|
This is the category for Southampton, a city in Hampshire, England. Refresh this list to see the latest articles.
|
From Wikinews, the free news source you can write. Bargate gatehouse, 2014 (Image: Richard Nevll) Sister projects
|
Sunday, January 12, 2020
On Friday, Qaboos bin Said, the long-serving Sultan of Oman, died aged 79. He had recently had health problems, reportedly colon cancer. Tributes were paid by world leaders including the Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
The government of Oman announced three days of mourning. Before Qaboos’s burial at a family cemetery, his successor, Haitham bin Tariq Al Said, attended funeral prayers at the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque in Muscat.
Qaboos became Sultan in 1970 after overthrowing his father, Sultan Said bin Taimur. By the time of his death, Qaboos’s reign was the longest in the Arab world. He was known for pursuing a neutral foreign policy and mediating in several Middle Eastern disputes as a “friend to all and enemy to none”. Most notably, he helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal that was signed in 2015.
Recently there had been growing concerns over his health. Following a week-long stay in a Belgian hospital, he returned to Oman in the middle of December, although there was no official information on what treatment he had received.
Qaboos was born 1940 and received his education in India and the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst in the United Kingdom, followed by a cultural tour of the world. Arriving back home in 1964, he turned to the study of Islamic law and Omani history.
Qaboos’s 1970 overthrew of his father was a bloodless British-backed coup. He began a programme of reform which changed his poorly-developed country into a relatively prosperous nation.
Qaboos did not have children, so Omani law allowed three days for a royal council to select a successor. If they could not do so, the council and other leaders would open a sealed letter from Qaboos naming his preferred successor.
When the royal council met, they chose to open the letter and acknowledged Qaboos’s cousin, Haitham, as the new Sultan. After the funeral, Haitham said he would continue Qaboos’s policies including a neutral approach to foreign affairs.
Sunday, January 13, 2013
The United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered a review Friday into the design and manufacture of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, following five incidents in five days involving the aircraft and two Japanese airlines.
On Monday, an electrical fire broke out aboard a Japan Airlines 787 at Boston’s Logan International Airport, when a battery pack which powers the auxiliary power unit, for when the plane is on the ground, caught fire. The fire was discovered by maintenance workers after passengers and crew disembarked following their flight from Tokyo’s Narita Airport.
The next day, a separate Japan Airlines 787, also at Logan International Airport, heading to Tokyo, suffered a fuel leak that spilled around 40 gallons, which was spotted by the crew of the aircraft taxiing behind them. “That Japan Air may know it, but they’ve got fuel or something spilling out the outboard left wing. Quite a bit,” said the pilot of aircraft behind them on local air traffic control frequencies.
Wednesday, in Japan, an All Nippon Airways 787, the launch customer for the aircraft, cancelled a flight after a brake problem was reported.
Earlier Friday, two All Nippon Airways suffered separate incidents in Japan. An oil leak was noticed in the engine after one aircraft had landed in Miyazaki, coming from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. Another flight, flying between Haneda Airport and Matsuyama said the pilot’s side window in the cockpit suffered a crack.
The FAA in a statement said “In light of a series of recent events, the FAA will conduct a comprehensive review of the Boeing 787 critical systems, including the design, manufacture and assembly.” Further adding, “The purpose of the review is to validate the work conducted during the certification process and further ensure that the aircraft meets the FAA’s high level of safety.”
According to the statement, “The review will also examine how the electrical and mechanical systems interact with each other.” The Boeing 787 relies more on electrical, as opposed to mechanical, systems than past aircraft from the manufacturer including having electronics operate hydraulic pumps and using electric brakes. Large portions of the plane’s structure use lightweight carbon fiber composite instead of more traditional metal airframe.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said, “The safety of the traveling public is our top priority […] This review will help us look at the root causes and do everything we can to safeguard against similar events in the future.”
“We are confident that the aircraft is safe. But we need to have a complete understanding of what is happening,” said newly sworn-in FAA Administrator Michael P. Huerta. “We are conducting the review to further ensure that the aircraft meets our high safety standards.”
Boeing released a statement saying, “[The company] is confident in the design and performance of the 787. It is a safe and efficient airplane. The airplane has logged 50,000 hours of flight and there are more than 150 flights occurring daily.”
Does Your Coffee Mug Harbor Harmful Bacteria?
by
Stacy Toolson
Studies show that your coffee mug might be harboring harmful bacteria. You want cream and sugar with your morning Joe, but thats about it. Whats even more frightening is the bacteria are fecal matter bacteria. Yes, germs from poop might be living in your coffee mug. When Clay Alexander designed Ember, his temperature-controlled mug, he was thinking about enjoying the perfect cup of coffee or tea for hours. What he imagined is also a step in the right direction toward better food safety.
Whats in a Cup?
According to Charles Gerba, Ph.D., who is a professor at the University of Arizona, Colonies of germs are living in your favorite cup. During an interview with Mens Health, Gerba relayed that studies show nearly 20 percent of coffee mugs are a breeding ground for fecal bacteria. Even if you rinse out your mug everyday and give it a quick scrub with your kitchen sponge, you still run the risk of having a unique and harmful additive in your morning Joe.
Whats worse is your coffee maker, whether a single-cup or multi-cup brewer, also houses bacteria. Even if you run that white vinegar through it once a month, these machines can turn into a Petri dish, and this makes sense if you think about it. Once the machine is done brewing your cup or pot, the warmth and moisture inside creates a fertile environment for bacterial growth, which is why it is important to keep the liquid at a hot temperature. Enter
Clay Alexander
.
The Ember
As you know, cooking to temperatures between 145 and 165 degrees Fahrenheit will kill any harmful bacteria harboring in meat. The same concept might hold true for coffee. You maker brews it super hot, not only to draw the coffee out of the ground beans but also to make certain its safe to drink. What you might now know is that even after brewing, your coffee will still grow bacteria, so its important to keep the liquid warm while youre drinking it.
Ember is a coffee mug manufactured by Ember Technologies. This mug will make your brew safe an enjoyable in two ways. It can keep our coffee heated to a temperature of 150 degrees Fahrenheit, which will discourage harmful bacteria from growing inside your mug. It will also cool your Joe to 120 degrees Fahrenheit, which means youll be less likely to have the rude tongue-scalding awakening first thing in the morning. You get the best of both worlds with this innovative coffee mug.
Keep it Clean
Of course, to prevent harmful bacteria from growing in the Ember, or any other coffee mug for that matter, you must keep it clean. If you purchase an Ember, follow its cleaning instructions to the tee, as this is a sensitive technological wonder. If you have a ceramic or plastic mug, run it through your dishwasher daily. Your best approach, however, is keeping your coffee hot throughout your drinking duration, and the Ember will do that.
When Clay Alexander invented Ember, he wanted to design a mug that made drinking coffee pleasurable. Making it safer to drink is icing on the cake.
John Trinh has been writing for 10+ years. He first delved into the world of writing when he wrote his first article for his university’s paper. Since then, John has enjoyed writing about technology, business, marketing, and anything that he thinks he should write about.
Article Source:
eArticlesOnline.com}
Thursday, June 30, 2005
Seoul —
The OhmyNews International Citizen Reporters’ Forum (see previous report) concluded on Saturday with several speeches and a visit to sponsoring companies in South Korea’s technology sector. Some invited “citizen reporters” from around the world extended their stay by several days to tour the country. Since the conclusion of the conference, presentations and transcripts have been published on the OhmyNews web site. [1]
Friday, August 2, 2013
A man and a woman have been killed in a road traffic accident near Connel in the west of Scotland. Seven people, including three children, were also injured in the head-on collision on the A85 road in Argyll at approximately 1830 BST (1730 UTC) yesterday.
A 74-year-old female passenger of a blue Honda CRV and a 32-year-old male passenger of a blue Vauxhall Vectra died at the scene of the crash. The Vauxhall driver, a 32-year-old woman, was transported by helicopter to Glasgow’s Southern General Hospital, where she is reportedly in a critical albeit stable condition.
Three child passengers in the Vauxhall, aged fourteen, five and two, were taken to Oban Hospital and given treatment for minor injuries, as were the Honda’s 51-year-old female driver and two female passengers aged 49 and 46.
A Scottish Fire and Rescue Service spokesperson said hydraulic cutting equipment was used during rescue efforts. “Ambulance personnel and police officers worked closely with our team throughout the incident but sadly one passenger from each car lost their life”, the spokesperson continued. “The thoughts of all emergency responders who were at the scene will be with the casualties and their loved ones as they attempt to come to terms with what has happened.”
Police have appealed for potential witnesses to contact them.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
The Internet has already brought great things to the world, but has also brought spam, phishing, scamming, etc. We all have seen them across the Internet. They promise money, weight loss, or other things a person may strive for, but they usually amount to only a lighter pocket. Online advertising has become something that the increasingly Internet-reliant society has become used to, as well as more aware of. As this is true, online ads have become more intricate and deceptive in recent years.
However, a certain type of advertisement has arisen recently, and has become more deceptive than any other Internet ad, and has tricked many users into credit card charges. These sites claim to be news websites that preach a “miracle product”, and they offer a free trial, and then charge the user’s credit card a large amount of money without informing them after the trial ends. These sites appear to be operating under one venture and have caught ad pages of high-traffic websites by storm. In this report, Wikinews’ Tjc6 investigates news advertisement sites.
These Internet ads work in different ways:
Hypothetically speaking, a reader is browsing the web, and then happens to come across something that they believe is too good to be true. A link on one of these high-traffic pages promises white teeth, weight loss, or huge profits from working at home part-time. Out of curiosity, they click on the link.
This is the way that people are attracted to these fake news sites on the internet. The domain owners draw in customers by purchasing advertising on some of the World Wide Web’s most visited pages. Curious users click and are led to what they believe is a news article. From anti-aging to shedding weight, these “articles” from non-existant newspapers and television stations depict a skeptical news reporter trying a product because they were instructed to by a superior.
As the user reads on, they find that the “reporter” miraculously achieves significant weight loss, teeth whitening, or other general health and beauty improvement. The reporter states that the reader can get the same results as they did by using a “free trial” of the product.
Next, the user looks to the bottom of the page, where there seems to be a set of user comments, all of them praising the product or products that are advertised — this is where we first see something suspicious. Across several of these false articles, the comments appear to show the exact same text, sometimes with even the same usernames as other sites.
There is obviously some kind of correlation. Although this appears to be true, most users who purchase these products do not look at multiple versions of these similar pages of what appears to be a fast-growing network of interconnected fake news sites.
Once customers have convinced themselves into buying the product, they are led to a product (or products) website which promises a free trial for a very low price. What they do not know about this, however, is that they are giving their credit card data to a company that will charge it automatically after the trial ends. In about 14 days, the user receives a charge on their credit card for an excessive amount of money, usually from about $80 to $100 (USD). All attempts to contact these companies and cancel their shipments usually prove to be futile.
What these sites have is a large amount of legal copy located at the bottom of each site, stating their right to charge the user. This site, a fake news article claiming to offer teeth-whitening benefits, has several paragraphs of fine print, including this: “…Upon signing up for the 10 day trial membership you will be charged up to $4.97 depending on various shipping and initial offer promotions at that time but not more than $4.97 upon signing. If not cancelled, you will be charged $89.97 upon completion of the 10 day trial period. Monthly thereafter or 30 days from the original order date, the charge will reoccur monthly at a total of $89.97 until cancelled…,” the site says.
Practices like this have alerted the Better Business Bureau, an American organization that studies and reports on the reliability and practices of US businesses. In a press release, a spokesman from the BBB spoke out against sites like this. “Many businesses across the country are using the same selling model for their products: They lure customers in with claimed celebrity endorsements and free trial offers, and then lock them in by making it extremely difficult to cancel the automatic delivery of more products every month…,” said the report that denounced the websites.
When a user looks at several of these sites, they notice that all of them have the same exact structure. Because of this, Wikinews decided to look into where some of the domains were owned, and if they were all in fact part of one company.
However, the results that Wikinews found were ones that were not expected. Out of the three random websites that were found in Internet ads, all using similar designs and methods to attract the customers, came from three different locations in three countries and two separate continents. The first came from Scottsdale, in the United States, while the next two came from Vancouver and Hamburg. There is no location correlation, but surely, there has to be something that connected these sites together. We had to look even further to try to find a connection.
|
HAVE YOUR SAY
|
|
|
What do you think of these sites? Have you ever fallen for an advertisement similar to this one?
|
|
|
Add or view comments
|
|
There is some correlation within the product’s contact information. A large amount of the teeth-whitening products analyzed actually shared the same phone number, which lead to a distribution center located in St. Petersburg, Florida, and several other similar distribution centers located across the Southern United States. But, that explains only one of the categories of products that these websites cover, teeth whitening.
What about the other products? The other products such as weight loss and work-at-home kits all trace back to similar distribution centers in similar places. So, what do we make of all of this?
There is obviously some company that promotes these products through the fake news advertisements, but that company is nowhere to be found on the websites. All contact information is given on the product pages, and websites are copyrighted under the name of the domain, not a company. Whatever company has been the setup for these pages has been very good at hiding themselves from the Internet, as there is no information across the web about that mysterious large advertiser.
As a result of customers buying the products and having unauthorized charges on their credit cards, a large volume of complaints are currently present on awareness sites, complaint sites, and even the Better Business Bureau. Several customers point out that they were not informed of the steep charges and the company made it extremely difficult to cancel their subscription, usually resulting in the loss of several hundred dollars.
One notable lawsuit has occurred as a result of these articles. Some of the articles about work at home kits specifically advertise things like “work for Google”, or “job openings at Google”. However, Google asserts these claims as false and has taken the case to court, as it is a copyright violation. “Thousands of people have been tricked into sending payment information and being charged hidden fees by questionable operations,” said Google in a statement.
The BBB has received over 3,000 complaints about products such as the ones that Google took offense to. The lawsuit has yet to begin in court, and no date has been set.
Click Here To Know More About:
byAlma Abell
With the advancement in technology, you can now enjoy a luxurious shower with just a press of the button. The use of electric showers has increased in the current times because of their efficiency and splendid styles. An electric shower has many inbuilt features that allow hot water to flow smoothly. You can easily control the water temperature as well as the amount of water flowing from the shower.
Decorative pull switches and designer switches have also become quite common in many modern households. These beautiful and unique switches can help to complement the decor of any room. They are supplied in a variety of colors and designs. Other decorative electrical supplies include sockets and screw-less switches, which appear quite sophisticated. The sockets are designed to cover screws, and thus prove to be a kind of embellishment to the rooms.
Today, modern homes require trendy and stylish electrical appliances that complement their interior decor. There is a wide range of electrical supplies that are stylish and affordable in the market today. Therefore, you can easily find the best Electrical Supply NYC, which will provide safety as well as style. Most decorative electrical appliances are supplied in a variety of designs and colors to match the interiors of any room. For example, lights, cables and fan switches are available in different colors such as brass color, black nickel, and satin chrome so that they can match the interiors decor of any home.
When you purchase your decorative Electrical Supply NYC from S & V General Supply Co. Inc., it is important you hire a license electrician to install it for you. A qualified electrician has adequate knowledge of the different types of electrical supplies. They will that your newly purchased electrical supply is installed properly and in a way, it adds the decor of the room. It is important you consider factors such as experience, education, licenses, insurance and the location of the electrician before you hire their services.
There are other decorative electrical supplies such as heating systems, ceiling fans, electric boxes, extension cords, security systems and power controllers available in the market today. However, you should make sure that all your electrical devices are installed by a qualified electrician to avoid the dangers associated with faulty installations.
Featured articles are selected by the community to represent the best of Wikinews. See the Featured Article Candidates page for nominations and discussions of candidate articles for this page. Or, subscribe to the RSS feed!
Thursday, March 9, 2006
Toronto’s public utility, Toronto Hydro Telecom, will make Canada’s largest city into a huge wireless hotspot.
“This is both an exciting and very important initiative for the city of Toronto”, said Toronto’s mayor, David Miller. “It puts us on the leading edge of the telecommunications industry nationwide and globally.”
Toronto Hydro Telecom will offer customers free access for the first six months. After that, it will begin to charge for services.
“Wi-Fi technology is the new benchmark for urban living”, stated Toronto Hydro president David Dobbin. “It’s standard equipment in many electronic devices, from laptops to portable entertainment units.”
Private telephone companies are questioning why a public utility needs to compete with the private sector.
Mike Lee of Rogers Communications Inc. questioned why the city of Toronto wanted to enter the internet access business.
“It will not be an easy business”, Lee told the National Post. “In this day and age, the focus should be on core operations more than anything. I was surprised to see they are looking to get into this business.”
Brian Sharwood, a telecom analyst in Toronto, said the municipality will likely install the wireless transmitters and receivers on its lamp posts as a way to blanket the city, a process known as “wireless mesh networking”.