Sunday, July 30, 2006

Two gay teens were fined and assaulted by police on 27 July at around 23:30 after cuddling, holding hands and kissing in a public park in Bucharest, Romania. According to their report, the two were subject to humiliation and physical assault by the officers and park guardians, who had approached them on the pretext of checking their identification cards. After beating up the two, one of the officers allegedly said that, “I should tie you up with chains and fuck you until you are cured of your sickness”. The two teens were each fined 500 lei (approximately €140 or USD179) for “disturbing the public peace“, the other alternative being a criminal record for the same offence. They consider this charge to be ungrounded and an act of discrimination against sexual orientation, considering that a heterosexual couple were not prosecuted for engaging in similar acts a few metres away. One of the teens stated that:

I will never forget the hypocrisy with which they said they only wanted to see our ID’s, that they were only doing their job, when at 10 metres distance, a girl and a boy were having sex in the bushes.

Additionally, the police officers threatened the teens that they would beat them again, with “no witnesses”, when they were off duty.

Homosexuality, including public manifestations of it, was decriminalised in Romania in 2001, when Article 200 of the Penal Code was fully repealed. Since 2000, the country has an anti-discrimination law which explicitly prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. However, despite this, social attitudes remain conservative and discrimination remains widespread and rarely reported and investigated, with the 2006 Bucharest GayFest, held in early June, provoking a violent reaction from many passers-by, even if it took place successfully due to heavy police protection. Gay rights organisations have also complained that when the anti-discrimination law is applied, fines are too low (the average fine for an employer discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation is about 300 lei, or less than €100 or $128).

Friday, November 3, 2006

On November 13, Torontonians will be heading to the polls to vote for their ward’s councillor and for mayor. Among Toronto’s ridings is Beaches—East York (Ward 32). Four candidates responded to Wikinews’ requests for an interview. This ward’s candidates include Donna Braniff, Alan Burke, Sandra Bussin (incumbent), William Gallos, John Greer, John Lewis, Erica Maier, Luca Mele, and Matt Williams.

For more information on the election, read Toronto municipal election, 2006.

A compilation of brief news reports for Wednesday, March 28, 2007.

The United States will reportedly seek a jail sentence of less than 20 years for Australian David Hicks. He pleaded guilty to providing material support for terrorism, but not an act of terrorism. Hicks may be sentenced by the end of the week. He could be returned to Australia to serve out his sentence, with credit for the years at Guantanamo Bay.

Related news

• “Guantanamo detainee David Hicks pleads guilty to providing “material support”” — Wikinews, March 27, 2007
• “US charges Australian David Hicks” — Wikinews, March 26, 2007

Sources

• Gemma Daley. “U.S. to Seek Hicks Jail Term of Less Than 20 Years” — Bloomberg L.P., March 28, 2007
• “Australian’s Gitmo confession likely to get him home” — CNN, March 28, 2007

US stocks fell on Tuesday starting another round of global selling, as worries about the US housing market and weaker consumer confidence. Lennar Corp., one of the largest US home builders reported that profits fell 73%. Wednesday, Asia markets opened steady to higher, but fell as rising oil prices and the geopolitcal standoff between Britain and Iran made investors seek the safety of government bonds. European and North American markets are trading lower in the Wednesday trading session.

Sources

• Madlen Read, AP. “Wall Street slides on economy worries” — Yahoo! News, March 28, 2007
• Chen Shiyin and Makiko Suzuki. “Asian Stocks Fall on U.S. Economy Concern; Toyota, Samsung Drop” — Bloomberg L.P., March 28, 2007
• “European stocks — Factors to watch on March 28” — Reuters, March 28, 2007
• Chris Burns. “Markets lower on Iran, US data” — Reuters, March 28, 2007

In an apparent reprisal for bombings in Shi’ite areas, gunmen went on a rampage in a Sunni in Tal Afar, Iraq, killing about 50 people. There have been reports that the gunmen included police.

Sources

• “Gunmen kill 50 in Iraqi town” — Reuters, March 28, 2007
• “Gunmen kill dozens in Iraqi town” — BBC News Online, March 28, 2007

The United Kingdom has made public GPS data that it says proves that the 15 navy personnel were well inside Iraqi waters when they were seized by Iran. Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the dispute would be solved “based on rules and regulations” and that the female sailor would be released soon.

Related news

• “UK prepared to go ‘into different phase’ if sailors and marines not released by Iran within days” — Wikinews, March 27, 2007
• “British sailors detained by Iran “to be tried for espionage”” — Wikinews, March 25, 2007
• “15 Royal Navy sailors captured at gunpoint by Iranian guards” — Wikinews, March 23, 2007

Sources

• “UK reveals Iran dispute evidence” — BBC News Online, March 28, 2007
• Peter Graff and Sophie Walker. “Britain turns up heat on Iran, woman to be freed” — Reuters, March 28, 2007

Surviving members of the 332d Air Expeditionary Group and 99th Pursuit Squadron, widely known as the Tuskegee Airmen, will be honored on Thursday by President Bush at a ceremony at the US Capitol. They will receive the Congressional Gold Medal for fighting both the Nazis abroad and racial segregation at home.

Sources

• Matthew Bigg. “Black airmen honored for fighting Nazis, racism” — Reuters, March 28, 2007
• Annie Bergman, AP. “Tuskegee Airmen Being Honored” — ABC News, March 28, 2007

Sunday, June 4, 2017

In an analysis published on Friday in Science, scientists announced data collected from the Curiosity Rover show that Mars’s Gale Crater was once a chemically stratified lake, meaning the aquatic environment differed markedly between deep and shallow water. According to the report, “all of the physical, chemical, and energetic conditions necessary to establish a habitable environment were present on Mars between ~3.8 billion and 3.1 billion years ago.”

Analysis shows the chemical index of alteration fluctuated over time in a way that suggested the lake varied between hot, wet periods and colder, drier periods. The shallow water would have been rich in oxidants brought in from the atmosphere and groundwater, and the deeper water would have been oxidant poor. Phosphates, carbon, nitrogen, iron and sulfur, indicating chemistry suitable for life, have also been found there in a variety of compounds.

Lead author Joel Hurowitz of Stony Brook University explained, “These were very different, co-existing environments in the same lake[…] This type of oxidant stratification is a common feature of lakes on Earth, and now we’ve found it on Mars. The diversity of environments in this Martian lake would have provided multiple opportunities for different types of microbes to survive.”

The scientists also evaluated the fineness of the sediment, meaning the sizes of individual particles of dirt, dust and sand. Curiosity found larger grains near the edges of the lake where sediments from incoming rivers and streams would have fed it, and smaller ones in what would have been the deep lakebed, which is consistent with particles dropping out of the water as the current slows down. “We could tell something was going on,” Hurowitz said in a statement. “What was causing iron minerals to be one flavor in one part of the lake and another flavor in another part of the lake? We had an ‘Aha!’ moment when we realized that the mineral information and the bedding-thickness information mapped perfectly onto each other in a way you would expect from a stratified lake with a chemical boundary between shallow water and deeper water.”

Wednesday, January 4, 2017

A joint research team from the University of Calgary, American Museum of Natural History, and Florida State University announced on Monday that the eggs of non-avian dinosaurs such as the duck-billed dinosaur took as long as six months to hatch, far longer than had previously been believed.

Bird eggs incubate for 11 to 85 days, about half the time of most other egg-laying vertebrates. Scientists had thought dinosaur eggs were more like those of modern birds than modern reptiles, but this long hatch time is far more reminiscent of monitor lizard than magpie.

The scientists reached this conclusion by comparing CT scans of the teeth of dinosaur embryos of two different species, the Protoceratops andrewsi, which had eggs weighing under 200 grams, and Hypacrosaurus stebingeri, a type of duck-billed dinosaur that had eggs twenty times that size. They observed the von Ebner lines, patterns that form in vertebrate teeth as they grow, to determine how long the overall developmental process was taking. “They’re kind of like tree rings, but they’re put down daily,” said Florida State University co-author Gregory Erickson. “And so we could literally count them to see how long each dinosaur had been developing.” They found the Protoceratops embryo was about three months old and the Hypacrosaurus about six months.

According to the research team, this may be one reason why dinosaurs did not recover after the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event 65 million years ago. Both the eggs and any parents guarding them would have drawn the attention of predators and been unable to flee floods or other problems. Guardians might not have been able to move far to find food. This, researchers say, would have put dinosaurs at a disadvantage over animals with quicker-hatching eggs and their mammalian competitors.

Natural History Museum Curator and study co-author Mark Norell cites advances in imaging technology as the reason why this study is being published today: “We know very little about dinosaur embryology, yet it relates to so many aspects of development, life history, and evolution, [b]ut with the help of advanced tools like CT scanners and high-resolution microscopy, we’re making discoveries that we couldn’t have imagined 20 years ago.”

The research team plans to study more fossilized dinosaur embryo skeletons to confirm their findings. Specifically, the current study did not include the skeleton of a velociraptor or any other dinosaur considered closely related to birds.

Friday, April 1, 2011

Treasury documents released today under the Freedom of Information (FOI) act reveal that Australians could face up to an A$863 rise in household costs per annum if the government proceeds with its plans to put a tax on carbon emissions.

The documents reveal an a annual price rise of $218.40 for electricity, $114.40 for gas, $187.20 for petrol and $88.40 for food for the average household. The treasury modelling was based on a $30 carbon tax, but also estimated other prices such as a $40 tax which predicted a rise of over $1,100 to the average household’s annual budget. However, they do not take into account the compensation deals and offsets promised by the government if a price is put on carbon.

After viewing the treasury modelling, Treasurer Wayne Swan and Climate Change Minister Greg Combet released a joint statement saying without the finalization of compensation packages it is too early to predict price rises. “No final decisions on the starting price or assistance have been taken and therefore it is far too early to speculate on any potential price impacts,” the statement said. Until the final design and modelling have been settled, anyone who uses these figures to scare families about prices is engaging in a dishonest, misleading scare campaign.”

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said the figures demonstrated the toll a carbon tax would have on Australian families. This just demonstrates that the Government has known all along that its carbon tax won’t clean up the environment but it will clean out your wallet,” he said. That’s right and this is $863 a year in extra burden that the Australian people shouldn’t have to pay. This is an $863 a year hit on families’ cost of living. Families are doing it tough as things stand. They don’t need a bad situation made much, much worse by Julia Gillard’s carbon tax.”

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) has also officially opposed the adoption of a carbon tax. A resolution was passed by all 30 members at their general meeting to reject the Federal government’s plan.