Thursday, December 13, 2007

Victoria Wyndham was one of the most seasoned and accomplished actresses in daytime soap opera television. She played Rachel Cory, the maven of Another World‘s fictional town, Bay City, from 1972 to 1999 when the show went off the air. Wyndham talks about how she was seen as the anchor of a show, and the political infighting to keep it on the air as NBC wanted to wrest control of the long-running soap from Procter & Gamble. Wyndham fought to keep it on the air, but eventually succumbed to the inevitable. She discusses life on the soap opera, and the seven years she spent wandering “in the woods” of Los Angeles seeking direction, now divorced from a character who had come to define her professional career. Happy, healthy and with a family she is proud of, Wyndham has found life after the death of Another World in painting and animals. Below is David Shankbone’s interview with the soap diva.

Sunday, June 5, 2005

Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International, compared the United States detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to a Soviet-era gulag in that it is “entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detention in violation of international law,” she said.

The group’s Executive Director William Schulz, on Fox News Sunday, said in response to questioning that they do not “know for sure” whether or not testimonies it has published describing torture and abuse of prisoners by sections of the U.S. military are valid because the U.S. will not give access to the camp to investigate them. [1]

He also said he has no conclusive evidence that U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, ordered torture of detainees at the facility. Schulz had previously referred to “apparent high-level architects of torture,”, and included Donald Rumsfeld in that group. [2]

Director Schulz stated that comparing the installation to a gulag was perhaps not the best choice of words. “…they (detainees) are not in forced labor, they are not being denied food. But,” he continued,” there are some analogies between the gulags and our detention facilities.” Schulz alleged that U.S. officials are “running an archipelago of detention facilities,” some secret. The report also describes “ghost” detainees who “disappear” and the export of prisoners to countries that are known to practice torture.

During his appearance, Schulz argued that his and other human rights groups should be given broader access to the facility. “We don’t know for sure what all is happening at Guantanamo,” he said, “and our whole point is that the United States ought to allow independent human rights organizations to investigate.” The treatment of prisoners at the facility has been in hot dispute recently, with Amnesty International comparing the facility to a “gulag” in its annual human rights report. Bush administration officials condemned the comparison.

On Friday, the U.S. government released documents indicating that both guards and detainees at the facility had on a few occasions abused the Qur’an, the Muslim holy book.

Prisoners and ex-prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have testified that they have been tortured. David Hicks, still being held, filed an affidavit on August 5, 2004 [3] declaring that he had been tortured, abused and ill-treated during his detention by US military authorities, and that he saw and heard similar treatment inflicted on other detainees. Mamdouh Habib, now free, says about his time at Guantanamo Bay that he was told by interrogators that his family had been killed, and that he was tied to the ground while a prostitute menstruated on him. Professor Christopher Tennant of Sydney University also stated he saw an unsigned medical report from Guantanamo Bay that backed up Habib’s claim to have been beaten while in US custody;

“Well, the main feature of the medical report from Guantanamo was that he had had repeatedly blood in his urine, which is a very significant symptom and a worrying symptom, and that was consistent with his reports both to me and to the specialist physician who also examined him, and was consistent with the fact that, on examination, he had evidence of discolouration to his skin on his right loin, just over his kidney, which in turn was consistent with old bruising and possibly due to being beaten.”

Friday, May 1, 2009

At approximately 06:00 a.m. (00:30 GMT) Wednesday, between four and seven people were killed when an Electric Multiple Unit (EMU) passenger train crashed into a stationary freight train at Vyasarpadi Jeeva station, in Chennai, India. Between eleven and twenty persons were injured, and rushed to General Hospital in Chennai.

Officials are unsure of the number of persons aboard the passenger train, which was operated by an unknown person. “It is not clear who operated (it),” said S. Jayanth, acting general manager of Southern Railway. The operator of the EMU train was not in the train when it left 15 minutes to half an hour before the scheduled departure time. It is said some passengers did board the passenger train.

The EMU train ignored all signals, and drove about 7 kilometers (4 mi) at high speed, jumping tracks, before colliding with the goods train.

The driver of the goods train, Arumugam, has been confirmed as one of those who has died. The goods train was traveling between Arakkonam to Chennai. The motorman, guard and assistant jumped from the goods train sustaining fractures.

“We heard a loud noise and saw several compartments in flames. The smell emanating from bodies from the mangled coaches was nauseating,” said M.N. Selvi, a nearby resident.

The platforms at the Vyasarpadi Jeeva station were destroyed, and electrical cables were torn down. The EMU train caught fire in the collision destroying two compartments completely. The other compartments were thrown from the tracks. The freight train was loaded with oil tanks, however reports indicate that only the EMU train was set ablaze.

All train services were canceled for a time on one of the busiest rail lines of India. “Train services are disrupted due to the mishap but we hope to restore the services in two to three hours time,” an Indian Railways spokesperson.

Railways Minister Lalu Prasad announced that an inquiry will be held.

Monday, October 4, 2010

Roush Fenway Racing driver Greg Biffle, who qualified fifth, won the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series 2010 Price Chopper 400 held on October 3, 2010 at Kansas Speedway in Kansas City, Kansas, United States. This became his second win of the season.

Biffle was chased by Jimmie Johnson up to the finish line, but was not able to catch him this weekend. Following the race, Johnson became the points leader after three of ten events in the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

Kevin Harvick managed the third position in the closing laps of the race, after starting twenty-fourth on the grid. Pole position winner Kasey Kahne collided with the wall earlier in the race, which prompted him to a thirty-seventh place finish.

Tony Stewart, from the Stewart Haas Racing team, clinched the fourth position, after leading the most laps with 76. Jeff Gordon followed Stewart in fifth, while Carl Edwards could only manage sixth.

Matt Kenseth, Paul Menard, Ryan Newman, and A. J. Allmendinger rounded out the top ten finishers in the race. Other drivers in the Chase, such as Denny Hamlin finished twelfth, and Kyle Busch finished in twenty-first.

Johnson now heads the Drivers’ championship with 5,503 points, eight points ahead of Denny Hamlin. Manufacturers’ ?hampionship standings is lead by Chevrolet with 212, thirty-seven points ahead of Toyota and 77 ahead of Ford. Once the race concluded, Johnson commented, “I know we came [into Kansas] second. Of course, I wanted to be leading. I could care less where the 11 [Hamlin] was [Sunday]. It’s just not time to worry about that stuff. After Talladega, teams and drivers can work on a strategy of protecting or taking chances. We have to get deeper into the Chase to be concerned about who the points leader is.”

Friday, March 26, 2010

Two medium intensity seisms were registered in Chile. These quakes are aftershocks of the March 11 Pichilemu earthquake. According to the University of Chile Geological Survey, the first one took place at 9:59 local time (13:59 UTC); its epicenter was located 17 kilometers northeast of Pichilemu, with a magnitude of 4.7. It lasted about ten seconds. The second aftershock had a magnitude of 5.1, and occurred at the 10:57 local time (14:57 UTC), with its epicenter located 15 kilometers north of Cobquecura.

The National Emergencies Office graded the scale of the seisms on the Mercalli scale, which attempts to quantify the amount of physical damage caused by an earthquake. The intensities of the smaller aftershock were determined to be V in Pichilemu, III in Talca and II in San Fernando, while the larger 5.1 magnitude earthquake only hit IV in Pichilemu, but registered a IV in Talca as well, due to its closer proximity to that city.

Thursday morning the Municipality of Pichilemu posted a letter via Facebook to all those affected by the February 27 and March 11 earthquakes in the surrounding areas of Pichilemu, like Ciruelos, Alto Ramírez, and others. However, they didn’t name the village of Espinillo. The mayor of Pichilemu, Roberto Córdova, was criticized for not giving aid to the village. Córdova responded that he was “doing his best to aid [the surrounding areas]. [The Municipality] is going to replace the [balustrades] destroyed by the 11 March earthquake,” and “these places are receiving the aid they require.”

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Molten steel spilled out and killed 32 workers at the Qinghe Special Steel Corporation mill in the city of Tieling in Liaoning province, China.

The ladle containing 1,500-degree-Celsius liquid steel poured into an open room, where employees take breaks in-between shift changes, at 7:45 a.m. local time. At least 6 others were injured, one of them critically.

“It is the most serious accident to hit China’s steel industry since 1949,” said China’s deputy head of the State Administration of Work Safety, Sun Huashan.

At least 4 workers have been arrested after the accident. The manager of mill, an operator, technician and a supervisor of a workshop were all arrested and are being questioned as an investigation in launched into what caused the accident to occur.

Saturday, July 9, 2005

A Friday protest in downtown Richmond drew around 200 protesters to Virginia’s state capital to demonstrate against strip mining practices of Massey Energy Company. Demonstrators marched through town and gathered in front of the company’s office building where nearly 20 laid in the street of the city’s main thoroughfare, and were nearly arrested. A few linked arms around a sidewalk structure to avoid being hauled away by police.

Chanting “Blankenship, Blankenship, Blankenship,” and waving bed sheets for flags, the demonstrators demanded to be seen and heard by the Massey Chairman and CEO, Don Blankenship. Arrests for civil disobedience were avoided when two security guards were sent by the company to retrieve a list of their demands.

The demonstration, timed to coincide with Scotland’s G8 conference, was organized by a group called “Mountain Justice Summer” and environmentalists to protest mountain top removal mining techniques. The company’s mining operations are located in the Appalachian Mountain chain in the states of Virginia, West Virginia , Kentucky and Tennessee. Massey is the United States‘ fourth-largest coal mining operation.

A statement issued by a Massey spokesman defended their respect of people’s rights, and decried what they said was, “a great deal of misinformation.”

The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that unofficial “legal observers” accompanied the demonstrators and carried notebooks to record crowd and police activity.