founded on knowledge discovery and research.

This article is based on UAE launches national authority for scientific research by scidev.net (Wagdy Sawahel) which has a copyright policy compatible with our CC-BY 2.5. Specifically “CC-BY-2.0 UK“

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

The discovery of the presence of airborne asbestos in a middle school in Montclair, New Jersey Friday prompted the evacuation of over 200 students from the school and the school’s closure. Renaissance Middle School, part of the Montclair Public Schools in New Jersey, was closed Monday and remains closed Tuesday while undergoing asbestos testing and cleaning.

According to a letter sent home to parents by the Superintendent’s Office of Montclair Public Schools on Friday, “plaster may have been disturbed” during construction on new fire doors at the Renaissance School building on Thursday.

An inspection arranged by the school district indicated asbestos was present in the plaster, and a subsequent inspection performed by asbestos consultant Detail Associates revealed “a level of airborne asbestos fibers that exceeded the acceptable range” in the third floor hallway of the school. Montclair Public Schools business administrator Dana Sullivan told The Star-Ledger that testing conducted on March 31 revealed the presence of asbestos in a brown undercoating of plaster at the Renaissance School building.

The affected area was sealed off, and some students were moved to other areas of the building while others were moved to off-site locations. District Public Information Officer Laura Federico told The Montclair Times that sixth and seventh graders were transported to Hillside Elementary School, and eighth graders were bussed to Montclair High School. “The safety of our students and staff is always our first concern,” said Federico.

According to The Montclair Times, Detail Associates conducted a cleaning protocol at the school on Saturday and tested the building to make sure it did not contain unacceptable levels of asbestos fibers. The letter sent to parents Friday by the Superintendent’s Office said that Detail Associates had told the district that the building would be “cleaned, tested and cleared for occupancy by Monday morning”. The school remained closed Monday, and a meeting was held between parents and school district officials. A Parent-Teacher Association meeting is planned for Wednesday night.

The Star-Ledger reported that the ongoing asbestos cleanup of the school is being supervised by the state Department of Environmental Protection. At the meeting Monday morning between parents and school district officials, parents demanded that the inside of lockers be included as part of the asbestos cleanup. This additional step in the asbestos inspection process prompted the school’s closure Tuesday. A Monday statement by the Business Office of Montclair Public Schools said that the Renaissance School would remain closed Tuesday for sixth and seventh grade students “so that an extensive cleanup and additional asbestos testing can be completed”. Eighth grade students did not have classes scheduled as a trip to Washington, D.C. had previously been planned; the school trip is unaffected by the recent asbestos incident.

Steve Jaraczewski of Detail Associates was present at the district meeting Monday, and said that one of four test samples taken at the school was positive for the presence of airborne asbestos at over six times acceptable levels. Jaraczewski was critical of the asbestos management plan provided by Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark, which owns the school’s building and leases it to Montclair Public Schools.

Jaraczewski said that the state Department of Environmental Protection has required asbestos management plans since 1988, but that the company that drafted the asbestos plan for the Archdiocese of Newark is out of business. Representative for the archdiocese Jim Goodness emphasized that the building would be back open for classes soon. “The kids will be able to go back to school soon, and that’s the important part,” said Goodness.

Exposure to airborne asbestos can lead to mesothelioma, a cancer which develops in the sac surrounding the lungs and chest cavity, abdominal cavity, or the sac surrounding the heart. Exposure to disturbed asbestos fibers can also lead to lung scarring, a condition called asbestosis, and lung cancer. Patients with malignant mesothelioma generally do not have positive outcomes, and once diagnosed have six months to a year to live.