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Tuesday, April 14, 2020

In February 2017, the Iranian Chess Federation announced two teenage chess players, Dorsa Derakhshani and her younger brother Borna Derakhshani, were banned from representing the national team. The federation announced their decision although Dorsa Derakhshani had previously decided and informed the chess federation she did not wish to play for Iran.

Dorsa Derakhshani is currently 21 years old and holds the International Master (IM) as well as Woman Grand Master (WGM) titles. Her brother, Borna, plays for the English Federation and holds the FIDE Master title.

Dorsa Derakhshani was banned since she did not wear a hijab, an Islamic headscarf, while competing at the Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival in January 2017. Under the laws of Islamic Republic of Iran, hijab is a mandatory dress code. Her brother Borna Deraskhsani was banned for playing against Israeli Grand Master (GM) Alexander Huzman at the same tournament. Iran does not recognise the existence of Israel, and previously, Irani athletes have avoided playing against Israeli athletes.

Mehrdad Pahlavanzadeh, the president of the country’s chess federation, explained the decision to ban the players saying, “As a first step, these two will be denied entry to all tournaments taking place in Iran and in the name of Iran, they will no longer be allowed the opportunity to be present on the national team.” ^{((fa))Farsi language: ?????? ????? ?? ??? ??? ?? ??? ????? ?? ?? ???? ???????? ?? ?? ????? ? ?? ??? ????? ?????? ??????? ????? ??????? ? ???? ???? ???? ?? ??? ??? ?? ??????? ????.} He further stated, “Unfortunately, something that should not have happened has happened and our national interest is paramount and we have reported this position to the Ministry of Sports.” ^{((fa))Farsi language: ????????? ?????? ?? ????? ????????? ?????? ??? ? ????? ??? ?? ?? ?? ???? ?????? ???? ? ?? ??? ???? ?? ?? ????? ???? ?? ????? ?????.}

IM Dorsa Derakhshani, who currently studies at Saint Louis University in the United States and plays for the United States Chess Federation, discussed her chess career, time in Iran and the 2017 controversy, and her life in Saint Louis with a Wikinews correspondent.

Thursday, June 2, 2005

Darwin’s Ltd. opened a second location of their sandwich shop at 1613 Cambridge Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in late May. It is situated across from Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. Previously limited to one location at 148 Mount Auburn Street, the second store seats approximately 30 people and sells sandwiches, coffee drinks, locally made pastries, as well as some produce and snack foods. The establishment also provides free wireless access through the WanderingWifi service. The shop plays music during the day; during this reporter’s visit to the shop, selections played ranged from David Bowie to The Strokes. The store is air-conditioned.

Key differences between the original store and the new one include the unification of the cafe and the sandwich line now behind one counter, handicap accessible restrooms, no beer or wine sold at location, and a lack of a loyal customer base. Although the recent months have been slow, business is expected to pick up with the return of Cambridge area students this autumn.

While the original location of Darwin’s was recently cited for lacking sneeze guards before the kitchen counter, according to the Cambridge Chronicle, the new Darwin’s has acrylic sheets along the front of their sandwich counter. The original Darwin’s has installed the sneeze guard at the kitchen counter the day following citation.

Thursday, November 2, 2006

Helsinki, Finland —The Finnish Parliamentary Ombudsman has found that an infant formula study has been conducted on thousands of newborns in several hospitals without obtaining informed consent from the parents, who were not informed of the commercial funding for the study. Additionally, the study was found to have been started and carried out for six months withoutethical committee approval, and suffered from other shortcomings.

Monday, August 29, 2016

On Friday, French capital football club Paris Saint-Getmain announced they loaned Italian goalkeeper Salvatore Sirigu to Spanish club Sevilla F.C. till the season end.

29-year-old Sirigu started his career in Italy and joined the Parisians five years ago, in 2011. After playing 60 Serie A matches from 2009 to 2011, Sirigu became the first-choice goalkeeper at PSG for four years, playing 145 matches.

In five seasons at Parc des Princes, Sirigu has won four consecutive Ligue 1 titles, three Trophée des Champions, three Coupe de la Ligue, and two Coupe de France. Sirigu has played seventeen international matches, debuting in 2010.

Last season, German goalkeeper Kevin Trapp joined PSG and became their first-choice keeper. Lacking playing time with PSG, Sirigu signed the contract with Sevilla on Friday, after passing the medical tests hours before.

Per the agreement between the clubs, PSG has not included an option for Sevilla to buy the player.

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Nintendo has released its newest video game console in North America. Known as the Wii, the system and games have an MSRP of US$249.99 and US$49.99 respectively. The North American release is to be followed by the December 2nd launch in Japan and the December 8th launch in Europe.

Launched officially at midnight, more than a thousand people gathered in New York’s Time Square to be among the first to buy one of the Wii. In contrast to the crowds that have challenged crowd control officials over the last two days in connection with the launch of Sony’s Playstation 3, the Wii crowds have been much calmer. Many observers attribute this to the fact that Nintendo had more than ten times as many Wii consoles available on launching day than Sony did for their PS3 that had been hounded by part shortages in manufacturing right up to the day of launch.

Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime said that several tough choices had been made in the design of the Wii. The company decided to develop a new way of playing games with revolutionary controllers instead of following the PS3 and the Xbox down the road of stunning graphic and multimedia options. This produced a console with a much talked-about sensor/controller design and the lowest price point of the three major consoles. While not having a DVD player or high-definition TV capabilities, the Wii retails for about $250 while its competitors the Xbox 360 and PS3 retail for about $400 and $600 respectively.

While the Wii will launch with several games available, one of its advertised advantages is that the new console is largely compatible with older games made for the GameCube, giving the new console an instant and extensive launching library. A GameCube controller will be needed to play GameCube games with the Wii. Several hardware items that GameCube games may be expecting, such as the modem or broadband adapter or the GameBoy player are not supported on the Wii.

Across the country in Los Angeles about 500 people were waiting for the doors to open at Universal City Walk’s Game Stop store. Fearing that the Wii introduction might be as contentious as the PS3 debut just a few days ago, the store handed out numbered wristbands to the throng. No problems were reported.

Sunday, February 10, 2008

The Internet group Project Chanology today held protests critical of the Church of Scientology. The protests marked what would have been the 49th birthday of Lisa McPherson, who is claimed to be a victim of the Church of Scientology’s practices. Lisa died in 1995 during a running of what Scientologists refer to as an Introspection Rundown, a procedure intended to help Church members deal with a psychotic or deeply traumatic event.

Protests were planned throughout the day in 14 countries and over 50 different cities. The estimation of total protesters world wide for Feb. 10, 2008 is 9,250 people.

Wikinews had correspondents at a number of protest locations to report on the events. This article was updated throughout the day with reports from around the globe.

Friday, July 23, 2021

With five active cases of the Delta variant of COVID-19, South Australia begun a one-week lockdown on Monday. Announcing the lockdown, state Premier Steven Marshall declared “we have no alternative but to impose some fairly heavy and immediate restrictions”.

The first case out of South Australia’s active cases was presented to Modbury Hospital on Sunday night, having returned from Argentina earlier this month. The fifth, which Premier Marshall noted as “far more worrying”, visited The Greek on Halifax restaurant at the same time as someone who was later confirmed to be carrying the virus. Chief Public Health Officer for the state Nicola Spurrier said “if anyone has been at The Greek on Halifax they need to get into quarantine and get tested”.

In accordance with new regulations, there are only five reasons for South Australians to leave home: essential work, shopping for essential goods such as food, exercise, but only with people from the same household and within 2.5 kilometers (2 mi) of home, medical reasons (which includes testing and vaccination against the coronavirus, but excludes elective and cosmetic surgery), and caregiving.

Schools have closed for all but children of essential workers, with online learning having begun on Thursday. Face masks are also be mandated for those who leave home. ABC News reported that “support for businesses is expected to be announced…”, with all non-essential retail required to close under the new regulations.

Saturday, May 20, 2006

The People’s Republic of China has announced the completion of an enormous dam across the Yangtze River, an important milestone for the world’s largest hydroelectric project. The official Xinhua News Agency reports the event as a “landmark in the construction of the project.”

Launched in 1993, the Three Gorges Project, including the 2,300 metre long, 185 metre high dam with 26 power generators, is being built in three phases on the middle reaches of the Yangtze River – China’s longest river. Built with over 16 million m³ of concrete, the Three Gorges Dam is considered the biggest reinforced concrete dam in the world.

The Three Gorges Reservoir is capable of holding nearly 40 billion m³ of water, including a space of 22.15 billion m³ for extra flooded water. With a length of more than 6,300 km and a natural fall of 5,400 metres from the west to the east, the flood-prone Yangtze River is the third largest in the world.

The gigantic project is expected to generate around 15 million megawatts of electricity, 84.7 billion kWh annually when the entire project is completed in 2008. But whilst proponents of the world’s largest hydropower project laud the increased electricity generation and improved flood control as benefits to China, opponents claim destruction of the environment, ruin to China’s cultural heritage – disaffecting millions of local residents.

“In my view, building the Three Gorges dam is a ridiculous and evil farce,” says dam opponent Dai Qing. “Many people have known something is wrong with the project, but few have dared to speak up,” she said. After it becomes operational, the 660km reservoir created by the dam will drown 13 towns, 4500 villages and 162 archaeological sites.

Friends of the Earth (FoE) are also strident vocal critics. “The dam is having a titanic social and environment impact,” the group said this week. “Sometimes people are being moved out by truncheon and bulldozer because they refuse to leave their home for fear of not being rehoused. Human rights violations are massive and brutal,” it said. FoE pointed to evidence that the dam was already having a serious environment impact.

FoE points to a scientific study by the East China Normal University in Shanghai, published in March in Geophysical Research, which said that in 2004, the Three Gorges dam has reduced the supply of sediment to the Yangtze delta to just 35 per cent of the norm.

Millions of tonnes of silt are drawn along the Yangtze river every year, and critics argue the dam will intercept much of it – with potentially disastrous consequences. They say the lack of sediment further downstream would lead to soil erosion, and the accumulation of sediment in the reservoir could raise the dam level, submerging even more land.

Opponents say the reservoir could fill with the accumulated garbage from tens of millions of households. The China Yangtze River Three Gorges Project Development Corp. has spent $2.5 million on a vessel to collect as much as 7 million cubic feet of garbage that accumulates at the dam each year, according to Xinhua. Some argue that the impact of the dam project will contribute to the extinction of the rare Yangtze river dolphin.

The dam project will force the relocation of a total of 1.13 million people, and communities that have lived in the area for millennia will disappear. Researchers warn sedimentation and rising water levels in the reservoir will lead to the evacuation of tens of thousands more people.

But as the waters rise, that which can not be saved will disappear along with some world famous natural scenery. Critics say the dam is under threat from earthquakes, with two geological fault lines nearby. Officials working on the project counter this by saying the worst that can happen is a tremor measuring 6.0 on the Richter scale, while the dam is built to withstand force 7.0.

“Although the dam is now complete, we still have a long way to go and cannot become self-satisfied or relax our efforts in the least,” Li Yongan, general manager of the Three Gorges Project Development Corp, said. The official China Daily in an editorial called for people to remember the more than 100 workers whom died during the dam’s construction. “The best possible way to repay such a debt of gratitude is to make sure the highest safety and quality standards are observed up till the very end of the entire building process,” the editorial said.