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Friday, March 10, 2006Japanese entrepreneur Daisuke “Dice-K” Enomoto, 34, is set to become the fourth private citizen in space. The Arlington, Virginia-based company “Space Adventures”, which specializes in spaceflight-related travel, announced on March 7 that Enomoto was approved by the Russian space agency as a flight candidate.

Enomoto has now passed the physical examinations necessary to be cleared for training, finished the medical preparation, and signed the contract for the flight. His training with the Russian Federal Space Agency will include physical and aeronautical preparation as well as Russian language instruction.

Enomoto will be the first Japanese person to fly to the International Space Station (ISS). His trip, to take place in a Soyuz TMA-9 rocket, is scheduled for September, with a ticket price of US$20 million.

United States entrepreneur Gregory Olsen returned from the ISS in October 2005; previous space vacationers were American Dennis Tito in 2001 and South African Mark Shuttleworth in 2002.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Journalist, counselor, painter, and US 2012 Presidential candidate Joe Schriner of Cleveland, Ohio took some time to discuss his campaign with Wikinews in an interview.

Schriner previously ran for president in 2000, 2004, and 2008, but failed to gain much traction in the races. He announced his candidacy for the 2012 race immediately following the 2008 election. Schriner refers to himself as the “Average Joe” candidate, and advocates a pro-life and pro-environmentalist platform. He has been the subject of numerous newspaper articles, and has published public policy papers exploring solutions to American issues.

Wikinews reporter William Saturn? talks with Schriner and discusses his campaign.

Tuesday, January 15, 2019

A Boeing 707 cargo plane, reported by local press as belonging to the Iranian military, crashed into houses in Karaj, near Tehran, the Iranian capital, yesterday. All but one of the sixteen on-board died; no deaths were reported on the ground, with local media reporting no-one was in the houses.

The aircraft came down into a residential area between Fath Airport, where it was attempting to land, and Payam International Airport. Fath Airport is owned by the Revolutionary Guards. State media reported the cockpit voice recorder was recovered. The army said the plane was bringing meat from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan “to help the country’s economy.”

Fars News said the crash involved pilot error. The lone survivor was a flight engineer. The entire crew were Iranians, the army said. Press TV said the crash was followed by a fire. Photographs showed the aircraft, sans wings, with the cockpit buried within a house and twisted engine parts strewn around.

The Aviation Herald reported the failed landing at Fath, which has a much shorter runway than Payam, was a mistake and the jet was supposed to land at Payam. The industry publication stated the aircraft overran the runway and broke through a perimeter barrier. It cited the Air Force as stating Saha Airlines owned the plane, and claimed a reported sixteenth death.

In 2018 another aircraft confused the two airports, performing an emergency go around at “very low height” according to The Aviation Herald.

The Centre for Aviation’s database of air carriers lists Saha as belonging to the Air Force and states it runs flights with Boeing 707s and Airbus A300s, but uses Boeing 747s for freight. Airfleets, a database detailing the aircraft operated by commercial carriers, states the aircraft uses the A300 and 747 as well as the Boeing 737. It does not, however, list any 707s. The Aviation Herald states the 707 was a freighter, despite photos showing a row of windows along each side; it lists a tail number of EP-CPP.

Wikinews contacted Boeing in an effort to establish the plane’s initial configuration when manufactured. Boeing did not release any specific information about the initial build, telling Wikinews the company “extends its profound condolences to the families and friends of those lost[…] as well as our best wishes for the recovery of those injured.” Boeing referred to the 707 involved as a “cargo plane”.

Iran’s air fleet is ageing, with sanctions restricting the purchase of both new planes and parts to maintain those already owned.

Wednesday, January 17, 2018

In findings published Sunday in Environmental International, a team from Britain’s University of Exeter reports that surfers and bodyboarders are roughly three times as likely to house antibiotic-resistant Escherichia coli and other bacteria that could easily become resistant, than other people who recreate in the coastal waters of the United Kingdom.

The epidemiological study was nicknamed the “Beach Bum Survey”. The project was performed on 143 regular surfers, body surfers and bodyboarders from around the United Kingdom. Each surfgoing participant was asked to recruit a non-surfing friend of the same sex and approximate age and who lived in the same part of the country to serve as a control, which resulted in a control group of 130.

All participants mailed in rectal swabs, and the researchers cultured the E. coli from those samples with a common antibiotic called cefotaxime. The antibiotic failed to kill the bacteria in about 9% (13 out of 143) of surfer and bodyboarder samples and 3% of the samples from the control group (4 out of 130). A deeper look into the genomes of the specific strains of bacteria found in the study volunteers showed that bacteria from surfers were four times as likely to possess genes that can be transferred from one bacterial strain to another, which can help antibiotic-susceptible bacteria become resistant. The study also involved examination of water samples from the coasts of England and Wales to estimate the risk of surfers and other beachgoers ingesting E. coli.

E. coli is a regular resident in the guts of humans and other animals. Most strains are harmless but others can cause serious disease. Like other bacteria, E. coli can undergo horizontal gene transfer, swapping genes from one bacterium to another. This can give the altered strain the ability to cause disease, survive in the presence of antibiotics or both.

Although the researchers expressed concern surfers might spread dangerous bacteria, Dr. Will Gaze, the University of Exeter Medical School professional who supervised the project, urged people not to avoid the beach: “We are not seeking to discourage people from spending time in the sea, an activity which has a lot of benefits in terms of exercise, well-being and connecting with nature”, he said. “It is important that people understand the risks involved so that they can make informed decisions about their bathing and sporting habits. We now hope that our results will help policy-makers, beach managers, and water companies to make evidence-based decisions to improve water quality even further for the benefit of public health.”

David Smith, science and policy officer of Surfers Against Sewage, which helped organise the volunteers, agreed the study was not meant to discourage surfing: “Water quality in the UK has improved vastly in the past 30 years and is some of the cleanest in Europe. Recognising coastal waters as a pathway for antibiotic resistance can allow policy makers to make changes to protect water users and the wider public from the threat of antibiotic resistance.”

One of the principal findings of this work was that existing methods may have been underestimating the prevalence of these bacteria in seawater. Previous studies have shown that even designated swimming beaches can be affected by runoff from farms or even sewage, and surfers swallow roughly ten times as much seawater as swimmers. Professor Colin Gardner of the charity Antibiotic Research UK says, these forms of runoff can have even higher concentrations of antibiotics than patients undergoing antibiotic treatment. “Research into new medicines to replace our archaic antibiotics has stagnated and unless new treatments are found, this could be potentially devastating for human health”, he warns.

The World Health Organization has reported that because so many kinds of bacteria are gaining resistance to common medicines, conditions such as pneumonia and gonnorhea may become more difficult to treat and have higher rates of sickness and death. Doctors often prescribe preventative antibiotics to patients undergoing surgery or radiation therapy, and this may also be impacted. Professor Sally Davies, England’s chief medical officer, has described a “post-antibiotic apocalypse” scenario

The European Regional Development Fund and Natural Environment Research Council provided funding for the study.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Officials say the death toll in the recent earthquake in China has reached almost 15,000. The news comes as 2,000 of the nation’s troops were dispatched to the Zipingku Dam to repair “extremely dangerous” cracks in the structure, which is upriver from Dujiangyan City, already severely hit by the disaster.

It is feared the toll will rise much further as 60,000 people are missing after the 7.9 magnitude quake in Sichuan left entire towns “razed to the ground” with no buildings standing, according to officials in the area. At one destroyed school 178 children were found dead after the building collapsed while they slept inside it. A second school at Wudu, twenty miles from the epicentre behind the White Cloud Mountain, has 130 dead children and 150 more still buried and feared dead.

Zipingku Dam has had some water drained to ease the pressure on it. According to the Ministry of Water Resources’ website “If Zipingpu develops a serious safety problem, it could bring disaster to Dujiangyan city downstream.” Numerous other dams are also affected, including several others near Dujiangyan. In addition, experts from France’s Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety say it cannot yet be ruled out that a number of nuclear power facilities in the area have been affected.

50,000 troops have been brought to the area to provide assistance. However, emergency response is being made difficult by continuing poor weather and landslides that have cut off Wenchuan county. In Mianyang alone, one of the worst-hit cities, some 19,000 people are thought to be buried under rubble and the first rescuers to reach the epicenter state tens of thousands may be dead there as well. The Wenchuan town of Yingxiu has only 2,300 confirmed survivors from a 12,000-strong population. Some aid in the form of food, water and medicine has arrived by helicopter, but rotorcraft operations are very dangerous due to ongoing poor weather. Trucks loaded with noodles and biscuits were raided by crowds before the aid could be properly handed out. The People’s Liberation Army intends to send in paratroopers.

“They had better set up a distribution system, or we will be stealing what we can,” one survivor promised.

Meanwhile, accusations of blame over the scale of the effects have been leveled at construction companies and local authorities. The allegations say that the firms used substandard techniques and materials when building many projects, and corrupt local authorities deliberately ignored the problem. Some people have nicknamed the resulting structures “tofu buildings”, an allusion to the fact that they are alleged to be ‘as soft as tofu‘. “It’s nothing but corruption – they must have used sub-standard cement and steel,” said rescuer Dr Tian, who withheld his second name from journalists. It is also alleged that both local residents and international scientific organisations were ignored when they warned of a large impending earthquake.

As a mark of respect, the Olympic torch relay will be scaled back in response to the earthquake.