Friday, March 28, 2008

2008 Taipei International Cycle Show (Taipei Cycle) & Taipei International Sporting Goods Show (TaiSPO) not only did a best reunion with conjunctions of the launch of Taipei World Trade Center Nangang Exhibition and the concurrent cycling race of 2008 Tour de Taiwan but also provide opportunities and benefits for sporting goods, bicycle, and athlete sports industries to establish the basis of the sourcing center in Asia and notabilities on the international cycling race.

Although the Taipei cycle was split from the TaiSPO since 1988, but the trends of sporting good industry in Taiwan changed rapidly and multiply because of modern people’s lifestyles and habits. After the “TaiSPO Innovation Award” was established since 2005, the fitness and leisure industries became popular stars as several international buyers respected on lifestyle and health.

For example, some participants participated Taipei Cycle and TaiSPO with different product lines to do several marketing on bicycle and fitness equipments, this also echoed the “Three New Movements” proposed by Giant Co., Ltd. to make a simple bicycle with multiple applications and functions. As of those facts above, Wikinews Journalist Rico Shen interviewed Ideal Bike Corporation and Gary Silva, designer of “3G Steeper” to find out the possibilities on the optimizations between two elements, fitness and bicycle.

Monday, May 31, 2010

Scottish IndyCar driver Dario Franchitti won his second Indianapolis 500 in four years today after leading 155 laps, which is the fourth most in the 99-year history of the race. Franchitti, aged 37, also won a rain-shortened race in 2007, when the race was stopped after 166 laps due to the inclement weather and he was declared the winner.

The conditions at this race were far different, with the National Weather Service reporting temperatures of 88° F (31° C) at the track at race time. This temperature made the race the second hottest to the 1932 race, which reached 92° F.

After a failed attempt to race in the NASCAR Sprint Cup series in 2008, Franchitti returned to the IndyCar series to race for Chip Ganassi Racing. With this victory, owner Chip Ganassi became the first team owner in racing history to have their drivers win both the Daytona 500 of the Sprint Cup (won by Jamie McMurray) and the Indianapolis 500 in the same year.

“The milk tastes just as good the second time around here,” said Franchitti, referring to the ceremonial winner’s milk drink following the race. “I just needed to know what the other guys were doing with fuel. There was a gap behind them and a lot of confusion. This means so much after coming back when I went away for a year in 2008 and to come back win a championship and win the Indianapolis 500,” he added in an interview in the winner’s circle.

Franchitti won the race on less than a tenth of a gallon of fuel, after he and his team decided to not pit during the final laps of the race. The race ended on a caution after a massive crash between drivers Mike Conway and Ryan Hunter-Reay, when Conway’s car got caught onto Hunter-Reay’s left outside wheel and was sent airborne. Conway’s car then hit the track’s retaining wall and landed on its front side. Medics took Conway out of the car, and he was taken to the hospital with a leg injury.

Finishing behind Franchitti in second place was British driver Dan Wheldon of Partner Racing. This was Wheldon’s second straight second place finish. In third place was Marco Andretti, who started in sixteenth position.

See external links for a full list of results.

Monday, May 19, 2008

The last remaining members of the Russian doomsday group True Russian Orthodox Church emerged from a cave outside Penza Friday, after enduring the toxic stench of rotting corpses from two deceased members of their group. Interfax quoted authorities who said that fumes from the corpses in the cave threatened the nine remaining members of the group with poisoning and intoxication. Members entered the cave in November 2007 under instruction from their leader Pyotr Kuznetsov, and were under the belief that the world was coming to an end in May of this year.

Thirty-five members of the group entered the underground cave, 650km (400 miles) south-east of Moscow, in November in order to wait for the end of the world. The group members threatened mass suicide by igniting gasoline canisters if authorities attempted to intervene and remove them.

When Russian Orthodox priests were brought in to negotiate in November, the group members refused to speak with them. The group’s leader Kuznetsov, a trained engineer, instructed his followers not to listen to the radio or watch television. True Orthodox Church is a splinter group of the Russian Orthodox Church. Members believe that bar codes are Satanic symbols and refuse to eat processed food.

In November Kuznetsov, 43, was arrested and charged with setting up a religious organization associated with violence. In March, Kuznetsov attempted to commit suicide by banging his head with a log, after the spiritual leader realized he was wrong about his prophecy of apocalypse. After undergoing a psychiatric evaluation, Kuznetsov was determined to be schizophrenic. “It was an attempted suicide. Pyotr put his head on a tree stump and started hitting his head with a log,” said Oleg Melnichenko, deputy goveror of the Penza region. According to local prosecutor Grigori Zhitenev, Kuznetsov attempted to commit suicide because “the end of the world has not come”.

When the roof collapsed approximately a month ago, 24 members including four children left the cave. A male member of the group who had previously left the cave told Russia Today TV that one female member died of malnutrition while fasting, and another female member died of cancer. Both of their bodies were buried in a hole in the cave. Emergency workers discovered the bodies while trying to shore up supports in the cave which previously underwent partial cave-ins due to melting snow. The bodies of the two dead women were exhumed after the nine members of the group left the cave, and forensic tests were conducted on the bodies.

“We could smell the stench through ventilation holes. As we pulled out the dead bodies, we suggested the others leave and they agreed,” said local official Vladimir Provotorov in a statement quoted by Interfax. Provotorov said authorities believed the remaining members of the group would be poisoned by the toxic fumes of the decomposing bodies of the two dead females. There was “a real threat of poisoning from toxic corpse fumes,” said Provotorov. Oleg Melnichenko said the stench of the corpses drove the remaining members out of the cave. According to the International Herald Tribune, the Penza regional Prosecutor General’s Office confirmed the Interfax report.

A physician is examining the eight women and one man that emerged from the cave on Friday, and prosecutor’s office spokeswoman Tatyana Ostrovskaya said authorities are in the process of deciding whether or not to pursue criminal charges related to the two dead women. “We are examining the bodies to see if we will open a criminal case,” said Ostrovskaya. The majority of the members of the True Russian Orthodox Church still believe that the world will soon end, and await the apocalypse in the village of Nikolskoye in a cottage owned by their leader Kuznetsov.

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Eurostar trains have been suspended today due to cold weather, and further snowfall is predicted in the United Kingdom, while the rail company attempts to work out what caused a series of electrical flaws on Friday.

On Friday night, more than 2,000 people were trapped in the Channel Tunnel for sixteen hours after the cold weather and condensation caused a number of electrical faults.

Calais port, in the French city where the Channel Tunnel terminates, was also closed yesterday, causing traffic problems on the roads around the English cities of Dover and Folkestone, near the tunnel’s British entrance.

The Conservative Member of the European Parliament for the south-east of England, Nirj Deva, has called for Eurostar chief executive Richard Brown to resign, saying that it would be the “decent thing” to do in the light of “astonishing incompetence”. Brown has apologised for the incident, and said it was “absolutely unprecedented”, and conceded that “it took too long to get the trains out”.

Kent Police say that there is now very little traffic waiting for a place on the Channel Tunnel, with more than 3,500 vehicles having crossed the English Channel on ferries. Supt. Andy Rabey made a statement on the suspension: “Overnight we’ve been working very hard with our partners to clear the queues and help people get away for Christmas. If you have a crossing booked and haven’t set out yet, check with your operator before leaving home.” A Eurostar spokeswoman issued an apology, in which she said that “it’s not possible” to run services.

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

US doctors are to interview 12 patients with a view to performing the first ever transplant of a human face.

The Cleveland Clinic will choose between seven women and five men to find the person most suited for the experimental procedure, which is a radical and controversial solution to extreme facial scarring or disfigurement.

Having practiced the procedure on bodies donated for medical research, the Cleveland Clinic team believe they have a 50% chance of success. The procedure will not live up to science-fiction predictions and give the recipient the appearance of the donor; the underlying bone structure is the deciding factor in the final appearance. The new face will end up resembling neither the donor nor recipient.

Surgeons in several other countries have announced being ready to perform this procedure in the past. However, the risk and non life-threatening nature of disfigurement have meant that gaining approval for the groundbreaking surgery has been difficult. Like many other transplant operations, the recipient would be required to take drugs to prevent tissue rejection for the remainder of their life. These drugs can have side effects and carry their own risks involving the patient’s immune system.

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Saturday, April 14, 2007

Nicolas Sarkozy, the right-wing political party UMP’s candidate for the upcoming Presidential elections in France, which enters its first round next week, held a campaign meeting in Toulouse last Thursday, where he accused the left side political parties of betraying the ideals of Jaurès, Blum and other key socialist politicians. He compared the “left of old times” with the left nowadays, and said he wanted to “bring back to the heart of politics the values that the left side parties have betrayed.”

Former mayor of Toulouse Philippe Douste-Blazy welcomed more than 14 000 attendees to the city’s Parc des Expositions. He summarized the candidates political program by saying: “The Republic [of France, red.] is not about defending laxity and impunity for the agitators, it’s about guaranteeing the security and freedom of all through the respect of the laws and Justice.” Sarkozy was Minister of Interior Affairs during the 2005 suburban riots in France, when he instituted a zero-tolerance policy. Of one of Sarkozy’s rivals, François Bayrou, Douste-Blazy said that France didn’t need a President who “undergoes and refuses to make choices.”

In his speech of more than one hour, Sarkozy claimed the historical heritage of the founders of socialism and their values of right to work, payed holidays, social security, unemployment benefits, education, liberty of conscience, and of moral rights and the rights of the individual: “These values, I’ve wanted the Republican right side to reclaim them at a moment when the left side abandons them.” He also criticised François Hollande, chairman of the French Socialist Party, and with him his wife and the socialist candidate for the Presidential elections, Ségolène Royal, who, according to Sarkozy, “has forgotten Blum and Camus, and doesn’t know Jaurès.”

A week ago, Ségolène Royal held a speech in Carmaux, the home of Jaurès, where she proposed herself in continuity with Jaurès’ battle for the values of employment, concluding her speech by saying: “It’s important for the left side to know where we come from, because that helps also to foresee the future.”

On Wednesday, she held a meeting in Metz, where she accused Sarkozy of wanting to exercise power alone, of knowing everything, of wanting an unequal health care system and of following the laws of money. “He proposes us the law of the strongest. Do you want it? Me neither! And I propose to you the law of most justice.”

Friday, November 3, 2006

On November 13, Torontonians will be heading to the polls to vote for their ward’s councillor and for mayor. Among Toronto’s ridings is Don Valley West (Ward 26). Four candidates responded to Wikinews’ requests for an interview. This ward’s candidates include Muhammad Alam, Bahar Aminvaziri, Orhan Aybars, Michele Carroll-Smith, Mohamed Dhanani, Abdul Ingar, Geoff Kettel, Debbie Lechter, Natalie Maniates, John Masterson, John Parker, David Thomas, Csaba Vegh, and Fred Williams.

For more information on the election, read Toronto municipal election, 2006.