Sunday, July 4, 2010 Last week, U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) held a press conference on the National Mall in Washington, DC, warning consumers of the dangers of fireworks, and advising them of safe handling. They were joined by representatives from the the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF); Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA); the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP); and other national safety agencies. Fireworks are often used to celebrate the United States’ July 4, 1776 independence from Great Britain. The Fourth of July is a time when many US families get together to celebrate, by holding reunions, picnics, barbecues, baseball games and firework displays; however,…

Tuesday, December 4, 2007 In an investigation reported on first by Wikinews, Wikileaks today revealed another chapter in the story of the Standard Operations Procedure (SOP) manual for the Camp Delta facility at Guantanamo Bay. The latest documents they have received are the details of the 2004 copy of the manual signed off by Major General Geoffrey D. Miller of the U.S. Southern Command. This is following on from the earlier leaking of the 2003 version. Wikileaks passed this document to people they consider experts in the field to carry out an analysis trying to validate it. Following this, they set out to assess what had changed between 2003 and…

Monday, January 23, 2006 At 11:45am on January 16, in Vladivostok, Russia, a fire broke out on the three upper floors of the Sberbank building. Photographs taken by eye-witnesses show people, who were trapped, dropping from 8th floor windows to their deaths. According to some reports the firemen who were dispatched to the scene were pre-occupied at the rear of the building. They had apparently been ordered to evacuate the bank and its management from the area, which was not under immediate threat. Official Russian media initially denied the fire, accusing the reports of being false. Russian media later confirmed 7 and then, 9 dead. Witnesses and those rescued from…

Saturday, October 7, 2017 The Canadian federal government of Justin Trudeau yesterday responded to a group of lawsuits by agreeing to pay C$750 million to the survivors of the “Sixties Scoop” program, in which 20,000 First Nations children were removed from their parents’ households and placed with non-indigenous foster or adoptive parents. The plaintiffs claimed that this caused them mental and emotional problems, in addition to the loss of their ancestral culture. Carolyn Bennett, Canada’s Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister, announced the agreement. “I have great hope that because we’ve reached this plateau, this will never, ever happen in Canada again,” Marcia Brown Martel, now Chief of the Beaverhouse First Nation, said…

Sunday, June 13, 2010 The New South Wales Fire Brigades (NSWFB) in Australia has come under scrutiny as a report highlights the latest in a string of sexual abuse and harassment cases. The report also describes the humilation of new recruits in “bizarre” initiation rituals. The independent investigation led by KPMG, a Swiss audit, taxation and advisory firm, found that less that 9% of those who claimed to have suffered from such abuse were said to be satisfied by the action taken by the NSWFB. The investigation states that “there are still instances of bullying and harassment … and they are not being adequately addressed…Some degree of physical bullying and…

Monday, March 19, 2012Hawker, Canberra — Coming off a national championship win for the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) men’s open team in mid-February, Australia men’s national softball team representatives Nick Norton and Adam Folkard are getting ready for more softball later this year, including the Australian club championships to be held in Brisbane in June. Folkard and Norton have both won the World Championships and have each won a total of ten national championships with the ACT side. They are both named to the current men’s national team, which has roughly thirty players, and believe they are likely to survive the December cut down to eighteen players who will represent…