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Monday, January 9, 2006

Honda’s Civic and Ridgeline truck won the North American Car and Truck of the Year awards at the International Auto Show in Detroit. This is the first time a company has won both awards in the same year. The finalists were the Ridgeline, the Ford Explorer SUV and the Nissan Xterra. The awards are intended to recognize vehicles for their innovation, design, safety, handling, driver satisfaction, and value.File:Ford Explorer.jpg

Honda also unveiled its latest model the Fit, a US version of the Honda Jazz sold in nonUS markets. The Fit comes with a 109 horsepower engine, antilock brakes, six air bags, fold flat seats, full iPod connectivity, 90.1 cubic feet of passenger and cargo space, and 33 mpg for the city 38 mpg for the highway. A sport package will also include Honda’s first steering wheel mounted paddle shifters. The car will go against another two new Japanese subcompacts, the Toyota Yaris, Nissan Versa and will have to wrestle away sales from the category’s current top seller Chevrolet’s Aveo.

The car will start selling in April for around $13,000 to $14,000 as a 2007 model. The company plans to sell 33,000 units of the hatchback in 2006.

Many automakers expect industry wide sales in the US to be between 16 and 17 million units. Honda, which is Japan’s third largest automaker, hopes to gain US market share with the redesigned Civic and the Fit. Honda hopes that the company’s auto sales will rise 4% this year. The fuel-efficient Civic helped increase US market share to 8.6 percent last year, some of those sales were taken from Ford as gas prices rocketed to $3 a gallon. The US market is extremely important for Honda as it receives 64% of its operating profit from the US.

• “Honda vehicles win Car, Truck of the Year” — Xinhuanet, January 9, 2006
• Kae Inoue. “Honda Expects to Gain U.S. Market Share in 2006 With Civic, Fit” — Bloomberg, January 8, 2006
• Nick Buntley. “Honda introduces its new small car, the Fit” — The Detriot News, January 8, 2006

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Rico Daniels is a British TV presenter living in France who is known for his two television series — The Salvager — whilst he still lived in the UK and then Le Salvager after he moved to France. Rico has been in a variety of jobs but his passion is now his profession – he turns unwanted ‘junk’ into unusual pieces of furniture. Rico’s creations and the methods used to fabricate them are the subject of the Salvager shows.

Rico spoke to Wikinews in January about his inspiration and early life, future plans, other hobbies and more. Read on for the full exclusive interview, published for the first time:

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

On Sunday, Wikinews interviewed creator of memorial site LisaMcPherson.org, former Lisa McPherson Trust employee and long time Scientology critic Jeff Jacobsen.

LisaMcPherson.org is a memorial site created in 1997 containing information on her death and the resulting legal case against the Church of Scientology.

Lisa McPherson died in 1995 while in the care of the Church of Scientology. After a car accident, she became mentally unstable. Scientologists removed her from the hospital and placed her in the Introspection Rundown, she died 17 days later while still in care of the Church. She was used as an icon during Project Chanology, the protest of the Church of Scientology by Anonymous. Protesters were pictured with signs that said “Remember Lisa McPherson” and “Ask Scientology Why Lisa McPherson Died”, other protesters had posters with her picture on it.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Wikinews interviewed author Marc Headley about his new book Blown for Good, and asked him about life inside the international headquarters of Scientology known as “Gold Base“, located in Gilman Hot Springs near Hemet, California. Headley joined the organization at age seven when his mother became a member, and worked at Scientology’s international management headquarters for several years before leaving in 2005.

Monday, July 25, 2005

Windsor Castle, one of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom’s official residences, is to get a hydro-electric power scheme.

The £1 million project will consist of a series of under-water turbines to be installed at Romney Weir in the nearby River Thames. The system will generate 200kW, enough to meet approximately one third of the castle’s electricity needs.

The electricity from the four turbines will not be sold into the local electricity grid, but will instead be directly connected to Windsor Castle’s electrical system. It will save 600 tonnes of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere every year.

The scheme was announced after it gained planning permission from the local council, the plans having been submitted in February of last year. A feasability study will now be conducted, with construction scheduled to start next year.

The Windsor Castle is not the only environmentally-friendly Royal scheme. A borehole beneath Buckingham Palace provides cold water for air-conditioning and the Duke of Edinburgh’s taxi runs on liquid petroleum gas.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

An Atlas V rocket has successfully launched a classified spy satellite for the United States National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). The satellite, currently known to the public as NRO L-28, or Launch 28, is believed by amateur enthusiasts to be a signals intelligence (SIGINT) spacecraft, known by the codename Trumpet. The Atlas V carrier rocket flew in the 411 configutation, with a 4 metre diameter fairing, one solid rocket motor, and a single-engine Centaur upper stage.

The rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Space Launch Complex 3 East (SLC-3E), at 10:02 GMT (03:02 local time) this morning. Today’s flight marks the thirteenth launch of the Atlas V, and the first Atlas V launch from Vandenberg. It is also the tenth orbital launch of 2008. The satellite entered a Molniya orbit, usually used by the NRO for SIGINT and communications satellites.

The launch was conducted by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Lockheed Martin, who designed and built the Atlas V, and Boeing, to provide EELV launches for the US Government. ULA president Michael Gass described the launch as “a proud moment in our company’s history”. The launch had been delayed by two years, from early 2006, due to a number of factors.

In addition to its reconnaissance payload, the satellite is carrying two small experiments. SBIRS-HEO 2 and TWINS-B. SBIRS is a test article for a missile detection system, slated to launch late this year or early next, and TWINS is a NASA infrared astronomy experiment. They will remain attached to the satellite for the duration of its mission.

Following the separation of the payload fairing, around five minutes after launch, all information on the launch was withheld, however about an hour into the flight, the launch was confirmed to have been successful. ULA will conduct its next launch on Saturday, when a Delta II will orbit a GPS satellite. The next Atlas launch is scheduled for mid-April, with the ICO G1 communication satellite.

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Sen. Larry Craig held a news conference Tuesday in Boise, Idaho to issue a public statement about his arrest in June, 2007 and subsequent guilty plea, August 8, to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct.

In his statement, Sen. Craig indicated that when he pled guilty to the charge, two months after the fact, he didn’t understand at the time what he was signing and declared himself innocent of any wrongdoing at the Minneapolis airport on June 11, 2007.

According to the arresting officer, Sgt. Dave Karsnia, who was dressed in civilian clothes at the time of the incident, he was using a bathroom stall when Sen. Craig entered the stall next to his. Karsnia reported the Senator tapped his right foot, and then stretched his foot over to touch the officer’s left foot. Sen. Craig also ran his hand along the bottom of the stall’s dividing wall. According to CNN, that type of behavior is known in the Gay community as a signal that the person wants to engage in lewd behavior. The officer subsequently showed Sen. Craig his badge. Using his other hand, Karsnia directed Craig to move toward the door. After some words and Sen. Craig’s refusal to cooperate with the officer, he was placed under arrest.

An additional charge against Sen. Craig, interference with privacy, had been thrown out. Sen. Craig received a ten-day suspended jail sentence, was fined US$500, and was given one year probation.

Sen. Craig admitted that he did not mention his arrest to the Senate Ethics Committee, which is not required by law, and also didn’t tell his wife and other immediate family members about his arrest until recent days.