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Thursday, November 19, 2009

A suicide bomber has killed at least 19 people around a courthouse in the city of Peshawar, Pakistan.

Witnesses said that the powerful explosion occurred during rush hour. Several security personnel and lawyers are among the victims, and doctors reported that some of those injured are in a critical condition.

“One policemen [sic] has been martyred and four injured in the attack,” said a senior police official, Mohammad Karim Khan.

Senior police officer Sahibzada Anis, speaking to reporters, said that the suicide bomber was on foot and detonated the device when security guards stopped him for a search at the main entrance. The blast damaged several cars parked nearby. “The attacker was on foot and blew himself when guards tried to search him at the gates of the court,” he said.

Thursday’s suicide attack in Peshawar took place hours after missiles fired by a suspected American drone killed at least four suspected militants and wounded five others in the North Waziristan region, on the Afghan border. The area is a known stronghold of Afghan and al-Qaeda militants.

Taliban insurgents have intensified attacks in the country — particularly in and around Peshawar — after the Pakistani army launched an offensive against militant bases in South Waziristan. Officials said that since early last month more than 300 people have died in bombings and militant raids on government, civilian, and Western targets in the country.

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Saturday, January 30, 2010

The automobile manufacturer Toyota has said that it will recall up to 1.8 million cars across Europe, after a problem with the accelerator pedal was discovered.

According to the firm, eight models were affected by the problem — AYGO, iQ, Yaris, Auris, Corolla, Verso, Avensis, and RAV4 — after it was discovered that the accelerator may become stuck in a depressed position, resulting in uncontrollable speeding.

On Thursday, Toyota said it would recall 1.1 million cars in the US; a day previous, it had suspended eight models from sales. Last week, 2.3 million cars in the US were recalled due to the pedal issues.

The chief executive of Toyota Motor Europe commented on the recall. “We understand that the current situation is creating concerns and we deeply regret it,” said Tadashi Arashima. The firm, however, noted that it wasn’t aware of any accidents resulted by the malfunctioning accelerator pedals, and not many pedal problem incidents were reported in Europe. “The potential accelerator pedal issue only occurs in very rare circumstances,” Arashima added.

The National Automobile Dealers Association, meanwhile, commented that Toyota showrooms could lose as much as US$2.47 billion worth of revenue due to the incident.

“Toyota veterans will likely hear the news with disbelief and keep faith in the brand, but new customers could definitely be scared off,” remarked Robert Rademacher, who is the president of the trade group ZDK, as quoted by Business Week. “This recall has a dimension which we’ve never seen before.”

There are concerns that the problem may result in reduced consumer trust in Toyota. Hans-Peter Wodniok, an analyst for Fairesearch GmbH & Co. in Germany, noted: “If this is a one-time event, huge as it is, Toyota may be forgiven. But if something happens again in the next months and years, they will have gambled away customer trust in Europe as well.”

Analysts for Morgan Stanley, however, said they believed Toyota would not suffer much from the incident. “The company’s actions to correct the situation are timely enough to avoid major brand damage,” they remarked in a note to investors.

Sunday, September 6, 2009

24-year-old Aman Kassaye, of no fixed abode, is to face a charge of attempted murder for his alleged role in an armed robbery that netted £40 million ($65 million) worth of jewelry from a London store.

Kassaye is the seventh man to be charged, and is also facing prosecution for conspiracy to rob the Graff store in New Bond Street, false imprisonment, and using a handgun to resist arrest. He will appear at Wimbledon magistrates court on Monday.

The other six men have already been remanded in custody until October 23, when they will appear at Kingston Crown Court. All are facing charges of conspiracy to rob, and two of them are also charged with a firearms offense.

43 diamond rings, watches, and bracelets were taken from the store. The theft occurred when two armed and suited men walked in and took an employee hostage. It has been reported they used prosthetic masks made from liquid latex but police have not confirmed this. Amateur footage also shows a shot was fired. No-one was injured.

The robbery is one of the biggest the United Kingdom has seen. After the crime a string of getaway vehicles was used, with police believing several more offenders assisted with this stage of the plan. Although The Telegraph claims no stolen property has yet been recovered, this is also unconfirmed by police.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

A recent study conducted by Hollins University indicates that 48% of sodas from soda fountains in the United States are contaminated with coliform bacteria.

The researchers drew the conclusions from a test of 90 beverages from 30 fountains in fast food restaurants. The bacteria found was a form of fecal contamination, it was discovered, although it was not immediately clear whether it came from the soda fountains themselves, or people with dirty hands.

Other bacteria were also found in the soda samples, including E.coli, present in eleven percent of the tested beverages. Many of the soda drinks apparently fell below the US Environmental Protection Agency’s minimum standards for drinking water; regulations state that samples cannot test positive for E.coli bacteria. In total, 20% of soda fountains had more than the maximum recommended levels of bacteria.

“The large number of beverages and soda fountain machines containing E. coli is still of considerable concern […] and suggests that more pathogenic strains of bacteria could persist and thrive in soda fountain machines if introduced,” the authors of the study wrote.

Renee Godard, the study’s lead author, and a professor of biology and environmental studies at Hollins University, commented on the findings. “Certainly we come in contact with bacteria all the time. It’s simply that some bacteria may potentially cause some disease or gastrointestinal distress. One thing we hesitate with is that people get afraid of bacteria. Many of them are benign or helpful, but certainly, I don’t want E.coli in my beverage,” she said.

Godard and her team took samples of 90 different beverages from three groups – sugar soda, diet soda, water – from 30 fast-food restaurants in Roanoke, Virginia.

“You can get collections of bacteria in the water line and that then runs through the whole machine and gets in to the beverage. Any time any water or liquid sits somewhere, it’s just a breeding ground for bacteria,” commented Primary Care Physician Alanna Levine.

Experts suggest that plastic nozzles used on soda fountains might be part of the reason why the study found so much bacteria is present; it takes only a single dirty hand to spread bacteria over a tube, and it could be easily transferred to the rest of the fountain from there.

“It could be from dispensing with a hand that wasn’t clean or using wet rags to wipe down the machine. We haven’t done the work to really identify those potential sources and how these bacteria get established,” Godard said.

A professor at the University of California Davis, however, said he believed that a single localised study wasn’t enough to come to a conclusion about soda machines throughout the country. “How sanitation regulations are promulgated and enforced in a community are different. Some communities are more on to it than others. How much of a threat it represents? It’s probably limited. Once again, it’s a matter of what regulations are in place, who pays attention and whether it’s being followed,” he said, as quoted by CNN.

The National Restaurant Association responded to the university’s findings in an e-mail statement. “While the results of this study are disconcerting, we feel that it isn’t representative of our industry and that our guests can safely enjoy beverages from dispensers and single-serve containers alike,” the organisation said.

The American Beverage Association also countered the findings. “Fountain beverages are safe. Consumers can rest assured that our industry’s fountain beverages pose no public health risk. […] Importantly, our industry meets, and often exceeds, all government health standards in bringing its products to market.”

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Today, the English version of Wikipedia is taking part in a 24-hour ‘blackout’ to protest two proposed U.S. anti-piracy laws, the Stop Online Piracy Act and the PROTECT IP Act. The protest mirrors similar actions from other websites including Reddit and Boing Boing. The White House stated on Saturday that they “will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global internet”.

In the midst of the Wikipedia blackout, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation Sue Gardner answered some questions posed by Wikinews’ Tom Morris about the effectiveness of, and background to, the blackout.

((Tom Morris)) Do you think the blackout is going to actually be effective?

((Sue Gardner)) Yes. In my opinion, the blackout has two main goals—to raise awareness about the dangers of SOPA and PIPA, and to encourage readers to contact their elected representatives and give their views. The first has already been accomplished: there are already more than 4,000 stories in Google News about the blackout, and it was a trending topic on Twitter almost immediately. So we know we’ve been effective in raising awareness. What remains to be seen how many people will contact their elected officials.

((TM)) What do you say to people who have decided to leave the editing community as a result of the blackout?

((Gardner)) I hope nobody stops editing Wikipedia because of the blackout. I watched the community decision-making process unfold on the English Wikipedia, and I thought it was a good one. People first started talking about SOPA more than a month ago. Jimmy started the straw poll in mid-December. Over 1,800 English Wikipedians from many different countries participated in the discussion over the last three days. As the admins who closed it noted, this is by far the largest-ever number of participants in a community discussion on English Wikipedia, and the overwhelming majority of them supported action. So I would hope that anybody who opposes the blackout would also agree that the decision-making process was a good one, and would therefore be okay to accept it, however reluctantly.

((TM)) How much technical planning went into the blackout before the community consensus was decided on Monday night?

((Gardner)) Last Thursday Geoff Brigham [Ed: Wikimedia’s legal counsel] asked engineering to do an internal assessment of the technical implementation requirements, because the community discussions at that point were suggesting there would likely be some kind of action. Engineering did an initial assessment based on e.g. the Italian blackout, implications for search engines, etc., and then a lot of work happened over the weekend. The bulk of initial development and testing happened on a sprint on Martin Luther King Day, a public holiday in the United States, and the final launch development and testing sprint happened on Tuesday.

((TM)) Does the fact that this is affecting only English Wikipedia and not the sister projects and other language projects concern the Foundation?

((Gardner)) No. My understanding is that the English Wikipedia is the only project and language-version enacting a blackout, but that several other projects and language versions are putting up supportive banners, with the Italian Wkipedians doing a clickthrough informational interstitial. The German Wikipedia decided to put up banners even before consensus was reached on the English Wikipedia, and the Arabic Wikipedia, Italian Wikipedia and Commons later made the same decision. (There may be others, that I don’t know about.) I think that’s fine: each project and each language has different circumstances that argue for different types of action, or for no action. There is no one right answer that fits everybody.

((TM)) Some have said that the lack of participation by opponents of SOPA in the commercial sector (sites of the size of Twitter, Facebook, Google etc.) is going to hamper the effectiveness of the blackout – is this a concern?

((Gardner)) No. I don’t think anybody ever expected the big commercial sites to black out: most aren’t in a position to participate in something like this even if they wanted to. For example, they might have shareholders to answer to, participation might cost them significant revenue, or it could break contractual agreements (such as a commitment to maintain a certain level of uptime, or some other service delivery). Most sites are constrained by various commercial considerations: that makes Wikipedia’s participation particularly powerful and important.

((TM)) Given both the Italian shutdown and the SOPA blackout, is the Foundation going to come up with a policy or set of conditions which limit when these kind of things happen? There are plenty in the community who support the SOPA actions but are concerned that this will set a bad precedent.

((Gardner)) Yeah, I empathize with those people and to a certain extent I share that concern. The Wikimedia movement does not have a lot of experience with advocacy, and probably mistakes will get made. At this time the Wikimedia Foundation doesn’t have any plans to develop policy governing protests or advocacy work. But, I think it probably does make sense for the Foundation to create venues for these discussions so people can share thinking and expertise. So for example, we may create a mailing list dedicated to advocacy/lobbying. And there is some good thinking starting to happen [on the project-wide protests page on Meta].