In a press conference held at 13:00 UTC on Tuesday, Bob Geldof, Elton John, and Harvey Goldsmith announced Live 8, a set of simultaneous free concerts to be held in Philadelphia, London, Paris, Rome, and Berlin on July 2, 2005, to raise awareness of Make Poverty History, a campaign to get the richest nations to cancel debt and increase aid to developing countries. The concerts are scheduled to occur just before the G8 Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, from July 6 to July 8.
"20 years ago, at the time of the original Live Aid concert, I was a se
Eddie Albert, well-known for his role as back-to-nature attorney Oliver Douglas in the surrealistic '60's TV series "Green Acres," has died at the age of 99.
Albert, who suffered from Alzheimer's disease in later years, succumbed to pneumonia on Thursday at his California home. His son Edward Albert was by his side at the time.
Although he gained his greatest fame in "Green Acres," Albert had a long movie, TV, and stage career stretching back to the 1930s. His first role came in 1938, playing opposite Ronald Reagan in the comedy "Brother
Hours after the premiere, files purporting to be computer-viewable copies of the movie Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith were available on internet filesharing networks.
The film, which is one of the years most eagerly anticipated, has already been downloaded by over 16,000 people through the BitTorrent file-sharing network. Some torrent downloaders reported being able to download the movie at "DVD-quality" as early as 11pm Eastern on May 18th, an hour before the US premiere. The versions available thus far are however "workprint copies." As
Wikinews reported on May 17 that several weeks earlier British police had picked up an unidentified man wandering the streets of Sheerness, United Kingdom. The man who has thus far refused to talk, has demonstrated himself to be an excellent pianist—earning him the nickname Piano Man.
Since publication of our first article, we have been contacted by a fellow wiki contributor informing us that the Piano Man may be a British actor named Geoffrey Betts. Although our contact strongly believed he knew the identity of the man and contacted the relev
__NOTOC__
The final Star Wars film, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith premiered at the Cannes Festival on May 15, 2005, with George Lucas and the stars of the movie in attendance at the Grand Theatre Lumiere.
At the subsequent United Kingdom premiere on May 16, 2005, fans turned out in costume. Outside London's Odeon cinema in Leicester Square, dozens of fans dressed as storm troopers, Jedi knights, and other characters for the film.
The movie is about the temptation of a Jedi knight to the Dark Side of the force, and his fiery tran
North Korea's official news agency is reporting that the country has finished removing all its spent nuclear fuel rods, over 8,000 of them, from the main reactor in the Yongbyon nuclear plant.
The rods could be reprocessed for several months to extract weapons-grade plutonium. Officials say the rods could be able to provide enough plutonium to make two nuclear bombs.
This could possibly signal that North Korea is preparing for a nuclear arms test. North Korea may already have enough materials to make six nuclear bombs.
North Korea has al
The two unique prime factors of a 200-digit number have been discovered by researchers in Germany and the Netherlands. The number, named RSA-200, is one of a series of challenges issued by security company RSA Security in March 1991 in order to track the real-world difficulty of factoring such numbers, used in the public-key encryption algorithm RSA. The factorisation of RSA-200 beats the previous record number "c176" (176 digits, factored on May 2nd, 2005), and RSA-576 (174 digits, factored on December 3rd, 2003).
Written out, RSA-200 is:
27
Workers at Newport Chemical Depot in Indiana have completed a successful test-run of a chemical reactor designed to dispose of Cold War stockpiles of VX nerve agent.
After encountering initial difficulties when the temperature in the reactor grew too high, workers were able to adjust the speed of the device. 180 gallons of VX and water were turned into a caustic but far less lethal compound, that can be further reprocessed into an inert substance.
A residue of 14 parts VX per billion remained; the Army's eventual goal is less than 20 parts
Testing began on a chemical reactor at the Newport Chemical Depot near Terre Haute, Indiana on Friday morning. If successful, the reactor will be put to use destroying the large VX nerve gas stockpiles stored at the facility over the course of the next two years.
After the disposal project experienced several delays, the facility announced it would begin pumping VX into a completed disposal unit for testing. The unit consists of a chemical reactor in which the VX will be mixed with water and sodium hydroxide, heated to 194°F while mixed wit
The first ever feature-length film to be shot in Yemen will be screened, but will not compete for prizes, at this year's international Cannes Film Festival. The 90-minute romantic drama by British-Yemeni film director, Bader Ben Hirsi, is titled A New Day in Old Sanaa'a.
"For the most people viewing this film, it will be the first time they ever see images of Yemen. The results will be a very positive message" which offers a "true and honest" portrait of life in Yemen, said a spokesman from the Yemeni Media Center in 2003, when the film was
Circulation figures dropped an average 1.9% among 814 U.S. newspapers according to research by the Newspaper Association of America industry group. The drop, which continues a 20-year declining trend, is one of the worst 6 month slips since a 1984 circulation peak.
Factors such as cable TV and the Internet are named as challengers in the competition for reader attention. Also contributing are scandal-driven changes in the way circulation is calculated. Concerns over the credibility of circulation figures given by some newspapers have gripped t
The FOX Morning News broadcast from Harvard Square this morning in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Anchors Liz Carrigan and Gene Lavanchy profiled a restaurant and a musician who will take part in the 22nd annual Mayfair, which starts on Sunday, May 1. The restaurant, Grafton Street, is on Massachusetts Avenue.
The Mayfair is a festival that takes place in Harvard Square on an annual basis. On Sunday, the Square will be closed from noon until 6 pm to vehicular traffic; according to the Mayfair website, "200 artists and merchants" will participate in
