Saturday, February 4, 2012

An unarmed man was killed by a New York City Police Department Narcotics Enforcement officer at his home in the Williamsbridge neighborhood of The Bronx, New York on Thursday, according to police. 18-year-old Ramarley Graham was pronounced dead at nearby Montefiore Medical Center. He was shot by a 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol. The incident is currently being investigated by Internal Affairs, and a grand jury investigation is expected into whether criminal charges should be filed against the officers involved.

The incident began with Mr. Graham walking on the street near his East 229th Street home, police say. He was approached by plain cloths officers in NYPD marked raid jackets. The officers were investigating suspected drug sales at a bodega. As they were approaching, Graham fled on foot towards his home and was followed by the officers. After officers followed him into the building, he entered the bathroom. An officer ordered Graham to “Show me your hands! Show me your hands!” After he failed to comply, the officer shot Graham once in the chest.

There were no weapons found on Graham’s person or at the scene. There was a small bag of cannabis in the toilet.

Police said the officer who shot Graham and his supervising sergeant have been placed on modified duty in light of the incident. The names of the officers were not released, but the officer who shot Graham is said to be 30 years old and joined the NYPD in 2008.

Police commissioner Raymond Kelly said “We’re obviously trying to get the facts. A young man’s life was taken. … It’s the worst thing that can happen to a parent — to lose a child.” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said “We obviously have some real concerns [about the incident].”

This was the third time within a week a young man had died in a police-involved shooting in New York City. 22-year-old Christopher Kissane was killed in an alleged carjacking in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn and 17-year-old Antwain White was killed in an alleged mugging in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Italian Prime Minister, Romano Prodi, delivered his resignation today to the country’s President Giorgio Napolitano. The decision came following an embarrassing loss suffered by the Italian government on a foreign policy vote in the Italian Senate, concerning the engagement in Afghanistan and after a political split in the government coalition about the planned expansion of a U.S. Army base in Vicenza, in Northern Italy.

President Napolitano will begin consultations among Italian party Leaders on the next Thursday: according to the Italian Constitution, the President can send back Prodi to the Chambers for a vote or might choose another Prime Minister who might have enough support to put together a new government, or could be forced to dissolve the Parliament and call for new elections.

In the meantime, the President asked the government to stay on in a caretaker role.

Prodi has been Prime Minister for nine months.

Friday, September 26, 2008

On October 14, 2008, Canadians will be heading to the polls for the federal election. New Democratic Party candidate Michael McMahon is standing for election in the riding of Prince Edward—Hastings. McMahon moved to Windsor in 1951, getting a degree in education, teaching locally and in Papua New Guinea. He served as Branch President of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF), served on multiple of their major committees, and recently retired from the Hastings and Prince Edward District School Board.

Wikinews contacted Michael McMahon, to talk about the issues facing Canadians, and what they and their party would do to address them. Wikinews is in the process of contacting every candidate, in every riding across the country, no matter their political stripe. All interviews are conducted over e-mail, and interviews are published unedited, allowing candidates to impart their full message to our readers, uninterrupted.

Since being redefined in 2003, the riding includes the County of Prince Edward and the County of Hastings (except the City of Quinte West). Conservative Party member Daryl Kramp currently represents the riding, after beating a Liberal in 2004. Ken Cole of the Liberals and Alan Coxwell of the Greens are also running in the riding.

For more information, visit the campaign’s official website, listed below.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

The following is the fifth in a monthly series chronicling the U.S. 2012 presidential election. It features original material compiled throughout the previous month after a brief mention of some of the month’s biggest stories.

In this month’s edition on the campaign trail, a politician from outside the fifty states receives significant mention as a potential Republican Party vice presidential nominee, Wikinews gets the reaction of three Democratic Party candidates after the party strips delegates from two of their fellow challengers, and a minor third party removes its presidential nominee for fraud.

Tuesday, February 7, 2006

Staff members of the offices of United States Senators, using Senate-linked IP addresses, have been editing Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia that allows its users to edit its content. In some cases, they have removed facts from the articles.

Using the public history of edits on Wikipedia, Wikinews reporters collected every Senate IP address from which Wikipedia edits had been made as of February 3, then examined where the IPs came from and the edits that were made from computers connected at those addresses. IP, or Internet Protocol, addresses are unique numbers electronic devices use to communicate with each other on an individual basis.

The investigation showed the vast majority of edits from Senate IPs were beneficial and helpful to Wikipedia. Examples include the creation of the articles on Click Back America, which organizes students to promote microfinance in the developing world, and Washington’s Tomb, which was designed to hold the body of first U.S. President George Washington within the White House Capitol building; and significantly expanding the article on closed sessions of the United States Senate in November. Dozens of small corrections have been made to grammar, spelling, or small facts — many of them related to the Senate.

Senators’ staff members have sometimes had to fight to correct inaccuracies. An edit to Jay Rockefeller‘s article by his staff removed information which may have been biased or untrue. The staff member who edited said, “Apologies, I was new to using Wikipedia, and I didn’t fully realize the workings of the website,” after other users continuously reinserted the information. The staffer removed the suspect paragraphs 12 times until another Wikipedia user finally removed the information. Four days later, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales got involved.

The Senators’ offices were contacted about this article, but no response was received before press time.

Staffers in the offices of Senator Joe Biden, who, according to his changed Wikipedia biography, “announced in mid-June 2005 that he will seek the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2008 if he believes his message and vision for the country resonate with Americans,” removed a paragraph about a 1996 plagiarism scandal, as well as changing the section regarding a possible 2008 candidacy to read very positively. A second staffer toned down and removed information about other plagiarism issues as well. The same addresses from Biden’s office edited the article on Hamas, which has recently won a majority in the Palestinian Legislative Council, and is listed as a terrorist organization by Australia, Canada, the European Union, Israel, and the United States, to give its first two paragraphs a more biased stance by removing information about its social welfare programs.

References, citations, and descriptions of Conrad Burns’ use of the word “ragheads” were removed from Wikipedia’s article, as was mention of legislation, co-sponsored by Burns, that would reduce Native American tribal sovereignty. These were replaced by a paragraph titled “A Voice for the Farmer”. The citations supported the discussion of Senator Burns’s legislative record regarding tribal sovereignty.

The staffers of Senator Norm Coleman changed a description of Coleman as a liberal Democrat in college to an “activist Democrat,” and then to “an active college student.” They removed references to Coleman’s voting record during his first year of Congress, which lined up with President Bush 98% of the time, which cited Congressional Quarterly. They also removed a reference to Coleman being persuaded by Karl Rove to run for senator instead of governor in 2002.

“When you put ‘edia’ in there, it makes it sound as if this is a benign, objective piece of information,” said Erich Mische, Senator Coleman’s Chief of Staff, to the Associated Press. Mr. Mische admitted the Senator’s office had made the edits, and he would take responsibility for removal of the sentence about the voting record. “That probably should have stayed in there.”

“It appears to be a major rewrite of the article to make it more favorable. If they’re trying to edit in such a way to change the public record, that’s a problem,” Jimmy Wales said to the Associated Press about the incident.

According to the St. Paul Pioneer Press, “Coleman’s decision to run for senator, rather than governor, was sealed during a walk with President Bush in the White House’s Rose Garden,” rather than Karl Rove. Rove had actually persuaded the former House majority leader of Minnesota and current governor, Tim Pawlenty, not to challenge Norm Coleman in the Senate elections. Still, other portions of the edit removed references to Karl Rove entirely, and their citations, while accentuating the positive side of several issues, including changing “a budget bill that cut funding from a number of programs” to “a deficit-reduction bill.”

The California block of Senate IP addresses made several edits to the Dianne Feinstein article, removing reference to her membership in the Trilateral Commission and to her net worth, with husband Richard C. Blum, but also adding an extensive list of awards.

Even more problematic than the edits to the article about Dianne Feinstein, however, were those made to the article about her husband. References to a 1992 fine for failing to disclose Mr. Blum had guaranteed her campaign loans were removed, along with citations, and a paragraph regarding a conflict of interest debate from 1997 when Mr. Blum had invested millions of dollars in Chinese businesses when Ms. Feinstein was campaigning in the Senate to lift trade sanctions against the country. Mr. Blum later announced he would donate all profits from his Chinese investments to charity.

The staffers of Senator Tom Harkin removed a paragraph relating to Harkin’s having falsely claimed to have flown combat missions over North Vietnam, and his subsequent recantation after inquiries by the Wall Street Journal and Barry Goldwater. Another paragraph removed related to a supposed pro-Israeli stance.

Wikinews reporters also discovered that a handful of miscellaneous vandalism edits had been made to some Senators’ articles. Vandalized articles included those of Tom Coburn and Harry Reid. The edits to Reid’s were made three times, while the Coburn vandalism was made two times, after it had been restored to a prior version. An edit to an article about a controversy over Senator Rick Santorum’s statements about Constitutional rights to privacy with regards to sexual acts, seemingly coming from Rick Santorum’s staff members, removed a reference to an effort to redefine Santorum’s last name as a neologism meaning “the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.”

Saturday, March 10, 2012

The Kenyan government has dismissed 25,000 striking health workers, mostly nurses, citing failure to heed government orders to recommence work and concern for the welfare of hospital patients. Speaking on behalf of the government, Alfred Mutua stated the workers were dismissed “illegally striking” and “[defying] the directive … to report back to work”, which he called “unethical”. The government asks that “[a]ll qualified health professionals, who are unemployed and/or retired have been advised to report to their nearest health facility for interviews and deployment”, Mutua stated.

The workers, who had been on strike for four days, were wishing to have improvements made to their wages, working conditions, and allowances. The strikes have caused a significant number of Kenyan hospitals to cease operations. According to Kenya Health Professionals Society spokesperson Alex Orina, the average monthly wage plus allowances for health workers in Kenya is KSh25,000 (£193, US$302 or €230) approximately. With an increasing number of reports of patients neglected in hospitals emerging, two trade unions met with the Kenyan government yesterday and negotitated a return to work, although a significant proportion of demonstrators defied the agreement, The Guardian reported.

Orina told Reuters the dismissals were “cat-and-mouse games, you cannot sack an entire workforce. It is a ploy to get us to rush back to work, but our strike continues until our demands are met”. Frederick Omiah, a member of the same society, believed the government’s actions would “make an already delicate and volatile situation worse”, expressing concern that demonstrations may continue in the capital Nairobi, amongst other locations. Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union chairperson Dr. Victor Ng’ani described government actions as “reckless”.

Mutua said the health workers were “no longer employees of the government” and had been eliminated from the payroll. While Ng’ani told the BBC of difficulties with finding other workers as skilled and experienced, Mutua reportedly stated that this would not be an issue. “We have over 100,000 to 200,000 health professionals looking for work today,” Mutua commented. “There will be a lag of a day or two … but it is better than letting people die on the floor, at the gate, or suffer in pain”.