Food with cancer-causing dye recalled in Britain

Saturday, April 30, 2005

The British Food Standards Agency (FSA) has announced a recall of foods containing banned dyes which increase the risk of cancer. The food products were sold at the Tesco, Waitrose, and Somerfield supermarkets.

A Bristol company called “Barts Spices” found the illegal Para Red substance in their Barts Ground Paprika, which was sold in 48g and 46g jars with a “Co-op” label. The batch codes on the affected products are 5032 and 5089 (expiration Dec 2007), and 5075 (expiration February 2007).

Tesco also found that their 130g package of BBQ rice cakes (expiration November and December 2005) contained both Para Red and Sudan I.

“It would be very prudent to assume that it could be a genotoxic carcinogen,” FSA scientific advisers told reporters.

“As a company committed to supplying only the very finest quality food ingredients, we took the immediate decision to withdraw our ground paprika spice from all outlets selling the product and advertised a product recall in the national press,” a Barts Spices spokesman said in a statement.

Sudan I is only authorized for industrial use to colorize petroleum products, such as shoe polish. Para Red and Sudan I are banned under the British Colours in Food Regulations of 1995.

Britain last went through a major food recall in February, when Worcester Sauce was found to contain chili powder dyed with Sudan 1.

Saturday, April 28, 2012

United States political consultant and gay rights (LGBT) activist Fred Karger of California took some time to discuss his Republican Party presidential campaign with Wikinews reporter William Saturn. Karger holds the distinction as the first openly gay person to seek the presidential nomination of a major U.S. political party.

Before entering electoral politics, Karger worked as an adviser for such prominent Republicans and former U.S. Presidents Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. Since retiring as an adviser in 2004, he has been involved in LGBT issues: opposing California Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in the state; and leading investigations of such same-sex marriage opponents as the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) and the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (The Mormon Church).

In 2010, Karger first announced his intentions to seek the Republican presidential nomination, but did not officially announce until March 2011. One of his early campaign goals was to participate in a GOP presidential debate, but was never invited due to polling thresholds. However, Karger argued that he did meet the requirement for an August debate, but was still excluded after the organizers deemed polls he cited as inadequate.

So far, Karger has appeared on four Republican primary ballots including Puerto Rico, where he was able to top Congressman Ron Paul, who, at the time was one of the four major candidates in the race. Karger will next appear on the ballots in California on June 5, and in Utah on June 26.

Karger brands himself as “a different kind of Republican” that wants to open the party to outsiders. He backs gay marriage, is pro-choice on abortion, and wants to lower the voting age. However, he also holds some traditional Republican views: he favors a strengthening of the private sector and believes the U.S. should be steadfast in its support for the nation of Israel.

In talking to Wikinews, Karger discusses his personal political background and activism, the 2012 presidential election and his GOP campaign, as well as his political views on both domestic and foreign affairs.

Wednesday, February 1, 2006

United States President George W. Bush delivered his annual State of the Union Address on Tuesday.

Monday, November 19, 2007

Drag—dressing in the clothing atypical of your born gender—in recent years has found mainstream success. Films such as Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar have prominently featured drag performers. But they have all focused on men in drag as women.

Murray Hill is a comedian, emcee and performer. He is also a drag king. Called “The Hardest Working Middle-aged Man in Show Business”, The New York Times christened him “the current reigning patriarch of the downtown performance community.” He is seemingly everywhere, emceeing a bingo night at the now closed, Jimmy Fallon-backed Mo Pitkins’ House of Satisfaction on Avenue A, or hosting the Polyamorous Pride Day in Central Park. Hill has become a legend in New York’s “anything goes” counterculture theater scene who is beginning to find mainstream success; which would be a first for a drag king.

David Shankbone’s examination of New York City‘s culture has brought him to the whip’s end of a BDSM dungeon, on the phone with RuPaul, matching wits with Michael Musto, grilling Gay Talese, eating dinner with Augusten Burroughs and quizzing the bands that play the Bowery Ballroom. In this segment he talks to downtown legend Murray Hill, former New York City mayoral candidate and comedian, on the last night of Mo Pitkins’ House of Satisfaction.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

At the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities (SARM) conference, a resolution was passed that encourages the Government of Saskatchewan, Canada to place a moratorium on specialty livestock farms raising wild boar. All wild boars that have escaped to roam wild should be killed, according to the resolution.

Agriculture Minister Bob Bjornerud endorses a ban on wild boar farming. The wild boar population is expanding exponentially. There are over 2,000 feral Sus scrofa swine roaming the prairies. Two litters of approximately 12 piglets are sired by each wild boar sow every year. The Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation (SWF) likewise passed a similar resolution at their 79th annual convention to urge the Saskatchewan Government to declare the wild boar as a nuisance species which can be killed on sight.

3% of farmed “wild” boars escape. Cells of wild boars are ravenous creatures killing and eating everything in their path. Horses, cows, and other livestock run from wild boars, breaking through fences in the process.

Ostriches, emus, llamas, alpacas, reindeer, wild boar, and fallow deer were amongst the animals introduced to farms in Saskatchewan during the agricultural diversification program in the late 1970s. Production of wild boars was promoted throughout the 1980s.

According to the Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food 2001 statistics, there were 150 wild boar producers raising approximately 15,000 and 20,000 head. Of these there were about 2,700 sows. On the 2006 Census of Agriculture, 401 farms reported 4,926 boars.

The boar’s red meat is an export commodity to Europe and Asia. The live breeding stock are also sold to trophy hunt ranches. Full blooded wild boar and hybrid crosses are raised.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Wikinews interviewed author Nancy Many about her book My Billion Year Contract, and asked her about life working in the elite Scientology group known as the “Sea Org“. Many joined Scientology in the early 1970s, and after leaving in 1996 she later testified against the organization. Published in October, Many’s book has gone on to become one of the top selling new books on Scientology at Amazon.com.

Wednesday, February 5, 2020

On Sunday in London, England, according to witness accounts and authorities, a man wearing a fake suicide vest entered a store, grabbed a large knife, ran outside with it and began to stab people. Reportedly he injured a man and two women on Streatham High Road, London. Armed plainclothes officers, already surveilling him for counter-terrorism purposes, chased him on foot. The officers eventually shot him dead, reportedly outside a Boots store, at around 14:00 local time in what the police declared a “terrorist-related” attack.

An eyewitness described for news agency PA Media how the attack unfolded, stating, “I was crossing the road when I saw a man with a machete and silver canisters on his chest being chased by what I assume was an undercover police officer […] The man was then shot. I think I heard three gunshots but I can’t quite remember.”

Two women and a man were injured, according to the reports. The man was briefly listed in critical condition. A woman had minor injuries reportedly from glass shattering after police discharged their firearms, and the remaining woman was in “not life-threatening” condition.

The attacker, identified as Sudesh Amman, 20, was placed under police surveillance after being released from prison a week ago. He was imprisoned in 2018 when he was 18 and served half his sentence for 13 separate terror offenses. Amman, who was described as “knife-obsessed” by the police, sent his girlfriend videos of beheadings and extremist text messages, and advised her to kill her “kuffar” (non-Muslim) parents. He told her on one occasion: “If you can’t make a bomb because family, friends or spies are watching or suspecting you, take a knife, molotov, sound bombs or a car at night and attack the tourists (crusaders), police and soldiers of taghut [idolatry], or western embassies in every country you are in this planet.”

Alexis Boon, the head of the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command, said about Amman: “His fascination with dying in the name of terrorism was clear in a notepad we recovered from his home. Amman had scrawled his ‘life goals’ in the notepad and top of the list, above family activities, was dying a martyr and going to ‘Jannah’ — the afterlife. It’s not clear how Amman became radicalised but it is apparent from his messages that it had been at least a year in development. Whatever the circumstances, this case is a reminder of the need to be vigilant to signs of radicalisation and report it.”

Police also recovered a bomb-making guidebook in his position and, on investigation in his family home in London, a black flag and an air gun.

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, thanked “the police, security and emergency services staff for their swift and courageous response”.

“Terrorists seek to divide us and to destroy our way of life,” said Khan, “here in London we will never let them succeed.”

The prime minister, Boris Johnson, tweeted: “Thank you to all emergency services responding to the incident in Streatham, which the police have now declared as terrorism-related. My thoughts are with the injured and all those affected.”

Wednesday, January 18, 2006File:Greenpeace Vessels Esperanza and Arctic Sun.jpg

Anti-whaling protesters have joined forces across Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, and the U.S.A calling for an end to the killing of whales for meat by Japan. Greenpeace organised the international day of action as it continued its efforts to disrupt the hunting of minke whales by the Japanese whaling fleet currently in the Southern Ocean.

The day of action was being marked to protest the actions of the fleet which protesters believe violate the 1986 International Whaling Commission (IWC) global ban on commercial whaling. Japan’s JARPA Japanese Whale Research Program was allowed to operate under a Special Permit in the Antarctic according to Article VIII of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling. In its JARPA-2 plan, Japan plans to double its annual scientific research catch of Minke whales to 935, and to add 10 Fin whales to its quota. The International Fund for Animal Welfare states that over the next two years, Japan plans to kill 50 endangered Humpback whales and an additional 40 fin whales.