Monthly archives: January, 2019

Grandmother of Barack Obama dies at 86

Monday, November 3, 2008 Madelyn Dunham, the maternal grandmother of United States 2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama, has died of cancer at 86, just one day before the election. Dunham, who was born in Peru, Kansas in 1922, helped to raise Obama from the age of 10. She lived in Honolulu, Hawaii for most of …

Too Grimm? Mother Goose cartoonist sued by Colombian coffee growers

Sunday, January 11, 2009 While it was just a joke, the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros de Colombia doesn’t find a recent “Mother Goose and Grimm” comic terribly funny. In what the coffee growers association calls “an attack on national dignity and the reputation of Colombian coffee,” the characters in a comic strip by Pulitzer Prize-winning …

Chili Finger Incident

Friday, May 6, 2005 On Thursday the 22nd of March, 2005, Anna Ayala, a woman from Las Vegas, claimed to have found a human finger in her bowl of chili at a Wendy’s restaurant located at 1405 Monterey Highway, just south of downtown San Jose, California, owned by Fresno-based Jern Management.. The finger, which probably …

News briefs:May 16, 2010

 Correction — August 24, 2015 These briefs incorrectly describe BP as ‘British Petroleum’. In fact, such a company has not existed for many years as BP dropped this name when becoming a multinational company. The initials no longer stand for anything.  Wikinews Audio Briefs Credits Produced By Turtlestack Recorded By Turtlestack Written By Turtlestack Listen To …

Controversial development training cited in religious discrimination lawsuits

Friday, May 23, 2008 A controversial development training course called “Landmark Forum” is cited in religious discrimination lawsuits in United States federal courts in New York and Washington, D.C. The seminars are run by a San Francisco, California-based for-profit training company called Landmark Education. The company evolved from Erhard Seminars Training “est”, and has faced …

Cleveland, Ohio clinic performs US’s first face transplant

Thursday, December 18, 2008 A team of eight transplant surgeons in Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, USA, led by reconstructive surgeon Dr. Maria Siemionow, age 58, have successfully performed the first almost total face transplant in the US, and the fourth globally, on a woman so horribly disfigured due to trauma, that cost her an eye. …

Two nuclear submarines collide in the Atlantic Ocean

Wednesday, February 18, 2009 The Nuclear ballistic missile submarines Triomphant, from France, and HMS Vanguard, of the British Royal Navy, collided deep under the middle of the Atlantic Ocean in the middle of the night between February 3 and 4, despite both vessels being equipped with sonar. The collision caused damage to both vessels but …

New Zealand dog saves five children; receives international attention

Saturday, May 5, 2007 A small, “nicely trained” Jack Russell Terrier gave his life to help save a group of five children from two aggressive pitbulls last Sunday in Manaia, Taranaki, New Zealand. The dog named George is being described as a hero, gathering a huge amount of international media interest in the process. The …

Wikinews interviews Australian wheelchair basketball player Tina McKenzie

Friday, January 3, 2014 Preston, Victoria, Australia —On Saturday, Wikinews interviewed Tina McKenzie, a former member of the Australia women’s national wheelchair basketball team, known as the Gliders. McKenzie, a silver and bronze Paralympic medalist in wheelchair basketball, retired from the game after the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London. Wikinews caught up with her in …