Monday, May 23, 2011

A tornado touched down yesterday in Joplin, Missouri, causing widespread damage. At least 89 were killed.

The path of the tornado was reported to be from one half to three quarters of a mile wide. City spokeswoman Lynn Onstot estimated the path to be nearly four miles long; Jasper County emergency management director Keith Stammer put its length around six miles.

Witnesses described entire blocks of buildings destroyed. Steve Runnels of the National Weather Service said “We have reports of significant structural damage to strong buildings. Automobiles have been flipped, bark was stripped off trees.”

Among the properties damaged was a local hospital, St. John’s Regional Medical Center. Some patients were hurt, and all were evacuated to other regional hospitals. The local high school, Joplin High School, was also hit. Describing the damage, its principal, Kerry Sachetta, said “You see pictures of World War II, the devastation and all that with the bombing. That’s really what it looked like. I couldn’t even make out the side of the building.”

Joplin has a population of about 50,000.

President Barack Obama has ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to support state and local efforts in response and recovery. He issued a statement with condolences to the families of victims.

Thursday, September 22, 2005

The London bomb suspect, Hussain Osman, also known as Hamdi Issac, has arrived in London and been arrested following his extradition from Italy.Allegedly involved in the second set of attacks on London in July, which targeted the city’s public transport infrastructure, Osman was arrested in Rome by Italian police on July 29, just one week after the failed attacks.

On September 13, a final appeal against extradition was rejected by an Italian court despite his lawyer’s protests that he could not get a fair trial in the UK. Osman is accused of planting the failed bomb at Shepherd’s Bush Underground station. His flight subsequent to the attack proved futile as phone records led police to Rome, and a raid on his brother’s apartment, where he was captured.

Pending his extradition, he was held at Rebibbia jail, Rome, a high-security facility on the outskirts of the city. He left the jail late on Thursday and the Ethiopian-born terror suspect flew out of Italy at 12pm local time, accompanied by officers from the Metropolitan police. Flying on a chartered private jet, Osman and his escort landed at RAF Northolt, where Osman was charged on arrival. He is expected to be put on trial at the Old Bailey in London, alongside the other suspects involved in the failed attacks.

Monday, February 17, 2014

On Friday afternoon, amateur shooters were briefed about a three-year-long trial of hunting in national parks of New South Wales, Australia. The meeting was held in Griffith near Cocopara Nature Reserve, where the first shooting operation of the trial was to occur on Saturday, targeting the feral goats.

The National Parks Wildlife Service (NPWS) has used aerial culls and baiting to reduce Cocoparra’s goat population, but there are said to be thousands of goats at the reserve. The feral animals to be hunted in other reserves may include cats, deer, dogs, and pigs, beside goats — depending on the reserve.

Shooters in the supplementary pest control trial were to be closely supervised by rangers, as the trial was monitored and its effectiveness evaluated. In a partnership of NPWS and the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia (NSW) Inc, qualified volunteers were recruited, under the Sporting Shooters Association’s hunting program. According to Mick O’Flynn, the Acting Director Park Conservation and Heritage with the NPWS, the four shooters selected for the first shooting operation received comprehensive safety and training instruction.

Following announcement of the close partnership of shooters with NWPS staff, the Greens cancelled planned picketing of the first shooting operation. However, State Greens MP (Member of Parliament) David Shoebridge warned, “This needs to be a government-run program, not run by the biggest gun lobby group in Australia”. He called limiting the meeting to members of the Sporting Shooters Association “outrageous”. Another concern raised by the Greens was the danger of armed people, not only to animals, but also to people visiting the national parks, should the shooters be unsupervised after the trial.

The trial was announced in the second half of 2013, though the plan has been significantly modified over time and has come to be regulated under the National Parks and Wildlife Act, in contrast with the original proposal of recreational hunting in national parks, as it was announced in May 2012 by New South Wales Premier Barry O’Farrell. This amendment of the Game and Feral Animal Control Act was part of a deal with the Shooters and Fishers Party. The government needed at least one vote from a Shooters and Fishers Party MP to pass electricity privatisation legislation, as both Labor and Greens opposed it. O’Farrell’s plans to allow pest control by licensed individuals called for licencing by the Game Council of New South Wales.

Following a report sharply criticizing the Game Council, the government dissolved it in mid-2013, suspended hunting on public lands, and reconsidered the plan to allow amateur hunters into national parks — thus breaking the earlier promise to the Shooters and Fishers Party.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

India’s 2011 census reports that its population has increased by 181 million in the span of one decade, a figure 17.6 percent greater than 2001. The census results, publicised today, show the population of India now stands at 1.21 billion. C. Chandramauli, the commissioner of the census, said India’s population represents “over 17 percent of the world population, [while] India is 2.4 percent of the world’s surface area.”

According to BBC News Online, the current population of the country is in excess of the populations of Pakistan, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Brazil and the United States put together. While India’s population has increased by more than 17 percent since the 2001 census, this growth rate is the lowest since India achieved independence in 1947. Between 1991 and 2011, the population growth rate has steadily decreased. Approximately 25 percent of Indians over the age of seven were found to be illiterate in the 2011 census, a decrease of 10 percent from the census held ten years ago. The increase in literate females is greater than that of males, the new census reports.

The findings have suggested a preference of male over female children. For every one thousand boys below the age of seven, there were 914 girls, a decrease from the 2001 census, which reported 927 female for every one thousand male children. Chandramauli called this discovery “a matter of grave concern. This is the lowest ever in the demographic history of the country,” he said, and noted “[t]he last census in 2001 had warned us about this, the tendency has worsened.” This pattern continues although the Indian government has prohibited hospitals from disclosing the gender of an unborn child.

According to The Washington Post, parents in much of India abort female fetuses and murder young female children for financial reasons. Incidents like this occur more frequently in the better educated and the richer Indian states, including Punjab and Gujarat. G.K. Pillai, the home secretary, has claimed that “[w]hatever policy measures we have been following in the last 40 years will need a complete review now. They have not been effective”.

There are now 940 female adults for every one thousand men, in contrast to 2001, when there were 933 women per thousand males. However, in the capital, Delhi, only 866 females were counted for every one thousand males.

Throughout the states of India, the population growth rate varies significantly. This results in an inequality in the allocation of funds and is a problem, experts say. According to Management Institute of Population and Development consultant Devendra Kothari: “Our federal government sends funds to the states according to their population. This means that the states that have worked harder to reduce their population growth get less money from New Delhi”. Kothari continued: “The states with lesser population send fewer members to the Indian parliament. Their financial and political clout will go down.”

Over the course of the approaching year, concluding census figures will be publicised, according to officials.

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Dell Inc. announced on Tuesday that it will partner up with the Microsoft-Nortel Innovative communications alliance (ICA) team to sell Unified Communications and VoIP products.

The announcement on Tuesday the 16th of October 2007 includes Dell selling VoIP, data and wireless networking products from Nortel and the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and other unified communications products.

The partnership with both manufacturers should allow Dell to provide a pre-integrated solution.

In March 2007, competitors IBM and Cisco announced they would join in the competition for developing unified communications applications and the development of open technologies around the unified communications and collaboration (UC2) client platform an application programming interfaces (APIs) offered by IBM as a subset of Lotus Sametime.

“We want to make it simple for our customers to deploy unified communications so their end users can get access to all their messages in one place – whether its e-mail, phone or mobile device. This will pave the way for more business-ready productivity tools,” said vice president of solutions, Dell Product Group, Rick Becker.

• Customers have four options:
  • Core Office Communication Server 2007 – provides instant messaging and on-premise Microsoft Live Meeting.
  • Office Communication Server: Telephony – enables call routing tracking and management, VoIP gateway and public branch exchange (PBX) integration.
  • Audio and Video Conferencing – allows point-to-point conference, video conference and VoIP audio conference.
  • Exchange Unified Messaging – provides voicemail, e-mail and fax in Microsoft Outlook, and anywhere access of Microsoft Outlook Inbox and Calendar.

Saturday, August 20, 2005

A power outage in Indonesia that left about 100 million people without electricity has caused a political crisis. The country’s state-owned energy monopoly, PLN, has not determined the immediate cause, and the country’s president has ordered the national intelligence agency and police to investigate.

The blackout appears related to deficiencies in Indonesia’s power generation capacity.

The power failure follows attempts to deal with the country’s growing energy crisis, including conservation and trying to allow private companies to provide energy, which was ruled unconstitutional in 2004. In January, the Indonesian government held a special energy summit to attract investment in their energy infrastructure. At the summit they set the goal of adding 22,000 megawatts to Indonesia’s present capacity of 23,000 megawatts, in order to support the country’s growth.

The World Bank and others have warned that without more investment in the country’s energy infrastructure an energy deficit will result. However, foreign investors remain wary of investing in Indonesia. “The power outage has resulted in worries over an energy crisis which could hurt the nation’s industrial sector,” said a trader on Indonesia’s stock market.[1]

The outage began at 10:23 a.m. local time, August 18, 2005, when power failed along the electrical system that connects Java, Bali, and Madura, causing outages in Java and Bali. Almost half of the country depends on the electrical grid that experienced failures. Some of the main lines on the grid are over 20 years old, according to PLN president Eddie Widiono.

The blackout caused traffic jams in Jakarta, forced cancellation of several international and domestic flights at Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, shut down Jakarta’s electric train service, and disrupted hospital operations. Some larger hospitals were forced to delay surgeries while many smaller hospitals could not receive patients. About 1,800 officers were called into action by Jakarta’s metropolitan police to deal with short-term problems caused by the power failure.

Candles used in place of electric lighting started six fires in Jakarta alone.

Mulyo Aji, a PLN official, said more power failures are likely in the future as energy demand increases, without any corresponding new supplies of electricity scheduled to come online soon.

Monday, November 13, 2006

Internet service provider (ISP) and telephone provider, Orcon Internet Limited, is going to start to provide television channels via super-fast broadband right to the customers television set. The service will be rolled out sometime next year after Telecom New Zealand has opened its lines to the competitors.

The high speed internet Orcon wishes to use is called VDSL2+ which is able to go 100 megabits per second; this is an upgrade of Telecom’s current technology, ADSL 2+. The new technology will be able to be installed when the government has opened up Telecoms lines to other ISPs. Scott Bartlett, regulatory manager of Orcon, said: “If we left this to the big telcos we wouldn’t get VDSL2+ for 5-10 years. We don’t have an existing legacy framework that limits us, so we can leap-frog them in terms of technology.”

The television channels/programmes will be delivered in high definition via IPTV, or Internet protocol television, to a set-top box, similar to those of Sky Network Television, connected to broadband.

Orcon has invested NZ$30 million into the new television service, they will be teaming up with Siemens to deliver the new television system.

Mr Bartlett said: “We are pitching to a market segment who were not necessarily totally nuts about watching the rugby live but still wanted high-definition quality television delivered by broadband.”

Orcon already has 52 channels secured, they channels will include the genres of comedy, science-fiction, news, music, weather and speaciality language channels. The movies will cost $1.00 each. And for $25 customers will be able to buy 25 channels or for $30 there will be 52 channels. For Sky television it costs $15 a week for an entry level package. “We don’t believe we have a monopoly and every channel known to man, we just think we have the ones that are important to New Zealanders,” the chief executive of Sky, John Fellet, said.

Mr Fellet said they “would like to partner with Orcon and deliver our channels over Orcon’s service, but if that did not happen, we are looking forward to competition heating up. Compete with us, that is fine. If you want to take our core product and add options yourself, that is an option as well. We have rights to rugby and movies, so whenever companies start seriously looking at it, they will look upon us as more of a supplier than a competitor.

Sky has confirmed that they have contracts to deliver IPTV via Telecom services, as Sky is planning to release an IPTV service early 2007. “For the foreseeable future, until the infrastructure improves, the satellite is the best way to deliver live rugby but if you wanted to see a game that has been played, the internet is the best way to do that, by streaming,” Mr Fellet said.