Wednesday, July 13, 2005

The U.S. space agency NASA called off the launch of Space shuttle Discovery today after a problem with a fuel sensor in the external tank used to detect fuel exhaustion. According to the agency-run NASA TV, the low-fuel sensor was either malfunctioning or damaged. The launch was already facing the threat of a scrub due to thunderstorms in the area.

The sensor is one of four used to trigger the engine cutout after launch. Although only two are required for normal operation, and the Shuttle can be flown with one, NASA elected to maintain full redundancy. Should more of the sensors fail, the engine might burn out due to lack of fuel, a situation that has not been tested.

The problem was detected during a simulation of an empty tank. When placed in a mode simulating an empty tank, three of the sensors correctly registered that the tank was empty, while the faulty sensor stayed in the “full” state. NASA is currently unsure whether the problem relates to the sensor, the instrumentation circuits reporting the sensor’s state, or the simulation circuits.

The problem comes after a separate incident yesterday when a cockpit window cover fell from the Orbiter, damaging thermal protection tiles. A similar problem caused the replacement of the fuel tank in June. NASA described the problem as an “intermittent fault”.

The launch, which was scheduled for 3:51 ET (20:51 UTC), would have been the first launch of a shuttle since Columbia‘s February 2003 crash which killed all crew members aboard.

It is still unknown to NASA officials what caused the sensor to become defective. It is also unknown at the moment whether the issue will be fixed on the launch pad, or in the Vehicle Assembly Building – in which it takes close to a full day’s time to transport a shuttle between the two areas.

In the interim, the crew of the shuttle will stay at KSC unless there are further delays, in which case the crew might be transported back to JSC in Houston for refresher training.

Thursday, May 29, 2008

David Tchappat, a popular housemate recently evicted from the television reality program Big Brother Australia, has spoken out critically of his childhood experiences in the controversial religious group “Raven-Taylor-Hales Brethren“, referred to in Australian media as “Exclusive Brethren”. Tchappat was a participant in the edition Big Brother Australia 2008, and was voted off the show on May 25.

Tchappat, 33, a former police officer and presently a firefighter, left the controversial group at age 19. He says he attempted to leave at age 17 but was brought back by members of the group and “interrogated” by group leadership for months. Up until he left he had never eaten in a restaurant, listened to the radio or been to the movie theater. According to Macquarie National News, Tchappat’s former community numbers number approximately 15,000 in Australia. Raven-Taylor-Hales Brethren is a sect of Protestant Christianity and a breakaway group from Exclusive Brethren.

Due to his departure from the group, Tchappat had to break off contact with family members still inside the organization, though at times he speaks with his parents. Members do not vote in elections because they feel it contradicts their belief that God should determine who is in power, but they provide finances to the Liberal Party of Australia. Tchappat’s cousin Andrew left the group a few months after he did.

After getting to know his fellow Big Brother Australia housemates for three weeks, Tchappat recounted some of his experiences in his former religious group. “Look, I don’t like to say it’s a cult, but it basically is. My whole life was controlled. I didn’t have a say in it myself,” he said on one episode. He grew up in the Raven-Taylor-Hales Brethren community in Gosford, New South Wales, and explained: “It’s based on Christian values but it’s very strict. So I had no TV, no radio, no computer, never been to a movie or a restaurant or kissed a girl – you name it, I didn’t do it.”

In an interview Tuesday with former Big Brother Australia runner-up Tim Brunero on Macquarie National News, Tchappat said he is planning on releasing a book about his experiences growing up in the controversial religious group. “I’ve spent the last two years writing it. It just happened that I got into Big Brother in the tail-end of it. Obviously there’s a few more chapters to add, but I’m really pumped, it’s an interesting story,” he said. He plans to title the book Losing my Religion.

He was also interviewed by ninemsn on Tuesday, and said he does not regret discussing his experiences in Raven-Taylor-Hales Brethren on Australian national television. “I’m an example of how you can go out and be successful. I say to people that if you are thinking about leaving, and you’re serious, take a punt and give it a go. You can always go back if you don’t like it.” Former members of the group were inspired by Tchappat’s comments and empathized with his experiences in posts to Big Brother Internet message boards.

Prime Minister of Australia Kevin Rudd criticized the Raven-Taylor-Hales Brethren group in August 2007. At the time he was leader of the Australian Labor Party, and requested that then-Prime Minister John Howard reveal what took place in a private meeting with senior members of the religious group. “I believe this is an extremist cult and sect. I also believe that it breaks up families,” said Rudd to reporters in Adelaide according to The Sydney Morning Herald. He noted that the organization was being investigated by the Australian Federal Police for prior election activities, and wanted to know how much funding had been given by the group to the Liberal Party.

During his election campaign Rudd called on Australian federal agencies including the anti-money laundering agency Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC), the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Taxation Office, and the Australian Electoral Commission to investigate the activities of Raven-Taylor-Hales Brethren. In spite of Rudd’s criticism of Raven-Taylor-Hales Brethren, the religious group was guaranteed AUD10 million in taxpayer funding for its school facilities in January 2008. Rudd had promised during his election campaign to maintain education funding levels for non-government schools if he became Prime Minister.

Australia media reported on May 18 that Rudd rejected a request from former members of Raven-Taylor-Hales Brethren to investigate the group. 34 ex-members of the religious group had sent a letter to the Prime Minister’s office asking him to investigate how they were treated in the organization. A spokesman for Rudd said that the ex-members should instead take their request to the police, and that a government investigation would raise religious freedom issues. Rudd’s chief of staff David Epstein said that the Prime Minister “does not resile from the views he expressed last year” and “remains concerned about the reported imposition of doctrines that weaken family bonds”.

Australian Greens spokeswoman Christine Milne told Australia’s ABC News said that the well-being of children still in the group should be of primary concern. “The issue here is not about religious freedom, it is about what this cult is doing to destroy families and effectively to undermine the law,” said Milne.

Ex-member Peter Flinn, who wrote the letter sent to Rudd which was signed by 33 other former members, was disappointed by the Prime Minister’s response. “We just want to highlight other equally fundamental human rights, such as access to family who remain Brethren members, a right callously denied for decades,” he said in a statement in The Sydney Morning Herald. Senator Bob Brown of the Australian Greens party has proposed a government inquiry into the group’s public funding, tax concessions and possible practices that harm children.

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Comply or Die, the racehorse who won the 2008 Grand National has died at the age of 17. His death was announced by his former trainer, David Pipe. He died over at the weekend in Gloucestershire, where he had been staying with jockey Timmy Murphy. He was cremated on Monday and his ashes will return to Murphy.

Murphy was the jockey in the saddle when Comply or Die won the 2008 Grand National. Speaking to the Press Association, he spoke about the horse’s death. He said, “He was part of the furniture at home so it’s very sad. He gave me the greatest day of my career, obviously that can never be taken away. He paraded at Cheltenham and Aintree and was getting ready to do some dressage in the summer. I’m not actually sure how he died, to be honest, but it wasn’t nice to come home to. He was cremated on Monday. He was a happy horse and he was also very clever.”

During his racing career he made £798,809 in prize-money after winning a total of eight races.

The 2008 Grand National victory was his greatest achievement and he almost matched it when he came second place in 2009. He retired in 2011 but remained active, often being paraded at race grounds such as Aintree and Cheltenham. He also participated in some hunting activities. Pipe said, “Since his retirement he had been a lead-horse at Timmy Murphy’s establishment before trying his hand at dressage, a discipline in which he had proven very successful”.

Tributes have been paid to Comply or Die on social media by horse racing fans with several tweeting their appreciation and memories.

On October 14, 2008, Canadians will be heading to the polls for the federal election. Liberal candidate Dr. Eric Hoskins is standing for election in the riding of Haldimand—Norfolk.

Wikinews contacted Dr. Eric Hoskins, to talk about the issues facing Canadians, and what they and their party would do to address them. Wikinews is in the process of contacting every candidate, in every riding across the country, no matter their political stripe. All interviews are conducted over e-mail, and interviews are published unedited, allowing candidates to impart their full message to our readers, uninterrupted.

For more information, visit the campaign’s official website, listed below.

Saturday, September 25, 2021

An earthquake with a magnitude of 5.9 was detected on Wednesday in the Australian town of Mansfield, which is located in the north-east of Victoria. Geoscience Australia stated the earthquake was recorded in Mansfield at 9:15am local time with a 10 kilometers (6 mi) depth. An estimated 15 minutes after the initial event, an aftershock of 4.0 magnitude occurred near Mansfield. The agency declared the earthquake is one of the largest to occur since colonisation in east Australia.

The earthquake was felt across the country, with over 15,000 recording on the Geoscience Australia website they had felt it. ABC News reported the earthquake was felt in the states of Victoria, New South Wales (NSW), South Australia, and Tasmania, as well as the nation’s capital of Canberra. In the inner suburbs of Melbourne, apartment buildings were evacuated, with reports of building and road damage shared on social media. Local authorities confirmed there was no risk of tsunamis.

Fire and Rescue New South Wales “dispatched crews across NSW from Alexandria, Manly and Hornsby in Sydney to as far as Dubbo in Western NSW following reports of tremors felt across the state” as a result of the earthquake, though no major structural damage was reported in New South Wales.

Karen McGregor, an employee of FoodWorks in Mansfield, reported “the windows started shaking, the walls, and everything on the desk, it was really quite scary. We ran downstairs to the shop, it was really, really scary down there. The windows were buckling. I was very scared. I just thought, oh my God, is this place going to fall down?” McGregor added she had not heard of any injuries in the town.

From Washington, D.C., Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said “it can be a very, very disturbing event for an earthquake of this nature. They are very rare events in Australia and, as a result, I am sure people will have been quite distressed and disturbed by that.” Morrison confirmed he was in contact with Victorian state Premier Daniel Andrews, and the Australian federal government was prepared to provide support to Victorians where needed, including the possibility of deploying the Australian Defence Force if necessary.

While Geoscience Australia initially reported an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.0, the head of the Seismology Research Centre Adam Pascale has said “we think it’s a mag-5.8 potentially at this point in Gippsland”, adding the earthquake “shook here in the northern suburbs of Melbourne for about 15-20 seconds so it’s quite a significant earthquake”. Geoscience Australia has since revised the magnitude to 5.9.

Further aftershocks remain a possibility, with Pascale saying “there’s usually a primary and a secondary wave”, and geoscientist Mark Quigley telling The Age “for something of that size, we’re talking about a fault that would be on the order of maybe 5 kilometres long and three kilometres wide. For an earthquake of that magnitude, we would expect to get hundreds of small aftershocks. We could get aftershocks in the range of 4.5 magnitude.”

Thursday, June 12, 2008

A large forest fire that started on Monday, June 9 is still out of control in the municipality of Froland in southern Norway. The fire is the largest forest fire to occur in Norway since World War II.

The fire has spread extensively and it is estimated that approximately 2,500 acres of forest have been damaged. Approximately 15 cabins are reported to have burned to the ground, but as of yet, no permanent dwellings or farms have been damaged. However, many inhabitants have been evacuated due to the fire threatening their homes, including the entire villages of Mykland and Belland. There have also been some power outages due to power lines being damaged.

Approximately 140 persons, including fire-fighters from several fire departments, and personnel from the Civil Defence and the Home Guard are working to curtail the fire. Four fire helicopters have been deployed. The fire fighting is focused on areas where the fire threatens buildings.

Extremely dry weather, and difficult wind conditions, have caused severe difficulties in fighting the fire. Fire-fighters first had hope of gaining control on the morning of Thursday, June 12, but the wind changed direction during the day, causing a large extension of the fire. There is some hope that the weekend will bring some rain; however, this will likely not be enough to stop the fire. It could take several weeks before the fire is completely extinguished.

Sunday, September 14, 2014

National Football League (NFL) commissioner Roger Goodell received a letter from sixteen female United States Senators on Thursday calling for the NFL to adopt a zero tolerance policy on domestic violence.

The senators criticized the NFL for their new domestic violence policy enacted in August. The new policy says a player will receive a six game suspension for their first offense.

A video of Baltimore Ravens player Ray Rice assaulting the woman who has since married him was recently released by website TMZ. The assault took place in a elevator at an Atlantic City, New Jersey casino. Rice was initially given a two game suspension; later, following the video release, the Ravens terminated Rice’s contract and the NFL indefinitely suspended him.

The bipartisan group of senators said, “If you violently assault a woman, you shouldn’t get a second chance to play in the NFL.”

The league stated they had initiated an independent investigation by former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller into the Rice incident.

The cross-party signatories were, from the Democratic Party,  Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, of California,  Debbie Stabenow, Michigan;  Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota;  Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, Washington;  Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire;  Kirsten Gillibrand, New York;  Barbara Mikulski, Maryland;  Mazie Hirono, Hawaii;  Heidi Heitkamp, North Dakota;  Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts;  Tammy Baldwin, Wisconsin;  Kay Hagan, North Carolina;  and, from the Republican Party, Senators Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, and Susan Collins of Maine.