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Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Malaysian documentary The Last Communist was passed without cuts by the National Film Censorship board in March. Ten days before it was supposed to start screening, the Home Ministry retracted the approval.

The film made its world debut at the Berlin Film Festival 2006 without filmmaker Amir Muhammed in attendance. It also appeared at the Seattle International Film Festival 2006 and the London Film Festival 2006. It has been reviewed favorably in Variety and UK’s Sight & Sound. Sight & Sound called the film an “essayistic delight” and of Amir Muhammed “the only visible heir to the Chris Marker tradition.”

The ban comes after Berita Harian, a conservative Malay daily, printed a series of articles critical of the film and the Censorship board. In the first article, the reporters ask government ministers and professors to comment on the impact of the film. The response is wholly negative.

Home Minister Datuk Seri Mohd Radzi Sheikh Ahmad issued a retraction of the approval on May 5, 2006. Deputy Minister Datuk Tan Chai Ho described the reasons behind the ban as, “the public was not very happy about the movie.”

Neither the Berita Harian journalists nor their sources had seen the full movie. The article misstates that the film glorifies “the communist leader” when Chin Peng is mentioned only once throughout the film.

At the request of opposition Parliamentary leader Lim Kit Siang, the documentary was screened for ministers of Parliament. Culture, Arts and Heritage Minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim said, “The plot isn’t controversial and there’s nothing that could be deemed as offensive from the cultural viewpoint.” Lim Kit Siang called the movie, “an eye opener for all”.

On Monday, 22nd May, Radzi announced that in the annual meeting of the UMNO supreme council, in June, the government is scheduled to decide whether to keep the ban on the film, or let the people decide.

At the time of the ban, Radzi had not seen the film either.

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

The Marussia F1 team’s test driver, Spaniard María de Villota, was taken to hospital by air ambulance today after a collision in testing at Duxford Aerodrome.

At the end of her first installation run, the car she was driving had a low-speed collision with the loading ramp of the team’s support truck. According to BBC Cambridgeshire presenter Chris Mann, the car “suddenly accelerated” into the rear of the vehicle. The Marussia team released a statement an hour and a half after the accident, stating that she had been transferred to hospital, and a further statement would be issued once her condition had been assessed.

A spokesman for the East of England ambulance service, Gary Sanderson, said de Villota had “[…] sustained life-threatening injuries and following treatment at the scene by paramedics, she has been taken to Addenbrooke’s Hospital for further care.” According to witnesses, she was motionless for about fifteen minutes as medical teams attended to her, but did move her hands before being taken away from the test track. Medical charity Magpas, whose volunteer paramedics attended the accident, reported she had sustained injuries to her head and face, and was in a ‘stable condition’ when she reached the hospital.

Marussia reported her as conscious later in the afternoon: “Since Maria’s arrival at the hospital at approximately 10.45am this morning, she has been receiving the best medical attention possible at the hospital, which is the region’s major trauma centre. Maria is conscious and medical assessments are ongoing. The team will await the outcome of these assessments before providing further comment. The team’s first priority at this time is Maria and her family.”

De Villota was announced as Marussia’s test driver in March, having prior experience driving for Alan Docking Racing in Superleague Formula in Spain.

Sunday, June 8, 2008

A lively shopping district was suddenly struck by an indiscriminate murder spree on a Sunday afternoon. A young man attacked a crowd with a rented truck, and then stabbed people with a dagger, around 12:35 JST (3:35 UTC) on Sunday in the Akihabara district of Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo. The suspect, identified as Tomohiro Kat?, aged 25, was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder. Seven people were killed, and ten injured.

The injured people include pedestrians, a 53-year-old policeman, and a taxi driver, 54, who is believed to have left his taxi in order to help a pedestrian hit by the truck. About 17 ambulances came to the scene. NHK reports that medical teams trained for disasters joined the rescue.

The dead are six men aged between 19 and 74 and a 21-year-old woman; each was identified by police.

The truck, traveling on Kanda My?jin-d?ri (Kanda My?jin Avenue), ran into the crowd at a crossing on Ch??-d?ri (Ch?? Avenue), which is a vehicle-free road every Sunday. After entering the crowd, the truck continued moving for about 30 meters. The suspect then exited the truck and began stabbing people. According to a witness, the suspect, upon being pursued by police, ran south on Ch??-d?ri and was cornered in a narrow alley. The suspect dropped his knife after the police officer drew his gun, and was overpowered by the officer and several bystanders.

The suspect has been quoted as confessing to police, “I came to Akihabara to kill people. I’m tired of the world. Anyone was OK. Today I came alone.” The suspect, a native of Aomori City, lived and worked as a dispatched temporary employee in Shizuoka Prefecture. After being held at the Manseibashi Police Station, he was sent on Tuesday to the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office.

At the scene, a table covered with a white cloth was set for memorial flowers and other offerings on the morning of Monday, June 9. As acquaintances of the dead and passersby visited, the table soon filled—almost flooded—with flowers, drink bottles, pictures, and folded paper cranes.

The incident occurred on the same date with the 2001 Osaka school massacre, in which eight elementary school students were killed.

NHK reported the incident as confirmed within 45 minutes, interrupting a news channel program for one minute. Some newspapers created special issues to report the incident as June 8 was a Sunday and also a press holiday, many newspapers in Japan were not scheduled for delivery on that evening or the following morning.

The Akihabara district is famous for its Electric Town with wholesalers and retailers of video games or electric gadgets such as PC parts, televisions and kitchen appliances. It has also become famous for distinctive trends in cultures created or supported by the youth.

Local residents, business owners, and government officials from Chiyoda Ward assembled for an emergency meeting on Monday to discuss whether the practice of maintaining the vehicle-free area on Sundays ought to be continued. The Tokyo Metropolitan Public Safety Commission is also expected to discuss the issue.

Saturday, February 11, 2006

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon underwent emergency surgery at Hadassah Medical Center in Israel to treat intestinal damage revealed by a recent computed tomography, better known as a CT scan. The Chief Surgeon said, “Sharon is out of danger, for the moment. His condition is stable and the surgery was a success.” Sharon is currently in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the hospital.

Yesterday doctors treating Sharon had noticed a swollen abdomen and ordered a CT scan on his torso and found the damage to his intestine. Later tests had shown that part of the large intestine had developed necrosis and needed to be immediately removed.

Hospital director Shlomo Mor-Yosef stated a press conference that there were “no complications” during surgery. “His (Sharon’s) key problem is lack of consciousness. There is no significant change in his condition. Doctors did not find any occluded artery and there were no blood vessels blocked. He is stable but in critical condition at this time and he is in no immediate danger at this moment.”

Yosef also said that Sharon’s sons and family had met earlier and decided to go forward with the surgery and treatment.

Doctors removed at least 50cm of Sharon’s large intestine.

Yosef also said that possible reasons as to why Sharon’s intestine was damaged were, “maybe infection or decline of blood supply to the intestine.” Yosef also said that the surgery was both a “routine procedure” and “not a dramatic” one. “Hospitals perform these operations sometimes two or three times a day,” he added.

Yael Bossem-Levy, a spokesman for Hadassah Medical Center said earlier that, “the prime minister’s life is in danger. His condition is now very serious, or critical. Sharon’s digestive tract has undergone severe deterioration while he’s been unconscious, and there appears to be a blockage in his blood circulation. The restricted blood flow raised the possibility of necrosis, or death of tissue, in the intestines.”

Levy also stated that Sharon’s condition has “deteriorated to its most critical point since his admission.”

The 77 year-old leader has been hospitalized since January 4th, after suffering a massive stroke which left him comatose. This is his seventh surgery since his hospitalization.

Sharon has been hospitalized for thirty-nine days, and has been on a feeding tube for two weeks.

Thursday, January 12, 2017

United States President Barack Obama gave his official farewell address on Tuesday night from McCormick Place in Chicago, reflecting on personal and national accomplishments. This is expected to be his last major speech before officially handing the reins to president-elect Donald Trump on January 20.

Obama’s speech was wide-ranging. He thanked his family and the nation, spoke of the need for unity, noted the country’s accomplishments and need for improvement in areas like education and civil rights, and spoke about the need for pride in U.S. accomplishments, citing milestones of U.S. history and of his presidency specifically. “It’s why GIs gave their lives at Omaha Beach and Iwo Jima; Iraq and Afghanistan – and why men and women from Selma to Stonewall were prepared to give theirs as well.”

The president also addressed his country’s troubled history with race and racism, an issue many black citizens feel he has avoided. Despite this, Chauncy Devega of Salon described the president as “a role model of calm, cool reflective black masculinity: a man utterly at home in his own skin.” Obama described the concept of a post-racial U.S. “unrealistic” and particularly cited the need for reform in education and the criminal justice system and greater acceptance of scientific evidence, particularly evidence supporting action to counteract climate change.

However, publications including The Washington Post and Salon have given particular focus to another aspect of the president’s address: the country’s increasing political tensions and controversies involving access to news and information, both accurate and inaccurate. “We become so secure and our bubbles,” said Obama, “that we start accepting only information, whether it’s true or not, that fits our opinions instead of basing our opinions on the evidence that is out there,” calling this trend “a third threat to our democracy.”

The Washington Post characterized Obama’s comment, “If every economic issue is framed as a struggle between a hard-working white middle class and an undeserving minority, then workers of all shades will be left fighting for scraps while the wealthy withdraw further into their private enclaves,” as a “not-so-subtle jab” at the campaign tactics of President-elect Donald Trump. The Telegraph describes Obama’s warnings about the need to protect democracy as “a thinly veiled slight to the divisive rhetoric of Donald Trump’s election campaign, which included attacks on Muslims, the disabled, women and immigrants.” The president went on to call on the public to “reject the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest or to enfeeble the sacred ties that make us one America. We weaken those ties when we allow our political dialogue to become so corrosive […] We weaken those ties when we define some of us as more American than others when we write off the whole system as inevitably corrupt and when we sit back and blame the leaders we elect without examining our own role in electing them. It falls to each of us to be those anxious, jealous guardians of our democracy.”

Despite this, when the mention of Donald Trump brought boos from the crowd, Obama reiterated the importance of the long history of peaceful transfers of power from one president to the next: “No no no no no. […] I committed to President-elect Trump that my administration would ensure the smoothest possible transition, just as President Bush did for me.” However, this was not unaccompanied by a call to action. Near the end of the speech, he insisted citizens dissatisfied with elected officials should “lace up your shoes, grab a clipboard, get some signatures and run for office yourself.”

Overall, the departing president’s speech focused on accomplishment, echoing the “Yes we can” slogan from his 2008 campaign: “If I have told you eight years ago, that America would reverse a great recession, reboot our auto industry, and unleash the longest stretch of job creation in our history. If I had told you, that we would open up a new chapter with the Cuban people, shut down Iran’s nuclear weapons program without firing a shot, take out the mastermind of 9/11[…] If I had told you that we would win a marriage equality and secure the right to health insurance for another twenty million of our fellow citizens. If I had told you all that, you might have said our sights were set a little too high. But that’s what we did.”

But when the crowd began shouting “Four more years! Four more years!” Obama, with a small laugh, answered, “I can’t do that.”

Tuesday, September 4, 2018

Fan Expo Canada ran in Toronto last weekend, from Thursday to Sunday, spread over both multi-storey buildings at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. The event is one of North America’s largest pop culture events, with panels, product unveilings, screenings, an artists’ alley, and celebrity autographs.

Featured programming included reunions of cast members from 2001: A Space Odyssey, Back to the Future, Xena: Warrior Princess, and Degrassi: The Next Generation. Other cast panels included Star Trek Discovery, Adventure Time, Steven Universe, and Grand Theft Auto. Attendees could have their portfolios reviewed by staff from Marvel and DC Comics, speed date others of the same sexuality, or try a Doctor Who escape room.

The end-of-summer event is one of three held in Toronto by convention firm Informa, a list that also includes the springtime Toronto Comic Con.

Wikinews was there, and captured some of the cosplay creativity and booths full of products new and old.

• Peekaboo Cosplay as “Glitterbomb Jessica”, based on Jessica Rabbit

• Faraway Cosplay as Ariel from The Little Mermaid

• Dayna the Sloth as Nightmare Ysera from World of Warcraft

• Jennocide as Storm and Lisa Mancini as Thor

• Quarter_year_cosplayz as Toothless the dragon

• Fan-made Pokemon sculptures

• Artist’s Alley promotional display

• Hasbro booth

• Ralph Breaks the Internet promotion

• Funko Pop display

• Dragonball Z display

• Voice actor Grey Delisle

• Voice actor Jim Cummings

• Alpha Flight action figures unveiled at the event

• Alpha Flight action figures unveiled at the event

• Rogers built a structure nearby, including a SpongeBob-themed room.

• Toys’R’Us is still active and open in Canada, despite closing in the US.

• Showcase had live painting for the show Marvel Runaways.

• Inigo Montoya

• Game of Thrones

• The Incredibles

• The Incredibles

• Super Mario characters

• Belle and Prince Adam

• Inflatable dinosaur meetup

• Peter Pan, Wendy, and Captain Hook

• Rainbow Brite

• Spinelli from Recess.

• Ariel

• Chuckie Finster from Rugrats

• Waluigi and Wario

• Lara Croft

• Objecthead cosplay

• Daft Punk cosplay

Monday, January 23, 2006

A mutated form of the Avian (Bird Flu) virus has been found in a sample taken from a Turkish patient.

The mutated form is said to make the virus easier to attach itself to humans rather than animals says a report in the Nature journal.

The situation is being monitored by the World Health Organization but says “it is too early to know whether the virus is changing in ways that would signal the start of a human flu pandemic,” says Maria Cheng a spokeswoman for the WHO. “It’s one isolate from a single virus from Turkey. The sample suggests the virus might be more inclined to bind to human cells rather than animal cells, but there’s no evidence that it’s becoming more infectious. If we started to see a lot more samples from Turkey with this mutation and saw the virus changing, we’d be more concerned.”

However, the Nature report says there is a second mutation that also “signals adaptation to humans.”

Cheng also said that “flu viruses mutate all the time. For us to assign public health significance to a genetic change we need to match it to what is happening epidemiologically — how the virus is behaving — and clinically — if it’s more or less virulent.”

In Turkey the fatality rate from the Bird Flu is 50% where elsewhere in the world reports of infection were only scattered. Entire families have been affected in Turkey and more reports come out almost every day of mild symptoms.

So far, Turkey has suffered four deaths and 21 infections. In addition to those cases the WHO reports 145 cases and 80 deaths in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.

“When this outbreak (in Turkey) was first reported, there was a lot of concern it was behaving differently,” said Cheng. Subsequent investigation, however, has indicated no major behavioral change.

“The team there told us that after two weeks of investigating, they haven’t found substantial differences in the pattern we’ve seen in Southeast Asia,” said Cheng.

The mutations were discovered by scientists in London, England in a lab.

Cheng said this may “signify the virus is trying different things to see if it can more easily infect humans. So far, we haven’t seen that the virus has the ability to do this. But it’s important that we continue monitoring. We would be concerned if we were seeing successive generations of spread of the virus. We haven’t so far. All these people had a very clear history of contact with diseased birds.”

Health officials say that so far they do not see any evidence yet that the virus can spread easily in humans.

The Bird Flu virus, strain H5N1, first started to infect humans in 1997 in Hong Kong. In 2003 it re-emerged and it has so far been difficult to control.