Friday, May 27, 2016

The Indian Government announced on Wednesday they will issue a notification to ensure all buses are fitted with panic buttons to prevent sex-related violence occurring on buses in India. The motion was introduced by Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari. Installation of the buttons is set to become mandatory on June 2.

Tests are under way on 20 buses running from Rajasthan to New Delhi. Buses are to have panic buttons, a GPS-enabled vehicle tracking device, and CCTV cameras. The new buttons are located at the front doors and when pressed, a police control room has the ability to view live footage recorded inside the bus.

Last month, the government announced that as of 2017, mobile phones can’t be sold in India without a panic button. With the press of a single key, the panic button alerts emergency services that assistance is required.

Since a fatal sexual assault three and a half years ago on a bus in New Delhi, accompanied by increased rates of sexual assault, the government has been pressured to help women avoid the dangers of sexual assault. The bus sexual assault three and a half years ago resulted in India-wide protests, and laws regarding sexual assault were overhauled.

According to India’s National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), in 2014 New Delhi reported 1,813 rapes, more than any other Indian city. In more than 80% of rapes across India, the victim knew the rapist. In data from 2013, the rapists in 539 cases were parents, in 2,315 cases other relatives.

In 2012 the NCRB said the country had 24,923 reported rapes. However, this number grew over the following year, with 2013 seeing 33,707 reported.

In 2013, NCRB said New Delhi saw 1,636 rapes reported, with an Indian average of 92 women per day. The New Delhi cases alone account for more than four per day.

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Methane gas was blamed for the explosion deaths of 8 miners in southern Polish‘s Halemba coal mine Tuesday, November 21. Officials say at least 15 are missing.

Rescue efforts were halted because dangerously high levels of methane gas returned, according to Zbigniew Madej, spokesman for state-owned Coal Co., which operates the mine.

The missing miners’ locater devices were not emitting signals, increasing rescurers’ concerns for their well-being. Grzegorz Pawlaszek, head of Coal Co., said the 15 missing miners’ fate is “not known,” but added that “there is a chance to find someone still alive.”

“This is a tragedy. People have died here,” Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said when he came to Ruda Slaska to see the blast.

Earlier Wednesday, a reconnaissance rescue team descended 3000 feet toward the blast scene, only to retreat because of safety concerns related to high methane gas levels. Rescue digging efforts were also halted because of explosion concerns.

The missing men were aged 21-59. One of the miner’s family members, Andrzej Pytlik, 30, remained on scene with his sister, hoping and waiting for news of her husband, Krystian Gaszka.

Pytlik, also a miner, said through teary eyes that, “I work in the mines and I know that hope is scant because that’s the truth.”

The explosion occurred in a closed portion of the mine where the now-missing miners were working to retrieve abandoned equipment. According to Pawlaszek, the value of the equipment was $23 million, adding that “It was new equipment and that is why we decided to retrieve it.”

He indicated that the recovery work was performed under the supervision of gas detection specialists, and that the bodies of the recovered miners were difficult to identify because of the severity of burns and because their ID tags were blown away in the explosion.

The Halemba mine, located in Ruda Slaska, has produced coal for nearly 50 years, has been fraught with safety concerns and has a track record of serious accidents. One of the oldest mines in Poland, it is centrally located in the industrial Silesia region.

Earlier this year, a miner was trapped underground in the Halemba mine five days after a cave-in. In 1990, 19 miners were killed and 20 hurt in a gas explosion, and five were killed in collapse in 1991.

Inside, priests and mining officials were comforting and counseling with distraught relatives. Outside, eight white candles flickered on a main gate wall.

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

U.S. Republican Party presidential candidate Mark Everson, former commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), filed a complaint on Monday with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to challenge his exclusion from Thursday’s first Fox News Republican Party presidential debate. Everson argues his exclusion violates Title 11 of the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations in that debate hosts must not “structure the debates to promote or advance one candidate over another”, and must “use pre-established objective criteria to determine which candidates may participate in a debate.”

Everson served as Commissioner of the IRS from 2003 to 2007, during the George W. Bush administration. After his departure, he briefly served as CEO of the American Red Cross, worked in the cabinet of Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, and worked for the tax consulting firm alliantgroup. He announced his candidacy this past March with a sixteen-page open letter in which he outlined the six pillars of his campaign: amnesty for illegal immigrants, reinstatement of the military draft, a promise to serve only a single presidential term, and calls for tax reform, deficit reduction, and corporate responsibility.

Fox News claims Everson fails to meet the criteria it established for Thursday’s two debates. Only seventeen candidates meet the criteria, which require a candidate “consistently” be included in “recognized” opinion polls. The prime-time event features the top ten candidates by average polling percentage. The other seven participate in a separate debate just before the prime time event.

In his complaint, Everson urges the FEC to compel Fox News to include him in the second tier debate as the eighth participant.

Everson argues Fox News, in violation of Title 11, “structure[d] the debates to promote or advance one candidate over another” through a July 27 change to its criteria that replaced a pre-existing one percent polling threshold with a threshold admitting those “consistently” included in “recognized” polls. He alleges this was done to ensure the inclusion of the low-polling candidates former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, former New York governor George Pataki, Senator Lindsey Graham, and former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore, because Fox News recognizes these candidates as “major players.”

Furthermore, Everson argues the Fox News criteria are not “objective,” as Title 11 requires, because they fail to define the terms “consistently” and “recognized” when referring to polls. He asserts he was included in the Republican Party’s online straw poll in May and is the only candidate still listed on that poll who has been excluded from Thursday’s debate.

Election law expert Richard Winger, publisher of Ballot Access News, says Everson is “completely correct” in his challenge. However, he believes Everson only has a chance of success if he actually files a lawsuit rather than simply complaining to the FEC.

Friday, March 14, 2008

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has been accused of editing pages in the encyclopedia in return for a donation to the Wikimedia Foundation. In an article published Tuesday, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that former Novell computer scientist Jeff Merkey alleged Wales had made edits to his article on his behalf, in exchange for a donation to the Wikimedia Foundation. The news hit the website Slashdot later Tuesday, where the incident was dubbed “DonorGate”.

According to The Daily Telegraph, Merkey claims that he was told by Wales in 2006 that the Wikipedia article about him could be made more favorable in exchange for a donation. Merkey made a donation of US$5,000 to the Wikimedia Foundation, and Wales made edits to the Wikipedia article about Merkey around the same time. Merkey published his claims on a public Wikimedia mailing list and sent a statement to The Associated Press.

In a response Wales called Merkey’s statements “nonsense”, saying “Of course I would never offer, nor accept any offer, whereby a donation would buy someone special editorial treatment in the encyclopedia. I do routinely assist people with WP:BLP issues, and I do courtesies for many people. Donations have no bearing on that at all.” WP:BLP refers to Wikipedia’s policy regarding biographies of living persons on the encyclopedia.

After deleting the Wikipedia article about Merkey in 2006, Wales wrote to Wikipedia editors he had done so “because of the unpleasantness of it” and requested that they “be extra careful here to be courteous and assume good faith”. After erasing the article, Wales placed the article under protection with editing access limited to established users. Merkey ceased his $5,000.00 per year payments to the Wikimedia Foundation after reviewing what he called “evidence of diversion and mismanagement of the charities funds by Wales and the Wikimedia Board of Trustees”.

In a statement responding to a post about the incident on the site Techtree.com, Wikimedia Foundation’s Head of Communications Jay Walsh addressed the Foundation’s principles regarding conflict of interest: “The Wikimedia Foundation (the Foundation which operates and maintains Wikipedia and other free knowledge projects) has never solicited or accepted donations for the purposes of making edits or offering protection to Wikipedia articles. Nor has Jimmy Wales ever solicited or accepted donations for the Foundation in this capacity. These allegations are completely false. … Jimmy has been unfailingly ethical and frugal in the use of all Foundation funds. The Wikimedia Foundation, its staff and board members, and the users of Wikipedia itself hold the core principles of ‘no conflict of interest’ in the highest regard.”

After leaving Novell amidst allegations of misappropriation of trade secrets, Merkey was sued by his former employer. He filed a harassment lawsuit against organizations including the website Slashdot in 2005. Merkey filed a suit against Delta Air Lines and Natural Selection Foods in 2006, claiming his son had become sick from E. coli contaminated spinach.

Merkey is banned from editing Wikipedia due to a ruling by Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee. The Wikipedia Signpost, Wikipedia’s community-written and community-edited newspaper, reported that a Wikipedia user account used by Merkey was blocked in October 2005 for “Personal attacks, legal threats, harassment, disruption”. Merkey was later allowed to come back to edit Wikipedia in May 2007 under a different account. As the result of a ruling by Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committe in a July 2007 arbitration case, Merkey and two users who had harassed him on Wikipedia were banned from editing the encyclopedia for one year.

Last week Jimmy Wales faced accusations by former Wikimedia Foundation executive Danny Wool that he misused the non-profit organization’s funds, and attempted to expense a visit to a Moscow massage parlor and high-priced bottles of wine. In an interview with CNET TV, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner described Wool as “a disgruntled former employee” and called his claims “a whole bunch of unsubstantiated rumors and gossip”. Wales’s former girlfriend, journalist Rachel Marsden, recently leaked purported instant message transcripts with Wales, which implied Wales had used his influence to change the article about Marsden on Wikipedia. Wales ended his relationship with Marsden and made a public statement to that effect on Wikipedia, and in response Marsden opened an auction for some of Wales’s clothing on eBay.

Friday, March 2, 2007

Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin appeared before a newly formed Antitrust Task Force, a sub-committee of the House Judiciary Committee, on Wednesday last week in Washington, D.C. to defend the proposed U.S. merger between XM and Sirius satellite radio services.

The hearing, carried live on C-SPAN, was attended by representatives from various competing broadcast companies. The representatives challenged the merger deal, and some speakers were openly hostile to Karmazin and to satellite radio in general, while other speakers were more civil.

Several times during the debate, the discussion centered on the failed merger deal between the two satellite television networks DirecTV and Echostar. The comparison between this proposed radio merger and the failed television merger was settled to some extent with an understanding that nearly all television viewers now use either cable or satellite to view available programming. Televised programming content is now delivered mainly in the form of a subscription, rather than airwave transmissions.

Unlike television programming, most radio listeners use over the air receivers to listen to free programming content supported advertisers.

“We come to this hearing with an open mind, but we recognize that the companies have the obligation to convince the Congress, the regulators, and most importantly, the American People that this combination will improve the competitive playing field and benefit consumers,” said John Conyers, the sub-committee chairman. To determine the legality of this merger, Congress first needs to decide whether a combined XM and Sirius would be a monopoly, as the only satellite radio provider in the United States, or whether the new company will actually be in competition with other forms of radio-like entertainment, according to Conyers. The hearing focused on alternatives such as Internet radio, terrestrial radio, portable audio devices, and emerging services, such as cell phone services and WiMax.

A compilation of brief news reports for Saturday, December 20, 2008.

The United States government has announced that it will give US$17.4 billion in loans to help three of the nation’s automobile makers – Chrysler, General Motors, and Ford – avoid bankruptcy.

The money will be taken from the $700 billion bailout package originally intended to rescue US banks. General Motors will get $9.4 billion and Chrysler $4 billion before next year. Ford stated that it wants to get by without government aid.

President George Bush said that it would not be “a responsible course of action” to allow the companies to collapse.

Sources

• “Bush unveils $17.4bn car bail-out” — BBC News, December 19, 2008
• “U.S. Throws Lifeline to Detroit” — WSJ.com, December 20, 2008

Telephone and Internet communications between Asia and Europe have been disrupted after some submarine cables were severed.

The cables FLAG FEA, SMW4 and SMW3 near Alexandria, Egypt, were damaged, and the GO cable 130 kilometres off the coast of Sicily has also been reported as broken. France Telecom will repair the damage, and the company announced that it was dispatching a ship to repair the line between Egypt and Italy.

Experts warn that it could be several days before the problems are fixed.

Sources

• “Severed cable disrupts web access” — BBC News, December 19, 2008
• “New undersea cable cuts lead to Internet outages” — ars technica, December 20, 2008

Yann Elies, a French yachtsman participating in the Vendee Globe round-the-world solo yacht race, was rescued on Saturday by the Australian navy after the former was paralysed by a wave that struck his boat in the Southern Ocean.

Elies broke his left thighbone and perhaps several ribs after the wave slammed into his boat 200 kilometres southwest of Perth.

The Australian frigate dispatched the HMAS Arunta to rescue Elies. The ship left Fremantle early on Friday morning and reached Elies by evening.

Sources

• “Injured yachtsman rescued by navy” — BBC News, December 20, 2008
• “Navy reaches stricken solo sailor Yann Elies” — news.com.au, December 20, 2008

Saturday, June 18, 2016

Yesterday in UEFA Euro 2016, Italy defeated Sweden 1–0 and assured their advancement to the knock-out stage. Croatia vs Czech Republic resulted in a 2–2 draw and Spain defeated Turkey 3–0 as Álvaro Morata scored twice. Spectators from the Croatian end threw flares before the final whistle.

Italy faced Sweden in the first match of the day. Sweden led in terms of ball possession but, in the 88th minute, Éder scored for Italy. Italian captain Gianluigi Buffon was yellow carded in injury time as he delayed a goal-kick. Italy numerically assured their advancement to the knock-out stage by winning this game.

Croatia were 1–0 up at half time as Ivan Periši? scored in the 37th minute. FC Barcelona midfielder Ivan Rakiti? scored a second goal for Croatia chipping the ball over Petr ?ech just before the one hour mark. Later, Milan Škoda scored from a header in the 76th minute for the Czechs. The match seemed to being inching towards a 2–1 victory for Croatia but Czech Republic won a penalty and Tomáš Necid equalised late in the match, having replaced Jaroslav Plašil.

In the 86th minute, spectators threw flares on the ground and delayed the game by five minutes. A hearing is scheduled to take place today.

Later, Davor Šuker, president of the Croatian Football Federation, said, “We will seek the help of the French police [to investigate] […] Something is rotten in our country, and this […] deserves zero tolerance.” ^{((hr)) Croatian language: Tražit ?emo od francuske policije pomo? našem sudstvu, da se vidi tko baca baklje […] Nešto je trulo kod nas, a ovo ostalo zaslužuje nultu toleranciju.}

Turkish captain Arda Turan faced his FC Barcelona teammate Andrés Iniesta as Turkey took on Spain. Spanish captain Sergio Ramos was booked in the opening moments of the game. Just after the half-hour mark, Nolito assisted Álvaro Morata, who scored a header. Three minutes later, Nolito scored the second goal of the match. Three minutes after half time, Morata scored from Jordi Alba’s pass.

Spain won the game 3–0 and qualified for the Last 16 knockout phase.

David de Gea maintained a clean sheet for his first five international appearances and set a new world record breaking the previous record of Gordon Banks.