Woman returns home with Christmas turkey, a month after setting out

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

A Scottish woman who set out before Christmas to purchase a turkey finally made it home on Monday, after being cut off by snow for a month. Kay Ure left the Lighthouse Keeper’s cottage on Cape Wrath, at the very northwest tip of Great Britain, in December. She was heading to Inverness on a shopping trip.

However on her return journey heavy snow and ice prevented her husband, John, from travelling the last 11 miles to pick her up. She was forced to wait a month in a friend’s caravan, before the weather improved and the couple could finally be reunited.

They were separated not just for Christmas and New Year, but also for Mr Ure’s 58th birthday. With no fresh supplies, he was reduced to celebrating with a tin of baked beans. He also ran out of coal, and had to feed the couple’s six springer spaniels on emergency army rations.

“It’s the first time we’ve been separated”, said Mr Ure in December. “We’ve been snowed in here for three weeks before, so we are well used to it and it’s quite nice to get a bit of peace and quiet.”

Monday, February 12, 2007

Cars drove home the big prize last night, from the 34th Annual Annie Awards. The animation industry’s highest honor, ASIFA-Hollywood’s Annies recognise contributions to animation, writing, directing, storyboarding, voice acting, composing, and much more.

As mentioned, Pixar took home the big prize last night, after facing stiff competition from four other Happy Feet, Monster House, Open Season, and Over the Hedge.

But the biggest winner of the night didn’t get a “Best Animated Feature” nod at all. Flushed Away won five feature animation categories including Animated Effects (Scott Cegielski), Character Animation (Gabe Hordos), Production Design (Pierre-Olivier Vincent), Voice Acting (Sir Ian McKellan as Toad), Writing (Dick Clement, Ian La Frenais, Chris Lloyd, Joe Keenan, and Will Davies).

Over The Hedge won awards for Directing (Tim Johnson and Karey Kirkpatrick), Storyboarding (Gary Graham), and Character Design (Nicolas Marlet).

Of little surprise, Randy Newman won an Annie for Cars in the “Music in an Animated Feature Production” category. Newman has won many Oscars for his movie music, and has a nomination this year for the song “Our Town”. Newman didn’t attend the Annies, instead picking up a Grammy for “Best Song Written For Motion Picture, Television Or Other Visual Media”.

DisneyToon Studios’ Bambi II won “Best Home Entertainment Production”, while “Best Animated Short Subject” went to Blue Sky Studios’ No Time For Nuts, which is based on Ice Age.

“Best Animated Video Game” went to Flushed Away The Game, while a United Airlines ad named “Dragon” won a “Best Animated Television Commercial” Annie for DUCK Studios.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a drug-resistant strain of bacteria, killed nearly 19,000 Americans in 2005 alone, according to a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. That is more people than were killed by AIDS in the United States. More than 94,000 Americans were afflicted with MRSA infections in 2005.

Although the supergerm, or superbug, is primarily found in hospitals, a growing number of cases have been contracted at public gyms and schools. In Moneta, Virginia, a high school senior died from an infection that spread to his kidney, liver, lungs and heart. In Bedford County, where Moneta is located, school officials have reported five cases of the Methicillin-resistant strain of the Staph bacteria. County officials closed the schools to clean them.

“Certainly, MRSA now has to be viewed as a very important target for prevention and control,” said Dr. David A. Talan, an infectious diseases specialist at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center.

Thursday, November 3, 2005

Australian industral relations reform legislationmade up of 700 pages of bill legislation and 500 additional pages of explanatory memoranda was introduced into the Federal House of Representatives November 2, where the Opposition heatedly attempted to address their perceived problem of the Government’s lack of discussion and debate over the matter.

The first reading of the bill was the first order of the day, and when Kevin Andrews tried to do so, Opposition member Stephen Smith, responsible for workplace relations, immediately moved a motion deferring the bills to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Employment, Workplace Relations and Workforce Participation. The Leader of the House, Tony Abbott moved that Smith and the necessary supporter — viz., Julia Gillard — be not further heard (cloture). The Government’s majority in the House ensured that this would happen. However, Opposition members attempted to use House standing orders necessitating that copies of the bill to be “available to Members”, with argument arising whether “available to Members” meant all members or simply whether some copies should be available; this ended up in a dissent motion moved against the Speaker of the House.

Later, in a heated Question Time, where six members of the Opposition, (Kelly Hoare, Julia Irwin, Anthony Albanese, Bernard Ripoll, Catherine King, and Gavan O’Connor), were removed from the Chamber during Question Time under standing orders for disruption — Jill Hall quipped that she was “glad to be still here to ask [her] question” — nearly all questions to the Government put by the Opposition, the subsequent time for matters of public importance, and some members in the adjournment debate, was all on the topic of the industrial relations reform.

To implement and fund the legislation, the government will “spend an additional $486million on industrial relations changes over four years, or $121million a year. This spending would be in addition to the present annual budget of $86million.” said an unnamed government source for The Australian.

The government will need to use its corporation powers to remove the powers from the states to alter the award conditions and other employee employer related conditions. But the New South Wales premier Morris Iemma has received legal advice that the legislation maybe unconstitutional, the reason being its being used to end the role of the states and territories Australian States in the industrial relations system. “It is our view that the Commonwealth is misusing this law to achieve exactly what it was designed to prevent”, Iemma said. Mr Iemma will be challenging the changes in the high court with Peter Beattie Premier of Queensland supporting his challenge in the High Court.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Wikinews interviewed author Amy Scobee about her book Scientology – Abuse at the Top, and asked her about her experiences working as an executive within the organization. Scobee joined the organization at age 14, and worked at Scientology’s international management headquarters for several years before leaving in 2005. She served as a Scientology executive in multiple high-ranking positions, working out of the international headquarters of Scientology known as “Gold Base”, located in Gilman Hot Springs near Hemet, California.

Thursday, January 4, 2018

A fire on Sunday night in the seven-storey carpark for the Echo Arena in Liverpool, England destroyed almost all the vehicles parked inside and led to cancellation of the final evening of the Liverpool International Horse Show and evacuation of nearby blocks of flats. The blaze reportedly started with a parked Range Rover Discovery.

Investigators with the fire brigade stated that they believe the fire began with an accidental engine fire in the Range Rover at about 4.30 pm. The first call was made at 4.42 and firefighters arrived eight minutes after that. Ultimately twelve engines and 85 firefighters were involved in combatting the blaze. Aerial appliances were used and also three high-volume pumps. Fed by the fuel in vehicles parked inside, the temperature of the fire in the carpark is believed to have reached as high as 1,000°C. It was too hot to be extinguished with water from hydrants, so a high-volume pump was used to draw water from the River Mersey, and two more were brought from other fire brigades in the region.

The carpark has seven storeys and a capacity of 1,600 vehicles, and approximately 1,300 were parked in it when the fire broke out. According to Dan Stephens, chief fire officer for Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service, almost all of them were destroyed, with the exception of a few parked on the top level and at corners. “With these very high temperatures, you were never going to put the fire out without the whole building taking hold. The speed at which the fire spreads means you simply aren’t going to put it out,” said Stephens.

The carpark itself was severely damaged; according to Joe Anderson, the mayor of Liverpool. It is not in danger of collapsing but will have to be demolished, which will be difficult with the many burned-out cars still inside it, Anderson told the BBC.

According to Stephens, there were no serious injuries: one woman injured her hand, and two people were treated for smoke inhalation. A spokesman for the Echo Arena also stated that all animals were safe. All horses were successfully evacuated from the carpark and then removed from the stables after smoke spread to them. Six dogs were also rescued unharmed, two on a lower level in the early stages of the fire and four that had been left in a car on the top level, freed by firefighters on Monday after the fire was put out.

The final evening of the four-day Liverpool International Horse Show had been scheduled to begin at 7.30, and had to be cancelled. Many attendees were stranded in the city on New Year’s Eve night. Merseyside police directed people to the Pullman Hotel, where Red Cross assistance was available, and the Liverpool City Council set up an assistance centre at the Lifestyles Gym. A spokesman for the Association of British Insurers has said that insurance companies will “move very quickly” to reimburse owners whose vehicles were destroyed.

Nearby blocks of flats were evacuated because of the smoke. Eyewitnesses reported hearing what they at first thought were firecrackers, then “multiple explosions”, “bangs and popping”, “the bangs of car windows exploding”. People reported leaving everything in their cars, including their cellphones, and running for their lives.

Mayor Anderson tweeted that cuts to fire services over the last two years made it significantly harder to fight the fire and might have caused it not to be controllable. He also suggested that fire safety in multi-storey carparks had not been sufficiently considered and that installing sprinklers in them might help stop future fires before they become unmanageable, in a letter to Nick Hurd, a member of Parliament.

Friday, May 19, 2006

State schools Superintendent Jack O’Connell has his lawyers working “around the clock” to prepare to ask the State Supreme Court to overturn a lower court judge’s ban on using the California State High School Exit Exam as a graduation requirement, he said today.

“In an effort to seek resolution of this issue as quickly as possible, I have asked my attorneys to appeal directly to the California Supreme Court,” said O’Connell in a prepared statement, “They are working around the clock to prepare those papers, and we expect to file within 24 to 30 hours. This is a remarkably fast turnaround for an appeal of a ruling that was made less than a week ago.”

Most appeals of a Superior Court decision go to an appellate court first.

Last Friday, Alameda County Superior Court judge Robert Freedman ruled against maintaining the California High School Exit Exam as a condition of graduation for the class of 2006, saying that the law requiring high school students to pass the test is unconstitutional because economically and racially disadvantaged students weren’t offered equal educations and therefore didn’t have an equal chance to pass.

In his statement, O’Connell acknowledged that some students need more help than others, but said the test should stand, anyway: “We know that some students at some schools need extra attention to overcome challenges brought to the classroom and challenges within the schools they attend. We agree those students must have every option available to them to learn the skills on the exam. But I strongly disagree that the remedy for students still struggling to pass the exam is to simply hand them a diploma whether or not they have learned what they need to know.”

Arturo J. Gonzalez, the San Francisco attorney who persuaded Freedman to stop the use of the test, told reporters that Freedman had ruled correctly and that the state should give up and let the students graduate. “There is no basis for the Supreme Court to take diplomas away from 45,000 students who have passed all required courses,” he said in an email exchange with the James Logan Courier. “To do that, they would have to find that Judge Freedman abused his discretion. Given the overwhelming evidence in support of his ruling, I do not think that any of the seven justices will find an abuse of discretion.”

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said he supported O’Connell’s bid to reinstate the test and would “put the full weight of my administration behind reinstating the California High School Exit Exam graduation requirement.”

O’Connell, who wrote the law, wants the requirement to be enforced against this year’s would-be graduates who haven’t yet passed the test and so is set to ask the State Supreme Court to immediately stay Freedman’s injunction to allow the state to withhold high school diplomas as originally planned.. At last count, the ruling affects about 47,000 California Seniors, including about 70 from James Logan High School.

“The decision came as more than 1,100 California high schools prepare for graduation ceremonies,” he said, “It created confusion and uncertainty not only for seniors in the class of 2006 but for juniors in the class of 2007.”

Cynthia O’Brien, who oversees testing at James Logan High School, told The Courier she wants the confusion to end. “If the Exit Exam is going to go forward, then it needs to go forward. If not, then it needs to be cancelled completely,” she said last week.

“Many students now wonder whether they should enroll in summer school or plan to take a summer administration of the exit exam,” he said, “Administrators and teachers are left wondering whether students who need the extra assistance will bother to enroll. And students who should be buckling down to learn the skills they need to succeed in college or the workplace have now been told they can get a diploma whether or not they have those skills.

“It is our responsibility to all of California’s children, especially our disadvantaged and minority students, to equip them with the most basic skills they will need in college, in work and in life,” said Schwarzenegger. “ Postponing the exam graduation requirement will hurt our children in the long run by depriving us of the best tool we have to measure how well schools are doing their job.”

He said he’s budgeted more money to help students pass the test: “My 2006-07 budget will add $7.7 million for three additional administration of the exam and we will also provide $65 million this year to give students at risk of failing the exam the support they need to pass it.”

The high court has 90 days to decide whether to hear O’Connell’s appeal once it’s filed, but could act more quickly if it chooses.