Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Edward Snowden, a US National Security Agency (NSA) whistle-blower who has been in exile since 2013, would like to return to the United States providing he is guaranteed a “fair and impartial trial”, said Anatoly Kucherena, his Russian lawyer, yesterday.

The US Attorney General has promised Snowden he will not be executed if he is convicted under the Espionage Act, however, Kucherena says, he has not been promised the fair trial he seeks. Kucherena also said the US Attorney General does not have legal power to enforce the promise of no execution. Reportedly, “fair”, to Snowden’s lawyers, requires he would not be tried under the Espionage Act. Snowden has been on the run since leaking classified information regarding the NSA’s mass electronic surveillance of the US population to the mainstream media.

Upon returning to the US, Snowden would still have to face trial on two counts of theft of government property. If he were found guilty on both counts he would serve an up to 30-year prison sentence.

Spokesman for the US Justice Department Marc Raimondi, in remarks to Reuters, reiterated the position of the US on the case, saying, “Snowden is not a whistle-blower. He is accused of leaking classified information and there is no question his actions have inflicted serious harms on our national security”.

Kucherena said he is working alongside lawyers from both Germany and the US in order to ensure that a fair trial can be negotiated.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Dan McCreary is running for the Progressive Conservative in the Ontario provincial election, in the Brant riding. Wikinews’ Nick Moreau interviewed him regarding his values, his experience, and his campaign.

Stay tuned for further interviews; every candidate from every party is eligible, and will be contacted. Expect interviews from Liberals, Progressive Conservatives, New Democratic Party members, Ontario Greens, as well as members from the Family Coalition, Freedom, Communist, Libertarian, and Confederation of Regions parties, as well as independents.

Saturday, February 26, 2011

An elderly Brooklyn, New York woman was found dead yesterday after a fire triggered by a voodoo ceremony caused a blaze in an apartment that left dozens homeless. The details of the ceremony were not clear, but sources say it led to sex.

An unidentified woman hired a Voodoo priest for $300, identified as Nelson (Pepe) Pierre, to perform a mystic ceremony meant to bring her good luck. The woman went to Pierre’s apartment, where she ended up in bed surrounded by lit candles which were mistakenly knocked over, setting the bedsheets on fire. In an effort to suppress the flames, Pierre splashed water from the bathroom sink on the sheets while his roommate, who was ironing at the time, opened a window for air. However, according to the New York Fire Department, wind gusting through the open window created a “blowtorch effect” which caused the fire to spread to the 4th floor hallway and into the 5th and 6th floors. The blaze killed one woman, three others were severely injured, and at least 20 firefighters were left with burn wounds.

In an NYFD statement, Fire Commissioner Salvatore J. Cassano said, “Time and time again we respond to tragedies that could have been so easily prevented. This fire had so many of those elements … hopefully others will learn from this tragedy.” It took hours for hundreds of firemen from dozens of companies to bring the raging fire under control.

Pierre, a man in his 60s, did not call 911 right away, but attempted to quell the fire using water from the bathroom sink. A source in law enforcement said, “Nobody sees a crime right now. It was an accident. Maybe they weren’t careful, but they did try to put it out.”

Mary Feagin, a 64-year old retired teacher, died in the blaze.

The New York Police Department is currently investigating the incident.

Friday, January 4, 2013

The Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai, who was shot by the Taliban for campaigning for education for girls, was discharged yesterday from the Queen Elizabeth hospital in Birmingham, England after success in the first stage of her medical treatment.

In October, Yousafzai was shot by Taliban forces on a school bus in Mingora, Swat District, Pakistan. She was given emergency treatment in Pakistan and then flown to Britain for treatment at a specialist unit which deals with injured soldiers.

Dave Rosser, University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust medical director, gave a statement about Yousafzai’s release from hospital: “Malala is a strong young woman and has worked hard with the people caring for her to make excellent progress in her recovery. Following discussions with Malala and her medical team, we decided that she would benefit from being at home with her parents and two brothers. She will return to the hospital as an outpatient and our therapies team will continue to work with her at home to supervise her onward care.”

She is due to return to hospital in a few weeks for cranial reconstructive surgery.

This is the Audio Wikinews Brief for October 25, 2007.

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Sunday, May 9, 2010

Chelsea football team today won the English Premier League for the first time since 2006, with an emphatic win over Wigan Athletic. Chelsea, who went into the game top of the table, knew that Manchester United had to beat Stoke City to have any chance of catching them.

The first goal came early, with French striker Nicolas Anelka scoring from a Florent Malouda knock on, despite calls for offside, in the sixth minute. Just after the half-hour mark, Frank Lampard was pulled down in the box by Wigan defender Gary Caldwell. This earned the defender a straight red card, and the resulting penalty was scored by Lampard. After half-time, a third goal came from Salomon Kalou, before Alenka converted an Ivanovic cross to extend the lead to four just minutes afterwards.

Didier Drogba, Chelsea’s top goalscorer this season, finally got onto the scoresheet with Chelsea’s hundredth goal of the season, heading in from Lampard’s lofted ball. When Ashley Cole was fouled in the area by former Chelsea man Mario Melchiot, Drogba stepped up to take the penalty, scoring Chelsea’s sixth. On 80 minutes, Drogba completed his hat-trick with a close-range rebound, as this became the third time Chelsea had scored seven in one game this season. Ashley Cole scored the eighth just before the end of the game with a low shot under the goalkeeper.

Chelsea captain John Terry, whose private life had been the subject of intense scrutiny over the course of the season, was exuberant over the title win: “Forget everything else, this is about Chelsea Football Club and our day today. It has been a hard three years not winning the Premiership and today we deserved it. It’s been hurting inside of me for three years, seeing Man United lifting it season after season.” Carlo Ancelotti, the winning manager, compared the win to that of former Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho: “Mourinho did some fantastic work and won two titles consecutively. This is my first and I hope to do the same as Mourinho. Now we have the opportunity to win the double and I hope that my players can, after these celebrations.”

Saturday, March 18, 2006

The Cole inquiry was told on Friday by a former director of the Middle East branch of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) that she had heard the name “Alia” during her time at DFAT. Alia is the Jordanian trucking company used by the Australian Wheat Board (AWB) and alleged to have been paying kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime.

Previously, Alexander Downer, Australia’s foreign minister, insisted that nobody in DFAT knew about Alia until it was named in the United Nations report on kickbacks paid to Iraq under the oil-for-food program.

Jill Courtney, a former director at DFAT, told the Cole Inquiry that she heard of Alia some time in 2000.

In a statement provided to the inquiry, Ms Courtney states “When I saw the name ‘Alia’ in newspaper reports of the Cole Inquiry over the last few weeks in relation to the Jordanian trucking company used by AWB I recognised the name and I now believe that it was aname that I had heard in that context during the time I worked in the Middle East branch in 2000 and 2001.”

Ms Courtney told the inquiry that she hard heard or read about Alia as a Jordanian trucking company which was being used by the AWB during her time at as a director of the Middle East branch at DFAT. Ms Courtney said that she could not recall how she came by the information.

Ms Courtney was asked by John Agius SC (counsel assisting the inquiry), “Is there any possibility that you saw it or heard of it as a Jordanian trucking company, and that what you have done when you read about it in the newspaper, in the context of this inquiry, is to learn then that it was being used by AWB, and that you have fused the two matters together?” She replied, “No.”

Sunday, December 4, 2005

The US commander of the Multinational Security Transition Command in Iraq said that he had no knowledge of the National Strategy for Victory in Iraq document released by the US President. This, along with speculation that the document was chiefly authored by a public opinion analyst recruited by the White House have led to some critics claiming that the drafted ‘strategy’ is targeting US public opinion, not the Iraqi insurgency.

The military, political and economic strategy for Iraq, outlined last week by President Bush in a speech at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, was based by a 35-page document titled the National Strategy for Victory in Iraq. A metadata tag on the document posted on the White House website identified its author as a computer user ‘feaver_p’. It is believed to refer to Dr. Peter D. Feaver, a special advisor to the National Security Council staff.

A political scientist at Duke University, Dr. Feaver analyzed public opinion polls about the Iraq war and attitudes towards war casualties. Dr. Feaver found that US public opinion will support military engagement abroad, despite growing casualties, provided that the public believed that the war was being fought for a worthy cause and that victory was achievable.

Dr. Feaver was one of the people who helped “conceive and draft” the document, according to a White House staffer, who said that Meghan L. O’Sullivan, the deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan, and her staff played a larger role. White House officials confirmed to the New York Times that the document’s “creation and presentation strongly reflected the public opinion research”.

The document “reflects the broad interagency effort under way in Iraq” according to an NSC spokesman Frederick Jones and had received major contributions from the Departments of Defense, State, Treasury and Homeland Security, as well as the director of National Intelligence.

On Friday, Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, whose Multinational Security Transition Command is responsible for building Iraq’s security forces, told reporters that he had seen the strategy document for the first time when it was released to the public. The White House had said that not all senior officers in Iraq had necessarily seen the document and Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said that he had read and critiqued the document on several occasions.

Earlier, replying to questions about the President’s strategy, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said that the document was an “inter-agency document” and an “unclassified version” of the administrations “strategy for victory in Iraq” published for the public to view.

Christopher F. Gelpi, of Duke University, who co-authored Dr. Feaver’s work titled Casualty Sensitivity and the War in Iraq, stated, “The Pentagon doesn’t need the president to give a speech and post a document on the White House Web site to know how to fight the insurgents. The document is clearly targeted at American public opinion.” In their work together, Gelpi, Feaver and Reifler found that the most important factor which determines the US public’s tolerance for US military deaths in a war is the public’s beliefs about the likelihood of success, and a secondary, but still important, factor, was found to be the public’s belief in the rightness of a war.