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Friday, March 3, 2006

Australian swimmer Ian Thorpe is reported to be feeling much better after suffering from chest pain for some time.

The Olympic gold medalist was due to swim in the 100m and 200m freestyle and in three relays at the Commonwealth Games, but due to his complaints his fitness has been in doubt. He has been unable to take the drugs needed to overcome his pain as they are banned from the Games.

Thorpe told the media Thursday “It’s actually the best I’ve felt in a while; the antibiotics are starting to work.”

[edit]

Sunday, May 1, 2005

Eleven years of drilling and blasting using a total 16 tons of explosives were completed Thursday when Swiss engineers detonated the last few yards of granite completing the 21 mile (35 km) Lötschberg tunnel in the Alps. The Lötschberg is now the longest overland tunnel in the world, and the third longest tunnel overall.

“With the breakthrough we have carved out the mountain for all to see. We are moving on,” said Swiss Transport Minister Moritz Leuenberger at a ceremony marking the occasion, attended by about 1,000 people who witnessed the event in the midpoint of the tunnel, about 5,900 feet below the 12,170 foot Balmhorn mountain.

The two halves of the tunnel met with almost perfect exactness. The centers of the bores coming from opposite directions were only about 5 inches apart, and the heights were aligned within less than 1 inch.

The new tunnel connects the Swiss district of Raron with the city of Frutigen, near the capital Bern. Construction on the railway within the new tunnel is expected to be completed by 2007, and should shorten travel time between Germany and the Italian city of Milan by about an hour. The cost of building the tunnel, at US$13 billion (€10 billion) has already overrun budget by US$3 billion, and 11 people died during its construction.

The only two tunnels that are longer than Lötschberg are:

• The Seikan Tunnel, Japan’s tunnel between the islands of Honshu and Hokkaido which passes part of the way underneath the seabed, and is the longest railway tunnel in the world at about 33 miles (54 km).
• The Channel Tunnel, once nicknamed the “Chunnel”, which is the second longest at 31 miles (50 km), extending from Kent, England under the English Channel to northern France.

The Lötschberg tunnel is the longest tunnel that travels entirely over land, surpassing the previous record-holder, Japan’s Hakkoda tunnel, which was completed only two months ago on February 27 at a length of 16 miles (26 km).

At least one future tunnel, Gotthard Base Tunnel, is planned to be the world’s new longest tunnel at a length of 35 miles (57 km); it is also currently under construction in Switzerland, parallel to the Lötschberg with a planned completion date of 2012.

Swiss people make large numbers of train trips compared to other Europeans, with an average of 40 trips per person annually compared to 21 in Germany, 14 in France, and 8 in Italy. A major goal of the ongoing rail tunnel construction is to decrease travel times between popular destinations, with the state-owned Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) predicting a 20% increase in rail traffic by 2020.

Also under consideration are improvement of the rapidly growing crowding of traffic (particularly heavy trucks carrying cargo) in the narrow Swiss highways, auto accidents, and pollution. Since 1980, Swiss highway traffic has increased tenfold, largely due to its geographical position along Europe’s north-south axis.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Molten steel spilled out and killed 32 workers at the Qinghe Special Steel Corporation mill in the city of Tieling in Liaoning province, China.

The ladle containing 1,500-degree-Celsius liquid steel poured into an open room, where employees take breaks in-between shift changes, at 7:45 a.m. local time. At least 6 others were injured, one of them critically.

“It is the most serious accident to hit China’s steel industry since 1949,” said China’s deputy head of the State Administration of Work Safety, Sun Huashan.

At least 4 workers have been arrested after the accident. The manager of mill, an operator, technician and a supervisor of a workshop were all arrested and are being questioned as an investigation in launched into what caused the accident to occur.

December 25, 2004

Officials in Mumbai, India, demolished over 6,000 shanties today in a push to eradicate the capital city’s slums. In total, 39,000 shanties have been flattened, displacing over 200,000 people, in the city’s biggest-ever demolition drive, which began in early December.

When complete, over 2 million people are expected to be displaced. After wiping out the least desirable shanties, next in line for demolition are the illegal ‘well-off’ shanties and neighborhoods, according to the legal and bureaucratic motions that have been executed toward cleaning up Mumbai’s appearance by lowering the dominance of shanties, which make up 62 percent of Mumbai’s housing.

“As far as eye can see, there are mounds of wood, tin and tarpaulin, the remains of 6,200 illegal homes, flattened by a heavy excavator running on tank-like tracks and giant motorised claws,” the Indian Express reported about today’s destruction. [1]

Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh said that citizens would see a change within six months. “Every chief minister likes to be remembered, and I’m no exception,” said Deshmukh, who despite having an empty exchequer, also announced that Rs 31,000 crore will be spent on new roads, sea links and rail lines. [2]

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

January’s second Interview of the Month was with Danny O’Brien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on 23 January in IRC.

The EFF is coming off a series of high-profile successes in their campaigns to educate the public, press, and policy makers regarding online rights in a digital world, and defending those rights in the legislature and the courtroom. Their settlement with Sony/BMG, the amazingly confused MGM v Grokster decision by the Supreme Court of the United States, and the disturbing cases surrounding Diebold have earned the advocacy organization considerable attention.

When asked if the EFF would be interested in a live interview in IRC by Wikinews, the answer was a nearly immediate yes, but just a little after Ricardo Lobo. With two such interesting interview candidates agreeing so quickly, it was hard to say no to either so schedules were juggled to have both. By chance, the timing worked out to have the EFF interview the day before the U.S. Senate schedule hearings concerning the Broadcast flag rule of the FCC, a form of digital rights management which the recording and movie industries have been lobbying hard for – and the EFF has been lobbying hard to prevent.