Thursday, August 16, 2007

The name Robert Cailliau may not ring a bell to the general public, but his invention is the reason why you are reading this: Dr. Cailliau together with his colleague Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, making the internet accessible so it could grow from an academic tool to a mass communication medium. Last January Dr. Cailliau retired from CERN, the European particle physics lab where the WWW emerged.

Wikinews offered the engineer a virtual beer from his native country Belgium, and conducted an e-mail interview with him (which started about three weeks ago) about the history and the future of the web and his life and work.

Wikinews: At the start of this interview, we would like to offer you a fresh pint on a terrace, but since this is an e-mail interview, we will limit ourselves to a virtual beer, which you can enjoy here.

Robert Cailliau: Yes, I myself once (at the 2nd international WWW Conference, Chicago) said that there is no such thing as a virtual beer: people will still want to sit together. Anyway, here we go.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Pakistani intelligence officials said earlier today that two suspected US drone attacks in Taliban-dominated tribal areas of the country have killed at least a dozen people, although some reports put the number as high as seventeen.

The first attack targeted a vehicle carrying two suspected militants in the town of Dosali, in the North Waziristan tribal area near the Afghan border.

Hours later elsewhere in North Waziristan, officials reported that several drones fired seven missiles into suspected militant compounds. They added that the death toll could rise. However, it was not immediately clear how many Taliban members were killed in the strikes.

“Seven missiles were fired. They hit a cave complex, a compound and a vehicle,” said a Pakistani official, as quoted by the Reuters news agency.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

At the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities (SARM) conference, a resolution was passed that encourages the Government of Saskatchewan, Canada to place a moratorium on specialty livestock farms raising wild boar. All wild boars that have escaped to roam wild should be killed, according to the resolution.

Agriculture Minister Bob Bjornerud endorses a ban on wild boar farming. The wild boar population is expanding exponentially. There are over 2,000 feral Sus scrofa swine roaming the prairies. Two litters of approximately 12 piglets are sired by each wild boar sow every year. The Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation (SWF) likewise passed a similar resolution at their 79th annual convention to urge the Saskatchewan Government to declare the wild boar as a nuisance species which can be killed on sight.

3% of farmed “wild” boars escape. Cells of wild boars are ravenous creatures killing and eating everything in their path. Horses, cows, and other livestock run from wild boars, breaking through fences in the process.

Ostriches, emus, llamas, alpacas, reindeer, wild boar, and fallow deer were amongst the animals introduced to farms in Saskatchewan during the agricultural diversification program in the late 1970s. Production of wild boars was promoted throughout the 1980s.

According to the Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food 2001 statistics, there were 150 wild boar producers raising approximately 15,000 and 20,000 head. Of these there were about 2,700 sows. On the 2006 Census of Agriculture, 401 farms reported 4,926 boars.

The boar’s red meat is an export commodity to Europe and Asia. The live breeding stock are also sold to trophy hunt ranches. Full blooded wild boar and hybrid crosses are raised.

Friday, June 23, 2006

The British confectioner Cadbury’s has recalled over one million chocolate bars from retailers in the UK and Ireland over fears that they may be affected by salmonella. The company is stressing that it is only a precautionary measure, and that customers should not be concerned if they have eaten one of the bars.

The bars affected are the Dairy Milk Turkish 250g, Dairy Milk Caramel, Dairy Milk Mint bars, Dairy Milk 8 chunk, Dairy Milk 1kg bar, Dairy Milk Buttons Easter Egg 105g and 10p Freddo bar. Uneaten products can be returned to ‘Cadbury Recall, Freepost MID20061, Birmingham B3O 2QZ’, and then a full refund will be given. Customers can also call 0800 818181 if they are concerned.

Cadbury has said that it expects to have fresh stocks of the products back on the market in the near future.

The decision was made in consultation with the Food Standards Agency.

Sunday, July 2, 2006

Asteroid 2004 XP₁₄, a half-mile wide chunk of hard rock travelling at 40 000 miles an hour, will miss the Earth by a few hundred thousand miles, Monday.

Dr David Asher from the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland said if the rock, discovered in 2004, were to hit the Earth the result would be devastating. “It would probably be big enough to wipe out a small country,” he said.

Amateur astronomers with 6-inch telescopes would be able to follow the speeding space debris in Europe and North America at its closest approach to the planet at 0425 UTC.

At this time it would be at a safe distance of 268,624 miles from Earth – closer to the Earth than the Moon would be at its farthest extent in its orbit.

2004 XP₁₄ is named as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA), along with 782 known others by Astronomers at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory at Harvard.

Zipping about in the solar system no PHAs have yet been found on direct collision course with the Earth. Still, “For something of this size to come this close is unusual,” said Don Yeomans, the head of NASA’s Near Earth Object Program.”

An expert at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California said it was the closest approach by such a massive object for over 80 years – since 1925.

Before 2004 XP₁₄‘s exact orbital path around the sun was known with more precision, there were concerns it would hit the Earth.

In the near future Jon Giorgini said such cosmic uncertainty would be much less and the public less alarmed. “In the next 20 to 30 years, we’ll have a complete catalog of hazardous objects,” Giorgini said.

Edward Lu and Stanley Love, of Johnson Space Centre, Houston, also have allayed fears about a collision. In a 2005 article in Nature they theorised a “gravity tractor” could move any known threat within a year.

Monday, November 26, 2007

In the 18 months since Andrea Muizelaar was crowned winner of the reality TV series Canada’s Next Top Model, her life has been a complete whirlwind. From working in a dollar store in her hometown of Whitby, Ontario, to modeling haute couture in Toronto, she had reached her dream of becoming a true Top Model.

But at what cost? Unknown to casual television viewers, Muizelaar had been enveloped in the eating disorder anorexia nervosa, which inevitably became too much for her to bear. She gave up modeling and moved back to Whitby, where she sought treatment for her disorder, re-entered college, and now works at a bank. Where is she now? Happy and healthy, she says.

Recently Andrea Muizelaar sat down with Wikinews reporter Mike Halterman in a candid interview that stretched to nearly two hours, as she told all about her hopes and aspirations, her battle with anorexia, and just what really happened on Canada’s Next Top Model.

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