Tuesday, May 9, 2006For the first time in three decades, direct and at least partially public diplomatic communication will commence between the United States (US) and Iran. Iranian government spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham said that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has sent a letter to the U.S. president George W. Bush proposing “new solutions for getting out of international problems and the current fragile situation of the world”.

Mr Gholam-Hossein Elham did not say whether the letter mentioned the nuclear dispute, one of the diplomatic problems currently straining relations between Iran and the USA. This information arrived one day after the Iranian parliament announced that it might retract from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) if Western pressure over its programme was to increase.

Differing reports have been made as to whether or not the letter will be made public, and if so, when. In its online report of 8 May 2006, 09:25 GMT, the BBC quoted Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi as saying that the contents of the letter would be made public once Bush had received it. The updated version of the report of 8 May 2006, 14:52 GMT, quotes Asefi as saying that the contents would be made public “at the right time”. An ABC report quoted Gholam-Hossein Elham as saying “it is not an open letter.”

Iran’s foreign affairs minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, delivered the letter to the United States’ interests section in the Swiss embassy in Tehran on Monday. The United States has not held diplomatic relations with Iran since the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said “this letter isn’t it. This letter is not the place that one would find an opening to engage on the nuclear issue or anything of the sort.”

“It isn’t addressing the issues that we’re dealing with in a concrete way,” she added.

John R. Bolton, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, also read the letter, saying, “I think it is typical of Iran that when major decisions are about to be taken … that they have tried to throw sand in the eyes of the proponents of the action. That’s what this may be.”

The letter has since been put on an official Iranian website, and on Tuesday, Ahmadinejad said “the letter to US President George Bush carries the Iranian nation’s views and comments on international issues as well as suggestions for resolving the many problems facing humanity.”

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.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Eric Bogosian is one of America’s great multi-dimensional talents. “There’s sort of three different careers, and any one of them could exist by itself, on its own two feet. There was that solo stuff, and then I started writing plays in the late seventies.” Although his work has spanned genres, most readers will recognize Bogosian for his acting, which has included a memorable performance in Woody Allen‘s Deconstructing Harry to co-writing and starring in the Oliver Stone movie Talk Radio (based upon his Pulitzer Prize-nominated play) to playing the bad guy in Under Siege 2 to his current role in Law & Order: Criminal Intent as Captain Danny Ross. They may not know, however, that he had collaborated with Frank Zappa on a album, worked with Sonic Youth, and was a voice on Mike Judge‘s Beavis & Butthead Do America. He started one of New York City’s largest dance companies, The Kitchen, which is still in existence. He starred alongside Val Kilmer in Wonderland and his play Talk Radio was recently revived on Broadway with Liev Schreiber in the role Bogosian wrote and made famous.

Currently at work on his third novel, tentatively titled The Artist, Bogosian spoke with David Shankbone about the craft of writing and his life as a creative.

Wednesday, December 24, 2014With the English-language Wikinews continuing to increase the amount of original content published, we take a look back at some of the eighty-plus original reports from our contributors during 2014.

Saturday, May 27, 2017

On Friday, Zbigniew Brzezinski, a professor and former U.S. National Security Advisor of the Jimmy Carter administration, died at the age of 89.

The New York Times reported he died at a Falls Church, Virginia hospital.

Brzezinski’s daughter Mika announced her father’s death via Instagram. Others paid tribute to Brzezinski, including Joe Scarborough, Mika’s co-host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, via Twitter and former U.S. president Jimmy Carter via statement.

Brzezinski was born on March 28, 1928 in Warsaw, Poland. His father Tadeusz, a diplomat, moved his family from Europe to Montreal, Canada in 1938 before World War II. Tadeusz retired from politics in 1944 when the Communists occupied his home country, so his family settled in the Canadian countryside.

Zbigniew Brzezinski earned two degrees from Canada’s McGill University and then, in the United States, earned a doctorate from Harvard University. He began his teaching career at Harvard and then Columbia University.

Throughout 1960s, Brzezinski worked for John F. Kennedy as his advisor and then the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. During the 1976 selections he advised Carter on foreign policy, then served as National Security Advisor (NSA) from 1977 to 1981, succeeding Henry Kissinger. As NSA, he assisted Carter in diplomatically handling world affairs, such as the Camp David Accords, 1978; normalizing US–China relations thought the late 1970s; the Iranian Revolution, which led to the Iran hostage crisis, 1979; and the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan, 1979.

For his role in politics, Brzezinski earned the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1981 and later the U.S. Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service in 2016. He has lately taught international studies at the Johns Hopkins University and worked as a counselor for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Brzezinski wrote multiple books and some articles, including several from the 1950s.

Brzezinski was survived by his wife Eileen and his three children: daughter Mika and sons Ian and Mark.

Monday, May 11, 2009

The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission is investigating claims that the United States used white phosphorus bombs in an attack against Taliban militants on May 4. The attack is reported to have killed over 100 civilians.

The claim that the US used phosphorus bombs come from a doctor at a burn hospital in Herat that treated victims of the attack. Dr. Mohammad Aref Jalali says that many of the injured people from the Bala Baluk village in Farah Province, had “unusual” burns on their bodies.

“We cannot be 100% sure what type of chemical it was and we do not have the equipment here to find out. One of the women who came here told us that 22 members of her family were totally burned. She said a bomb distributed white powder that caught fire and then set people’s clothes alight,” said Jalali. His claims prompted the rights group to launch an investigation.

U.S. officials denied having used any chemical weapons and also deny the reports that 147 civilians had been killed in the raid. General James L. Jones, a U.S. security adviser for the military in Afghanistan apologized for the loss of civilians, but also said that the Taliban is using them as “human shields.” The U.S. also said that the Taliban had, in the past, used or possessed white phosphorus in at least 44 previous incidents. At least 11 of the incidents involved the use of white phosphorus shells.

“The insurgents possess and use white phosphorus as a weapon against people. It’s a law of war that we adhere to but the insurgents blatantly violate,” said Colonel Greg Julian, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Afghanistan. The U.S. military admits they use white phosphorus for illumination and smokescreens, but not as a weapon.

Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai criticized last weeks attack saying the U.S. is losing the “moral” battle with Afghanistan in terms of civilian deaths. The U.S. military said it would work to correct any errors they make when fighting with Taliban militants.

“We’re going to take a look at trying to make sure we correct those things we can correct, but certainly to tie the hands of our commanders and say we’re not going to conduct airstrikes would be imprudent,” Jones said in an interview with ABC News, as quoted by the New York Times.

The reports of the possible use of phosphorus bombs comes just months after Israel confirmed they used at least 20 white phosphorus bombs inside civilian areas during the IDF‘s offensive in the Gaza Strip in December of 2008 through January of this year. It is reported that the bombs were 155mm, M825E1 which were made in the U.S.. Nearly 1,300 Palestinians, the majority being civilians, died and nearly 5,450 were injured during the three-week offensive. Thirteen Israeli soldiers were also killed.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Forecasters predict that northern lights could be visible to the naked eye late tonight and early tomorrow morning across Canada, northern parts of the U.S., and possibly the United Kingdom.

Solar storms caused a large ejection of plasma from the Sun’s surface on Sunday, and the plasma is heading directly towards Earth. The plasma, a cloud of rapidly moving hydrogen gas atoms and subatomic particles, is expected to reach us late Tuesday. The plasma will interact with the Earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere, which will cause northern lights, or aurora borealis, to be visible much further south than is usual. Northern lights usually appear as green or red rivers of lights across the sky.

“It’s the first major Earth-directed eruption in quite some time” said astronomer Leon Golub of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The eruption was detected by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which was launched in February 2010, and is currently orbiting the Earth.

The Sun goes through approximately eleven-year long activity cycles, with the last maximum occurring in 2001. Sunday’s eruption is a sign that the many years of inactivity is over, and the Sun is heading towards another maximum.