Saturday, February 4, 2006

The Bush Administration said Thursday that it will request a Defense Department budget of US$439.3 billion for 2007. This is an increase of over 4%. This does not include a planned supplemental bill to fund ongoing actions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The proposal’s details are still not final, but the budget that President Bush will submit next week will be for planning purposes. $2.3 billion of the budget will go to preparing for a bird flu epidemic.

Many weapons programs were tweaked but no major weapon system was cut. Funding for unmanned aircraft will be increased.

Thursday, June 23, 2005

Farming in urban areas has been banned in the latest turn in the Zimbabwean government’s ‘crackdown’ on the country’s poor.

Zimbabwe is in the grip of a chronic drought and with food supplies running low, thousands fear starvation after they were told they could no longer supplement their food supply with crops grown themselves. A police spokesman told a UN news agency that they were under government instruction to prevent urban farming.

Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said “a lot of harm is being done to the environment. Why can’t those who want to cultivate crops go to rural areas, where people are being allocated farms under the land reform programme?”

People living in urban areas had taken to growing their staple crop – maize – and other grains in patches of land near their houses. Much of the land being used had already been earmarked for cultivation, but the police have been told to ignore any such designations.

A non-governmental organisation, Environment Africa, agreed with some of the policy. “We totally understand and appreciate the need for urban people to supplement their incomes, but they should not do it the wrong way. Ideally, farming should be done on farms, not in towns. What we have witnessed is an irreparable damage to the environment, which will certainly have dire consequences for our beloved cities,” said an official.

A spokesman for the opposition — the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) — said that while planting on undesignated land, especially amid a maze of houses in townships, was not something they could approve, planting on designated areas should be allowed.

Such urban farming could produce up to 100,000t of grain in a good year, the spokesman added. He believes the government aims to drive urban people — who are often MDC supporters — out into the countryside, with the promise of getting land under the “reform program”.

As international concern about Zimbabwe grows, Kofi Annan plans to send a special envoy to assess the situation. However, he has not scheduled a date for the visit.

Wednesday, May 4, 2005

Horia Teodorescu, a student in 10th grade at Costache Negruzzi College in Ia?i, northeastern Romania, won the annual worldwide NASA Space Settlement Design Contest. The contest is sponsored by the Fundamental Space Biology Program of the United States‘ space agency, NASA. The task of the contest is for students to develop designs for a permanent orbital space colony. For his design, Teodorescu was awarded a visit to a NASA base in the USA.

Concerning the contest, Teodorescu said, “I designed a space colony which is called ‘Temis’, a personification of the Greek goddess of wisdom. The project is made up of four parts.” He said that the development of the space colony in his design has two phases – “Firstly, there is the construction period, in which the Moon is used as a base for extracting and processing materials. This would last about one year. After that, there would be a period of 4-5 years, in which the population of the colony would reach 10,000.” In 15 years, Teodorescu projects in his design that the population would reach 100,000, and reach the stage where the colony would be able to sustain itself and to start developing its own economic, social and educational systems.

During the design’s conception, Teodorescu was aided by his teachers, Adrian Koriloff, Margareta Constantinescu, Nicolae Hirtan and Lucia Miron, as well as his father Horia Neculai Teodorescu, who is a professor at the Ia?i University. Teodorescu also participated in the same contest in 2004, where he received second place. The first prize was also obtained by Romanians, more precisely a group of students from Constan?a.

The Costache Negruzzi College, founded in 1895, is, with over 1500 students, the largest secondary education facility in Ia?i, a city of 320,000 people.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

South Korean media is reporting that North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-il has named his successor, after ordering his people to pledge their alliance to his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, age 25.

Yonhap News Agency reports that the decision was made after North Korea’s recent test of a nuclear bomb on May 25. The New York Times reports that select unnamed embassies overseas received the news to pledge their support for their decision, but that there has been no official confirmation of the decision.

The South Korean presidential office refused to confirm, or deny that any change to North Korean leadership was imminent saying, “nothing has been confirmed.” If true, the news also comes just nine months after media reported that Jong-il had a “serious stroke.”

Little is known about Kim Jong-un. His name had only surfaced in 2003 when mentioned in memoirs written by a former chief of the Japanese military. Prior to that time, reports said that Jong-il had only two sons, Kim Jong-chul and Kim Jong-nam.

Thursday, August 20, 2015

Former U.S. Commissioner of Internal Revenue Mark Everson took some time to talk with Wikinews about his campaign for the U.S. Republican Party’s 2016 presidential nomination.

Everson served as Commissioner of Internal Revenue, the administrative head of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from 2003 to 2007, during the George W. Bush administration. After his departure, he briefly served as CEO of the American Red Cross, worked in the cabinet of Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, and worked for the tax consulting firm alliantgroup. He announced his candidacy this past March with a sixteen-page open letter in which he outlined the six pillars of his campaign: amnesty for illegal immigrants, reinstatement of the military draft, a promise to serve only a single presidential term, and calls for tax reform, deficit reduction, and corporate responsibility.

He was excluded from the August 6 Fox News Republican presidential debate and has been excluded from most presidential polls. However, he is listed on the Republican Party’s website as one of 18 candidates and filed a Federal Election Commission (FEC) complaint against Fox News for his exclusion from the August 6 debate.

With Wikinews reporter William S. Saturn?, Everson discusses his 2016 campaign, the media blackout of his campaign, and his views on the presidency and the possible Everson administration.