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Wednesday, February 22, 2006

The Bathurst Regional Council has begun preparing the Mount Panorama motor racing circuit for the inaugural Bathurst International Motorsport Festival (BIMF) to be held between April 13 and 16, 2006. The Mount Panorama motor racing circuit is considered to be the home of motorsport in Australia.

Council’s staff have been busy cleaning the facilities, erecting signage, checking pedestrian bridges and inspecting the track surface for the past few days.

The BIMF will be the first event to be held at the 6.2 kilometre circuit over Easter since 2000. In 2000, Event Management Specialists held the first motorcycle racing event since 1990, but due to EMS going bankrupt a short time after their 2000 event was ran and the inability of the then Bathurst City Council to find another promoter, the Easter event was canned.

The BIMF is inspired by the Festival of Speed and Goodwood Revival in the United Kingdom. The Bathurst Regional Council and event promoter Global Entertainment Team promise that the event “will cater for all motoring enthusiasts, collectors and historians”.

According to the BIMF website, the on-track program consists of:

• Manufacturers showcasing their vehicles and track times
• Historic touring car races
• Aussie racing car races
• Australian GT sports car
• Parade laps by car clubs
• Parade laps and races by “Legends of Motorsport”
• Stunt car and bike events
• Rally cars
• Displays of cars from all eras of Mount Panorama’s history
• The chance for patrons to purchase a ride around the circuit in a race car.

Off the track, the organisers have promised manufacturer displays, merchandise stands, music, joyflights, Off-road demonstrations and joyrides, autograph sessions and interviews with influential people in the Australian motor industry.

Monday, December 2, 2019

On Friday, 28-year-old Usman Khan stabbed reportedly several people at Fishmongers’ Hall in London with a large knife, then fled up London Bridge. Members of the public confronted him; one man sprayed Khan with a fire extinguisher, others struck him with their fists and took his knife, and another, a Polish chef named ?ukasz, harried him with a five-foot narwhal tusk. Khan was pinned to the ground. Police arrived and shot him dead. By reports on Saturday, two of Khan’s victims died, and three others were seriously injured.

According to police, they received the first call about the attack at Fishmongers’ Hall around 2:00 p.m. local time. Khan reportedly started attacking people there, and one of them died inside of the hall, according to The Times. Police reported the attacker exited the Hall and continued to attack others.

At the London Bridge, members of the public stopped Khan. According to videos posted on social media, people approached Khan armed with the fire extinguisher and the narwhal tusk and forced him to lie on the ground, after which a third person removed his knife. According to these videos and NPR, the police then surrounded the attacker aiming at him with their guns, moved a last bystander out of the way, and shot Khan.

The University of Cambridge had been hosting a program about criminal rehabilitation at Fishmongers’ Hall called “Learning Together”. According to a Twitter post by Amy Cook, director of the Learning Together event, the five-foot (one and two thirds meters) marine mammal tusk came from the wall in Fishmongers’ Hall. ?ukasz, who reportedly works at Fishmongers’ Hall as a chef, having thus armed himself, participated in the chase and sustained a stabbing injury to his hand before the police arrived. Broadcaster Piers Morgan commented, “The guy with the whale tusk is a Polish chef named Luckasz. Worth noting this for the next time someone says, ‘we’ve let too many Eastern Europeans into this country’.”

Police also said Khan had appeared to be wearing a suicide vest, though it was later found to be a harmless fake.

One of the men who held Khan down was James Ford, 42, a convicted murderer approaching the end of his sentence at an open prison. Another was tour manager Thomas Gray, 24, who cited only his experience with the sport of rugby: “‘one in, all in’. I did what any Londoner would do and tried to put a stop to it.”

“I am in awe of the people who ran towards danger to keep us all safe” tweeted Mayor of London Sadiq Khan (no relation). “The bravery of the emergency services and ordinary Londoners is incredible.”

Khan was convicted of terrorism years ago for his participation in a London Stock Exchange bomb plan and served eight years of a sixteen-year sentence. He was released in 2018 and has been out on license, also called parole, and living in Staffordshire.

Lucy Fischer of The Times told NPR, “[Khan] had been released a year ago on the provision that he had agreed to wear an electronic tag, submit to curfews and restrictions to his movements”.

“In the US there is a phenomenon ‘suicide by cop'”, Birmingham City University criminology professor David Wilson told the press. “[I]ncreasingly what we are seeing is some attackers wear pretend suicide vests as they prefer martyrdom than getting a sentence. I wonder if what we are seeing is another version of suicide by cop.”

Saturday, February 4, 2006

Jennifer San Marco allegedly shot and killed herself, as well as an ex-neighbor and six postal workers at the Santa Barbara Processing and Distribution Center in Goleta, California says Santa Barbara County Sheriffs department. Authorities say that Marco believed that she was threatened by a conspiracy among the workers at the facility.

Sheriff Sergeant Erik Raney has said that Marco apparently left writings in her New Mexico desert home “alluding to a vague plot involving the mail-sorting plant, a local medical facility and the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department. She obviously felt that the post office was out to get her in one way or another,” he said. “That establishes as good of a motive (for the killings) as we can determine at this point.”

Raney said that the writings were described to him as “ramblings,” but Raney says, “they alluded to a conspiracy.”

In her home, investigators also found a check payable to ‘cash’ with the notation “will,” which could indicate that Marco left a will, “and that may shed more light on what’s happened here,” said Raney.

Marco has a history of mental illness, but was still able to purchase a firearm and ammunition from Ace Pawn and Antiques, owned by Paul Castillo.

Castillo said, “she (Marco) bought the gun for $325.00 without saying why she needed the weapon. She filled out an application for a background check, which didn’t turn up any problems, and picked up the gun two days later.”

Friday, October 10, 2008

In Wikinews’ attempt to speak with as many candidates as possible during the 2008 Canadian federal election, Wikinews has talked via email with Jo-Anne Boulding. Jo-Anne is a candidate in Ontario’s Parry Sound—Muskoka riding, running under the New Democratic Party (NDP) banner.

The riding’s Conservative incumbent is Tony Clement, Minister of Health and Minister for FedNor. Other candidates in the riding are Liberal Jamie McGarvey, Green Glen Hodgson, and independent David Rowland.

The following is an interview with Ms. Boulding, conducted via email, over a week ago.

She did not respond to two of the main questions: “Previous to this campaign, have you been politically involved? How will you apply your previous work/volunteer/life experience to serving your constituents?” and “What would you say are the three hottest topics this election, in your riding? What would you and your party do to address these issues?” Being unanswered, these questions were edited out of the interview, which otherwise is published as received.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Viktor Schreckengost, the father of industrial design and creator of the Jazz Bowl, an iconic piece of Jazz Age art designed for Eleanor Roosevelt during his association with Cowan Pottery died yesterday. He was 101.

Schreckengost was born on June 26, 1906 in Sebring, Ohio, United States.

Schreckengost’s peers included the far more famous designers Raymond Loewy and Norman Bel Geddes.

In 2000, the Cleveland Museum of Art curated the first ever retrospective of Schreckengost’s work. Stunning in scope, the exhibition included sculpture, pottery, dinnerware, drawings, and paintings.

Sunday, February 7, 2010

A major winter storm, which has been nicknamed by some as “Snowmageddon“, has pummeled parts of the U.S. Middle Atlantic region, dumping up to 19 inches (50 centimeters) of snow in some parts of the Washington area.

The National Weather Service is predicting as much as 24 to 30 inches (60 to 75 cm) of snow for the Washington, D.C. region by late Saturday. The storm brought high winds and low visibility, with winds gusting at 56 miles per hour (93 kilometers per hour) along the coast.

Life in the nation’s capital ground to a halt with the federal government and most businesses closing early on Friday and residents warned to stay off the snow-clogged roads. Hundreds of thousands of homes were without power as the wet snow weighed heavily on trees and power lines. Power lines in some areas have been brought down by the heavy snow.

The Weather Service issued blizzard and winter storm warnings for states reaching from Virginia and West Virginia up to Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey.

Forecasters say this could be the largest recorded snowfall in Washington, rivaling a storm, known as the Knickerbocker Storm, that hit the city nearly 90 years ago, in January 1922. The largest amount of snowfall recorded so far has been in Elkridge, Maryland, reporting 32 inches (81 cm). The 1922 storm was named the Knickerbocker Storm for a theater where 98 people were killed when the building’s roof collapsed due to heavy snow. Snowfall in that storm measured 28 inches (71 cm).

Airlines and airports across the region have canceled flights and train service has been disrupted. Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport suspended flight operations for the day while nearby Washington Dulles International Airport reported only a few international flights would be departing. Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport reported most flights were canceled. Flights at Philadelphia International Airport are also canceled.

Amtrak announced that it was canceling a number of trains between Washington and New York City, along with service from Washington to cities in the south. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, known as the Metro locally, has suspended bus service and above ground train service. Underground subway service is running at 30 minute intervals.

As the storm approached, residents emptied supermarket shelves, stocking up on food and other supplies, especially due to Super Bowl XLIV which will be held on Sunday. Local area sports teams in Washington, D.C. will still play games as scheduled. People are urged to take the Metro to see the games and not use the roads. Impromptu snowball fights have also broken with some people going as far as to organize them over Facebook and Twitter.

The winter weather has already been blamed for hundreds of road accidents. So far two fatalities have been reported, a father and son who were rendering aid to a stranded motorist on Interstate 81 in Virginia, when an approaching tractor-trailer jackknifed and killed the pair.

This is the second major snowstorm to hit the region in less than two months.