Author: Admin

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Sudanese-born British mobile communications tycoon Mo Ibrahim told a news conference in Tanzania today that some African countries are too small to keep functioning independently, and need to integrate in order to survive.

Ibrahim, speaking at the beginning of a two-day-long event encouraging good governance on the continent, commented that “some of our countries, and I’m really sorry to say this, are just not viable….We need scale and we need that now — not tomorrow, the next year or the year after.”

“Intra-African trade is 4–5 percent of our international trade. Why? This is unacceptable, unviable, and people need to stand up and say this,” he continued. “Who are we to think that we can have 53 tiny little countries and be ready to compete with China, India, Europe, the Americans? It is a fallacy.”

“We are poor, we are hungry, we are going without. Something is drastically wrong. I think we have the right to ask our leaders: are they really serious?” he said.

A reporter for the BBC suggested that the tycoon was talking about economic, not political, integration.

Ibrahim also surprised many African leaders when he did not give out his Ibrahim Prize in October, worth US$5 million. The prize is given to former sub-Saharan African leaders whose governance has been deemed good. Prize judges didn’t say why it wasn’t given out this year. Former presidents Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique and Festus Mogae of Botswana both have received the prize in the past.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Egypt will open a Gaza Strip crossing for humanitarian and medical aid.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak ordered the opening of the Rafah Border Crossing. Food and medical supplies will be allowed, but not concrete or steel. It will be made available for ill and injured Palestinians seeking medical treatment.

Rafah is the only point on the Gaza border not controlled by Israel; a 2005 agreement put Palestine and Israel in charge of the border, with observation from the European Union. United Nations officials had demanded an end to the Gaza blockade.

This comes after there has been international criticism of the death of activists when Israeli commandos raided Turkish ships in the international waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The six-ship “Freedom Flotilla” was carrying some 10,000 tonnes of supplies and was planning to breach the Gaza blockade. Details are unknown, with information limited to Israeli military briefings.

Friday, October 10, 2008

In an attempt to speak with as many candidates as possible during the 2008 Canadian federal election, Wikinews has talked via email with David Sparrow. Sparrow is a candidate in Ontario’s Don Valley West riding, running under the New Democratic Party (NDP) banner. The riding was set to vote in a by-election on September 22, 2008, following the resignation of John Godfrey, but Stephen Harper’s sudden election call nulled that effort.

Also running in the Toronto riding are Liberal Rob Oliphant, Conservative John Carmichael, Green Georgina Wilcock, and Communist Catherine Holliday.

The following is an interview with Sparrow, conducted via email. The interview is published unedited, as sent to Wikinews.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Marvin Schur, a 93-year-old man from Bay City, Michigan has died after the electric company limited his electric use due to his failure to pay over US$1,000 in past-due payments.

Bay City Electric Light & Power installed a power-limiting device on his home on January 13. The device would limit the amount of power the resident uses and would essentially shut it off if that limit is reached, or if the resident fails to pay the outstanding bill within 10 days of installation. In order for the electricity to be turned back on, the limiter must be reset by pushing a button.

Bay City power says that a warning, indicating that the power was to be turned off and a limiter installed, had been placed on Schur’s front door. Despite that, the company says that they are now “looking at our website and possibly doing an automated phone message. We obviously need to get the word out.”

The autopsy performed on Schur’s body concluded that he had died “a slow, painful death” caused by hypothermia. Dr. Kanu Virani, who performed the autopsy, explained: “Hypothermia shuts the whole system down, slowly. It’s not easy to die from hypothermia without first realizing your fingers and toes feel like they’re burning.”

It was less than 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 Centigrade) in Schur’s home when neighbors found Schur dead on January 17. Virani commented that it was his first time performing an autopsy on a body in which “the person froze to death indoors.”

“His furnace was not running – the insides of his windows were full of ice the morning we found him,” said George A. Pauwels Jr., who was with his wife when they found Schur’s body.

In Michigan it is illegal for a utility company to disconnect power to any home between November 1 and March 31 when a resident is over the age of 65. Limiters are also not supposed to be used during that time frame. However, municipally-owned electric utilities like the one in Bay City, are not regulated by the state. The Michigan state attorney general’s office has launched an investigation into the incident.

Residents around Schur’s home say he was hard of hearing, and the city states that the device’s function and operation were never explained to him. When word of the story got around, people from all over the United States began to call the city in anger.

“I’ve taken calls from Canada, Massachusetts, Texas, New York, Alabama – and that’s just the ones I can think of off the top of my head,” said Melody Roth of the city’s administrative office, who also added that people from all over are “calling all city departments, not just our office.”

Schur has no known children, and his wife had died several years prior to the incident.

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

The popular social news site Digg.com was suffering from what appears to be a user revolt in response to the deletion of several articles revealing the encryption keys for HD-DVD, which would allow individuals to remove the encryption from HD-DVDs. Users are posting articles with links to the codes. At approximately 1:40 a.m [Eastern time] Digg.com was no longer online but returned online with a message from Kevin Rose, Digg’s founder, who declared that he would not delete any more articles that contain the code.

“We’ll be back shortly. Digg.com will be down for a brief period while we make some changes,” said a statement previously posted on Digg.com’s website. The notation (Out of service) appeared as the page’s title.

According to co-founder Jay Adelson, the stories were deleted as a result of intellectual property infringement, although some users of the site speculate that the stories were deleted as a result of ties to the MPAA and its Diggnation podcast.

“We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code. But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be,” said Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg in a statement on Digg’s blogging site. The message also appears as a story submitted by Rose on Digg’s main page. Rose included the encryption key in the title of the story, and joined countless other users by repeating the key in the comment section of the story.

A large number of Digg.com users were spamming the site with the 16 byte key to such an extent, apparently, that the site became almost unreadable. Users were not able to submit new material even though a “success” message was displayed after clicking submit.

As with Digg, during the past 48 hours, Wikipedia also has experienced some intensive user (and non-user) efforts to post the HD-DVD codes. Pending legal instructions to the contrary, Wikipedia volunteers (“administrators”) have struggled with limited success to keep the codes off its site. Wikinews also experienced some trouble with users and non-users posting the code.

==Sources==

• Kevin Rose. “Digg This” — Digg the Blog, May 2, 2007
• Chris Scott Barr. “Extra Extra! Mob takes over Digg – Riot ensues!” — SlashGear, May 2, 2007
• kdawson. “Digg.com Attempts To Suppress HD-DVD Revolt” — Slashdot.com, May 2, 2007
• Jay Adelson. “What’s Happening with HD-DVD Stories?” — Digg the Blog, May 1, 2007
• Elijah Horton. “Was it Worth It, Digg?” — fieryprophet, May 1, 2007
• On Wikipedia’s situation, see: [1]

Thursday, February 4, 2010

With a state by-election coming up in Victoria, Australia, many minor parties and independent candidates will be looking to gain a seat in the Legislative Assembly. Liz Mumby is one of the independents.

“I am a medical sales professional, a wife and mother and a small business owner,” says Mumby, the Division of Altona. “I don’t come from a political background, I live in the real world.” She argues that “we should not limit the debate to public transport issues just because the retiring member was the Minister for Public Transport.”

Wikinews reporter Patrick Gillett held an exclusive email interview with Mrs. Mumby.

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

A National Academy of Sciences report (.pdf) last year said that while the milk and meat from cloned animals would not likely make anyone sick, more research should be performed. Now, a new US-Japan study published in the April 11 online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences says that milk and meat from cloned cattle does indeed appear to meet industry standards and appears to be safe for human consumption.

As BBC News reports, the scientists, led by Professor Jerry Yang from the University of Connecticut, compared the produce from two beef and four dairy clones, all derived from a single Holstein dairy cow and a single Japanese black bull, with the produce from normal animals of similar age and breed.

The meat was analysed against more than 100 physiological, tissue and cellular components, while the milk was analysed for protein, fat and other variables. No significant differences between the produce of cloned and normal cattle were found. Higher levels of fat and fatty acids were found in the cloned cow meat, but they still fell within beef industry standards.

While the study showed the cloned produce to be within the range approved for human consumption, the scientists stressed that the research was still in its early stages. Their findings, they said, provide “guidelines” for further research with larger numbers of clones from different genetic backgrounds.

Cloning livestock may one day increase yields by copying those animals that are especially productive and especially resistant to disease.

“The milking production levels in the US are three to four times higher than levels in China; maybe even five times or more compared to cows in India and some other countries,” Professor Jerry Yang told BBC News. “Therefore cloning could offer technology for duplicating superior farm animals. However, all the products from these cloned animals must be safe for human consumption. …and it is a major issue for scientists to provide a scientific basis for the data and information to address this question.”

As USA Today reports, there is currently no law governing the sale of meat or milk from the estimated 1,000 to 2,000 cloned farm animals in the USA. But since 2003, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has asked producers to voluntarily keep the meat and milk of these animals, and that of their offspring, out of the food supply.

Wired News reports that companies like ViaGen and Cyagra, which offer livestock-cloning services, have also been waiting for several years for a final say from the FDA.

“For the United States agricultural industry, (cloning) can reduce the number of cows necessary for milking,” said Jerry Yang “They can have a pleasant environment and produce even more milk.” He also said that cloning cattle from the United States, where genetic breeding is more advanced, could save developing countries 50 years of breeding.

The idea of cloning animals for human consumption is not without its critics. First, there are the welfare concerns, as most cloned animals do not make it to term before being born, and many of those that do are born deformed or prone to illness. The Humane Society of the United States has asked for a ban on milk and meat from clones for just this reason. Second, there is still the concern that healthy clones may have subtle defects that could make their food products unsafe to eat.

As the Washington Post reports, some critics are asking why it is necessary to clone cows that produce huge amounts of milk when surpluses, rather than shortages, are the main problem facing the U.S. dairy industry today.