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Thursday, December 6, 2018
On Tuesday, the United Kingdom Parliament started five days of debates ahead of a vote over Prime Minister Theresa May’s deal to leave the European Union.
The deal being debated is a withdrawal agreement for the United Kingdom (UK)’s exit from the European Union (EU), and a political framework defining ambitions for the future of the UK–EU relationship.
| I have spent nearly two years negotiating this deal | ||
In a statement to the House of Commons shortly before debates began, Theresa May said “I have spent nearly two years negotiating this deal […] I have lost valued colleagues along the way, I have faced fierce criticism from all sides. If I had banged the table, walked out of the room, and at the end of the process delivered the very same deal that is before us today, some might say that I’d done a better job.”
Following the debates, a vote in the House of Commons is to determine if the deal will be implemented. The vote is scheduled for next Tuesday, December 11.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
London, England— Marta Makowska of Poland narrowly defeated Jingjing Zhou of China with a score of 15 to 14 in the women’s individual foil category B bronze medal bout Tuesday night at London’s ExCeL North Arena 2. This was amongst the first wheelchair fencing medal matches of the games.
The match was last of the four concurrent wheelchair fencing medals decided, with the crowd shouting in support of the Makowska fencer after the previous matches were concluded. Zhou had limited crowd support, with only one large Chinese flag visible in the spectator area. Makowska’s win came in a very closely-contested match; The score was first tied on eleven points, and again on 12, 13, and 14 points before the Pole finally won.
Following the match, Makowska raised her hands above her head in celebration before her coach ran up and gave the fencer a hug.
At the London Games, Paralympic wheelchair fencing features five medal events for women and seven for men, involving several weapons including the foil, epee and sabre. Wheelchairs used in competition are held in place using medal plates, with the fencer with shorter reach choosing the distance between the chairs. B-classified wheelchair fencers have, according to the International Paralympic Committee, “fair sitting balance and their fencing arm not or only minimally affected.”
London Paralympic fencing ends Saturday with medal bouts every day until then.
Saturday, March 17, 2018
In the United States, autopsy results were released on Thursday by the Napa County Sheriff’s Office, which show that Albert Wong killed himself after shooting his three hostages at The Pathway Home veterans’ psychiatric center in Yountville, California last Friday. The hostages died instantly from rifle shots to the head, and Wong shot himself in the head with a shotgun. Officials said there was no indication any of the four was killed by a sheriff’s deputy who exchanged shots with Wong.
The Sheriff of Napa County also acts as the county coroner. According to the official report, the three hostages “all suffered immediately fatal head wounds caused by a high velocity projectile consistent with the rifle that the shooter, Albert Wong, used in this incident”. Wong’s fatal head wound was self-inflicted. Sheriff’s Captain Steven Blower clarified that neither Wong nor the hostages was shot by the deputy.
According to authorities, Wong, a former Pathway resident, drove a rented car to the center Friday, March 9, and shortly after 10 AM local time (UTC-8), dressed in black and armed with a semi-automatic rifle, took five of the people at a leaving party hostage. The first call to the emergency 9-1-1 number was made at about 10:20. About ten minutes later, shots were heard, and a sheriff’s deputy and Wong exchanged fire. Wong then shut himself in a room with three of the hostages. The campus was evacuated, but there was no further contact with Wong. A little before 6 PM, a video feed from a remote-controlled robot showed the four people in the room were probably dead.
The three victims were all women. Christine Loeber, 48, was the executive director of the home. Jen Golick, 42, was its clinical director. Jennifer Gonzales Shushereba, 36, was a psychologist on the staff of the San Francisco Department of Veterans Affairs Healthcare System and also worked with PsychArmor, a nonprofit group, to create a toolkit for college campuses to assist students with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). She was entering her last trimester of pregnancy.
Wong, 36, was a decorated veteran who served in the infantry in Afghanistan for a year in 2011–2012. He had been in treatment at the center for about a year but had been expelled two weeks before the hostage-taking because knives were found in his possession. His brother Tyrone Lampkin told The Press Democrat, Wong had been angry and said he “wanted to get back at them”, but what he had mentioned was to “talk to them, yell at them, not to kill them”.
The Board of Directors of The Pathway Home announced on Wednesday that it would suspend operations “indefinitely”. It is a ten-year-old non-profit in-patient center treating veterans with PTSD, brain injuries, depression and addictions on the campus of the Veterans Home of California Yountville. Yountville is a small town in the wine country a little more than 50 miles north of San Francisco. Founded as a last-resort center for intensive treatment of veterans who had not been helped by other approaches, it transitioned in 2015 to providing care to those not yet in crisis, including veterans studying at Napa Community College. The Veterans Home is the largest in the United States, with more than 900 residents.
At 1 p.m. EDT, Florida governor Jeb Bush, as well as others, held a press conference relating to the preparedness of the upcoming Hurricane Wilma. “There is no cause for a New Orleans-like concern,” says Governor Bush. He also says that this category 2 hurricane will affect southern Florida, including Lake Okeechobee. Georgia, Texas, Mississippi, and New York are helping Florida prepare. Mandatory and voluntary evacuations, he says, are currently underway.
For those who are unable to evacuate, shelters are to open up. There are 23 shelters opened at the moment, and more shelters, including shelters for the elderly, will open. The pets of Floridians also will be able to stay at a pet shelter. Over 80,000 MREs, as well as 200 truckloads of ice, are available for those who must take up shelter. This does not include the aid that will come from FEMA, which is expected to double the amount made available by Florida.
As of 10 a.m., over 200 million gallons of fuel, particularly gasoline and diesel, were at Florida ports. These ports are either to be closed, or currently closed at the moment. In addition, tolls for Florida turnpikes were suspended, and traffic is current flowing smoothly. However, as it was said by Director of Florida Emergency Management Craig Fullgate, “You need to pay attention to your local officials.”
Thursday, October 19, 2017
On Monday, digital security researchers Mathy Vanhoef and Frank Piessens of Belgium’s KU Leuven university publicly disclosed a security vulnerability in the WPA2 Wi-Fi (wireless local-area networking) protocol, which they called KRACK (for Key Reinstallation Attack). Their study claimed KRACK affects every modern device using Wi-Fi; it can be fixed by a software update, researchers said.
Vanhoef wrote, “Attackers can use this novel attack technique to read information that was previously assumed to be safely encrypted. This can be abused to steal sensitive information such as credit card numbers, passwords, chat messages, emails, photos and so on.” Vanhoef notified vendors about the flaw in July, including UNIX-like operating system OpenBSD. “If your device supports Wi-Fi, it is most likely affected. […] In general, any data or information that the victim transmits can be decrypted”, he wrote.
The study papers, which were submitted for review on May 19, were kept in confidence allowing companies to fix the security flaw. The United States-based Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) informed vendors on August 28. The Wi-Fi Alliance said it “could be resolved through a straightforward software update.” OpenBSD released their software patch on August 30.
Exploring the flaw which affected every device the researchers had tested, National Cyber Security Centre of the UK said “the attacker would have to be physically close to the target”. But due to this flaw, an attacker can send malware or ransomware on the websites, Vanhoef claimed.
Linux-based operating systems including Android v6.0 and higher are especially affected by this flaw, while Windows and iOS are not as vulnerable as Android by this flaw as they do not fully implement WPA2.
Microsoft reportedly has released security patches for Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and 10. Google said Android operating systems would receive the updates in the software update scheduled to be made available on November 6. Apple has implemented the patch in the beta versions of their operating system iOS, macOS, tvOS and watchOS, however it is yet to roll out patches for stable operating systems.
WPA2 protocol has been used for more than a decade, and has been compulsory for Wi-Fi since 2006. KRACK would also affect various home appliances which can be controlled over Wi-Fi, within the so-called “Internet of things”. Andrew Martin from Oxford University said, “We can be sure a lot of these devices won’t be patched[…] Whether that matters for this attack or only for some future attack is yet to be seen.”
The study and its findings are scheduled for presentation at the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Computer and Communications Security conference on November 1.
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
| This article mentions the Wikimedia Foundation, one of its projects, or people related to it. Wikinews is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. |
Just five years ago, when Jimbo Wales founded Wikipedia, the project’s goal of 100,000 articles [1] seemed ambitious. Yet today, the project, now one of the top 25 websites in the world according to Alexa, is nearing closer 1,000,000 articles in English, and 3.5 million articles across all languages. This week, we interviewed Jimbo Wales.
Color-free version
Wikinews: Raul654 asks: “Recently, there were revelations about organized attempts by US Congressmen to whitewash their articles. What is your take on this, as well as earlier reports of Corporate astroturfing?”
Jimbo Wales: The question is invalid. There were no revelations of organized attempts by US Congressmen to whitewash their articles. Not any evidence of “corporate astroturfing” of which I am aware. There was evidence that some congressional staffers edited Wikipedia in inappropriate ways. But the internal evidence of the type and style of these edits do not suggest “organized attempts”.
WN: Nichalp asks: “Budget permitting, are there any plans to increase the number of Wikipedia servers, specifically into the less developed countries?”
JW: We are always buying new servers. There are no specific plans to add servers in less developed countries, but we have looked into it as a possibility. We are particularly interested in doing so if it helps increase access and reduce costs for those users.
WN: An anonymous reader asks: “How much of a role do you feel the Wikipedia community (and the communities of its sister projects) should have in the running of the Wikimedia Foundation? Do you see an increasing separation of the organization from the projects? If so, do you regard that as beneficial or a potential problem?”
JW: The community has always been and will always be absolutely crucial to the running of the Wikimedia Foundation. We are increasing the community input and activity in the foundation through a new series of committees to delegate things to community members which have traditionally been handled by me or the Board. I do not see any increasing separation of the organization from the projects, quite the opposite. I consider the increasing integration of the community and the foundation as overwhelmingly beneficial.
WN: ALoan asks: “English Wikipedia is approaching 1 million articles, but less than 1 in a thousand are Featured articles. The list of featured articles English Wikipedia should have has few featured articles, and recent surveys of articles chosen at random show that many articles are poorly written. How can we get from here to an encyclopedia of well-written articles? Or should we not worry too much about coverage and content?”
JW: We should be tightly focused on the quality of our coverage and content. The goal of Wikipedia is to create and distribute a freely licensed high quality encyclopedia. The path to that goal will require us to be flexible and thoughtful. The first steps will come soon with the article review system, which will initially be used simply to gather data. After we have data, we can begin to work on how we will focus our attention to improve quality.
WN: GeorgeStepanek asks: “You’ve said that ‘Wikimedia’s mission is to give the world’s knowledge to every single person on the planet in their own language.’ But very few of the wikipedias in the languages of third-world countries are seeing as much activity as the first-world language wikipedias. Do you have any ideas on how this could be turned around?”
JW: I am a believer in outreach. I would like for the Foundation to raise money specifically to pay one or more minority language co-ordinators. The goal would be to reach out in a more organized way to professors and graduate students and expat communities who have good Internet access, to seed projects for languages where the majority of speakers have poor internet access.
WN: Jacoplane asks: “How do you feel we will be able to reach Wikipedia 1.0? The tools currently available for vetting our articles are crude at best. The Featured article process seems too slow, and the article validation feature seems to have died a quiet death. Are you planning a big push on this front?”
JW: Isn’t that the same question as the quality question? The article validation feature has not died a quiet death at all.
WN: Quadell asks: “Most important decisions on Wikimedia projects are handled with consensus. However, we sometimes have to deal with legal issues, especially related to copyright law. For instance, we as a community may need to decide whether to consider a certain use “fair”, or how to deal with conflicting copyright claims. Dealing with this through consensus is problematic, since we can’t do something illegal even if there is widespread misguided support for it. In general, how can we as a community deal with these issues?”
JW: I don’t think there is any real problem with this. The community is strongly in support of following the law. I don’t know of any particular cases of widespread misguided support for something illegal. In particular cases, there can of course be [dis]agreement, but I have never seen anyone in the community argue that we should not listen to the advice of our legal team.
WN: Raul654 asks: “Where do you see Wikipedia in 10 years?”
JW: I don’t know. My favorite answer to this is to say, the real question is: where will the world be after 10 more years of Wikipedia. 🙂 Seriously, I think we’ll eventually see a tapering off of new article creation in the large language wikipedias as more and more “verifiable” topics are covered. At this point, most changes will be expansions and updates and quality improvements to existing articles. But in 10 years, it seems likely to me that many languages which are now quite small will have very large Wikipedia projects. Our community will continue to become more diverse as more and more people worldwide come online.
WN: Kevin Myers asks: “The values reflected in certain Wikipedia policies (anti-censorship, neutral point-of-view) are problematic in cultures where freedom of expression is limited, as the blocking of Wikipedia in mainland China and arguably the Muhammad cartoons controversy attest. As Wikipedia expands internationally, do you foresee Wikipedia becoming increasingly controversial in countries where “Western values” are seen as a potential threat?”
JW: I don’t think that neutrality and objectivity are really controversial among most people of the world. It is true that the leadership in some places does not value these things, and may actually work against these things, but we can not deviate from our goals to accommodate them.
WN: On a similar topic, Vsion asks: “Are there currently any efforts being undertaken by the Foundation to address the People’s Republic of China’s blocking of Wikipedia or to alleviate its effect?”
JW: Beijing-area Wikipedians are working to have the block lifted. Our position is that the block is in error, even given China’s normal policies. Wikipedia is not propaganda, it is basic information. We expect that the block will be lifted.
WN: David.Monniaux asks: “The Foundation receives daily accusations of libel from semi-well-known people who have an entry on Wikipedia or are mentioned in some Wikipedia entry. What do you propose? Would a strict application of the rule of citing controversial claims suffice, in your opinion?”
JW: Yes. I think that our current systems do a good job of addressing these sorts of complaints, although it is very time-consuming for us here in the office. What really works wonders is a very strict application of the rule of citing controversial claims particularly relating to biographies of living persons. The new policy on biographies of living persons is a very strong step in the right direction.
WN: Tony Sidaway asks: “In the past six weeks the number of userboxes on English Wikipedia has risen from 3500 to 6000 and, despite your appeals for restraint, the number pertaining to political beliefs has risen from 45 to 150. Can the problem of unsuitable userboxes still be resolved by debate?”
JW: My only comment on the userbox situation is that the current situation is not acceptable.
WN: Larsinio asks: “How can Wikipedia effectively explain to the public its open-contribution model without simultaneously worrying the public about inaccurate information?”
JW: I think we do a reasonably good job of that. The best thing is to point to our overall quality while at the same time pointing out that we are currently a work in progress. Over time, this answer will change as we move toward ‘1.0’. At that time, we can point to ‘1.0’ for those who are made nervous by the live editing.
WN: Rob Church asks: “Do you consider the encyclopedia to be ‘finished’? Do you think it ever can be?”
JW: Nothing is ever finished. Human knowledge is always growing.
WN: Raul654 and Pavel Vozenilek both asked, “What kind of cool new features/announcements can we expect to see in the next year or two?”
JW: I think this question is too hard for me to answer. I almost never “announce” anything, and features are developed publicly by the community. I think other people have a better idea than I do what will happen in the next year or two. 🙂 Ask Brion [Vibber].
WN: Celestianpower asks: “If you had not founded Wikipedia, and had just been referred to it by a friend, how active a contributor do you think you would be?”
JW: [I] dream fondly of such a scenario. I might actually get to edit articles then. Instead of spend the morning (this morning) documenting transactions and taking phone calls.
WN: OpenToppedBus asks: “The last fundraising drive was less successful than had been anticipated. Do you see a shortage of money holding back Wikipedia/Wikimedia in the short-to-medium-term, and are there any plans to bring in income from sources other than individual donations?”
JW: The last fundraising drive was more successful than had been anticipated, by a long shot. It was the most successful fund drive in our history. [Regarding a quoted goal of $500,000], Mav wrote something like that somewhere, in a scratchpad kind of way. That number was just a placeholder and had nothing to do with me or the official view of the foundation. He’s apologized repeatedly for it.
WN: Thryduulf asks: “What is your single greatest wish for Wikipedia?”
JW: I would have to just point back to our original goal: a freely licensed high quality encyclopedia for every single person on the planet. That’s what I remain focused on daily.
Click Here For More Specific Information On:
By Lanbo Jiang
Commitment from the Northwest University and chair of the National 948 Project “embryo rescue technology system and disease resistance of grape to establish new lines incubation” of research results, April 4 at the Ministry of Agriculture adopted by Shaanxi Yangling, Shaanxi Province Department of Agriculture and Technology Office of the Organization for acceptance and verification.
As we all know, China is an important grape is the origin of plants, with rich resources, the resistance of wild grapes, but our grape production has long there are single species, the fruit of economic traits and disease resistance difference, product lack of competitiveness on the international market. The seedless grape embryo rescue technology is in the world today for a seedless grape breeding fast and efficient modern biotechnology. Therefore, to accelerate our process of seedless grape cultivar selection, accelerate the pace of upgrading our grape varieties, grape varieties to make up for lack of a superior status, in particular the use of embryo rescue technique in our own breeding new varieties of seedless grapes, has become priority.
Attention in support of the Ministry of Agriculture, Northwest A & F University PhD supervisor Professor Wang Yuejin research discussion group, led since 1999 by the American grape embryo rescue technology introduction, digestion, absorption, launched the “non nuclear species seedless varieties, “” non nuclear species nuclear species “,” nuclear free varieties of self, “a total of 11 crosses Embryo Rescue work continued to explore through embryo rescue obtained 515 seedlings, seedling rate was 42.1 % leading domestic level and close to international advanced level. Chinese wild grapes as their male parent, and the European seedless grape varieties hybridization, embryo rescue of seedless grapes for disease resistance breeding, obtained 25 hybrid combinations of embryo rescue 468 seedlings, seedling rate was 48.3%, than the current international grape embryo rescue seeding rate (45%) higher than 3.25%, the highest international level.
Project Team for the climate in Northwest China characteristics and grape berries in ovule development in the environment, the United States grape embryo rescue medium is improved, created which has the independent intellectual property, suitable for “non nuclear Chinese wild species Grape “hybrid embryo rescue the liquid medium for the international initiative, created to take advantage of the wild grape breeding for disease resistance in new areas. Project task force under the reality of our country, and selected line of seedless grape embryo rescue the female parent, the project implementation through the invention of grape seedless gene molecule resistance gene probes and molecular markers, and “non nuclear variety Chinese wild grapes” embryo assisted selection to save the seedlings in seedling stage, the technology under field conditions than the identification of seedlings from embryo rescue to save at least 3 years, therefore, greatly improving the efficiency of resistance breeding seedless grapes, to accelerate the breeding process.
In addition, the project team has also bred a large grain of China, seedless grape new line 00 3 1, the strains of fruit color is pink, disease resistant. Project implementation process, has received a national invention patent, a national invention patents, and in Shaanxi, Ningxia, Gansu and Xinjiang has established five seedless grape base, the introduction of improved varieties selected for promotion, training, technology staff 3000 people, for the fine grape varieties in large scale basis.
From domestic fruit and vegetable kingdom peer Northwest A & F University to complete the “embryo rescue technology system to establish and foster new lines of seedless grape disease resistance” gave a high evaluation of research, agreed that: embryo rescue aggregate breeding molecular markers on accelerating the process of our resistance breeding of seedless grapes important role in promoting. Research projects generally reached the international advanced level, in disease resistance breeding of seedless grape embryo rescue has groundbreaking.
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Wednesday, June 13, 2018
Today, the Real Federación Española de Fútbol (Royal Spanish Football Federation; RFEF) announced sacking Julen Lopetegui as the manager of Spanish men’s national football team. This announcement came just a day after Spanish capital-football club Real Madrid announced reaching an agreement with Lopetegui as club’s new head coach after the World Cup ends. This year’s FIFA World Cup is to begin from tomorrow.
Yesterday, via their official website, Real Madrid announced Lopetegui to coach the first team for the next three seasons. To manage the national team, Lopetegui should not have a contract with any football club. Speaking at a press conference at Krasnodar, RFEF’s head Luis Rubiales said, “I found out five minutes before Real Madrid made the announcement [about Lopetegui]. I asked that nothing was to be done until the team arrives at Krasnodar. But this is not possible” ((es))Spanish language: ?Me enteré cinco minutos antes que el Real Madrid lo anunciara. Pedí que no se hiciera nada hasta llegar a Krasnodar. Pero no fue posible.
Rubiales said, “I do not feel betrayed. While he has been with us, Lopetegui has done an impeccable job.” ((es))Spanish language: ?No me siento traicionado. Lopetegui, mientras ha estado con nosotros, ha hecho un trabajo impecable. Sporting director Fernando Hierro was named as the national team’s new head coach.
Julen Lopetegui was announced La Roja’s manager on July 21, 2016. Lopetegui has been in-charge of the national team for 20 matches, winning fourteen and drawing the remaining six. Lopetegui was the manager of Spain’s U-19 team from 2010 till 2012. Later, he handled sub-20 before moving to the U-21 team. He has also coached Portuguese club Porto FC.
In the press conference, Rubiales said, “Winning is very important, but there are more important things, like the way of work. So despite Lopetegui being a ‘top’ coach, we have been forced to make this decision” ((es))Spanish language: ?Ganar es muy importante, pero hay cosas más importantes aún, como las formas de trabajar. Por ello, pese a que Lopetegui es un entrenador ‘top’, nos hemos visto obligados a tomar esta decisión.
Spain is scheduled to play their first group stage match against Portugal on Friday in Sochi. On May 22, RFEF announced Lopetegui renewing his contract, extending it to 2020.
Thursday, March 2, 2006
Recently emerging evidence seems to contradict a statement by United States President George W. Bush during Hurricane Katrina. He stated in an interview with ABC on September 1st that, “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees”.
One of the first items to emerge, a video obtained by the Associated Press, shows footage of Bush during a video-conference received at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, on August 29, 2005, 19 hours before landfall of Hurricane Katrina. During the briefing, Director of the National Hurricane Center Max Mayfield warned, “I don’t think anyone can tell you with any confidence right now whether levees will be topped or not, but there is obviously a very, very great concern”.
In addition, Michael D. Brown, then director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), reported that he had spoken with President Bush twice in the morning and that the president was asking about reports that the levees had been breached.
Brown would state later on CNN that, “There’s no question in my mind he probably had those reports (about breaches in the levees), because we were feeding in the Homeland Security Operations Center, into the White House sit room, all of the information that we were getting. So he had to have had that information. Plus, I think the president knew from our earlier conversations that that was one of my concerns, that the levees could actually breach”.[1]
In July 2004, the Federal Emergency Management Agency completed an exercise called “Hurricane Pam”, which, dealt with the scenario of a direct hit on New Orleans by a hurricane with 120 mph winds (a Category 3). It resulted in “10 to 20 feet of water within the City of New Orleans,” according to January 24 congressional testimony by the president of the company that designed the Hurricane Pam exercise.[2]
A report FEMA sent to the White House Situation Room on August 29th, they cited death and destruction anticipated by the “Hurricane Pam” exercise and warned that Katrina was likely to be worse. “Exercise projection is exceeded by Hurricane Katrina real-life impacts,” they stated. Furthermore, “The potential for severe storm surge to overwhelm Lake Pontchartrain levees is the greatest concern for New Orleans. Any storm rated Category 4 on the Saffir-Simpson (hurricane) scale will likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching. This could leave the New Orleans metro area submerged for weeks or months”.[3]
When the report was released, Hurricane Katrina was thought to be a Category 4 as of landfall (though after analysis, it’s power at landfall would be downgraded to a Category 3).[4]
White House officials previously clarified Bush’s earlier comment, saying that the president was referring to the hours after Katrina swept through and news reports as of August 30th suggested the city had “dodged a bullet”, which led to surprise when reports reached them of the levee breaches.[5][6] Contrasting this was the August 30th broadcast of NBC’s Today, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams reported at 7:05 a.m. ET, “There has been a huge development overnight … the historic French Quarter, dry last night and it is now filling with water. This is water from nearby Lake Pontchartrain; the levees failed overnight.”[7]