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Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Marvin Schur, a 93-year-old man from Bay City, Michigan has died after the electric company limited his electric use due to his failure to pay over US$1,000 in past-due payments.

Bay City Electric Light & Power installed a power-limiting device on his home on January 13. The device would limit the amount of power the resident uses and would essentially shut it off if that limit is reached, or if the resident fails to pay the outstanding bill within 10 days of installation. In order for the electricity to be turned back on, the limiter must be reset by pushing a button.

Bay City power says that a warning, indicating that the power was to be turned off and a limiter installed, had been placed on Schur’s front door. Despite that, the company says that they are now “looking at our website and possibly doing an automated phone message. We obviously need to get the word out.”

The autopsy performed on Schur’s body concluded that he had died “a slow, painful death” caused by hypothermia. Dr. Kanu Virani, who performed the autopsy, explained: “Hypothermia shuts the whole system down, slowly. It’s not easy to die from hypothermia without first realizing your fingers and toes feel like they’re burning.”

It was less than 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 Centigrade) in Schur’s home when neighbors found Schur dead on January 17. Virani commented that it was his first time performing an autopsy on a body in which “the person froze to death indoors.”

“His furnace was not running – the insides of his windows were full of ice the morning we found him,” said George A. Pauwels Jr., who was with his wife when they found Schur’s body.

In Michigan it is illegal for a utility company to disconnect power to any home between November 1 and March 31 when a resident is over the age of 65. Limiters are also not supposed to be used during that time frame. However, municipally-owned electric utilities like the one in Bay City, are not regulated by the state. The Michigan state attorney general’s office has launched an investigation into the incident.

Residents around Schur’s home say he was hard of hearing, and the city states that the device’s function and operation were never explained to him. When word of the story got around, people from all over the United States began to call the city in anger.

“I’ve taken calls from Canada, Massachusetts, Texas, New York, Alabama – and that’s just the ones I can think of off the top of my head,” said Melody Roth of the city’s administrative office, who also added that people from all over are “calling all city departments, not just our office.”

Schur has no known children, and his wife had died several years prior to the incident.

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

Wikinews extended invitations by e-mail on March 23 to multiple candidates running in the Texas’ 6th congressional district special election of May 1 to fill a vacancy left upon the death of Republican congressman Ron Wright. Of them, the office of Democrat Daryl Eddings, Sr. agreed to answer some questions by phone March 30 about their campaigns and policies. The following is the interview with Ms Chatham on behalf of Mr Eddings, Sr.

Eddings is a federal law enforcement officer and senior non-commissioned officer in the US military. His experience as operations officer of an aviation unit in the California National Guard includes working in Los Angeles to control riots sparked by the O. J. Simpson murder case and the police handling of Rodney King, working with drug interdiction teams in Panama and Central America and fighting in the Middle East. He is the founder of Operation Battle Buddy, which has under his leadership kept in touch with over 20 thousand veterans and their families. He was born in California, but moved to Midlothian, Texas. He endeavours to bring “good government, not no government”. Campaign manager Faith Chatham spoke to Wikinews on matters ranging from healthcare to housing.

An Inside Elections poll published on March 18 shows Republican candidate Susan Wright, the widow of Ron Wright, is ahead by 21% followed by Democrat Jana Sanchez with 17% and Republican Jake Ellzey with 8% with a 4.6% margin of error among 450 likely voters. The district is considered “lean Republican” by Inside Elections and voted 51% in favour of Donald Trump in last year’s US presidential election. This is down from 54% for Trump in 2016’s presidential election, the same poll stated.

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Regular commuter Dan Ruefly detonated a half-mile (800 m) section of the old Woodrow Wilson Bridge just after 12:30 a.m. local time (0530 UTC) on Tuesday 29 August 2006. The detonation brought down over 2,600 tons of steel. The bridge, which carried the Capital Beltway across the Potomac River, was scheduled for destruction as part of a $2.4 billion project to replace the span. The bridge has caused traffic delays nearly every day since its opening in 1961.

Mr. Ruefly had won the honour of pushing the plunger in a contest to find the worst commuting experience; after a motoring accident he became stuck in a traffic jam. Mr. Ruefly (who leaves home at 5:00 a.m. every day to beat the traffic) had crashed into a stationary tractor-trailer on the bridge, leaving him with severely crushed hips. The ambulance sent to transport him to hospital was unable to make it through rush hour traffic and, as a result, Mr. Ruefly almost died.

The detonation of the six-lane drawbridge was originally planned to occur at 11:59 p.m. however it was delayed by over half an hour when spectators broke through security fences to get a better view, the bridge was finally brought down at around 12:35 a.m. There was a 20 second delay between the time of initiation and the actual detonation. It was reported that the plunger was not actually wired to the charges, and was only a ceremonial prop to signal the actual detonation by the engineering crews.

The demolition is part of a complete replacement of the former six-lane bridge with a twelve lane version comprised of two side-by-side drawbridges. Work started on the project as early as 1999 and the new north-bound bridge was opened on June 10 2006. This demolition is the first step in the next stage of the project; to replace the existing bridge with the southbound ‘twin’.

Boat traffic on the Potomac River and vehicle traffic on the new Wilson Bridge were halted during the detonation. Airspace was also briefly closed for a short duration.

Monday, June 2, 2008

Leading up to the 2008 COMPUTEX show, the “2008 WiMAX Expo Taipei” is being held. Co-organized by Taiwan External Trade Development Council, Taipei Computer Association (TCA), the Industrial Development Bureau of the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA), M-Taiwan Office, and WiMAX Forum, the expo will be held in Taipei Show Hall two. It is planned to run for five consecutive days commencing on June 2. In addition, the 2008 WiMAX Forum Operator Summit will be also held at Far Eastern Plaza Hotel on June 2 & 3.

According to the Taipei Computer Association (TCA), there will be sixty networking companies and manufacturers participating in this show. Their aim, to demonstrate the telecommunications technology in Taiwan. About seventy world-class operators from the networking industry will be invited to join the Forum Summit.

Following the Ministry of Economic Affairs signing an extended Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Intel on April 21, both will work together to promote the WiMAX industry in Taiwan. Intel, participating in both COMPUTEX and the WiMAX expo has a number of WiMAX Segways to demonstrate the technology. Their involvement will also include acting as hosts for the 2008 e21FORUM where Mobile Web 2.0 will be discussed.

A bus promoting the WiMAX expo will also be in service with Far EasTone Telecommunications and First International Telecom doing live demonstrations of their enterprise offerings.