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Sunday, June 5, 2005

200,000 people living around Harare, Zimbabwe have been evicted from their homes, which have been targeted in a demolition programme by the government. Most have been forced to sleep out in the open while rental prices in the city have skyrocketed.

The operations have targeted at least six Harare suburbs: Hatcliff extension, Epworth, Dzivaresekwa, Glenorah, Glenview, Budriro and Mbare.

The official government newspaper, The Herald, says that 22,735 people have been arrested in the drive against “illegal structures, businesses and criminal activities”.

The Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights) are pressing for the government for a six month waiting period to give residents time to make new housing arrangements. ZimRights director Munyaradzi Bidi told the IRIN news service: “About 200,000 people have been affected in the demolition drive — and many of them have papers to prove that they were legal occupants with lease agreements”.

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

In the biggest ever narcotics haul in India’s capital, the New Delhi police have seized over 4,400 kg of Mandrax and Rs. 20 crore from a dealer in the city. The consignment, meant for a customer in the U.S, was seized from a godown in Badarpur, near the Delhi-Haryana border. The alleged trafficker, identified as Vinod Sharma, claimed that the contraband was not his and that he had nothing to do with the matter. Sharma started his career as a scrap-dealer in Delhi, and police suspect that with the help of some contacts he used container depots for drug-trafficking, whilst successfully dodging both the police and the Customs Department.

On Sunday the Delhi Police arrested him at his Kalkaji residence. The Deputy Commissioner of Police for South District, Delhi Police, Anil Shukla said, “Sharma befriended container drivers and once they had driven past customs, he and his men would meet them at a distance and pilfer the containers.”

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Yao Jiaxin, a 21-year-old student at the Xi’an Conservatory of Music, was sentenced to death on Friday. Yao, from Xi’an in China’s Shaanxi province, was convicted of homicide after stabbing a cyclist to death.

On the night of October 20, 2010, Yao ran into 26-year-old cyclist and mother of a two-year-old, Zhang Miao, while driving his car. After he saw her writing down his vehicle’s license plate number following the accident, he feared she would report him, and proceeded to murder her by stabbing her six times. Prior to her murder, Zhang had suffered only minor injuries in the accident, according to police.

On October 23, after being accused of murdering her, Yao went to the local police station with his parents and confessed to the crime. He said he killed Zhang because she had seen his license plate number, and he feared that the “peasant woman would be hard to deal with.”

During a three-hour trial on March 23, 2011, Yao’s lawyer pleaded for a lenient sentence, saying it was a “crime of passion.” Yao tearfully described how he had been forced to play the piano, leading him to thoughts of suicide. But prosecutors and judges said Yao did not deserve leniency, as he had not attempted to help the woman after the accident but instead murdered her.

Public passions were raised and some thought Yao would get off through the influence of his family. The case triggered a public debate over the death penalty.

“The motive is extremely despicable … the measures are extremely cruel … and the consequence is extremely serious,” said the court in its judgment.

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Saturday, September 3, 2005

Blizzard Entertainment has won a federal ruling in the U.S. Court of Appeals against the programmers of bnetd, a software package that emulates Blizzard’s Battle.net service. The court reaffirmed the original judgement, given in October, that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and click-through EULA’s prohibited the reverse engineering of Blizzard’s software in order to improve their playability. This was the first real test of the DMCA’s applicability.

Bnetd, released under the GNU General Public License, was created to enable users to play multiplayer games, bypassing Blizzard’s freely accessible Battle.net servers, which have sometimes been unreliable or slow for gamers. The software also disabled the CD-Key check which is present in Battle.net to prevent users of pirated copies from being able to connect to Blizzard’s servers. Offers by bnetd developers to incorporate Blizzard’s CD-Check system were declined.

The CD-Check system itself has faced controversy, with some users complaining it borders on breaching privacy in the same way as adware and other malevolent software. This is not confined to Blizzard: controversy occurred when Sony Online Entertainment’s EverQuest had a similar system which was later disabled due to complaints. Other games designed for network play are also known to have similar systems in place, the most prominent perhaps being Valve Software’s Steam system developed for Half-Life 2.

Blizzard has produced many popular titles such as Starcraft, World of Warcraft and the Diablo series.

Thursday, June 2, 2005

Newly named Prime Minister of France Dominique de Villepin has had his cabinet accepted by President of the Republic Jacques Chirac.

Head of the majority Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party, Nicolas Sarkozy, comes as a second-in-command as Minister of the Interior, with the honorific rank of Minister of State. The Ministry of the Interior is traditionally one of the most important positions in the cabinet, with that of Finances; the Minister of the Interior is in charge, notably, of law enforcement and relationships with local governments. There is some uneasiness in having the head of a party in a position that is partly in charge of electoral redistrictings. Also, this arrangement creates a peculiar situation: it is public knowledge that Villepin and Sarkozy consider each other a dangerous political rival with respect to the 2007 presidential election, and they are widely said to loathe each other.

The cabinet was presented as a “restricted” cabinet. However, as many as 31 ministers, delegate ministers and secretaries of state were named; still, this is a reduction from the preceding 43. While the cabinet is for a large part copied from the preceding one, some ministers who had provoked controversy and animosity were removed or moved to another less risky position. François Fillon, formerly Minister of National Education, whose plan for reforming public education was lambasted by members of his own party, including president of the National Assembly Jean-Louis Debré, was ruled partly unconstitutional by the Constitutional Council, and provoked widespread student protests and unrest in high schools, is no longer a minister. Dominique Perben, who pushed for controversial law which opponents allege curtail fundamental constitutional freedoms while Minister of Justice, was moved to the less sensitive position of Minister of Transportation and Equipment. It is also possible that the movement of Brigitte Girardin from Minister for the Oversea (relationships with French overseas departments and territories) to (international) Cooperation was motivated by the crisis that occurred in French Polynesia between Gaston Flosse and his opponent Oscar Temaru.

While the Union for French Democracy (UDF) party, led by François Bayrou, formally remains in the ruling coalition along with the UMP, it has decided that, because the new government would probably do more of the same policies, it would not participate in it. The only member of the government from UDF is Gilles de Robien, as in the preceding government.

Previous head of government Jean-Pierre Raffarin had lost the confidence of the French, with polls putting him as low as 22% confidence. President Chirac’s confidence among the citizenry is also a record low of 24%.

Mr Dominique de Villepin is Prime Minister.

1. Mr Nicolas Sarkozy — Minister of State, Minister of the Interior and of the management of the Territory (law enforcement, French National Police, French Gendarmerie; relationships with local governments; safety regulations; territory subdivisions)
2. Mrs Michèle Alliot-Marie — w:Minister of Defense (France)
3. Mr Philippe Douste-Blazy, Minister of Foreign Affairs
4. M. Jean-Louis Borloo, Minister of employment, social cohesion and housing
5. M. Thierry Breton, Minister of Economy, Finances and Industry
6. M. Gilles de Robien, Minister of National Education, of Higher Education and Research;
7. M. Pascal Clément, Keeper of the Seals, Minister of Justice;
8. M. Dominique Perben, Minister of Transportation, Equipment, Tourism and the Sea (national roads, help to local governments for transportation, some government constructions)
9. M. Xavier Bertrand, Minister of Health and Solidarities;
10. M. Dominique Bussereau, Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries;
11. M. Christian Jacob, Minister of the Civil Service|;
12. M. Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, Minister of Culture and Communications; (museums, cultural activities, supervision of broadcasting)
13. Mrs Nelly Olin, Minister of Ecology and sustainable development;
14. M. François Baroin, Minister for the Oversea;
15. M. Renaud Dutreil, Minister for small and middle businesses, Commerce, artisans, and self-employed professionals
16. M. Jean-François Lamour, Minister of Youth, Sports and associative life.

Delegate ministers operate as subordinates of ministers.

1. Mr Henri Cuq, delegate minister for relationships with Parliament;
2. Mr Azouz Begag, delegate minister for the promotion of the equality of chances;
3. Mr Jean-François Copé, delegate minister for budget and the reform of the State, spokesman of the Government;
4. M. Gérard Larcher, delegate minister for employment, work, and the professional insertion of the young;
5. Mrs Catherine Vautrin, delegate minister for social cohesion and parity [of the sexes];
6. Mrs Brigitte Girardin, delegate minister for [international] cooperation, development and francophonie;
7. Mr Brice Hortefeux, delegate minister for local governments;
8. Mrs Catherine Colonna, delegate minister for European affairs (relationships with the European Union and other members thereof);
9. Mr François Goulard, delegate minister for higher education and research;
10. Mr Léon Bertrand, delegate minister for tourism;
11. Mr Philippe Bas, delegate minister for Social Security, the elderly, the handicapped, and family;
12. Mr François Loos, delegate minister for industry;
13. Mrs Christine Lagarde, delegate minister for foreign commerce;
14. Mr Hamlaoui Mékachéra, delegate minister for war veterans;
15. M. Christian Estrosi, delegate minister for the management of the territory.

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

President Bush is lobbying the U.S. House of Representatives to pass the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), which is scheduled for a vote Wednesday night. The U.S. Senate passed the treaty in June.

Similar to the existing North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) among the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, CAFTA would create a free trade zone putting an end to most trade barriers between the United States and six additional countries, including Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic.

The free trade agreement faces stiff opposition among Democrats. Many Republicans who represent agricultural Corn Belt or industrial Rust Belt and southern textile states in Congress also have stated opposition to the bill. But with a Republican majority in the House large enough to ensure passage of CAFTA, party leaders are trying to shore up enough votes to ensure CAFTA’s passage.

This has prompted last minute action by the President to lobby individual members of the House, reminding them that Central American countries have committed troops and other resources to fight the U.S. War on Terror. Other Republican leaders have been using the party’s traditional pro-business message and linking it to homeland security issues.

“Trade creates jobs and lifts people out of poverty and there’s nothing like a stable society to fight terrorism and strengthen democracy, freedom and rule of law,” Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the House, reportedly said at a news conference Tuesday.

But the opposition disagrees. CAFTA is “a bad deal for Central Americans and also for Latinos in this community… (with CAFTA) the exploitation of workers will continue in Central America,” Democrat Representative Hilda Solis of Los Angeles said. Her views are common among Democrats, who are overwhelmingly against the treaty.

According to opponents of CAFTA, the current trend of American jobs being sent to foreign countries, particularly in the information technology sector, would greatly expand under the treaty.

“This will be a vote in the middle of the night. They’ll keep the vote open for several hours, in violation of the rules. If it passes, it will be by fewer than five votes,” predicted Rep. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio, according to a Washington Post report.

Friday, November 3, 2006

On November 13, Torontonians will be heading to the polls to vote for their ward’s councillor and for mayor. Among Toronto’s ridings is St. Paul’s West (Ward 21). One candidate responded to Wikinews’ requests for an interview. This ward’s candidates include John Adams, Tony Corpuz, Joe Mihevc (incumbent), and John Sewell.

For more information on the election, read Toronto municipal election, 2006.