Kaitaine National News

[Kaitaine]

BUMPER SPICE HARVEST EXPECTED

The highly anticipated annual spice harvest is soon to be upon us, and according to the CEO of Corrino Enterprises, the nations largest producer of Melange, anticipates that this year they will have more than ever. Melange is vital to the culture and traditions of Kaitaine and a central part of the nations Bene Gesserit faith. It is believed by many that the dark red spice, made from grinding up the discarded shells of the native Seitch Sandworm, grants members of the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood significant insight into the realm of God/Gods. Additionally, the spice is used, in small quantities, for making special delicacies unique the desert region around the sacred city of Seitch. Speaking to KNN the Duke of Seitch, Niklaus Corrino, who is also CEO of Corrino Enterprises said, "Every year we look forward to the harvest, its always exciting the sift the worm tanks and see just what we've got. This year has been particularly warm and that usually means more worm growth and results in thicker shells, all that means a bumper harvest." The Duke will also be hosting his annual Spice Festival in which members of all Four Holy Houses, as well as key members of the Bene Gesserit faith, travel to Seitch to sample the first of the new harvest.

The news of a large Corrino harvest, however, is not good news for everyone. The sacred desert city of Seitch is home to some small traditional Spice Farmers, many of whom believe Corrino Enterprises will put them out of business. One such farmer is Malcolm McCourt, a spice farmer of 20 years who believes this year may be his last. "Every year we've seen the Sisterhood buying less and less spice from us independents, instead favouring the Corrino's because of their Holy status. It means that we make less and less money, but the amount we need to spend to survive isn't getting less and less. Last year I had six tanks of worms and only managed to sell four tanks worth of spice, I fear this year its going to be even worse."

It is expected that the 82-year-old Reverend Mother Hannah McKay will still attend this year's Spice Harvest Festival despite being ill recently with flu. The cousin of the Atreides family has been the nations Head of State for the last 24 years and a Mother within the Sisterhood since the age of 18. This would be the first Spice Harvest she has missed since being four years old.

IN OTHER NEWS

• Police in Arrakeen are gearing up for the Football Derby between local teams Arrakeen Celtic and Arrakeen Rangers, the game often boils over on and off the pitch. During last years match, there were 23 arrests for various offences. In an attempt to cut down the trouble this time the Kick-Off has been moved forward to midday to hopefully avoid drunkenness among fans.
• The Kaitaine Defence Force is set to demonstrate its latest prototype in the shape of a remotely controlled ground vehicle capable of patrolling the desert regions around the city of Seitch. It is hoped that the new vehicle will enter service by the end of 2018 and even be exported around the world.
• The son of Duchess Anna Fremen, the 22-year-old Achilles Fremen is due to attend a meeting at Chapterhouse tomorrow, it is widely believed that a marriage announcement will follow soon after, maybe with a minor member of the Harkonnen family in order to try and end recent arguments between the family in the Holy Council.

[Kaitaine]

REVEREND MOTHER RUSHED TO HOSPITAL

Reverend Mother Hannah McKay was last night rushed to hospital following a fall at Chapterhouse. The 82-year-old Head of State sustained head and back injuries but is considered "stable" and being treated at Arrakeen National Teaching Hospital. It has been stated that McKay was making her evening rounds of the schools dormitories when she slipped and fell on one of the old spiral staircases, she was found soon after by students who alerted the paramedics.

Chapterhouse School was first built in 597 AD by the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood following contributions of all four Holy Houses. It was opened with the mission of training the young girls who were to become part of the Sisterhood in a standardised way, as well as pooling together the faiths resources. The school has also served as a kind of orphanage taking in and caring for girls of various ages and providing them with a world-class education as well as inducting them into the Bene Gesserit faith. McKay herself attended the school from ages 4 until 18 after being enrolled in the school by her parents who believed that she would have a better standard of education. She quickly impressed the staff there and at the age of 14 was placed into the Mother Training Programme, one of the four programmes students enter at the age of 14. Following her graduation, she remained at Chapterhouse furthering her studies into the faith and assisting in the day to day ceremonies run there. Eventually, she was dispatched to Seitch where she worked in the Temple of the Holy until at the age of 40 returning to Chapterhouse as a theological teacher, a post she held until appointed Reverend Mother. Her recent accident puts in doubt her attendance at the upcoming Spice Harvest Festival as well as requiring the day to day running of the Sisterhood to be allocated to someone else. It was left to Duke Niklaus Corrino to address the press following his visit to the hospital. "The Reverend Mother wishes to thank the people for their concern and prayers. It is important at this time that we ensure the stable continuation of government while she recovers, as such the head of the Missionara Protectiva, Rebecca Cartwright, will step into the role of running Chapterhouse while Mother Tabitha Rush will act as Head of State. The Holy Houses will offer whatever support we are required to. This will not have any impact on our future talks with nations about a cultural organisation, nor any other project we have going."

It was also expected that today McKay would visit the National Institute for Marine Biology, an organisation that has been working on projects of desalinisation and water purification in order to explore better ways of providing desert regions with water for arable projects. This meeting will now be attended by Duke Oswald Atreides whose company has been taking an interest in the projects.

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VIOLENCE ERUPTS AT ARRAKEEN DERBY

As expected trouble marked the end of the Arrakeen Derby, the often tempestuous game between the capitals two biggest clubs, Celtic and Rangers, saw 34 arrests. The game finished in a controversial 3-2 victory for Rangers as young star Richard McDuff scored with a free kick in the final minute following what many people believe was a dive. At the final whistle, the Celtic fans charged onto the pitch, which took place at their ground, in an attempt to assault the referee and Rangers players. In return, the Rangers fan's took to the pitch and violent scuffles broke out until members of the nations police Special Operations Group took to the field in full riot gear. It took them nearly 15 minutes to clear the stadium and at one point they had contemplated using tear gas. Outside the stadium, more violence began as fans using railway stations mixed at Muirfield West tube station following an organisational error by the rail company.

By the end of the day, 34 fans were under arrest, mainly for crimes relating to fighting, while a few were also charged with property damage. Meanwhile, a further 18 fans were taken to hospital for what are described as "serious" injuries, it was also reported that one person was knifed during the fighting but this has yet to be confirmed by Police.

The clubs have a long rivalry going back to the foundation of the clubs in the 1920's. Celtic were founded by the Harkonnen family as an outlet for their factory workers, meanwhile, Rangers are backed by the Atreides family who set their club up two years later to compete with their Holy Family rival of the Harkonnen's. The Kaitaine Football Council is due to call both clubs Chairmen and Managers to a meeting to discuss this ongoing problem with one solution being future games possibly being made even earlier in the day or played behind closed doors.

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NEWS IN BRIEF

• The Watly company is set to unveil their new system. The water purifier and solar energy cell is smaller than previous models and is designed to also act as a wifi hub. The first system was popular among farming groups in Seitch while the newer model is designed more for urban environments.
• The Corrino Educational Trust is set to launch its latest round of Scholarships. The Trust is expected to give 100 full University scholarships this year, with 20 reserved for alumni of Chapterhouse. It was also announced that the majority of these will go in the medical and engineering disciplines.

[Kaitaine]

CHAPTERHOUSE TO ANNOUNCE GUEST SPEAKER LIST IN COMING WEEKS

The prestigious Bene Gesserit training school, Chapterhouse, is set to announce its list of guest speakers for the year. The school hosts twice a guest talker once every three weeks who have spoken a wide variety of topics ranging from the study of astrophysics to zoology. The lectures first began in 1709 as part of an initiative by the then Reverend Mother Sabia MacKenzie as a way of introducing the students to issues and thoughts not necessarily covered in the school curriculum. The lectures are open to all members of the Sisterhood and a handful of members of the public and all talks take place in the Chapterhouse Grand Hall where the school's social events and meals take place. This year the lecturers are being organised by Lidia Ericsson, the wife of Holy House member Robert Fremen, she is also on the Board of Scholars, the leadership panel of the Sisterhood's Missionara Protectiva, responsible for the Orders knowledge gathering operations. The 45-year-old mother is currently in Morheim attending the creation of a cultural exchange treaty, something she has described as "tailor-made for the Missionara, something that will enable us to continue, and even expand our studies, especially abroad." It is expected that she will use the meeting as an opportunity to perhaps bring in talkers from abroad, something that while it has been done in the past is a rarity. Duchess Louise Harkonnen, a former member of the Missionara believes that this should now become something more routine saying in a recent discussion on the future of the Missionara, "We stand now at a time where the study of our domestic history, culture, religious texts and so on is being exhausted, for over 1000 years the Missionara has set high academic standards but our access to foreign data is limited, that will change and we can either go to them, or in the day and age of modern technology bring them to us. I think the split in talkers should be 50/50 between Kaitainites and foreign nationals."

The School has also announced this week that it is set to receive a grant of around $20million to build a new Truthsayer annexe. The Truthsayers are the para-military branch of the Sisterhood and currently make use of several buildings across the expansive school campus, the grant will be used to build them a purpose-built facility. Each of the Four Holy Houses has contributed $5million after the move was backed by former Truthsayer Duchess Anna Fremen. The facility will boast eight classrooms, and a total of three 100-seat lecture theatres, with the third floor home to a 35-metre indoor firing range. The top floor will also house a new, state-of-the-art gym, which will also be open to the School's other students. There will be a range of other facilities including a climbing wall, mess hall and a small drill hall.

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WATLY 2.0 REVEALED & FUTURE PROJECT ANNOUNCED

Five years ago the Watly company introduced a device with the aim of providing electricity, clean water, and Internet services to remote areas around the desert region, a place where frequent sandstorms have made the development of infrastructure difficult. The device's inventor, 34-year-old former Missionara Protectiva Agnes McCaul explained that it was her time spent in Seitch, the largest city in the desert region, that inspired her. "At times water tanks would crack and you'd have sand get in creating a sludge, it was a nightmare, then things like power lines would get knocked down and you'd spend the next 48 hours without electric. I figure that in this day and age its possible to build in a short-term support for this and Watly was the solution." McCaul left the Missionara and set up her start-up company which has sold around 150 units to the government who have placed them in rural areas. The new model, however, is more efficient and able to handle twice the amount of water.

The system works by capturing solar energy through photovoltaic panels on the surface of the Watly module, which is converted into electricity through an internal battery. This powers a patented water treatment system that uses a graphene-based filtering process, before the water is boiled and then distilled. The process in the old system can deliver around 50 litres of safe drinking water each day however the new system is expected to be able to produce around 70. The battery also powers a connectivity hub that provides wireless internet access within a 200-meter radius, and a charging station for electronic and mobile devices. Following a demonstration of the new model, where McCaul herself converted water containing sand, mud, salt and even Cola into clean pure water that tasted perfectly normal, the entrepreneur announced the company hope to begin development of Urban Watly, a project that would scale the model up to become hubs in major cities such as Geidi and Arrakeen. These hubs would provide people with places to charge devices securely, obtain free clean fresh water, connect to the internet and even use wall mounted devices to surf the web while their own device charges. The Watly 2.0 systems have already been purchased by the military who have placed 30 orders.

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NEWS IN BRIEF

• Court cases to start over football violence. It has been announced that cases will be fast-tracked so they will be dealt with before the next fixture in the season which comes next Saturday. It is thought that custodial sentences will be passed down to most offenders found guilty. Additionally, the Kaitaine Football Council (KFC) have announced each team will be fined and have to play their next home game behind closed doors.
• An agreement has been reached that Achilles Fremen will be obliged to join the military following his graduation from University. The 21-year-old member of the Holy House Fremen is currently studying a medical degree at Geidi University and will now join the Military Medical Core. People had thought a marriage would be announced, however, that is not the case, Achilles already has an Honored Matres Concubine however after 3 years they are still to produce a child.
• 10 Days to Spice Harvest

[Kaitaine]

COUNCIL OF FOUR RULE OUT EQUAL RIGHTS BILL

Following the passage of an Equal Rights Bill by the narrowest of margins within the National Assembly the legislation was struck down by the Council of Four. The Bill was presented by members of the Liberterian party who managed to get the Bill passed by a single vote, 32-31, it called for an end to "gender bias among the Sisterhood, introduction of gender neutral language in all walks of life and the legalisation of same sex marriage." It was left to Duke Niklaus Corrino to explain why the Council had thrown out the Bill; "The nation is the home to our Bene Gesserit faith, the only nation in the world with a significant population of followers too, as such our laws must reflect that, while discrimination in everyday life is wrong, the Bill overstepped its mark, it would radically change the faith to which our nation is bound. Homosexuality is not seen as evil or harmful, and denying someone a job or denying them an oppurtunity based on that would be wrong, but we are talking about a change to the purpose of marriage in our faith, namely to continue successful bloodlines. The nation has laws that grant tax relief and various other benefits enjoyed by hetrosexual couples to same sex couples, I believe that is only right and fair. Furthermore having a Sisterhood, that would contain "Brothers" is against the very basis of the faith." The Duke then revealed that the Bill was defeated 4-0 by the Council.

The news was greeted with great joy from members of the Missionara Party, a party made up of former members of the Missionara Protectiva, "This bill was presented at a time when they knew that 10 of our members are involved with issues surrounding the Reverened Mother's medical issues, it was nothing more than a blind side attempt to push a liberal agenda that is not wanted within our nation. A rcent poll by KNN showed that only 20% or so of people here support making the Sisterhood open to men, while only 25% support same sex marriage. To have such a bill supported by members of the Assembly who should know better concerns me."

Meanwhile however the Liberterian Party hailed it as a great victory, "This bill was supported by the majority of the Assembly, we will now go away, look at making amendments and then possibly have a 2nd attempt. A day must come when this nation allows all to be treated as equals, regardless of gender, sexuality and ethnicity." It is expected that the party will attempt to hold a protest march in the coming days on the streets of Geidi, the city which hosts the annual Kaitaine LGBT+ Pride Parade.

[Kaitaine]

REVERNED MOTHER DIES. NATION TO HAVE FOUR DAYS OF MOURNING

 

Reverend Mother Hannah McKay was pronounced dead at 2am this morning. The 82-year-old Head of State had suffered from ill health for a number of months after sustaining a fall at the Chapterhouse School, it was reported that the Head of State had suffered a number of black outs and seizures since. Ambulances attended the school at just before midnight following an emergency call from one of the staff who had discovered the Reverned Mother unconcious, doctors later confirmed that she had suffered a stroke. The death of the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood's leader also means that the nation is now without a Head of State while the rituals to determine McKay's replacement take place. Traditionally the heads of the the Orders three non-theocratic branches, the Truthsayers, The Missionara Protectiva and the Honored Matres attend the dying Reverned Mothers death bed to witness her final words, the Mother best capable of reciting these words is deemed to have been blessed with the dying Reverned Mother's knowledge and thus inherits the title, however in this case no such final words were witnessed. In cases such as this it falls to the three Heads of Branch to draw up a short list of candidates and then determine which is best through a public test of sorts. It was left to Truthsayer Commander Kristin Metcalffe to make the announcement saying, "Reverned Mother McKay has left us to go to the great beyond, in time we shall join her, but until then it is our duty to make sure our faith, and therefore Kaitaine are in a position to continue to be strong. This is neccessary for us to now observe a series of days of mourning, one for each branch of the Sisterhood. Following that we shall convene at Chapterhouse and on Sunday the 1st of April announce the new Reverned Mother, her inauguration to take place the following day."

It is expected that the head of the Missionara Protectiva, Chief Scholar Abigail Hallam, will invite Heads of State from across the world to witness for the first time the ceremony to begin the regin of the new Reverened Mother.