Sunday, February 24, 2008

In the year 2000, Dries Buytaert created Drupal, a freely licensed and open source tool to manage websites, as a bulletin board for his college dorm. Since Dries released the software and a community of thousands of volunteer developers have added and improved modules, Drupal has grown immensely popular. Drupal won the overall Open CMS Award in 2007, and some speakers in Drupal’s spacious developer’s room at FOSDEM 2008 were dreaming aloud of its world domination.

Buytaert (now 29) just finished his doctoral thesis and has founded the start-up Acquia. The new company wants to become Drupal’s best friend, with the help of an all-star team and US$7 million collected from venture capitalists. Wikinews reporter Michaël Laurent sat down with Dries in Brussels to discuss these recent exciting developments.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

On June 4, a report published by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that in the past 16 years high school students have become less likely to engage in health risk-related behaviors such as having sex and taking drugs. However, the CDC found that Hispanic students were less likely to have reduced risky behavior when compared to Black and White students in several key areas.

The National Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) is run by the CDC every two years, and is an anonymous, self-administered survey of students in grades 9 to 12. In the 2007 YRBS, over 14,000 students were surveyed from across 44 U.S. states, 5 territories, and several individual school districts. The combined statistics used results from 39 states and 22 large urban school districts.

The survey showed that males were more likely than females to engage in most behaviors involving violence or risk of unintentional injury, including driving while drinking alcohol, carrying a weapon, and being involved in a physical fight, although females were more likely to have contemplated or attempted suicide. Males were also more likely to have smoked tobacco or marijuana, engaged in heavy drinking, or engaged in sexual intercourse, while females were more likely to have fasted for 24 hours or more, vomited or taken laxatives in order to lose weight.

While the proportions of White and Black students who had ever had sexual intercourse, and who had had sex with four or more partners in their lifetimes, all dropped over the period 1991-2007, there was no change in either of these statistics for the Hispanic population. Compared to their counterparts in the 1990s however, Hispanic students in 2007 were found to be more likely to have used a condom during their most recent sexual intercourse, and less likely to have consumed drugs such as cigarettes, alcohol and marijuana.

Hispanic students were more likely than White or Black students to go without food for 24 hours to lose weight, to take drugs such as heroin or cocaine, to drink alcohol on school property, and to have avoided school on occasion because of safety concerns.

In comparison with previous YRBS results, the survey found that the percentage of students who had ever had sexual intercourse decreased from 54.1% in 1991 to 47.8% in 2007, with a comparable decrease in the percentage who had had four or more sexual partners, from 18.7% to 14.9%. Decreases were also found in the percentage of students who had attempted suicide, who rode in a car with a driver who had been drinking alcohol, and who had smoked marijuana in the past month, but an increase in the percentage who had avoided school on occasion because of safety concerns (from 4.4% in 1993 to 5.5% in 2007).

“We are pleased that more high school students today are doing things that will help them stay healthy and avoiding things that put their health in danger. Unfortunately we are not seeing that same progress among Hispanic teens for certain risk factors,” said Howell Wechsler, Ed.D., MPH, director of CDC’s Division of Adolescent and School Health.

Sunday, December 7, 2008

Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia —The Sunshine Coast Regional Council has formally ratified the rejection of the 24 hour McDonald’s in Minyama. The decision comes after council rejected the proposal earlier this week at a general committee meeting.

McDonald’s forwarded an 11th hour compromise to deputy mayor Tim Dwyer in order to overturn the decision. The compromised had included reducing the opening hours to 6am to 10pm Sunday to Thursday and until 12am Friday and Saturday.

Local member of federal parliament Peter Slipper has said that any new development be given serious and honest consideration to the various potential impacts on the community.

“It is important that any new development, including fast food outlets, give serious and honest consideration to the various potential impacts of the project on the community. This is important as society strives to balance the need for development with the need to support the lifestyle choices and wishes of residents,” said Mr Slipper in an e-mail to Wikinews.

Local residents who had opposed the development had support from local councilor Chris Thompson. “We already have a 24-hour McDonald’s at Mooloolaba, only one kilometre away, and there are already [anti-social] issues at that site,” he said.

Councillors ratified the rejection unanimously. McDonald’s will now fight the decision in court.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Satire site Uncyclopedia, a parody of online encyclopedia Wikipedia, has been labeled by the Malaysian government as dangerous. The Internal Security Department of Malaysia issued the warning today, saying that the site has “messages and information insulting Malaysia”.

The warning notes the creation date of the website as being 5 January 2005, and hosted by Wikia, Inc., both of which are correct. However, it claims Wikia owns Wikipedia; Wikipedia is a charitable non-profit website owned by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, while Wikia is an independent, for-profit company.

The report evidently mentions that Uncyclopedia covers Malaysian “history, culture, the political leaders, the government, the national song and the name / history of the national flag,” none of which is “correct”. They accuse the website of helping to reinforce a bad international image of their country.

There are no reports of the site being blocked from access within the country, only this statement, which urges Malaysians not to circulate the content.

Uncyclopedia’s article on Malaysia begins:

The site has fired back with a parody article posted at the site under their UnNews section, titled Uncyclopedia Internal Security Department warns on Malaysia. The article suggests that the “Internal Security Department of the Uncyclomedia Foundation,” which is a facetious and fictitious parent organization of Uncyclopedia, identifies Malaysia “as a dangerous country… It warned its people not to use the country today.”

There are forty-seven individual language editions of Uncyclopedia, including Tolololpedia, which is written in Bahasa Melayu, the Malay language. This is in addition to fictional “language” editions which include Oscar Wilde, Newspeak, N00b, White Supremacist, and Re: PharmaccgRy.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Buffalo, New York —The preliminary hearing for a lawsuit against the Elmwood Village Hotel proposal has been pushed back to August 10, 2006.

The hotel would require the demolition of at least five properties owned by Hans Mobius, 1109-1121 Elmwood and would cause the closure of several businesses. Already, two businesses, Skunk Tail Glass and Six Nations Native American Gift Shop have relocated, outside the Elmwood Strip. Don apparel, H.O.D. Tattoo and Mondo Video still remain on Elmwood; however, Mondo Video is planning on moving to a new location. The hotel will be 72 rooms and will cost at least 7 million dollars to build. Savarino Construction Services Corporation would be in charge of building the hotel and Wyndham Hotels would operate it.

Attorney Arthur Giacalone says that the court date was pushed back because “the court apparently felt it did not make sense to proceed with oral argument on 7/27 if Savarino is going to re-start the process.” Giacalone also stated that the decision to adjourn until August 10 “was not my idea.” On July 13, 2006 Savarino announced that they were withdrawing the proposal to “resubmit” it to “shed the lawsuits” against the proposal.

Savarino was allegedly supposed to resubmit the proposal by the end of last week but so far has not done so. The final meeting of Buffalo’s Common Council for the summer occurred today. The Council will not meet again until September.

“If they [Savarino] took no action today, re the hotel, [that is, accepting the new application, or rescinding the prior rezoning resolution], nothing official will happen for the next 6 weeks or so,” added Giacalone also saying that if this is the case, “the court may not be willing to hear oral argument on 8/10 since we will still be up in the air about what’s going on.” Giacalone also states that he is unsure about “what they [the Common Council] did today.”

Despite the call for a “do-over” of the proposals process, Giacalone still states that his client’s position of the “pending lawsuit will not be ‘moot’ or ‘academic’ unless and until the Common Council rescinds its prior vote(s) that approved the rezoning” for the buildings on Elmwood and one property on Forest Avenues.

Sam Savarino, CEO of Savarino Construction has been contacted, but has not replied to any e-mails. Area councilman Joseph Golombeck has also been e-mailed, but also has not replied.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

The name for the newest James Bond film has been announced today. The 22nd film, previously known only as “Bond 22”, will be called “Quantum of Solace“. EON Productions who are producing the film made the announcement today at Pinewood Studios, where production for the film has been under way since last year.

The name of the film was inspired by a short story (of the same name) from For Your Eyes Only by Bond creator, Ian Fleming.

The film will be the second for star Daniel Craig, who first starred in Casino Royale in 2006, taking over from Pierce Brosnan. Producer Michael G. Wilson has previously said that the film will continue “literally an hour after” Casino Royale’s conclusion.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Former Argentine professional wrestler and basketball player Jorge ‘Giant’ González has died at the age of 44. González died in his hometown of San Martin, Argentina. The cause of death was established to be complications of diabetes. González had suffered with the illness for several years and was wheelchair bound.

Standing over 7.5 feet (2.3 metres) tall, González was originally a basketball player before becoming a wrestler. Upon moving to the United States, he was drafted in the third round of the 1988 NBA draft by the Atlanta Hawks. After his basketball career ended, he joined World Championship Wrestling (WCW). During his time there, he wrestled as El Gigante for two years, then joining the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), now World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE).

During his time with the WWF, González feuded with The Undertaker. He debuted at the 1993 Royal Rumble where he eliminated Undertaker from the Royal Rumble match. He spent the entire of his time at with the WWF feuding with Undertaker and left the company in July 1993 after losing a Rest in Peace match to him. After leaving the company, he wrestled in Japan before retiring in 1995 after suffering from sciatic nerve pain.

González is the latest in a line of former WWE wrestlers to die in the last two months. In August, both Lance Cade and Luna Vachon passed away, while Mike ‘Bastion Booger’ Shaw died at the age of 53 earlier this month.

Monday, August 29, 2005

The designer of the current 50-star United States flag, Robert G. Heft, has put his original creation up for sale on the popular auction website eBay.

Heft originally made the flag for a school project in 1958, in which he received a “B minus” as his grade. When he submitted the design for national consideration in 1959, he beat out over 100,000 other applicants. His design was adopted as the new flag in 1960 and his grade was promptly changed to an “A”.

The flag has been flown over all state capitol buildings and over 80 United States embassies. Sixty-three year-old Heft explained that medical bills, as well as tuition costs for his relatives, are becoming an economic burden.

The opening bid on the flag starts at $250,000 USD, and the auction lasts until September 28th.

Heft has also designed a 51-star US flag, which is currently in possession of Representative Clarence Miller, a Republican from Ohio.