Tuesday, April 5, 2005Irish betting shop chain, Paddy Power, is taking bets for a new Pope. The current front runners are Cardinal Francis Arinze of Nigeria and Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi of Italy, who have each been given odds of 11-4.

“Our feeling is, we held off a few days, and now the cardinals themselves are convening in Rome,” Darren Haines, a spokesman for Paddy Power said.

“We do it very much in the same way as a horse race,” Haines added, “Without sounding so callous, in a sense, we have contenders, and you very much rate the speculation on the contenders, very much by going on media reports in the religious press … Our trading manager is very clued up on this, though she hasn’t had divine intervention.”

The full betting list can be found here.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Journalist, counselor, painter, and US 2012 Presidential candidate Joe Schriner of Cleveland, Ohio took some time to discuss his campaign with Wikinews in an interview.

Schriner previously ran for president in 2000, 2004, and 2008, but failed to gain much traction in the races. He announced his candidacy for the 2012 race immediately following the 2008 election. Schriner refers to himself as the “Average Joe” candidate, and advocates a pro-life and pro-environmentalist platform. He has been the subject of numerous newspaper articles, and has published public policy papers exploring solutions to American issues.

Wikinews reporter William Saturn? talks with Schriner and discusses his campaign.

Saturday, July 9, 2005

A Friday protest in downtown Richmond drew around 200 protesters to Virginia’s state capital to demonstrate against strip mining practices of Massey Energy Company. Demonstrators marched through town and gathered in front of the company’s office building where nearly 20 laid in the street of the city’s main thoroughfare, and were nearly arrested. A few linked arms around a sidewalk structure to avoid being hauled away by police.

Chanting “Blankenship, Blankenship, Blankenship,” and waving bed sheets for flags, the demonstrators demanded to be seen and heard by the Massey Chairman and CEO, Don Blankenship. Arrests for civil disobedience were avoided when two security guards were sent by the company to retrieve a list of their demands.

The demonstration, timed to coincide with Scotland’s G8 conference, was organized by a group called “Mountain Justice Summer” and environmentalists to protest mountain top removal mining techniques. The company’s mining operations are located in the Appalachian Mountain chain in the states of Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. Massey is the United States’ fourth-largest coal mining operation.

A statement issued by a Massey spokesman defended their respect of people’s rights, and decried what they said was, “a great deal of misinformation.”

The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that unofficial “legal observers” accompanied the demonstrators and carried notebooks to record crowd and police activity.

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

A Proton rocket which was intended to launch the JCSAT-11 satellite into a geostationary transfer orbit lifted off and successfully completed its first stage burn, but the second stage failed leading to loss of the rocket and satellite.

The launch vehicle was a Proton M booster with a Breeze M upper stage. More than 300 Proton rockets have been launched, all from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Following the launch failure, Kazakhstan suspended the launch of Proton rockets from Baikonur, Interfax news agency reported.

JSAT Corporation immediately placed an order with Lockheed Martin, the satellite manufacturer, for an identical replacement satellite based on the A2100AX design.

Friday, June 20, 2008

The Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM), or Jason-2, satellite, has been launched into low Earth orbit. A Delta II rocket carrying the satellite lifted off from Space Launch Complex 2W at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, United States, at 07:46 GMT this morning. Spacecraft separation occurred around an hour later, and the solar panels on the satellite have deployed.

OSTM is a collaboration between the American space agency, NASA, and the French space agency, CNES. It will study and map the surface of the oceans from space. The Delta II rocket flew in the 7320 configuration, the lowest capacity variant, with three solid rocket motors, and no third stage. The exact launch time was 07:46:25.192 GMT.

This is the third launch of a Delta II carrier rocket to be conducted so far this year, and the 137^th overall. The next Delta II is scheduled to launch in mid-late August, with the GeoEye-1 civilian imagery satellite, however A GPS satellite launch which was delayed from mid July to an unconfirmed date could potentially occur before this. This is the 32^nd orbital launch of 2008.

Saturday, March 1, 2008

An overcrowded double decker bus in Guatemala crashed into a gulley Friday, killing 57 people and injuring 40 more, authorities say.

The bus crashed about 30 miles from Guatemala City while carrying roughly 100 people towards San Salvador.

Journalist Martin Austurias says that a makeshift morgue was created along the highway so that relatives of the passengers could identify the victims.

Austurias noted that several policemen and firefighters were working to uncover bodies from the wreckage.

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Stuart Ryan is running for the Communist Party in the Ontario provincial election in Ottawa Centre. Wikinews interviewed him regarding his values, his experience, and his campaign.