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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.

Sunday, March 27, 2005

After almost a decade off the air, the science fiction television series Doctor Who returned with new episodes to BBC airwaves on Saturday night, drawing a large audience.

Starring movie actor Christopher Eccleston, the ninth actor cast to play the Doctor, as the newly reincarnated Time Lord, the new series showed off a bigger budget with expensive special effects and a much darker — and sexier — tone. The new star and series got a blessing from actor Sylvester McCoy, who played the Doctor in the 1980s.

“I am very envious about not being in it. The writing is terrific and the toys they play with are much more sophisticated than they were in my day,” McCoy wrote in a column for BBC News. “My only criticism was about the TARDIS. It was far too clean. It needs to look a bit more battered and bruised as if it’s been through the odd asteroid or two,” he said.

The Doctor’s new sidekick is played by Billie Piper, whose marriage to Chris Evans ended during filming.

“We’re pleased so many people sat down as a family to watch the return of the Doctor,” a spokesperson said. Families apparently sat down in droves. Preliminary ratings figures show Who wooing 10.5 million viewers at its peak, or more than 44 percent of all television households in the United Kingdom, for the debut episode.

This made it the most-watched show of the evening, easily outpacing second-place Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway on ITV, which attracted an average of 7.2 million households.

The series will run for another twelve episodes.

One of the longest-running dramas in British history, Doctor Who has been airing sporadically since its debut in 1963. Ironically, the series cancellation in 1989 was due to low ratings.

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Johnnie Cochran, U.S. lawyer famous for getting O.J. Simpson acquitted of murder charges in the 1990s, died Tuesday afternoon in his home in Los Angeles, California. He had been suffering from complications of an inoperable brain tumor.

“The family of Attorney Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr. and members of The Cochran Firm are deeply saddened by the passing,” his family said in a statement to the press. “The world has lost not only a legendary attorney, but an outstanding humanitarian.”

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Following the escalation of investigations into St Stanislaus College in Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia, Wikinews has obtained a police statement from an alleged victim made in 1997 against priest Brian Joseph Spillane. Spillane is facing 33 charges relating to the allegations.

It had been believed that Bathurst detectives set up Strike Force Header after receiving a complaint from a former St Stanislaus student last year. The complainant came to the police’s attention after he came to Bathurst handing out fliers documenting alleged abuses at the school and providing a link to a website he had set up. St Stanislaus College contacted police and asked them to investigate. Police contacted the alleged victim and asked him if he would like to make a complaint.

In the statement obtained by Wikinews, the same man complained to detectives at Kalgoorlie, Western Australia about abuse by Spillane at St Stanislaus. In the graphic statement, he describes abuse which began following a poker game with the priest at the centre of the allegations. The statement describes further abuses spanning several months.

Bathurst Police refused to comment when contacted about the statement today.

Saturday, July 9, 2005

Today The Walt Disney Company issued a joint statement with business partners Roy E. Disney and Stanley Gold to the media, as a show of reunion between the two camps after nearly three years of hostility.

Roy E. Disney, son of company co-founder Roy O. Disney and nephew of the company namesake Walt Disney, had resigned from his job as chairman of Feature Animation at the company after experiencing difficulty with the company’s board of directors, many of whom were biased towards company CEO Michael Eisner‘s view of what direction the company should take.

Eisner is due to retire from the company this September, and the talks with Disney and Gold are believed to have been led by Eisner’s successor, Bob Iger, who is currently President and COO of the company. Iger has shown great interest in building relationships back up with many companies who have refused to work with Disney until Eisner leaves, such as Pixar Animation and George Lucas.

Large scores of Disney fans had hoped Roy would read the Disneyland Dedication Speech on the theme park’s fiftieth birthday next week, which was originally read by Walt on the park’s opening day, but Roy had already entered an annual sailing race from Los Angeles to Honolulu.

Sunday, November 26, 2006

A suicide bomber has killed at least seven people in an attack on a restaurant situated in south-eastern Afghanistan. Twenty people are seriously injured in the attack.

The attack took place in the Urgun district of Paktika province, which shares its border with that of Pakistan.

Governor Mohammed Akram Akhpelwak said that most of those killed are civilians. He added that intention of the attack could have been to target a senior provincial official and an Afghan special forces commander.

Sunday, January 6, 2008

A Piper PA-31 Navajo Chieftain owned and operated by Servant Air has crashed shortly after takeoff from Kodiak Island, Alaska, United States. Six people were killed and four others were rescued.

The flight was a 100 mile scheduled domestic charter flight from Kodiak to Homer. Servant Air are a small local airline that serves Kodiak, which has a population of around 6,000. The airline was founded in 2003 and currently operates seven planes. The plane took off at 1:48 p.m. local time Saturday and subsequently crashed in a shallow harbor 50 yards from the runway.

Dean Andrew, who was piloting a float plane taxiing on the water nearby, was able to rescue four people from the crashed plane. “Once I got them in they were really cold, and they were just pretty hysterical because they had told me that their family’s in that plane,” said Andrew, who the International Tribune Herald reports operates his own small air service, although the Seattle Times reported that he flew the plane for Trident Seafoods.

Alaska State Troopers and Kodiak Police divers were called in to retrieve the bodies of four others. A fifth was pulled out the water after attempting to swim 300 yards to shore, but he had already succumbed to the cold.

The passengers were Russian Orthodox Old Believers who had chartered the flight home in order to celebrate Russian Christmas, which is celebrated on Monday. The deceased have been identified as Homer citizens Stefan F. Basargin, 36; Pavel F. Basargin, 30; Zahary F. Martushev, 25; Iosif F. Martushev, 15; Andrian Reutov, 22 and local pilot Robin Starrett, 50. The survivors, who have not been identified, are all in good condition or out of hospital. Two were flown to Anchorage for treatment and two remained in Kodak; in both cases one was released and one remains.

Andrew described the moments leading up to the crash: “I heard Servant Air’s Navajo taking off, and shortly after he took off, he said, ‘I need to return to the airport.’ I know the pilot, and I could tell by the tone of his voice that it was probably something serious.”

The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has opened a full investigation. NTSB investigator Clint Johnson told reporters it’s possible that mechanical problems with the plane caused the accident.

Ted Panamarioff, spokesman for Servant Air, said of Starrett “Very humble, very caring. Very detail oriented. Very precise in the way he did things. He was an excellent family man. Excellent co-worker.” He also said that Starrett had served in the Coast Guard, and that those involved were regular customers well known with the small airline. “We’re all family and friends here. We knew these customers for several years. This is really, really tragic.”

Monday, June 23, 2008

An Australian air safety group claims that Yogyakarta International Airport was opearating illegally with no license when Garuda Indonesia Flight 200, a Boeing 737, crashed at the airport, killing 16 Indonesians and five Australians.

Flight Safety Pty Ltd had been asked to carry out an independent investigation by an anonymous client after the March 2007 disaster, which occurred when the aircraft landed at excessive speed and shot off the end of the runway. Flight Safety has now announced that they have found Yogyakarta International had been granted a five year license but this would be withdrawn after twelve months if several conditions were not met. Since these conditions remained unchanged, the license effectively voided six months before the disaster, claim Flight Safety. One of the conditions was extension of the runway and provision of an adequate Runway End Safety Area (RESA).

The group adds that it also conducted checks on Solo International Airport and Semarang International Airport, and that these airports also had invalid Airport Operating Certificates. The final report was not released at the time as the client in question felt it ‘too sensitive’, and Flight Safety says that it was rapidly covered up three months later when it leaked in Indonesia.

The group says it notified the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), and that they in turn said the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) – who assisted in the crash investigation – was in control of the situation. However, Flight Safety claim that when approached, the ATSB denied knowing about it. Allegedly, the ATSB had missed the licensing discrepancy because they only checked the front page of the airport’s license and did not conduct a detailed analysis of the small print.

Flight Safety claim that the Indonesian Director of Aviation Safety told them that the situation had been rectified. However, the group have now conducted a re-audit and say Solo and Yogyakarta airports both remain illegal. They go on to accuse the ICAO, ATSB and Indonesian Director of Aviation Safety of “keeping quiet” and described them as ‘compromised’.

Flight Safety go on to claim that the survivors of the crash and relatives of the deceased have not been informed either, and say that this will have a serious effect on the compensation process and on any insurance claims. Crikey, an Australian news service, also suggested that AU$12 million of aid promised by Australia to help Indonesia improve air safety is also being misused. All Indonesia’s air carriers are currently on the list of air carriers banned in the EU.

An official statement by Flight Safety head Chris Weir concluded “It [the group’s findings] should now be exposed as the safety issues remain unresolved.”

Mardjono Siswo Suwarno of the National Transport Safety Committee, the body responsible for investigating the disaster, denied that Yogyakarta Airport was illegal, saying “At that time [the license] was still valid, but the RESA was not long enough… But still in the [Garuda] case, even if the RESA length was adequate, the plane would have still overrun because the speed was 1.8 times normal speed.”

The final report found that the pilot-in-command, who has been arrested and charged over the crash, attempted to land after fifteen Ground Proximity Warning System activations to tell him he was landing too fast, and says that although a longer runway and full-sized RESA wouldn’t have stopped an airliner traveling at such excessive speed it could have reduced the toll of deaths and injuries.

The directors of Yogyakarta and Solo airports claim that since the re-audit they have taken steps to improve safety and rectify any problems, but have not actually admitted their airports were illegal. Indonesian director general of air transportation Budi Mulyawan Suyitno said that although local budget limitations have prevented some airports from being improved there are no problems currently at Yogyakarta, with improvements including declaration of a RESA for 140 metres of the 2,250 metre runway and stationing Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting trucks at the airport.