Friday, July 29, 2011 Today sees the reopening of the National Museum of Scotland following a three-year renovation costing £47.4 million (US$ 77.3 million). Edinburgh’s Chambers Street was closed to traffic for the morning, with the 10am reopening by eleven-year-old Bryony Hare, who took her first steps in the museum, and won a competition organised by the local Evening News paper to be a VIP guest at the event. Prior to the opening, Wikinews toured…

Continue reading

Wednesday, October 13, 2010 The rescue of the Chilean miners trapped in the San José Mine in Copiapó, codenamed Operación San Lorenzo (San Lorenzo Operation), began on Tuesday night, at around 20:00 local time (23:00 UTC). Florencio Ávalos was the first miner to be rescued, at 00:12 local time (03:12 UTC) on Wednesday. He was wearing a shirt signed by all his fellow miners. “The first miner is already with us. We saw it all,…

Continue reading

Monday, November 21, 2016 UK Prime Minister Theresa May and opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn both spoke at the annual Confederation of British Industry conference today, talking about Britain after its planned ‘Brexit’ from the European Union, and future plans for business. May formally announced plans to cut corporation tax from 20%, without giving details, in order to discourage businesses from leaving the UK post-Brexit. Corbyn said in his speech he believes investment by the government…

Continue reading

Sunday, August 21, 2005 A robotic system at Stanford Medical Center was used to perform a laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery successfully with a theoretically similar rate of complications to that seen in standard operations. However, as there were only 10 people in the experimental group (and another 10 in the control group), this is not a statistically significant sample. If this surgical procedure is as successful in large-scale studies, it may lead the way for…

Continue reading

Saturday, August 6, 2005 A U.S. lobbyist group, the United Seniors Association, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Boston to recover Medicare expenses related to tobacco smoking. The suit says there is a link between nicotine addiction and smoking-related diseases. The first of its kind lawsuit seeks to recover as much as $60 billion in estimated Medicare expenses outlaid for treatment of lung cancer and emphysema patients. The Medicare Secondary Payer Statute (MSP)…

Continue reading

Saturday, July 18, 2009 A ‘giant black mystery blob‘ in the Chukchi Sea off the coast of Alaska has been identified as marine algae. Initially speculated to be an oil spill, the mass was discovered by a group of hunters earlier this month near Wainwright. The blob is reported to be stringy and hairy, and is tangled with jellyfish, among other debris. The “thick, dark gunk” stretches for as much as 15 miles, and is…

Continue reading

Wednesday, November 17, 2004 ENGLAND — UK Health Secretary John Reid has proposed widespread legislative and health care changes in a new white paper on public health released Tuesday. Titled “Choosing Health”, the paper details government plans to restrict smoking in public places, limit ‘junk food‘ advertisements to children, make available “lifestyle trainers”, campaign against sexually transmitted diseases and tobacco, and improve food labelling. The white paper comes after extensive public comment that involved 150,000…

Continue reading