Militants kill at least 21 Algerian police in ambush

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Local media stated on Thursday that at least 21 Algerian paramilitary police had been killed after an ambush on their convoy.

The convoy was en route to their barracks at Bordj Bou Arreridj, following an escort of Chinese construction workers to a nearby worksite, located southeast of Algeria’s capital of Algiers, when it was attacked late Wednesday.

Militants detonated no less than two roadside bombs to block the convoy, consisting of six vehicles. They then opened fire on the police before stealing their uniforms, weapons, and vehicles. The militants, as part of Al-Qaeda’s network, are referred to as al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, (AQIM).

Newspaper reports indicated that 21 people had died, while a local official said 23 were killed and a further five had been hospitalized.

A large security operation has started in the area; however, the attack was not immediately confirmed by Algerian authorities.

The militants have been left over from a civil war begun in 1992 between the government and radical Islamists that has killed between 150,000 and 200,000 people. Violence has since diminished, but attacks on government forces still occur.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Militants_kill_at_least_21_Algerian_police_in_ambush&oldid=1179687”

Ontario Votes 2007: Interview with NDP candidate Sheila White, Scarborough-Rouge River

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Having worked as an aide, advisor, and Executive Assistant to municipal and provincial politicians, Sheila White is running for the Ontario New Democratic Party in the Ontario provincial election, in the Scarborough-Rouge River riding. Wikinews’ Nick Moreau interviewed her regarding her values, her experience, and her campaign.

Stay tuned for further interviews; every candidate from every party is eligible, and will be contacted. Expect interviews from Liberals, Progressive Conservatives, New Democratic Party members, Ontario Greens, as well as members from the Family Coalition, Freedom, Communist, Libertarian, and Confederation of Regions parties, as well as independents.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Ontario_Votes_2007:_Interview_with_NDP_candidate_Sheila_White,_Scarborough-Rouge_River&oldid=498931”

RuPaul speaks about society and the state of drag as performance art

Saturday, October 6, 2007

Few artists ever penetrate the subconscious level of American culture the way RuPaul Andre Charles did with the 1993 album Supermodel of the World. It was groundbreaking not only because in the midst of the Grunge phenomenon did Charles have a dance hit on MTV, but because he did it as RuPaul, formerly known as Starbooty, a supermodel drag queen with a message: love everyone. A duet with Elton John, an endorsement deal with MAC cosmetics, an eponymous talk show on VH-1 and roles in film propelled RuPaul into the new millennium.

In July, RuPaul’s movie Starrbooty began playing at film festivals and it is set to be released on DVD October 31st. Wikinews reporter David Shankbone recently spoke with RuPaul by telephone in Los Angeles, where she is to appear on stage for DIVAS Simply Singing!, a benefit for HIV-AIDS.


DS: How are you doing?

RP: Everything is great. I just settled into my new hotel room in downtown Los Angeles. I have never stayed downtown, so I wanted to try it out. L.A. is one of those traditional big cities where nobody goes downtown, but they are trying to change that.

DS: How do you like Los Angeles?

RP: I love L.A. I’m from San Diego, and I lived here for six years. It took me four years to fall in love with it and then those last two years I had fallen head over heels in love with it. Where are you from?

DS: Me? I’m from all over. I have lived in 17 cities, six states and three countries.

RP: Where were you when you were 15?

DS: Georgia, in a small town at the bottom of Fulton County called Palmetto.

RP: When I was in Georgia I went to South Fulton Technical School. The last high school I ever went to was…actually, I don’t remember the name of it.

DS: Do you miss Atlanta?

RP: I miss the Atlanta that I lived in. That Atlanta is long gone. It’s like a childhood friend who underwent head to toe plastic surgery and who I don’t recognize anymore. It’s not that I don’t like it; I do like it. It’s just not the Atlanta that I grew up with. It looks different because it went through that boomtown phase and so it has been transient. What made Georgia Georgia to me is gone. The last time I stayed in a hotel there my room was overlooking a construction site, and I realized the building that was torn down was a building that I had seen get built. And it had been torn down to build a new building. It was something you don’t expect to see in your lifetime.

DS: What did that signify to you?

RP: What it showed me is that the mentality in Atlanta is that much of their history means nothing. For so many years they did a good job preserving. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a preservationist. It’s just an interesting observation.

DS: In 2004 when you released your third album, Red Hot, it received a good deal of play in the clubs and on dance radio, but very little press coverage. On your blog you discussed how you felt betrayed by the entertainment industry and, in particular, the gay press. What happened?

RP: Well, betrayed might be the wrong word. ‘Betrayed’ alludes to an idea that there was some kind of a promise made to me, and there never was. More so, I was disappointed. I don’t feel like it was a betrayal. Nobody promises anything in show business and you understand that from day one.
But, I don’t know what happened. It seemed I couldn’t get press on my album unless I was willing to play into the role that the mainstream press has assigned to gay people, which is as servants of straight ideals.

DS: Do you mean as court jesters?

RP: Not court jesters, because that also plays into that mentality. We as humans find it easy to categorize people so that we know how to feel comfortable with them; so that we don’t feel threatened. If someone falls outside of that categorization, we feel threatened and we search our psyche to put them into a category that we feel comfortable with. The mainstream media and the gay press find it hard to accept me as…just…

DS: Everything you are?

RP: Everything that I am.

DS: It seems like years ago, and my recollection might be fuzzy, but it seems like I read a mainstream media piece that talked about how you wanted to break out of the RuPaul ‘character’ and be seen as more than just RuPaul.

RP: Well, RuPaul is my real name and that’s who I am and who I have always been. There’s the product RuPaul that I have sold in business. Does the product feel like it’s been put into a box? Could you be more clear? It’s a hard question to answer.

DS: That you wanted to be seen as more than just RuPaul the drag queen, but also for the man and versatile artist that you are.

RP: That’s not on target. What other people think of me is not my business. What I do is what I do. How people see me doesn’t change what I decide to do. I don’t choose projects so people don’t see me as one thing or another. I choose projects that excite me. I think the problem is that people refuse to understand what drag is outside of their own belief system. A friend of mine recently did the Oprah show about transgendered youth. It was obvious that we, as a culture, have a hard time trying to understand the difference between a drag queen, transsexual, and a transgender, yet we find it very easy to know the difference between the American baseball league and the National baseball league, when they are both so similar. We’ll learn the difference to that. One of my hobbies is to research and go underneath ideas to discover why certain ones stay in place while others do not. Like Adam and Eve, which is a flimsy fairytale story, yet it is something that people believe; what, exactly, keeps it in place?

DS: What keeps people from knowing the difference between what is real and important, and what is not?

RP: Our belief systems. If you are a Christian then your belief system doesn’t allow for transgender or any of those things, and you then are going to have a vested interest in not understanding that. Why? Because if one peg in your belief system doesn’t work or doesn’t fit, the whole thing will crumble. So some people won’t understand the difference between a transvestite and transsexual. They will not understand that no matter how hard you force them to because it will mean deconstructing their whole belief system. If they understand Adam and Eve is a parable or fairytale, they then have to rethink their entire belief system.
As to me being seen as whatever, I was more likely commenting on the phenomenon of our culture. I am creative, and I am all of those things you mention, and doing one thing out there and people seeing it, it doesn’t matter if people know all that about me or not.

DS: Recently I interviewed Natasha Khan of the band Bat for Lashes, and she is considered by many to be one of the real up-and-coming artists in music today. Her band was up for the Mercury Prize in England. When I asked her where she drew inspiration from, she mentioned what really got her recently was the 1960’s and 70’s psychedelic drag queen performance art, such as seen in Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis, The Cockettes and Paris Is Burning. What do you think when you hear an artist in her twenties looking to that era of drag performance art for inspiration?

RP: The first thing I think of when I hear that is that young kids are always looking for the ‘rock and roll’ answer to give. It’s very clever to give that answer. She’s asked that a lot: “Where do you get your inspiration?” And what she gave you is the best sound bite she could; it’s a really a good sound bite. I don’t know about Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis, but I know about The Cockettes and Paris Is Burning. What I think about when I hear that is there are all these art school kids and when they get an understanding of how the press works, and how your sound bite will affect the interview, they go for the best.

DS: You think her answer was contrived?

RP: I think all answers are really contrived. Everything is contrived; the whole world is an illusion. Coming up and seeing kids dressed in Goth or hip hop clothes, when you go beneath all that, you have to ask: what is that really? You understand they are affected, pretentious. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s how we see things. I love Paris Is Burning.

DS: Has the Iraq War affected you at all?

RP: Absolutely. It’s not good, I don’t like it, and it makes me want to enjoy this moment a lot more and be very appreciative. Like when I’m on a hike in a canyon and it smells good and there aren’t bombs dropping.

DS: Do you think there is a lot of apathy in the culture?

RP: There’s apathy, and there’s a lot of anti-depressants and that probably lends a big contribution to the apathy. We have iPods and GPS systems and all these things to distract us.

DS: Do you ever work the current political culture into your art?

RP: No, I don’t. Every time I bat my eyelashes it’s a political statement. The drag I come from has always been a critique of our society, so the act is defiant in and of itself in a patriarchal society such as ours. It’s an act of treason.

DS: What do you think of young performance artists working in drag today?

RP: I don’t know of any. I don’t know of any. Because the gay culture is obsessed with everything straight and femininity has been under attack for so many years, there aren’t any up and coming drag artists. Gay culture isn’t paying attention to it, and straight people don’t either. There aren’t any drag clubs to go to in New York. I see more drag clubs in Los Angeles than in New York, which is so odd because L.A. has never been about club culture.

DS: Michael Musto told me something that was opposite of what you said. He said he felt that the younger gays, the ones who are up-and-coming, are over the body fascism and more willing to embrace their feminine sides.

RP: I think they are redefining what femininity is, but I still think there is a lot of negativity associated with true femininity. Do boys wear eyeliner and dress in skinny jeans now? Yes, they do. But it’s still a heavily patriarchal culture and you never see two men in Star magazine, or the Queer Eye guys at a premiere, the way you see Ellen and her girlfriend—where they are all, ‘Oh, look how cute’—without a negative connotation to it. There is a definite prejudice towards men who use femininity as part of their palette; their emotional palette, their physical palette. Is that changing? It’s changing in ways that don’t advance the cause of femininity. I’m not talking frilly-laced pink things or Hello Kitty stuff. I’m talking about goddess energy, intuition and feelings. That is still under attack, and it has gotten worse. That’s why you wouldn’t get someone covering the RuPaul album, or why they say people aren’t tuning into the Katie Couric show. Sure, they can say ‘Oh, RuPaul’s album sucks’ and ‘Katie Couric is awful’; but that’s not really true. It’s about what our culture finds important, and what’s important are things that support patriarchal power. The only feminine thing supported in this struggle is Pamela Anderson and Jessica Simpson, things that support our patriarchal culture.
Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=RuPaul_speaks_about_society_and_the_state_of_drag_as_performance_art&oldid=4462721”

What Are The Benefits Of A Cold Stone Massage

By Emily Taylor

A cold stone massage is not a widely known practise. Hot stone massages are more commonly known but a cold stone massage is an ideal way to relieve stress and aid in relaxation. Cold stone massage therapy is also effective at easing the mind and reducing the effects of anxiety and trauma. Nowadays, this type of massage is most commonly used in various sporting events in order to treat injuries and sprains. Skilled massage therapists use cold stone massage techniques to help calm the human body. Although this technique has existed for ages it has only since become a popular trend.

During cold stone massages, a licensed masseuse will utilize various types of stones or rocks which have been chilled. These stones have special properties that enhances the experience. They, in tandem with the massage therapist’s touch will help to treat and cure several physical, emotional and mental problems. Clients that experience anxiety will often be treated with marble stones as it is commonly used to calm the mind allowing it to concentrate less on mental stress.

Persons with sinus problems have experienced the curative effects of cold stone massage. During this massage, a cloth is placed over the client’s face on which chilled stones are placed after. The stone’s cold temperature helps to relieve congestion and nasal swelling. Bloating and menstrual pains have also be successfully treated with the help of cold stone therapy. The stones are placed on the abdomen of the client and helps to cool the painful swelling and discomfort in the uterus.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ng08sHphA4[/youtube]

Just like hot stone massage therapy, cold stones are also able to improve the circulation of blood throughout the body. Circulatory problems are not seen in each person but all can benefit from this procedure. Chilled marble stones are able to target circulatory problems when placed on specific areas of the body. In addition, those affected by high blood pressure can successfully lower it by having a cold stone massage.

Cold stone massages are also commonly used to alleviate sport related injuries as aforementioned. This is often mistaken as a cold compress and has been a common method of injury relief for some time. Cold compresses help to sooth inflamed muscles and joints. However, cold stone therapy is a much more effective treatment method as massage therapists are able to strategically place chilled rocks and gently massage aching muscles. Tendinitis is also a condition that cold stone massage helps to treat and cure.

Cold stone massages are not beneficial for everyone. In fact, clients who have illnesses such as heart conditions, skin inflammation and sensitivity to the cold should avoid this type of massage. It is thus, very important to visit a physician before making an appointment with a masseuse to make sure you are a prime candidate for any massage technique.

The benefits of having a cold stone massage are many. Like heated stones, cold stones also enable therapists to pinpoint aches, pains and illnesses, helps to alleviate them as well as give a much needed boost to the client’s energy level.

About the Author: I write for TIR Massage Stone about obtaining a proper

hot stone massage

kit and performing

hot stone massage

therapy.

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Air Pacific re-brands as Fiji Airways

Saturday, June 29, 2013

Fiji’s national airline Air Pacific has now officially returned to its original name: Fiji Airways. Fiji Airways adopted the Air Pacific name in 1971, slightly prior to its first international flight on June 3, 1973. The re-brand was described by interim CEO Aubrey Swift as allowing the airline to align itself “closer with Fiji as a destination”. The name change is designed in part to reduce the confusion which surrounded the name Air Pacific. Swift noted that “Air Pacific just didn’t resonate with our customers” and said that same people “thought we were an air conditioning company”.

Along with the name change, the airline has redesigned its website, and changed the name of each of its classes of service. Pacific Voyager and Tabua Class have been replaced with economy and business class respectively. The airline has also introduced plans to overhaul its fleet of older Boeing 747s with Airbus A330s. It has said that the completion of this overhaul and the re-branding efforts will be completed by the end of the year.

The airline’s new brand-mark and livery features a masi design created by Fijian artist, Makereta Matemosi. The new identity is to “symbolises the airline’s new identity and epitomises all that Fiji Airways represents. It is authentic, distinctive, and true to the airline’s Fijian roots”, the airline said.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Air_Pacific_re-brands_as_Fiji_Airways&oldid=4511840”

The Importance Of Tracking

Submitted by: Dave Davis

As many of you know, I only set up this blog recently. Four years of success, failure and testing. This allows me to offer some advice to anyone starting out that I wish I had when I was starting out in the online business world. Today, I am going to discuss one of the MAJOR things I wish I had have paid attention to sooner. Site tracking and analysis.

When you set up a website for the first time, it s always one of the last things you bother to take care of or put in place. Visitor tracking, no matter what your business is EXTREMELY important. It s always forgotten in the flood of excitement of finishing your site and launching it. You have worked hard on your site, your content, your design and your features. It s your baby and you want to let it fly. That s great. If, like me, you experiment, you just want to test the waters and see if you get any revenue from adsense, or make a sale (Or affiliate sale).

So now, here you are 2 (Or more) months later and your site is starting to take off. You are starting to generate a few dollars from your website. Great! Now it s time to improve the flow, usability and find out what your visitors are actually looking for.

But wait. How do you find this out?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMX1hY6Vbms[/youtube]

You can first look into your hosts Webalizer or awstats statistics, but in fairness, while they are great for checking referrers and traffic stats, they don t drill down to the nitty gritty. You realize now that you should have put something in place when you first started.

Enter Google Analytics (Formerly Urchin). Google Analytics is an advanced and FREE visitor tracking service. Most of you have probably heard of it already. Google Analytics allows you to track your visitors and their behavior down to the most detailed level. Covering the features of Google Analytics is far beyond the scope of this document, but sign up and play around for yourself. Google Analytics is also SUPER easy to set up. All you need to do is past a few lines of JavaScript into your sites HTML.

Once you have Google Analytics set up, the rest is taken care of by Google. You don t have to worry about a thing.

Now, assuming you have taken my advice (Which I assure you in this case is 100% good) you have two (Or more) months of tracking information available to you. Are you visitors coming and searching for something on your site? If so, should it be made available on the main page? Why make them search? Are your visitors coming to your site looking for content that you do not actually have? Maybe you should create it? The list goes on .

You will be surprised at some of the search terms your site is found under. Some will make you laugh and some are even pretty upsetting terms that you DO NOT want to be found under!

So there you have it. If you set up your analytics and tracking early on, it makes it ten times easier to improve your site and grow your business earlier and start making more money earlier. I have used many different tracking services and it all boiled down to me using my default server stats programs and Google analytics. Experiment a little and find out what works for you.

I hope this article has given you enough reason to invest an additional five minutes setting up some sort of tracking for your website before you go live . Your five minute investment can make the world of difference months down the line.

About the Author: David Davis, is the lead developer and project manager of Redfly Studios LTD.

Web Design Ireland

For more information visit

redflystudios.com

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Daughter of Yuko Ikeda kidnapped to ransom in Tokyo; freed 13 hours later

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Ikeda Kanako, a 21-year-old senior student of the Meiji Gakuin University and the first daughter of celebrity surgeon Yuko Ikeda, was kidnapped at about 1225 (UTC+9), June 26, 2006, in Shibuya, Tokyo.

A bullet was fired and one officer slightly cut when police stormed a Kawasaki apartment to rescue the girl.

Kanako was dressed in a white light half-sleeved cardigan, blue jeans with a bistre belt made of leather, a spring green camisole and carried a bag of Vuitton when she was abducted at a bus stop.

She was found unharmed 13 hours later by Japanese police at a condominium located in Nakahara-ku, Kawasaki, Kanagawa. The young woman’s make-up was not disordered; Kanako’s long brown fringe was not disheveled at all and she was wearing what she had been when she was kidnapped.

The kidnapping of Kanako was a big story in Japanese media in June, 2006. The story appeared in many newspapers as the front-page news on June 27, 2006.

Kanako and her kidnappers had been in touch with her mother using Kanako’s mobile phone. The effort to free her was helped greatly by a woman who witnessed the moment Kanako was taken; she wrote down the license plate of the van and other details.

Police traced mobile phone calls and were able to locate the van in Kawasaki where they detained two of the kidnappers as they went shopping.

One conspirator Li Yong, 29, from China, led the policemen to the apartment and tricked Kaneo Ito, 49, from Japan, to open the door. Ito managed to discharge one bullet before being restrained by an assistant police inspector, the first man in the room.

The other man involved in the kidnap of Kanako was Choi Gi Ho, 54, from South Korea. Kanato was freed unharmed.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department arrested three men on suspicion of conspiring to kidnap a woman and hold her to a reported 300 million yen ransom.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Daughter_of_Yuko_Ikeda_kidnapped_to_ransom_in_Tokyo;_freed_13_hours_later&oldid=1765889”

Wikinews interviews 2020 Melbourne Lord Mayor Candidate Wayne Tseng

This article mentions the Wikimedia Foundation, one of its projects, or people related to it. Wikinews is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Thursday, October 22, 2020

2020 Melbourne Lord Mayor candidate Wayne Tseng answered some questions about his campaign for the upcoming election from Wikinews. The Lord Mayor election in the Australian city is scheduled to take place this week.

Tseng runs a firm called eTranslate, which helps software developers to make the software available to the users. In the candidate’s questionnaire, Tseng said eTranslate had led to him working with all three tiers of the government. He previously belonged to the Australian Liberal Party, but has left since then, to run for mayorship as an independent candidate.

Tseng is of Chinese descent, having moved to Australia with his parents from Vietnam. Graduated in Brisbane, Tseng received his PhD in Melbourne and has been living in the city, he told Wikinews. Tseng also formed Chinese Precinct Chamber of Commerce, an organisation responsible for many “community bond building initiatives”, the Lord Mayor candidate told Wikinews.

Tseng discussed his plans for leading Melbourne, recovering from COVID-19, and “Democracy 2.0” to ensure concerns of minorities in the city were also heard. Tseng also focused on the importance of the multi-culture aspect and talked about making Melbourne the capital of the aboriginals. Tseng also explained why he thinks Melbourne is poised to be a world city by 2030.

Tseng’s deputy Lord Mayor candidate Gricol Yang is a Commercial Banker and works for ANZ Banking Group.

Currently, Sally Capp is the Lord Mayor of Melbourne, the Victorian capital. Capp was elected as an interim Lord Mayor in mid-2018 after the former Lord Mayor Robert Doyle resigned from his position after sexual assault allegations. Doyle served as the Lord Mayor of Melbourne for almost a decade since 2008.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Wikinews_interviews_2020_Melbourne_Lord_Mayor_Candidate_Wayne_Tseng&oldid=4598699”

Category:June 8, 2010

? June 7, 2010
June 9, 2010 ?
June 8

Pages in category “June 8, 2010”

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Benefits Of Using Alaska Student Loan Consolidation

Submitted by: Thomas K

With high cost of education in the modern world today many students who go for higher education have been forced to look for means and ways of ensuring that they get money to cater for their tuition and at the same time get money to buy stationery and other monies that should be used for upkeep expenses. With these endless lists of expenses, the students have been forced to go and approach several lenders to give them a loan to finance their education. As a result of having very many loans, however, having many loans becomes difficulty to manage and hence the need to consolidate the loans.

Alaska student loan consolidation is used by those students who are schooling in Alaska. For many of the students who have quite number of loans with the many lenders have chosen to use the Alaska student loan consolidation so that they can be able to convert all the loans that they have into one particular repayment system with only one lender. There is some benefit of using the Alaska student loan consolidation and these include the reduced interest rate. By the fact that there is low interest rate, you will be making less payments compared to when making payments to the many lenders differently.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9OtNgpDfPA[/youtube]

It is also very important for students to consider the consolidators who will help in catering for your needs as a student. There are very many Alaska student loan consolidation companies that are giving students the best deal that has some benefits like very low cost for any financial programs, grants to some programmes, reduction in the cost of the loan and the outreach programs that many students do enjoy. Another benefit is that you will be in a position to enjoy is the one bill for all your federal loans.

By joining the Alaska student loan consolidation, the students who graduate will never be burdened as they look for the jobs since they have consolidated their loans making it easier to manage their accounts when they do not have the jobs, unlike in the case of students who have not consolidated their loans and have to pay the many lenders as they are out looking for a job.

Alaska student loan consolidation is gaining much popularity since it can be able to cater for those students who live in the secluded area or within the city. The many students who have benefited from Alaska student loan consolidation do say that their parents do not have to worry about the debt loans of their students.

As the demand for Alaska student loan consolidation increases among the students there are very many companies that are willing to provide the automatic private loan consolidation. Very many borrowers have been known to make huge savings by accepting to go for the Alaska student loan consolidation. Very many companies for Alaska student loan consolidation have helped the students greatly by reducing the monthly repayments and then prolonging the period of pay that can take up to ten years.

About the Author: Thomas K is a finance fanatic and has always been highly interested in this subject. All this hard work has paid off and he hopes to share it with everyone. He is also a food junkie and has a website at

coffee makers reviews

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