A view of the Leonard Zakim bridge from the construction site. The warehouses at right will be replaced by a five-acre park within two years. The elevated roadway in the foreground is the John F. Gilmore Bridge.

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Cambridge, Massachusetts —Construction of two condominium buildings and a five-acre park began on March 21, in East Cambridge, Massachusetts. The buildings and park are part of the 45-acre Northpoint development, which will take 15 years and more than $2bn to complete, according to the Boston Globe. The buildings, designated as “Building S” and “Building T” by the planners of the project, Spaulding & Slye Colliers, have been designed by local architectural firm Childs Bertman Tseckares and Architects Alliance from Toronto. Buildings S and T are the first of an eventual 20 buildings planned at the site.

The development will fill what used to be a railroad yard for the Guilford Rail System, a subsidiary of Guilford Transportation Industries. According to Hoovers.com, Guilford is controlled by Timothy Mellon, heir to the Mellon banking fortune. Guilford Rail Systems has its headquarters in North Billerica and owns 1600 miles of railroad throughout New England. The tracks in the Northpoint plot have been removed, though Boston subway’s Lechmere station remains within walking distance of the site, along with parts of Boston and Cambridge. The site is bordered by Route 93 on its eastern side, Monsignor O’Brien Highway to the west, and the Gilmore Bridge to the south.

The landscape architecture of the park is provided by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, a landscape architecture firm on Concord Avenue in Cambridge. The firm’s principal teaches in Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. MVVA is also completing the landscape for Harvard’s Northwest Science Building.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

What you are about to read is an American life as lived by renowned author Edmund White. His life has been a crossroads, the fulcrum of high-brow Classicism and low-brow Brett Easton Ellisism. It is not for the faint. He has been the toast of the literary elite in New York, London and Paris, befriending artistic luminaries such as Salman Rushdie and Sir Ian McKellen while writing about a family where he was jealous his sister was having sex with his father as he fought off his mother’s amorous pursuit.

The fact is, Edmund White exists. His life exists. To the casual reader, they may find it disquieting that someone like his father existed in 1950’s America and that White’s work is the progeny of his intimate effort to understand his own experience.

Wikinews reporter David Shankbone understood that an interview with Edmund White, who is professor of creative writing at Princeton University, who wrote the seminal biography of Jean Genet, and who no longer can keep track of how many sex partners he has encountered, meant nothing would be off limits. Nothing was. Late in the interview they were joined by his partner Michael Caroll, who discussed White’s enduring feud with influential writer and activist Larry Kramer.

Thursday, October 22, 2020

2020 Melbourne Lord Mayor candidate Wayne Tseng answered some questions about his campaign for the upcoming election from Wikinews. The Lord Mayor election in the Australian city is scheduled to take place this week.

Tseng runs a firm called eTranslate, which helps software developers to make the software available to the users. In the candidate’s questionnaire, Tseng said eTranslate had led to him working with all three tiers of the government. He previously belonged to the Australian Liberal Party, but has left since then, to run for mayorship as an independent candidate.

Tseng is of Chinese descent, having moved to Australia with his parents from Vietnam. Graduated in Brisbane, Tseng received his PhD in Melbourne and has been living in the city, he told Wikinews. Tseng also formed Chinese Precinct Chamber of Commerce, an organisation responsible for many “community bond building initiatives”, the Lord Mayor candidate told Wikinews.

Tseng discussed his plans for leading Melbourne, recovering from COVID-19, and “Democracy 2.0” to ensure concerns of minorities in the city were also heard. Tseng also focused on the importance of the multi-culture aspect and talked about making Melbourne the capital of the aboriginals. Tseng also explained why he thinks Melbourne is poised to be a world city by 2030.

Tseng’s deputy Lord Mayor candidate Gricol Yang is a Commercial Banker and works for ANZ Banking Group.

Currently, Sally Capp is the Lord Mayor of Melbourne, the Victorian capital. Capp was elected as an interim Lord Mayor in mid-2018 after the former Lord Mayor Robert Doyle resigned from his position after sexual assault allegations. Doyle served as the Lord Mayor of Melbourne for almost a decade since 2008.

Friday, July 22, 2005

Administrators PriceWaterHouseCoopers (PWC) have announced that the British car company MG Rover and its engine manufacturer Powertrain Ltd has been sold to Chinese company Nanjing Automobile for an unknown sum of money. The company beat bids from Shanghai Automotive (SAIC), despite being the smaller of the two.

MG Rover collapsed this Spring, after struggling to make a profit for several years.

SAIC had tried to buy only the engine plant and then transfer it to China, but in June Nanjing Automobile approached PWC with a combined bid for both the car manufacturing company and Powertrain. This Monday SAIC bid for both but the offer was inferior to Nanjing’s.

Nanjing has indicated that it too will move the engine production plant to China, along with some car manufacturing. However it also intends to continue building cars in Britain, and establish an engineering research and design centre there in an effort to expand its sales globally. Nanjing intends to start hiring at once.

Wednesday, June 6, 2018

On Monday, United States technology giant Microsoft announced their plans to acquire GitHub, a San Francisco, California-based web-based hosting service for software version control using Git, for 7.5 billion US Dollars (USD).

In the official announcement at the Microsoft News web site, the company said they are to reach agreement with GitHub by the end of the year. They said the agreement would allow them to deliver Microsoft development services to GitHub users, and “accelerate enterprise use of GitHub”. GitHub had been financially struggling recently and is expected to get a new CEO.

In 2016, according to financial news and media company Bloomberg L.P., through three quarters GitHub lost USD 66 million, while in nine months of that year GitHub had revenue of USD 98 million. In August 2017 GitHub said they were seeking a new CEO. According to the announcements by GitHub and Microsoft, the Microsoft Corporate Vice President Nat Friedman would become the new CEO of GitHub. He had created app creation platform company Xamarin and was “an open-source veteran”, Microsoft said.

GitHub confirmed the acquisition plans on its blog. In this announcement they alluded to concerns about past friction between Microsoft and open-source software, however they said “things are different. […] Microsoft is the most active organization on GitHub in the world”, mentioning VS Code as an example. In the announcement, GitHub also referred to its several years of collaboration with Microsoft on Git LFS and Electron. GitHub also mentioned the Azure development platform run by Microsoft.

Wednesday, March 9, 2005File:Plastic bag stock sized.jpg

They are cheap, useful, and very plentiful, and that is exactly the problem, according to researchers. A report issued on Feb. 23 by a cadre of environment and economics researchers suggested that Kenya should ban the common plastic bag that one gets at the checkout counter of grocery stores, and place a levy on other plastic bags, all to combat the country’s environmental problems stemming from the bags’ popularity.

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Buffalo, New York —Attorney Arthur J. Giacalone has filed a lawsuit in New York Supreme Court against the city of Buffalo‘s Common Council and Planning board, alleging that the proposed Elmwood Village Hotel was approved “without giving meaningful consideration to either the impact on the adjoining residential neighborhood, or the unique character of this section of Elmwood Avenue.” Giacalone is representing Nancy Pollina and Patricia Morris, who operate the Don Apparel (a vintage clothing and collectibles shop at 1119 Elmwood Avenue), Angeline Genovese and Evelyn Bencinich, owners of residences on Granger Place which abut the rear of the proposed site, Nina Freudenheim, a resident of nearby Penhurst Park, and Sandra Girage, the owner of a two-family residence on Forest Avenue less than a hundred feet from the proposed hotel’s sole entrance and exit driveway.

The Elmwood Village Hotel is a 72-room, seven-million-dollar hotel proposed by Savarino Construction Services Corporation and designed by architect Karl Frizlen of the Frizlen Group. Its construction would require the demolition of at least five buildings, currently at 1109-1121 Elmwood, which house several shops and residents. Although the properties are “under contract,” it is still not known whether Savarino Construction actually owns the buildings. It is believed that Hans Mobius, a resident of Clarence, New York and former Buffalo mayoral candidate, is still the owner. The hotel is expected to be a franchise of the Wyndham Hotels group.

The lawsuit, filed in State Supreme Court, is seeking annulment of the City of Buffalo’s rezoning and site plan approvals for the hotel.

“Had the Common Council members complied with State law and waited to receive comments from the County’s planning agency, they would have been obliged to address the County’s concerns regarding the replacement of former residential buildings with ‘a much larger commercial structure’, the health effects of placing a 55-vehicle parking area next to existing homes, and the absence of a traffic study to assess the likelihood that the project would add ‘considerable congestion’ to the Elmwood/Forest intersection,” said Giacalone.

“The four-story hotel will overshadow the neighboring homes and backyards, impacting quality of life and property values. Equally as important, the project will displace a unique and diverse group of businesses that have served nearby college students and Buffalo’s arts and theater community for many years, and replace them with upscale retail establishments that will cater, not to local residents, but to affluent tourists and business travelers,” added Giacalone.

On March 22, 2006 the city’s Common Council approved the rezoning for the proposed hotel and on March 28, the Planning board approved the design and site plan of the hotel.

The lawsuit, entitled Pollina et al. v. Common Council of the City of Buffalo et al., [Index No. I-2006-3885], has been assigned to the Honorable Rose H. Sconiers, and is scheduled for oral argument at 9:30 A.M. on Thursday June 8, 2006.

Sunday, August 3, 2008

At least seven mountaineers have died while climbing K2, the second highest mountain in the world. The accident was reportedly caused by a rock slide or an avalanche that severed all the ropes used for ascent and descent.

Initial reports state that seventeen climbers ascended the mountain in two groups, with both reaching the summit successfully. The reports also state that after the avalanche, some climbers attempted to return without ropes.

The summit was covered in clouds late yesterday afternoon and the conditions in the mountain continued to deteriorate. Some of the latest reports indicate that eight climbers were stuck at the summit, unable to descend. Four of these climbers are Norwegian nationals. The conditions at the summit during night are extreme and offer very limited chances for survival for people unable to descend.

In an unrelated incident, a Serbian climber and his sherpa fell down during the initial descent. This incident was, however, unrelated to the other deaths caused by the avalanche.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Stephen Harper, Canada’s Prime Minister, apologized on behalf of the Canadian Government for its role in the Indian Residential School System in front of Aboriginal Leaders, elders, and more than 1000 outside the Parliament Building. Harper proclaimed, “The treatment of children in Indian residential schools is a sad chapter in our history. Today, we recognize that this policy of assimilation was wrong, has caused great harm, and has no place in our country.” This apology was seen at more than 30 event around the country, and broadcast live on CBC Newsworld and CTV Newsnet.

The residential school system was created based on the Gradual Civilization Act (1857) and the Gradual Enfranchisement Act (1869), which assumed the superiority of British Ways, prompting the need for Aboriginals to become “civilized” by becoming English-speakers, Christians, and farmers. The funding of the schools was provided by the Indian Act (1876) and by the federal government department, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, and operated with the support of churches, generally the Roman Catholic Church and the United Church of Canada.

In the 1920s, attendance became compulsory for all children aged 6 to 15, and families who refused to cooperate were at risk of having the children removed by the government, and the parents sent to prison. The school systematically tried to destroy the aboriginal language and way of life, raising the idea of cultural genocide. Students were forbidden to speak their native languages, even outside the classroom, as to install the English or French language (and as result, to “forget” their native language), punishable by unreasonably severe corporal punishment. Practicing non-Christian faiths was also punishable by corporal punishment.

In the late 1990s, allegations of sexual abuse, as well as several physical and psychological abuse, arose, leading to large monetary payments from the federal government and churches to former students. The government also established the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, providing $350 million to fund community-based healing projects, and provided another $40 million in 2005.

On February 13, 2008, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a similar apology in the Australian House of Parliament.

On June 21, 2008, Indian Residential School Museum of Canada is scheduled to open on Long Plain First Nation, near Portage La Prairie, Manitoba.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

A 16-year-old girl was shot dead from distance in Zürich, Switzerland on Friday night. The victim was waiting with her companion at a bus stop in Zürich at 10 p.m. CET, next to the Hönggerberg campus of Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, a technical university. The shooter, a conscript in the Swiss Armed Forces, used his army-issued assault rifle to shoot the victim at a distance of 60-100 metres. With a gunshot wound in her upper body, the girl died in the arms of her companion before the medical help could arrive.

“Yes, it was me who was shooting,” confirmed the 21-years-old Swiss recruit of Chilean ancestry, who had just finished his training at recruit school on the same day. He did not know his victim, who was a 16-year-old hairdresser apprentice. The state attorney assumes that the shooter has picked his victim randomly. The motive of the crime is not known at the moment.

There is an ongoing domestic debate whether soldiers should continue to keep their firearms at home. According to a study by Martin Killias, a criminologist at the School of Forensic Sciences and Criminology in Lausanne, army-issued firearms are responsible for 300 deaths annually in Switzerland and two-thirds of suicides-by-firearm are committed with army-issued firearms.