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Wednesday, March 26, 2008

The popular American soap opera The Young and the Restless, currently the reigning Emmy Award-winner for best daytime drama, celebrated 35 years on the air Wednesday.

The 35th anniversary also comes after the series, known colloquially as Y&R, marked its 1,000th straight week as the highest-rated soap opera in a daytime slot. In addition to keeping the #1 spot every week since December 1988, Y&R has also been the top-rated soap in the African-American demographic since 1991.

A trend-setter since the beginning, Y&R relied on character-driven storytelling, accentuated with understated sexuality from its cast, which at that time was mostly young, in order to bring in teenage and twentysomething viewers who were ignored by soap producers and networks up to that time. These traits immediately set Y&R apart from other soap operas, and other soaps have since mimicked Y&R’s formulaic approach to offering something for everyone, especially younger viewers.

Since premiering on March 26, 1973, Y&R has become a worldwide cultural institution in its own right, racking up an impressive 100 Emmy Awards between the writers, producers, cast and crew since 1974. The show has aired in over 100 countries, including Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Italy, and Turkey, and reaches a worldwide audience of ten million daily. So far-reaching was Y&R’s appeal that Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci chose the serial’s theme song as accompanying music to her floor exercises at the 1976 Summer Olympics. In Australia, where Y&R has aired since 1974, the show was canceled by the original network that aired it in 2007, prompting a widespread fan backlash in that country. It was quickly moved to a pay channel.

Over the past 35 years, countless characters, marriages, divorces, births, deaths, and every joy and trauma in between have visited the residents of Genoa City, where Y&R is set. To commemorate the milestone, Mike Halterman from Wikinews interviewed three actresses who have played long-running characters on Y&R, and asked them to share their memories. All three responded to questions about what being on Y&R means to them, what their favorite storylines were, what they perhaps would have wanted to do all over again, and what they’d love to tell their fans directly.

Below are portions of all three interviews.

Friday, May 26, 2006

In February of 2006, the Savarino Services Construction Corp. proposed the construction of a seven million dollar hotel on Elmwood and Forest Avenues in Buffalo, New York. In order for the hotel to be built, at least five properties containing businesses and residents would have to be destroyed. It was not certain whether the properties were owned by Savarino or by the landlord Hans Mobius. The hotel was designed by Karl Frizlen of the Frizlen Group, and is planned to be a franchise of the Wyndham Hotels group.

Elmwood Avenue is known by the community as a popular shopping center, and Nancy Pollina of Don Apparel (who is “utterly against” the construction) claims it’s the only reason why students from Buffalo State College leave campus. Additionally, Michael Faust of Mondo Video said he did not want to “get kicked out of here [his video store property].”

In 1995, a Walgreens was proposed to be built on the same land, but Walgreens later withdrew its request for a variance because of pressure from the community. More recently, Pano Georgiadis tried to get the rights to demolish the Atwater House next to his restaurant on Elmwood Avenue, but was denied a permit due to the property’s historical value. He has since been an opponent to the hotel construction.

In the process of debating the hotel, it was thought that a hotel had previously existed on the proposed site, however; research done at the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society had shown that no hotel had previously existed on the site.

Thursday, December 25, 2008

At least 27 people, including three children, have been killed and about twenty are still missing after a Wednesday gas explosion in an apartment building in the Ukrainian town of Yevpatoria, Crimea. Five injured are treated in local hospitals, one of them in a serious condition.

According to Ukrainian Emergency Situations Ministry, the blast occurred at about 9:45 p.m local time on Wednesday, destroying 35 apartments of a five-storey post-Soviet block. The rescuers, in the number of 565, managed to pull out alive 21 residents of the building; about twenty people are still unaccounted for, the Ministry spokesmen said. The search was regularly suspended so the rescuers could hear voices of victims still trapped under the rubble, the AFP reports.

Olexander Mazilin, head of the regional branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry, said that 26 out of 27 bodies have been identified so far. He told the journalists that entire families, including one family of five, were among the dead. Eduard Grivkovsky, the Crimea’s deputy prime minister, told the reporters that there are likely more casualties, as the rescuers were working through the rubble of the third floor to get to the lower floors and basement.

According to the outcome of the government experts, the blast was caused by a leak of oxygen; the gas is reported to have been stored in cylinders in the building’s basement. Yulia Tymoshenko, the Ukrainian Prime Minister, however, told the journalists that a certain information about the content of the cylinders, which is to be oxygen or acetylene, will be revealed only when rescuers get to the basement. “”According to preliminary expert conclusions, there was a workshop in the building’s basement where explosive materials have been used without any kind of permission,” she said. The Ukrainian government has allocated UAH 70 million (about US$ 13.865 million) for work against the effects of the blast. According to the official website of the Prime Minister, the funds will be used to pay peculiarly compensations for lost properties and purchase temporary accommodations for the victims of the blast.

Gas explosions are not rare in the post-Soviet and poorly maintained areas of Ukraine. In 2003 and 2007, such blasts happened in Dnipropetrovsk in the south-central region of the country. In 2003, ten buildings, including a nine-story apartment building, were destroyed after a series of gas blasts; the occurrence resulted in 23 victims. One year ago, a nine-story building was partially destroyed with 15 people dead.

Friday, September 2, 2005

A UK ISP, Plusnet, terminated the service of two of their broadband service customers for asking too many repeated questions and taking up too much customer support time on their portal discussion forums.

Early last year, Plusnet, an ISP with nearly 200,000 subscribers, cut its prices for all of its broadband products. In doing so, Plusnet allegedly did not inform its existing customers by e-mail, and instead published new products and prices on their public portal. This manner of notice for the price changes may have resulted in thousands of customers paying almost twice as much for the same service.

Within the last month, Plusnet began Packet Shaping peer-to-peer transfers for users of its ‘Premier’ service, which is sold and described as a ‘clean’ connection.

They also recently introduced the throttling [enforcing a maximum limit] of customers using more than 150GB per month of bandwidth. Users whose bandwidth is throttled receive service of 70Kbps, while paying for 2Mbps. This figure is based on the PlusNet network contention of 30:1, being 2mb divided by thirty users. The throttle is in place until the end of the customers current billing period, and is meant to help keep broadband access for all Plusnet users fast by stopping a small percentage of users from using excessive bandwidth. As a result, the ISP has begun receiving numbers of customer complaints and criticism both privately and through their publicly accessible member discussion forums. Though the vast majority of comments on this new Sustainable Usage Policy have been positive.

Wade Woverly, 20, from Leeds (also known as “Wadev1589”), started a thread in the Plusnet member discussion forums challenging the ISP on a number of customer service issues. One of those was regarding the customers who were paying an unnecessary premium for the same internet connection. In addition, Woverly mentioned he was assisting the Trading Standards Institute with an investigation of the legality of terms and conditions of Plusnet.

The accusations by Woverly, that customers are being over-charged, are considered speculative. Woverly asked the same questions dozens of times on forum pages, hoping to receive some sort of answer from Plusnet that he considered satisfactory. Ultimately, he claims the ISP called him on the telephone and said that if he didn’t stop posting comments on their forums, they would terminate his ADSL internet connection and forum access. Woverly said Plusnet’s position was that he was using up excessive customer services resources.

After a night of lengthy posts both on Plusnet boards and at the forums at ADSLGuide, a Customer Services Manager at Plusnet, Carol Axe, allegedly contacted Woverly to inform him that they would be terminating his service, and that he has 30 days to migrate away until his line will be disconnected. Axe refused to allow her conversation to be recorded: “her voice was that of rude arrogance, not listening at all, it was a true ultimatum of a call,” according to Woverly.

Neil Armstrong, the Head of Marketing at Plusnet, commented, “Our comms team is there to serve all our customers, not to be drained by one unreasonably demanding customer.”

The Plusnet forums are led by a team of moderators, also customers, whose job it is to deal with problem posters, amongst other things. Forum Moderator Liam Martin, another stirrer, said “Part of our moderation involves restricting access to those users causing problems… and this is always carried out at our discretion when we believe somebody is causing a nuisance and/or breaking forum rules. ‘Wadev1589’ didn’t come close to being banned, in my book. This has come as a complete shock.”

A second user, “pr100” from Wargrave, has since then had his service ended after being given the same ultimatum. He was told that it was “in his best interests”. He responded on the Plusnet forum, “I did suggest to her that perhaps PlusNet should allow me to decide what will be in my best interest whereupon she stopped beating around the bush and said that my account was being terminated because of my anti-PlusNet posts in the forum.” Not all ISP’s would give you the option of migrating or losing your BB connection, some would just use their right to end your contract forthwith.

Another forum user, “chuffbears”, commented, “Carol [Axe] is in a position where she should be taking responsibility for customer service. In my book she should be issuing an apology over this entire situation.”

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.

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Sunday, July 2, 2006

A suicide bomber exploded a truck bomb in the crowded Al-Ula market in Sadr City in Baghdad on Saturday, killing 66 people and injuring over a 100.

‘At the beginning of this market, the criminal blew up his dynamite-packed truck after trying to go over the pavement,’ said Iraq’s Deputy Health Minister Sabah al-Hussein.

The explosion happened when a police patrol was passing by and caused heavy casualties in the morning market rush. Some shoppers were sent flying on top of nearby two-storey buildings.

The force of the blast left a large crater and wreckage of blown-out cars and windowless buildings. Rescuers were left to pick through a sickening scene of human remains mixed in with exploded vegetable matter and dead animals.

Sadr City, a Shiite city of two million in which religious leader Moqtada Sadr has found popular support, had many times before been targeted by Sunni terrorists who were blamed by some residents for this attack.

It was the deadliest bombing of civilians since Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki‘s government assumed responsibility for domestic security in May 2006.

Experts said the truck bomb was a lethal concoction of explosives, shells and shrapnel hidden under a consignment of fruit. The driver of the truck blew himself up in the explosion.