Monday, November 10, 2014

Fatah yesterday announced it was cancelling the memorial it was planning to hold tomorrow in Gaza City for its late leader Yasser Arafat, following a wave of explosions targeting Fatah leaders’ homes in the Gaza Strip. Sources in the Fatah movement blamed Hamas, the ruling movement in Gaza, for the attacks. Hamas has denied involvement and condemned the attacks.

The memorial was to take place on Tuesday at Al-Katiba square, to commemorate ten years since the founder and leader of the Fatah movement, Yasser Arafat, died. However according to Zakaria al-Agha, senior Gaza Strip Fatah leader, Gaza security services ordered the stage workers for the event “to stop working and leave”.

Agha said, “After the series of explosions and assaults against Fatah leaders, we have been notified by Hamas’ political and security officials that security services won’t be able to take charge of security arrangements during the Arafat anniversary ceremony”.

Some Fatah officials blamed the wave of explosions on Hamas. A Fatah spokesperson added they had been expecting the unity government “to cater to the interests of our nation”. Hamas denied any connection to the events, and its spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri condemned the attacks on his Facebook page.

Hamas Ministry of Interior spokesperson Iyad Al-Buzm said the memorial had been cancelled due to the tense atmosphere between the two movements following the attacks during the last few days, and due to technical reasons, including the delay in salary payments to security personnel by the unity government. Furthermore, he said the prime minister of the unity government, Rami Hamdallah, hadn’t contacted security in the Gaza Strip.

In June 2014, after an agreement between Hamas and Fatah, a reconciliation government was established. This reconciliation was to have enabled the first memorial ceremony for Arafat in Gaza since Hamas took over the strip in 2007. For the past few months, however, recriminations between the two sides have marred the arrangement. About two months ago, Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas accused Hamas of establishing a “shadow government” in the Gaza Strip. Hamas workers accuse Fatah-dominated leadership of not paying their salaries.

Friday, March 13, 2009

A team of archaeologists excavating an Ancient Egyptian tomb have discovered golden jewelry in a recently-discovered lower chamber at the Valley of the Kings burial site in Luxor, Egypt.

Two golden rings and five golden earrings were found in the tomb of Djehuty, an 18th-dynasty official of Queen Hatshepsut, and were probably the property of Djehuty or his family.

The discovery was announced by Farouk Hosni, Egypt’s current Minister of Culture.

Djehuty was overseer of the treasury and overseer of works for the Queen. Hatshepsut reigned approximately 1479–1458 BCE. Djehuty was responsible for managing the huge amounts of precious goods brought in from Egypt’s military expedition to Punt in the Horn of Africa and the vast building projects of Hatshepsut which have made the female pharaoh one of the most-remembered of any from ancient Egypt.

Djehuty died after Hatshepsut did, sometime during the reign of Thutmosis III. Both Hatshepsut’s and Thutmosis’s names are recorded on the tomb. In a fashion typical of ancient Egyptian rivalries, Hatshepsut’s name was partly obscured on the monument over the tomb sometime after the queen’s death.

The team, led by José Manuel Galán of the National Research Center (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, CSIC), in Madrid, Spain, had been excavating the tomb, designated TT11 and located in the necropolis of Dra’ Abu el-Naga’, since 2002. While much of Djehuty’s funerary equipment was lost to fire in antiquity, the lower chamber of his tomb was concealed at the end of a three-meter shaft and discovered at the end of 2008.

A superficial description of the tomb itself was recorded almost two hundred years ago by 19th-century French Egyptologist Jean-François Champollion, rubble blocking the entrance hindered excavation until the 21st century. In that time, emphasis in Egyptology has changed from the cataloging of treasures to the investigation of ancient culture, life and religion.

Since excavation began, Djehuty’s tomb has yielded a number of surprises. It was discovered that the tomb was re-used repeatedly up to and during the Greco-Roman period. There is an unusual face-on depiction of pharaoh Thutmosis III hunting ducks, and the mummy of a young, bejewelled, as-yet unidentified woman.

In 2007, 44 preserved bunches of flowers thought to be from Djehuty’s funeral were found in the site. In their 8th season of excavation, which ended on February 22, 2009, the team also found considerable evidence that below Djehuty’s tomb is a network of burial sites from the 11th dynasty, four thousand years old.

The lower chamber also displays passages from the Egyptian funerary text the Book of the Dead on its walls and a colorful mural of the goddess Nut, an embodiment of the heavens, on the ceiling. The names of Djehuty and his parents were also intact in the second chamber; the names were defaced in the previously-known first chamber of the tomb, which had also been looted.

According to a press release from Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, Djehuty’s tomb is only the fifth known decorated burial chamber of the 18th dynasty. An additional unusual feature of the tomb is that its upper chamber is decorated in relief, rather than simply paint. When the excavation is completed, Dr Galán’s team plans to open the site to the public as the carved stoneworks will not be destroyed by tourists’ activities as paint would.

The identification of Djehuty is a complicated one, as a number of officials of the 18th dynasty bore the name, including a general and several governors. The name itself is an alternate transliteration of the name of the Egyptian god usually written in English as Thoth.

The time is 18:00 (UTC) on August 17th, 2006, and this is Audio Wikinews News Briefs.

Friday, February 5, 2010

South African lawyer, politcian, diplomat and anti-apartheid leader Harry Schwarz has died at the age of 85. He died after suffering from a short, undisclosed illness.

Leader of the Democratic Alliance of South Africa Helen Zille paid tribute to Schwarz. She said “On behalf of the Democratic Alliance, I extend sincere condolences on the death of Harry Schwarz”. She added “Harry Schwarz will be remembered for his signal contribution to the development of our democracy. His piercing intellect, and long professional experience in banking, made him the most astute analyst in Parliament on economic and financial matters during his terms in office. He has engraved his place in South Africa’s political history. We will always remember him”.

Harry Heinz Schwarz was born in Cologne, Germany in 1924. At the age of 10 he arrived in South Africa as a Jewish refugee, he later served in the South African Air Force. After World War II he qualified as a lawyer from the University of the Witwatersrand.

As both a trained advocate and attorney, Schwarz served on the defence team on Nelson Mandela and several other anti-apartheid activists during the 1963-64 Rivonia Trail.

Schwarz entered politics in 1951 with his election to the Johannesburg City Council. He entered parliament in 1974 on the UP ticket. He was the opposition’s spokesman on finance until 1987. Despite being on the opposition he was chosen as South Africa’s ambassdor to the United States and served from 1990 to 1994. He was also South Africa’s first ambassador to Barbados, serving from 1993 to 1995.

His funeral is planned for Febuary 7th. He is survived by his wife Annette, and his three children Jonathan, Allan and Michael.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Wikinews interviewed author Amy Scobee about her book Scientology – Abuse at the Top, and asked her about her experiences working as an executive within the organization. Scobee joined the organization at age 14, and worked at Scientology’s international management headquarters for several years before leaving in 2005. She served as a Scientology executive in multiple high-ranking positions, working out of the international headquarters of Scientology known as “Gold Base”, located in Gilman Hot Springs near Hemet, California.

Monday, November 7, 2005

Jean-Jacques Le Chenadec has been reported as the first casualty of recent rioting in France. The 61-year old man was beaten by a hooded rioter last week and had been in a coma since the attack.

The uprising was set off by the death of two teenagers who were allegedly chased by police and hid in an electric power station where they were electrocuted.

The French riots have further intensified over the past few days and are now said to have spread to nearly every city in the country.

The French prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, announced on Monday plans to allow the nation’s regions to impose curfews. Mr. de Villepin appeared the day before on television with an appeal to end the violence.

The president, Jacques Chirac, ended his silence on the rioting on Saturday, when he spoke to the press. “Those who want to sow violence or fear will be caught, tried and punished,” he said. “But we also understand very well that we must move towards respect for each individual, justice and equality of opportunity. We are all completely determined to go down this road and pursue the efforts that are already under way in this domain.”

The Minister of the Interior, Nicolas Sarkozy, called for a radical overhaul of the French social model that he said, “in every aspect, needs to be fundamentally rebuilt.” On the same day, various people [1] [2] discovered that UMP, the political party of Nicolas Sarkozy had bought the Google AdWords ‘banlieue’ (suburbs) to advertise their own website on google.fr.

Arrests in the rioting total nearly 1200 following the deaths of two youths on October 27. The unrest, which started in a Paris suburb, has spread to over 270 towns across France. More than 4300 cars have been torched across the country, and 2 schools were burned.

[edit]

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Cheek numbing, eye watering winds whip across the plains of the Laramie Basin, Wyoming. The ground is yellow brown with patches of recalcitrant snow. Sheep Mountain is losing its winter coat. All normal affairs for March. The March edition of the Wyoming Basin Outlook Report also reports, based on February accumulations, that Snow Water Equivalent is at 99% of average.

The SWE is a measure of the snow pack that feeds the streams, rivers and reservoirs that Wyoming, Nebraska and other states depend upon for water. Current averages are compared to the average SWE for 1971-2000. In recent years, snow pack in this region has been anything but normal.

The Outlook Reports are issued January to June. Since March 2000, only five of 46 months have been above normal. While many of the winter months have been near normal, June’s snow pack is far below average. Even in 2006, the wettest year of the last eight years, June snow pack was only 37% of the average.

In an e-mail interview with Wikinews, Lee Hackleman, Water Supply Specialist, said

In a phone interview with Wikinews, Myra Wilensky of the National Wildlife Federation in nearby Colorado, also commented on changing snow patterns.

This is part of a general increase in temperature in the region. An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change cited by the National Wildlife Federation estimates that the temperature will rise almost 7 degrees (F) by 2100.

The NWF’s main concern is the fate of the wildlife in the region, particularly how the impact of pine bark beetles. Warmer winters have led to mass infestations in Western lodge pole pine forests and The New York Times reports that they are now moving on to white bark pines in Yellowstone particularly impacting grizzly bears there. In turn, the grizzlies are shifting to feeding on Canadian thistle, an invasive species that might be choking out native plants.

Changing weather patterns have also affected large migratory animals.

Water for people has also become a major issue in the region.

Kansas has long fought Wyoming over water rights issues. And Montana is currently suing Wyoming, claiming that the Yellowstone River Compact signed in 1950 gives rights to both surface and ground water, while Wyoming disagrees. On February 18, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the lawsuit.

Authorities do not see this fight over increasingly limited water resources going away anytime soon.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

At 2 P.M. on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., approximately 400,000 people attended H.B.O.’s presentation of Barack Obama’s inaugural kick off concert called “We are One“. The concert featured many musicians including Beyonce, Stevie Wonder and U2. The show featured other high profile celebrities in between performances reading and reflecting on the significance of Barack’s Inauguration on the 20th. Near the end, President-Elect Barack Obama went on the steps and gave a speech.Throughout most of the songs, several different large choirs provided back up vocals and harmony, as well as a full orchestra below the stage. The bald Eagle, the national bird of the United States was displayed several times and allowed to fly within its trainers arm range as a symbol of patriotism and pride. The entire event is expected to be funded with donations gathered by Obama’s inaugural committee.On January 19, Michelle Obama and Jill Biden hosted the “Kids’ Inaugural: We Are the Future” concert at the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C. Musical performers include Disney television and pop stars Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers. The show was broadcast live on Disney Channel and on Radio Disney.