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Due to the damage by Hurricane Katrina and subsequent flooding, a number of colleges and universities in the New Orleans metropolitan area will not be able to hold classes for the fall 2005 semester. It is estimated that 75,000 to 100,000 students have been displaced. [1]. In response, institutions across the United States and Canada are offering late registration for displaced students so that their academic progress is not unduly delayed. Some are offering free or reduced admission to displaced students. At some universities, especially state universities, this offer is limited to residents of the area.

Thursday, March 24, 2005

San Jose, California — A woman eating a bowl of chili at a Wendy’s restaurant bit into a chewy bit that turned out to be a human finger. She immediately spat it out, warned other patrons to stop eating, and upon recognizing the object as a finger, vomited.

“I’m more of a Carl’s Jr. person,” the 39-year-old Las Vegas woman, Anna Ayala, told Knight Ridder. She said this incident was her first visit to a Wendy’s restaurant. Ayala described how she found the finger, “Suddenly something crunchy was in my mouth,” she continued, “and I spit it out.”

According to Devina Cordero, 20, after Ayala found the finger, she ran up to her and Cordero’s boyfriend and said, “Don’t eat it! Look, there’s a human finger in our chili.”

“We went up to the counter and they told us it was a vegetable,” Cordero continued. “The people from Wendy’s were poking it with a spoon.”

The restaurant is located at 1405 Monterey Highway, just south of downtown San Jose.

Wikinews reporter David Vasquez drove his car up to the drive-thru menu and found that chili was still on the menu, at a price of US$1.19 for a small serving. He also witnessed workers unloading supplies from a semi-trailer truck in the restaurant’s parking lot, and carting them into the back door of the establishment.

According to Ben Gale, director of environmental health for Santa Clara County, the finger did not come from any of the employees at the restaurant. “We asked everybody to show us they have 10 fingers and everything is OK there,” he said. The found portion of the finger likely belonged to a woman because of its long and manicured fingernail, also found in the food.

Officials seized the food supply at the restaurant and are tracing it back to the manufacturer, where they believe the finger may have gotten mixed in with the raw ingredients used to prepare the chili. The restaurant’s operators were later permitted to re-open after preparing new chili prepared from fresh ingredients.

As this story was filed, there was no mention of the incident on the Wendy’s corporate web site. Wendy’s issued a statement through a spokesman.

“Food safety is of utmost importance to us,” said Wendy’s spokesman Joe Desmond. He referred to the incident as an “unsubstantiated claim.”

“We are cooperating fully with the local police and health departments with their investigation. It’s important not to jump to conclusions. Here at Wendy’s we plan to do right by our customers,” Desmond said.

According to county health officials, the unfortunate woman who bit into the finger is doing fine, despite her initial reaction. Officials also noted that the finger would have been cooked at a high enough temperature to destroy any viruses.

The Santa Clara county medical examiner reported that the finger had a solid fingerprint, although investigators did not say if a search of fingerprint databases would be performed to find the owner of the finger.

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Dell Inc. announced on Tuesday that it will partner up with the Microsoft-Nortel Innovative communications alliance (ICA) team to sell Unified Communications and VoIP products.

The announcement on Tuesday the 16th of October 2007 includes Dell selling VoIP, data and wireless networking products from Nortel and the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and other unified communications products.

The partnership with both manufacturers should allow Dell to provide a pre-integrated solution.

In March 2007, competitors IBM and Cisco announced they would join in the competition for developing unified communications applications and the development of open technologies around the unified communications and collaboration (UC2) client platform an application programming interfaces (APIs) offered by IBM as a subset of Lotus Sametime.

“We want to make it simple for our customers to deploy unified communications so their end users can get access to all their messages in one place – whether its e-mail, phone or mobile device. This will pave the way for more business-ready productivity tools,” said vice president of solutions, Dell Product Group, Rick Becker.

• Customers have four options:
  • Core Office Communication Server 2007 – provides instant messaging and on-premise Microsoft Live Meeting.
  • Office Communication Server: Telephony – enables call routing tracking and management, VoIP gateway and public branch exchange (PBX) integration.
  • Audio and Video Conferencing – allows point-to-point conference, video conference and VoIP audio conference.
  • Exchange Unified Messaging – provides voicemail, e-mail and fax in Microsoft Outlook, and anywhere access of Microsoft Outlook Inbox and Calendar.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

The 108-floor central component of the new World Trade Center in New York City has been officially renamed 1 World Trade Center, ending the Freedom Tower moniker it had sported since 2003.

Freedom Tower was envisioned as a symbol of America’s victory over terrorism. It is currently on track for completion in 2013, with 10 floors partially finished so far.

Port Authority Chairman Anthony Coscia commented on the change, “It’s the one that is easiest for people to identify with — and frankly, we’ve gotten a very interested and warm reception to it.”

Former Governor George Pataki, who revealed the Freedom Tower name nearly six years ago, was critical of the switch, saying “The Freedom Tower is not simply another piece of real estate and not just a name for marketing purposes.”

1 World Trade Center has been the building’s legal name and address for the past two years, with the public change precipitated by the ramp up of construction and the commencement of lease marketing.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg seemed ambivalent to the change, saying “I would like to see it stay the Freedom Tower, but it’s their building, and they don’t need me dumping on it. If they could rent the whole thing by changing the name, I guess they’re going to do that, and they probably, from a responsible point of view, should. From a patriotic point of view, is it going to make any difference?”

The change was approved following the signing of a two-decades-long lease by a Chinese real estate company, which plans to occupy floors 64 through 69. Other future tenants include the U.S. General Services Administration and the New York State Office of General Services.

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

A 33-year old visitor to the United States, named Wen Hao Zhao from Sydney, Australia, was arrested at the Capitol building on Monday, after he was observed by police standing in a “statue-like pose” and carrying two suitcases.

When confronted by officers of the United States Capitol Police (USCP) who were called to the scene at 12:45 p.m. EST, he is reported to have been unresponsive to questioning. “He only would say at first that he wanted to speak to President Bush,” according to USCP Chief Terrance W. Gainer. Some reports suggest that the man was limited or unresponsive in his use of English.

The West Lawn area next to the Capitol building and an adjacent part of 1st Street was evacuated and tourists were briefly prevented from entering the building on the possibility that the suitcases may have contained a bomb.

Authorities X-rayed the bags and examined them for over 3 hours. One bag was found to contain only clothing. The other bag, which apparently was thought to contain wiring which might belong to an explosive device, was destroyed on-site with a water cannon; after which, the bag was found to have contained only common items such as a CD player, batteries, and a watch.

Zhao was arrested at 1:45 p.m. EST without resistance on charges of disorderly conduct; other more serious charges could be filed. However, Allen Doody of U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has indicated plans to deport Zhao back to Australia within a few days without charges. “We do not plan to charge him,” Doody said.

Zhao is dual-nationality Chinese-Australian, who entered the US legally on his Australian passport less than a week ago.

Thursday, April 10, 2014

News broke early this morning on Facebook that Wikipedian Adrianne Wadewitz died while rock climbing recently. Wadewitz was well known in the Wikimedia community for her activism drawing attention to the lack of female contributors on Wikipedia. She was also very involved in the Wiki Education Foundation, serving as a member of its board of directors.

Wadewitz was one of the most visible women in the media on the under-representation of women amongst contributors to Wikipedia, talking to media organizations like the BBC, the Huffington Post and non-English publications like Greek-language magazine LIFO. Some estimates put female participation rates at around 10% of contributors and there is a body of academic work talking about systemic bias against topics featuring women on Wikipedia.

She was involved in organizing several edit-a-thons aimed at encouraging greater female participation and improving content about women, including Wikipedia Takes America: Los Angeles, FemTech Edit-a-thon, Wikipedia Loves Eagle Rock, Wikipedia Loves WeHo, and Feminists Engage Wikipedia. Wadewitz’s own work to address systemic bias as an article contributor included improving English Wikipedia articles relating to women, including:

• Mary Wollstonecraft
• Thoughts on the Education of Daughters
• Mary: A Fiction
• A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
• Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman
• Timeline of Mary Wollstonecraft
• Fanny Imlay
• Mary Shelley
• Anna Laetitia Barbauld
• Sarah Trimmer
• Mary Martha Sherwood

She started contributing to English Wikipedia in July 2004. She had taught two classes on collaborative work on the project, and was involved with FemTechNet Wikistorming, an academic effort to encourage more women involved in academia to contribute to Wikipedia. In the past month, she had written several blog entries on HASTAC, an online collaborative platform dedicated to changing the way people learn, about how to write about academics on Wikipedia.

Fellow activist Sarah Stierch said in a public post on Facebook, “My heart hurts. Adrianne was a leading voice – and her legacy still is – in the work we have been doing to get more women and more diverse peoples contributing to Wikipedia. Two days ago she was quoted in the BBC, for godsake.” Stierch went on to say, “A sarcastic, feminist, smart, brilliant, to the point delivery type of academic genius who held an honest love life for all to see and a life in LA that was becoming one she owned.”

At the time of her death, she was a Mellon Digital Scholarship Fellow at Occidental College. In 2011, she earned her PhD from Indiana University.

Wikimedians are memorializing her on her Wikipedia talk page, which is adorned with a picture of a funerary arrangement of flowers. A notice at the top of the page invites condolences, which have been arriving in their dozens. “This is a crushing loss, for the Wikipedia community and the world. There was no one else like her.” wrote one contributor. Another noted “Adrianne embodied brilliance, determination, and enthusiasm in everything she did.”

Sunday, April 14, 2013

The BBC has announced it will not play “Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead” in its entirety on today’s Radio 1 Chart Show. The song has become the third most downloaded single of the week, following the death of former United Kingdom Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The song is featured in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz.

Controller of Radio 1 Ben Cooper said “about a four or five second clip” of the song would be included in a news item explaining why it has featured in the charts, which will air as part of the programme.

BBC Director-General Tony Hall stated that although he believed the song was “distasteful and inappropriate”, an outright ban would breach the principle of free speech.

Conservative MP John Whittingdale, Chairman of the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee welcomed the BBC’s decision, acknowledging “this was always going to be a very difficult decision for the BBC […] I don’t think it would have been right to have allowed the chart show to have been hijacked for political purposes and had they played the whole song that would have been the consequence. But on the other hand they couldn’t have just ignored the fact that it does feature amongst the most downloaded singles of the week.”

Conservative MP Rob Wilson, for Reading East, however, said the BBC had “come up with a very British old-fashioned fudge” and Mrs Thatcher would have been “horrified […] that she could in any way have censorship in her own country.”

Mrs Thatcher’s supporters have launched a campaign to get “I’m in Love with Margaret Thatcher” into the music chart alongside “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead”.

Mrs Thatcher’s funeral is scheduled for St.Paul’s Cathedral on Wednesday. It is to be attended by leading figures from the worlds of politics and entertainment, as well as several international figures, including former Australian Prime Minister John Howard and inventor of the World Wide Web Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

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