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Saturday, February 3, 2007

At least 19 people have been killed in central Florida in the city of Lady Lake and Paisley after severe storms and a tornado ripped through the cities in the middle of the night. Eleven of those killed were in Paisley and three were in Lady Lake.

The death toll is expected to rise as rescue crews resume tomorrow morning.

Volusia, Sumter, Lake and Seminole counties have all been declared a state of an emergency as dozens of houses, mobile homes and a church were destroyed. Clothes and furniture are scattered around the wrecked houses and pieces of trees are scattered about. Cars are reported to have been turned over or thrown around in the air.

“Our priority today is search and rescue,” said Gov. of Florida, Charlie Crist. Rescuers are still looking through the wreckage to find survivors of those who might have been killed.

A spokeman for the emergency response team of Lake county, Chris Patton calls the damage “devastating” and worse than “hurricanes in 2004.”

“We have complete devastation of homes, of businesses, religious institutions. It was unlike even perhaps the hurricanes of 2004 when we had minor roof damage, screen damage, pool damage. This is way far more devastating,” said Patton.

The storms hit at about 3:15 [EST] a.m. on Friday morning. At least 20,000-30,000 people are without power.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

After an early morning fire began, four out of the nine people living at the Riverview Individual Residential Alternative group home located in Wells, New York were killed by the blaze. The Sunmount Developmental Disabilities Services Office, which supervises the home, told the media that the fire started at approximately 5:30 AM Eastern Daylight Time. Two staff members were at the home at the time, who safely evacuated four of the five survivors.

The names of the residents killed in the fire were not able to be released due to New York’s Mental Hygiene Law, but are able to be identified as two adult men, aged 32 and 52, and two adult women, aged 43 and 60. A 71-year-old male was injured in the fire, and was taken to a hospital in Utica, a nearby city. The other four residents have been relocated to an unnamed group home. Both staff members are also being examined at the hospital.

“On behalf of all New Yorkers, I wish to extend my heartfelt condolences to the families, loved ones and friends of the four victims and to continue to pray for the full recovery of those five people and two staff members who survived this incident. I also want to express my thanks and appreciation for the first responders and volunteers who worked swiftly and diligently to respond to this tragedy,” David Patterson, the governor of New York, said to the media.

The exact cause of the fire has yet to be determined. However, the New York Civil Liberties Union stated that “the blaze appears to have been an electrical fire and the sprinkler system was knocked out immediately.” They also called for “an immediate investigation into the causes of and contributing factors of the fire.”

The New York State Department of State Office of Fire Prevention and Control is currently investigating the causes of the blaze, with help from New York State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation and the New York State Commission on Quality of Care and Advocacy for Persons with Disabilities.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

File:BeijingOlimpicGames2008-08-08.jpg

Officials representing the Beijing Olympic Games in China have confirmed that the organizations in charge of the Opening Ceremony for the 2008 Summer Olympics may have faked at least two parts of the production. The ceremony lasted a total of four and a half hours.

It has been revealed that nine-year-old Lin Miaoke, who performed “Ode to the Motherland” during the ceremony, was only a visual effect. A recording of another girl’s voice played throughout the stadium and on the television and radio broadcasts. It is also now known that that some of the fireworks shown on television were computer-generated imagery.

The New York Times reports Lin’s voice was not perfect, and a member of the Chinese Politburo demanded that a more suitable voice was used. Organizers found that voice in seven-year-old Yang Peiyi. Another girl was used in rehearsals, but she was deemed to be too old.

“The reason was for the national interest,” Chen Qigang, the opening ceremonies general music designer, said Sunday during a radio interview. “The child on camera should be flawless in image, internal feeling and expression.”

Filmmaker Zhang Yimou, the production’s director, praised Lin at a press conference with Chinese media.

“She’s very cute and sings quite well, too,” he said according to a transcript of the news conference. “I was moved every time we did a rehearsal on this, from the bottom of my heart.”

The initial performer was a ten-year-old girl who was not named in the report and “whose voice was really good,” but Zhang decided that she was too old. About ten girls were auditioned for the role at Central People’s Radio Station in Beijing.

“After the recording, we thought that Lin Miaoke’s voice was not very suitable,” Chen Qigang said during his radio interview with Beijing Music Radio. “Finally, we made the decision that the voice we would use was Yang Peiyi’s.”

During the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy, tenor Luciano Pavarotti mimed to a recorded version of the song he was singing. The recording was of him, but the singer, then 70 years old, had problems with a cold and opted to lip sync.

Friday, June 22, 2007

Buffalo, New York —A three alarm fire at a house owned by John and Evelyn Bencinich, two of the initiators of a lawsuit filed against the Elmwood Village Hotel proposal in Buffalo, required firefighters to rescue eight cats and two dogs in Buffalo, New York today.

At about 8:30 (eastern time) firefighters were called to the home on 48 Granger Place to put out a fire that had started in the basement. It quickly spread to the first floor where the main bathroom was destroyed. The fire did not spread to the second floor or attic.

Initial calls said that many animals were inside the house and firefighters quickly worked to rescue all the cats and dogs. At least one cat and one dog had to receive CPR and oxygen, but both are reported to be in stable condition. At least 3 cats are unaccounted for, but after a search of the house, the cats were not believed to have been inside at the time the fire started.

One elderly woman, Anna Bencinich, the mother of Evelyn, was rescued by neighbors who helped her from the burning house.

“There was smoke all over the house. The fire started in the basement and spread to a small portion of the first floor. Two firefighters were injured while fighting the fire and were transported to Erie County Medical Center,” said Division Fire Chief Thomas Ashe who also said that sections of the kitchen wall at the back of the house had to be torn out to stop the fire from spreading through the walls.

One firefighter is being treated for bite injuries to his face that he received while attempting to rescue a dog. The other firefighter was treated for injuries he received to his hand, which was believed to have been caused by glass or a cat scratching him. The names of the injured firefighters are not known. The injuries are said to not be life threatening.

According to witness reports, the home owners had a new water heater installed just last week, but it is not known if the fire was caused by the heater.

“We believe the fire was caused by an electrical (malfunction). An investigation is being conducted,” said Battalion Chief Joe Fahey who also added that they did not believe arson was the cause.

Thursday, December 6, 2018

On Tuesday, the United Kingdom Parliament started five days of debates ahead of a vote over Prime Minister Theresa May’s deal to leave the European Union.

The deal being debated is a withdrawal agreement for the United Kingdom (UK)’s exit from the European Union (EU), and a political framework defining ambitions for the future of the UK–EU relationship.

In a statement to the House of Commons shortly before debates began, Theresa May said “I have spent nearly two years negotiating this deal […] I have lost valued colleagues along the way, I have faced fierce criticism from all sides. If I had banged the table, walked out of the room, and at the end of the process delivered the very same deal that is before us today, some might say that I’d done a better job.”

Following the debates, a vote in the House of Commons is to determine if the deal will be implemented. The vote is scheduled for next Tuesday, December 11.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

London, England— Marta Makowska of Poland narrowly defeated Jingjing Zhou of China with a score of 15 to 14 in the women’s individual foil category B bronze medal bout Tuesday night at London’s ExCeL North Arena 2. This was amongst the first wheelchair fencing medal matches of the games.

The match was last of the four concurrent wheelchair fencing medals decided, with the crowd shouting in support of the Makowska fencer after the previous matches were concluded. Zhou had limited crowd support, with only one large Chinese flag visible in the spectator area. Makowska’s win came in a very closely-contested match; The score was first tied on eleven points, and again on 12, 13, and 14 points before the Pole finally won.

Following the match, Makowska raised her hands above her head in celebration before her coach ran up and gave the fencer a hug.

At the London Games, Paralympic wheelchair fencing features five medal events for women and seven for men, involving several weapons including the foil, epee and sabre. Wheelchairs used in competition are held in place using medal plates, with the fencer with shorter reach choosing the distance between the chairs. B-classified wheelchair fencers have, according to the International Paralympic Committee, “fair sitting balance and their fencing arm not or only minimally affected.”

London Paralympic fencing ends Saturday with medal bouts every day until then.

Saturday, March 17, 2018

In the United States, autopsy results were released on Thursday by the Napa County Sheriff’s Office, which show that Albert Wong killed himself after shooting his three hostages at The Pathway Home veterans’ psychiatric center in Yountville, California last Friday. The hostages died instantly from rifle shots to the head, and Wong shot himself in the head with a shotgun. Officials said there was no indication any of the four was killed by a sheriff’s deputy who exchanged shots with Wong.

The Sheriff of Napa County also acts as the county coroner. According to the official report, the three hostages “all suffered immediately fatal head wounds caused by a high velocity projectile consistent with the rifle that the shooter, Albert Wong, used in this incident”. Wong’s fatal head wound was self-inflicted. Sheriff’s Captain Steven Blower clarified that neither Wong nor the hostages was shot by the deputy.

According to authorities, Wong, a former Pathway resident, drove a rented car to the center Friday, March 9, and shortly after 10 AM local time (UTC-8), dressed in black and armed with a semi-automatic rifle, took five of the people at a leaving party hostage. The first call to the emergency 9-1-1 number was made at about 10:20. About ten minutes later, shots were heard, and a sheriff’s deputy and Wong exchanged fire. Wong then shut himself in a room with three of the hostages. The campus was evacuated, but there was no further contact with Wong. A little before 6 PM, a video feed from a remote-controlled robot showed the four people in the room were probably dead.

The three victims were all women. Christine Loeber, 48, was the executive director of the home. Jen Golick, 42, was its clinical director. Jennifer Gonzales Shushereba, 36, was a psychologist on the staff of the San Francisco Department of Veterans Affairs Healthcare System and also worked with PsychArmor, a nonprofit group, to create a toolkit for college campuses to assist students with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). She was entering her last trimester of pregnancy.

Wong, 36, was a decorated veteran who served in the infantry in Afghanistan for a year in 2011–2012. He had been in treatment at the center for about a year but had been expelled two weeks before the hostage-taking because knives were found in his possession. His brother Tyrone Lampkin told The Press Democrat, Wong had been angry and said he “wanted to get back at them”, but what he had mentioned was to “talk to them, yell at them, not to kill them”.

The Board of Directors of The Pathway Home announced on Wednesday that it would suspend operations “indefinitely”. It is a ten-year-old non-profit in-patient center treating veterans with PTSD, brain injuries, depression and addictions on the campus of the Veterans Home of California Yountville. Yountville is a small town in the wine country a little more than 50 miles north of San Francisco. Founded as a last-resort center for intensive treatment of veterans who had not been helped by other approaches, it transitioned in 2015 to providing care to those not yet in crisis, including veterans studying at Napa Community College. The Veterans Home is the largest in the United States, with more than 900 residents.