Saturday, June 12, 2010

A rescue operation is underway after sixteen-year-old American Abby Sunderland, attempting to sail around the world by herself, lost contact with her family while in the Indian Ocean.

Sunderland, from Thousand Oaks, California, had originally hoped to become the youngest person to sail around the world nonstop by herself. She departed from Marina del Rey, California on January 23, 2010 and was about halfway through the attempt when Sunderland’s family lost communication with her Thursday morning. That night, an Australian plane was able to locate her 40-foot (12.2-metre) long boat, Wild Eyes, which had lost its mast earlier.

Sunderland had been sailing amid a rough storm in the Indian Ocean early Thursday when her boat was flipped over. The mast broke off as a consequence. After losing contact, the teenager activated two manual distress radiobeacons, or EPIRBs, and a search-and-rescue operation was formed. As part of the operation, a Qantas Airways Airbus A330 was sent over the ocean by Australian authorities. The plane’s crew was able to make radio contact with Sunderland, and confirmed that she was not injured and that her boat was upright, but was unable to continue sailing. The closest rescue boat, a French fishing ship, was about 24 hours away from Sunderland’s location when she was found, and is expected to meet her later today. She was stranded about 2000 miles (3218.7 kilometres) southwest of Australia’s coast.

This is not Sunderland’s first obstacle during the journey. Near the beginning of the voyage, she made a stop at Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, after the boat’s generators were not producing enough power. She resumed the attempt in February, but autopilot problems forced another stop at Cape Town, South Africa for repairs in April, and she had to give up going for the unassisted record.

Sunderland’s parents, Laurence and Marianne, have vigorously defended against claims that their daughter was too young to be attempting such a feat. They have also been criticized for allowing her to depart the United States at the beginning of the year, because Sunderland would likely arrive in the Indian Ocean during the region’s winter. Marianne Sunderland has said that Abby would likely not try “something of this magnitude again.” Last year, her brother Zac had completed a circumnavigation when he sailed solo around the world at the age of seventeen. She had begun preparing for this journey at the age of thirteen.

Saturday, December 3, 2016

Peng Chang-kuei, a Chinese-born chef credited with creating the internationally popular dish General Tso’s chicken, was yesterday announced to have died by his son.

Chuck Peng told The Associated Press his father died of pneumonia in Taipei, Taiwan on Wednesday. The chef fled China to Taiwan in 1949 and invented the dish shortly thereafter. In the 1970s Peng opened a New York restaurant, which he claimed was a regular haunt of Henry Kissinger. Peng credited Kissinger with the dish’s popularity.

Peng conceived the famed dish, which is unknown in China, as unfried. Garlic and soy sauce provided flavour, as did chillies. Today the chicken is served across the US as fried chicken in a sweet, sticky sauce. The chillies remain, with broccoli also appearing. Peng named it after Zuo Zongtang from his native Hunan Province; Zongtang assisted in suppressing the 19th-century Taiping Rebellion.

Peng said the meal was invented for a US admiral visiting Taiwan. Over three days, Peng was contracted to produce several banquets, with not one repeated dish. After exhausting traditional chicken dishes Peng said he created what became General Tso’s chicken as an experiment.

In later years he ran Peng’s, a chain of Taiwanese restaurants. General Tso’s chicken also remained popular across the US. His son claimed he remained working in the kitchen until a few months before his death, at 97. In a documentary two years ago, shown photos of General Tso’s chicken served in the US in modern times, he remarked “This is all crazy nonsense.”

Running away from his farming family in Changsha, Peng trained under Cao Jingchen. He fled communist rule that followed the 1930s Japanese invasion. He fathered seven children, six of whom remain alive, from three marriages. Chuck Peng described his father as “very good to other people, [but] very hard on his family.” Peng Jr. spoke of a “very demanding” man who “thought other people’s cooking was no good.”

Two years ago the Taipei City Government awarded Peng an Outstanding Citizen award. Peng, then 95 and unstable, collected the award in person and delivered a speech in Mandarin Chinese.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Victoria Wyndham was one of the most seasoned and accomplished actresses in daytime soap opera television. She played Rachel Cory, the maven of Another World‘s fictional town, Bay City, from 1972 to 1999 when the show went off the air. Wyndham talks about how she was seen as the anchor of a show, and the political infighting to keep it on the air as NBC wanted to wrest control of the long-running soap from Procter & Gamble. Wyndham fought to keep it on the air, but eventually succumbed to the inevitable. She discusses life on the soap opera, and the seven years she spent wandering “in the woods” of Los Angeles seeking direction, now divorced from a character who had come to define her professional career. Happy, healthy and with a family she is proud of, Wyndham has found life after the death of Another World in painting and animals. Below is David Shankbone’s interview with the soap diva.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

0 A.D. is a historical, open source, strategy game, published by Wildfire Games. It focuses on the period between 500BC and 500AD. The game will be released in two parts: the first covering the pre-AD period, and the second running to 500AD. With development well underway, Wikinews interviewed the development team.

Aviv Sharon, a 24-year-old Israeli student responsible for the project’s PR, compiled the below Q&A, which the full team approved prior to publication.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

As reports came out yesterday that the oil spill caused by the explosion and sinking of an oil rig in Gulf of Mexico near Louisiana had reached the coast, the Obama administration announced a ban on all future offshore drilling at least until the investigation into the incident is completed.

Early Friday morning, the US Coast Guard received reports that oil from the spill had washed ashore, and while officials have not confirmed the reports, winds continue to push the slick northward towards land, and conditions are deteriorating, making cleanup of the spill increasingly difficult. The Coast Guard said it was planning to conduct a flyover of the slick to determine its extent sometime on Friday. According to the National Weather Service, strong winds and thunderstorms are predicted to continue through the weekend, hindering cleanup efforts.

Also early on Friday morning, a senior government official, White House advisor David Axelrod, said that the government was immediately banning all new offshore drilling until the investigation into the spill had been completed. His announcement came just after a month the administration relaxed restrictions of offshore drilling.

The operation to clean up the spill has accelerated in recent days, with the US Navy having joined the effort, as well as resources from the Coast Guard and British Petroleum (BP), the lessor of the rig at the time of the explosion. The total assets deployed in the operation are estimated to be around 1,900 people and more than 300 ships and aircraft. Additionally, six remotely operated submarines are trying to stem the leaks, which now number three, at the ocean’s floor.

On Wednesday, the estimated amount of oil spilling from the damaged well was raised to 5,000 barrels, or around 210,000 gallons, a day, five times the original estimate of 1,000 barrels a day. This figure was later revised upwards again to 25,000 barrels (1.05 million gallons) per day. So far, the cleanup operation has laid around 210,000 feet of containment booms to protect vulnerable wildlife refuges on the Gulf Coast, and an additional 66,000 feet of boom has been provided by the US Navy. Since the beginning of the operation, more than 18,000 gallons of an oil/water mix have been recovered from the ocean, and after a successful test burn of oil, plans are being made to scale the burns up. According to a BP official, “We believe we can now scale that up and burn between 500 and 1,000 barrels at a time.” The first test burned around 100 barrels of oil.

Despite the efforts, many are still worried about the potential consequences of the spill, and officials said that the damage could end up being more than that caused by the Exxon Valdez oil spill 20 years ago, which spilled 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound. One analyst said that he expected “that movement is going to continue to stress and fatigue the pipe and create more leaks,” adding that “this is not on a good trajectory.”

BP has developed two options to stop the flow of oil at the source, but both are expected to take at least weeks to complete. The first option is to lower large structures over the leak, which would allow the oil to be safely transported to the surface. BP is building one such structure, but it isn’t expected to be completed for at least several weeks. The second option is to drill a second well which would then plug the leak at the source. A well for this purpose will begin to be drilled within two days, although it could be up to three months before the leak is completely plugged.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Pakistani security forces, aided by artillery and tanks killed 38 Taliban insurgents today in two separate attacks near the Afghanistan border in the Orakzai district of the North-West Frontier Province of the country, according to government officials.

Security men say that Orakzai, located to the southwest of Peshawar, became a Taliban stronghold since the army led offensives against other Taliban areas in different parts of northwest Pakistan.

An army checkpoint in Sayd Khalil Baba village was attacked by militants early on Sunday. However, security troops killed 26 insurgents with artillery fire, according to Samiullah Khan, a senior administrative official in the area. Sajid Khan, another government official of Orakzai told the Reuters news agency that scores of militants attacked the checkpost in the village on Sunday morning. “They used rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and machine guns, but our soldiers’ response was quick and tough,” he added. Ten militants were wounded in this attack according to the latter, who is based in Kalaya, the district’s principal town.

Within hours, a military convoy was ambushed by Taliban attackers in an adjoining village. At least a dozen insurgents were killed in this attack, according to local authorities. Officials said only Pakistani soldier was injured in the attack. There was no confirmation of the figures provided by administrative officials available news agencies, as journalists are prohibited from entering the area.

Security officials claimed around 250 militants have been killed in several clashes in the Orakzai district. Pakistani Taliban leader {{w|Hakimullah Mehsud]] was believed to have control over this region. The latter is thought to have been killed in an U.S. drone strike in January this year.