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Friday, May 29, 2009

A 48-year-old man in Ohio has been arrested and is facing charges of obstruction of justice and disorderly conduct after refusing to stop cutting the grass at a local public park.

John Hamilton of Sandusky says on Thursday the grass in Sandusky Central Park was over 12 inches long. He decided to take up the task of cutting it after driving around his city and seeing how long the grass was in vacant lots and in public parks. He was also inspired by Toledo‘s mayor, who spent his time off cutting the grass in his local parks.

“I was only trying to save the city some money,” said Hamilton to FOX 8 in Cleveland. As Hamilton was cutting the grass, city workers attempted to stop him, showing him a list of lawns they were going to cut, including the one he was mowing. Hamilton told the worker to go cut another lawn while he finished cutting the one in Sandusky Central Park.

A short time later, police arrived on the scene and told Hamilton to stop cutting the grass. When he refused, police verbally warned him. When he refused a second time, police arrested him and charged him with obstruction and disorderly conduct. Police say that the trash was not removed from the lawn prior to him mowing it and his riding mower was throwing the debris onto the sidewalks and into the streets.

City officials call the incident unfortunate, but that they knew the grass would be an issue months before the growing season started. Officials say there are over 600 acres of park grass that needs to be mowed regularly, but that only three or four people are assigned the task due to city budget cuts. Officials also add that residents can adopt local parks in an effort to help maintain them, but Hamilton did not go through the process.

Hamilton appeared in court today where he pled not guilty.

“I am a citizen,” said Hamilton who added he had no regrets about the incident. “The only thing I’m worried about is…how am I going to tell my wife.”

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Numerous men have been charged in Canada and the United States with various crimes related to a plot to arm the Tamil Tigers who are listed as a terrorist organization in both countries. Some are accused of plotting to buy surface-to-air missiles and AK-47 rifles that would have been sent to the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. Eight people, including three Canadian citizens, were charged in Brooklyn, New York yesterday with various offences. At the same time the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested a 26-year-old in Ontario in relation to the plot. He faces extradition to the United States.

Charges against the nine include fundraising and money laundering through US bank accounts and charitable organizations for the Liberation Tigers of Talim Eelam, or Tamil Tigers, who have been fighting the Sri Lankan military in a civil war since 1983.

Two of the men allegedly tried to bribe undercover US State Department officials with $1 million in order to remove the Tigers from the official list of terrorist organizations which bars the group from raising money, obtaining weapons or lobbying. A more extensive investigation ensued involving the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Joint Terrorism Task Force.

The RCMP was brought in when the FBI learned of a Canadian allegedly being involved. Ultimately, the three Canadians arrested in the United States are accused of traveling to New York to purchase the military equipment including 50 to 100 SAM missiles, assault rifles, truck mounted missiles, aerial vehicles for jamming radio transmissions and radar, submarine design software as well as flight lessons and military training.

Monday, October 10, 2005

The sets and props of popular claymation characters Wallace and Gromit have been destroyed in a warehouse blaze this morning in Bristol, UK.

The disaster comes only days after the US release of Nick Park‘s latest film featuring the characters, The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit, which topped the box office chart and took US$16.1 million (GB£9.1 million) over the weekend. The film is scheduled for UK release this Friday.

Sets and models from the new film escaped as they had not yet been added to the Aardman Animation collection hosted in Bristol. Among the damage caused by the blaze, the character Morph was lost; for many UK children the appearance of this character in Tony Hart‘s BBC art programmes was their first introduction to stop motion animation.

The warehouse, located near Bristol’s central railway station, dated from the Victorian era and was formerly part of Ismbard Kingdom Brunel‘s Great Western Railway.

Ten fire crews attended the blaze, in which flames shot 100ft into the air, from 0600 BST into the afternoon, but were unable to prevent the collapse of the roof, interior walls and all three floors of the building.

An investigation will begin once the building has been made safe.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Kivimetsän Druidi? is a Finnish female-fronted band formed in 2002 whose music is a fusion of symphonic, fantasy and folk metal, which the band’s website dubs ‘Rock ‘N’ Troll’.

Brothers Joni and Antti Koskinen formed the band in Kouvola with Joni playing guitar and growling while Antti played keyboard and sings backing vocals. They joined up with a female lead vocalist, lead and bass guitarists and a drummer. The brothers write the songs between them, with Antti doing the main body and Joni writing the lyrics.

Together the band recorded and released three demos and an EP, all released independently, across 2002-6. Across October and November 2007 they gained international attention by supporting well-known Finnish folk metal band Korpiklaani across a large European tour.

On June 6 this year Kivimetsän Druidi? was announced to have been signed to Century Media Records in a global deal. The band have now entered Noice Camp studio in Turku to record their debut, with a planned release date in October. This summer the only performances will be at a handful of festivals while the band works on their new album, but after that is released a major tour will follow to support it. The band say they are “extremely pleased” with the deal.

Wikinews was able to discuss these events and what the future holds for the band with the Koskinen brothers and female vocalist Leeni-Maria Hovila, who also writes the vocal melodies in an exclusive interview, which is published below for the first time.

Wednesday, August 31, 2005

A Rhode Island district court has frozen all the US assets of the Palestinian Authority (PA), prompting Palestinian finance minister Salam Fayyad to request the aid of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

The frozen assets include US holdings in an investment fund worth $1.3 billion, which was used to finance economic development, and $30 million from the Palestinian Monetary Authority.

The ruling was passed upon the PA when they refused to compensate the relatives of a Jewish couple shot dead by members of Hamas in 1996.

US citizen Yaron Ungar and his wife Efrat were killed while returning from a wedding near the West Bank, when their car was shot at repeatedly, killing the couple. Three Hamas militants were jailed as a result.

A lawsuit was filed in 2000 against the Palestinian Authority, the PLO, Hamas, and Yasser Arafat in Rhode Island.

Yasser Arafat hired lawyer and former attorney general Ramsey Clark as his defense. In the case, Clark argued that the PA was a sovereign state, and that it deserved immunity from prosecution accorded to most countries. The court disagreed with this, and in 2004 they ruled that Palestine is not a state, and ordered them to pay the Ungars $116 million. A federal appeals court upheld the verdict in March.

The head of Washington’s PA office, Hasan Abdul Rahman said that his office had been “paralysed” by the verdict.

“It paralyzes the function of the office, and I think that is the intention of the plaintiffs.” he told Associated Press shortly after the decision, and called upon the US administration to intervene.

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Gay Talese wants to go to Iraq. “It so happens there is someone that’s working on such a thing right now for me,” the 75-year-old legendary journalist and author told David Shankbone. “Even if I was on Al-Jazeera with a gun to my head, I wouldn’t be pleading with those bastards! I’d say, ‘Go ahead. Make my day.'”

Few reporters will ever reach the stature of Talese. His 1966 profile of Frank Sinatra, Frank Sinatra Has a Cold, was not only cited by The Economist as the greatest profile of Sinatra ever written, but is considered the greatest of any celebrity profile ever written. In the 70th anniversary issue of Esquire in October 2003, the editors declared the piece the “Best Story Esquire Ever Published.”

Talese helped create and define a new style of literary reporting called New Journalism. Talese himself told National Public Radio he rejects this label (“The term new journalism became very fashionable on college campuses in the 1970s and some of its practitioners tended to be a little loose with the facts. And that’s where I wanted to part company.”)

He is not bothered by the Bancrofts selling The Wall Street Journal—”It’s not like we should lament the passing of some noble dynasty!”—to Rupert Murdoch, but he is bothered by how the press supported and sold the Iraq War to the American people. “The press in Washington got us into this war as much as the people that are controlling it,” said Talese. “They took information that was second-hand information, and they went along with it.” He wants to see the Washington press corp disbanded and sent around the country to get back in touch with the people it covers; that the press should not be so focused on–and in bed with–the federal government.

Augusten Burroughs once said that writers are experience junkies, and Talese fits the bill. Talese–who has been married to Nan Talese (she edited James Frey‘s Million Little Piece) for fifty years–can be found at baseball games in Cuba or the gay bars of Beijing, wanting to see humanity in all its experience.

Below is Wikinews reporter David Shankbone’s interview with Gay Talese.

Monday, February 17, 2014

On Friday afternoon, amateur shooters were briefed about a three-year-long trial of hunting in national parks of New South Wales, Australia. The meeting was held in Griffith near Cocopara Nature Reserve, where the first shooting operation of the trial was to occur on Saturday, targeting the feral goats.

The National Parks Wildlife Service (NPWS) has used aerial culls and baiting to reduce Cocoparra’s goat population, but there are said to be thousands of goats at the reserve. The feral animals to be hunted in other reserves may include cats, deer, dogs, and pigs, beside goats — depending on the reserve.

Shooters in the supplementary pest control trial were to be closely supervised by rangers, as the trial was monitored and its effectiveness evaluated. In a partnership of NPWS and the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia (NSW) Inc, qualified volunteers were recruited, under the Sporting Shooters Association’s hunting program. According to Mick O’Flynn, the Acting Director Park Conservation and Heritage with the NPWS, the four shooters selected for the first shooting operation received comprehensive safety and training instruction.

Following announcement of the close partnership of shooters with NWPS staff, the Greens cancelled planned picketing of the first shooting operation. However, State Greens MP (Member of Parliament) David Shoebridge warned, “This needs to be a government-run program, not run by the biggest gun lobby group in Australia”. He called limiting the meeting to members of the Sporting Shooters Association “outrageous”. Another concern raised by the Greens was the danger of armed people, not only to animals, but also to people visiting the national parks, should the shooters be unsupervised after the trial.

The trial was announced in the second half of 2013, though the plan has been significantly modified over time and has come to be regulated under the National Parks and Wildlife Act, in contrast with the original proposal of recreational hunting in national parks, as it was announced in May 2012 by New South Wales Premier Barry O’Farrell. This amendment of the Game and Feral Animal Control Act was part of a deal with the Shooters and Fishers Party. The government needed at least one vote from a Shooters and Fishers Party MP to pass electricity privatisation legislation, as both Labor and Greens opposed it. O’Farrell’s plans to allow pest control by licensed individuals called for licencing by the Game Council of New South Wales.

Following a report sharply criticizing the Game Council, the government dissolved it in mid-2013, suspended hunting on public lands, and reconsidered the plan to allow amateur hunters into national parks — thus breaking the earlier promise to the Shooters and Fishers Party.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Yesterday, Norwegian news outlets reported that Defense Security Service (Forsvarets sikkerhetstjeneste [FOST]) had conducted illegal surveillance against the prime minister’s office and other government offices.

Kripos, a division of the Norwegian Ministry of Justice and the Police, did a police search of the Norwegian Ministry of Defence’s top-secret intelligence agency’s computer equipment in Jørstadmoen, after a request by the Ministry of Defense.

While remaining confident that the case will be investigated in a correct way, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg stated to Aftenposten late Wednesday that “it’s important that the police now find out what actually has happened.”

Verdens Gang reported that to their knowledge, the surveillance happened in connection with FOST, having the responsibility for the computer security of key personnel within the prime minister’s office and other government offices. For practical reasons these people have been connected to the military secure lines. Sources with insight to the surveillance process explained to Aftenposten that when a possible breach of computer security is detected its protocol that the person be given a notice that he may be in process off or already have broken the security rules. A person, possible within the Prime minister’s office has most likely received such a note and has reacted to the fact that the computer traffic had been under surveillance.

Vice admiral Jan Eirik Finseth told Verdens Gang that the Defense security agency’s computer security section, reported that computer communication lines had been put under surveillance by military communications lines. Vice admiral Finseth stated to Verdens Gang that “the circumstances is of such a nature that the police [were] asked to investigate if anything of this may be illegal.”

When Wikinews contacted State attorney Petter Mandt, who leads the investigation, we received confirmation that a search in Jørstadmoen took place, but he would not comment on what was confiscated, if anything. Mandt also stated that they would not comment on any specifics or give any details on the investigation, but explained that for use of a police search there has to be more than 50% probable suspicion that something illegal may have happened. When asked if suspicion was that the prime minister’s office had been put under illegal surveillance, Mandt refused to comment and stated that he will comment on neither how many nor who the individuals involved are.

Defense political spokesperson for Socialistic left (Sv) Bjørn Jacobsen, told Wikinews that “it’s important to find out what, if anything has happened,” but that “it’s shocking that there even exist[s] a reason for a police search.” When asked what will happen if anything illegal is found to have taken place, Jacobsen responded by pointing out that in this case the prosecutors will have to decide on what to do next, but stated that “parliament will have to see if the law and regulations ha[ve] to be changed. It’s important to stop an eventual bad culture before it sticks to the walls.”

This is the second investigation of illegal government surveillance in Norway since the Lund commission’s report uncovered illegal surveillance of communist, socialist, and other persons, which the Norwegian Police Security Service deemed to be dangerous.

Wikinews was unable to get any comments from the Norwegian Military Defense when contacted.