Wednesday, March 5, 2014
In the past few days, tension has been increasing due to conflict between Ukraine and the Russian Federation which has led to the United States, the United Kingdom, and France increasing pressure on Russia to remove their troops from Crimea.
Wikinews interviewed specialists in Russian foreign policy and specialists in international law about the legality of Russia’s actions and the consequences of any sanctions imposed by G7 nation economies.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Trusteer, a web security company, reports that a trojan horse virus called Zeus can steal online banking details from infected computers. The virus has infected one out of every 3,000 computers of the 5,500,000 million which the company monitors in the United States and the United Kingdom.
The trojan can infect users of Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer on Microsoft Windows, and steals login information by recording keystrokes when the machine connects to certain websites, usually banks or other financial institutions. The stolen data is transmitted to a remote server and sold to cyber-criminals. “We expect this new version of Zeus to significantly increase fraud losses, since nearly 30% of Internet users bank online with Firefox and the infection is growing faster than we have ever seen before,” said Amit Klein, chief technology officer at Trusteer, to BBC.
The trojan has also affected Wikinews users, including Brian McNeil, who is the founder of Wikinewsie, a restricted-access wiki used to collaborate on sensitive news reports. McNeil reported on his userspace: “On Saturday [April] 17, a Windows-based PC in the house issued a cry for help, the Avira package running on the system had just detected a piece of malware; full scans indicated several known pieces of malware and numerous hidden files. Additional scans revealed that all but one of the USB memory sticks and portable hard drives in the house were infected with something. The Zeus botnet, as it turned out.” E-mail accounts for accredited reporters have also been affected.
Stuttering (or stammering) is a voice disfluency, a speech disorder. When a person stutters, the normal flow of speech is disrupted by repetitions and/or prolongations of voice sounds. Frequently, an individual is also unable to start a word.
Child stuttering, toddler stuttering and adult stuttering are themes being studied by many scientists and speech specialists all around the world. The Stuttering Foundation of America, the National Stuttering Association, the National Center for Stuttering and individual speech therapists in general are all investigating why people stutter and finding effective and fast speech therapies.
Nevertheless, even though scientists have several theories and suspect a variety of causes for stuttering, the precise mechanisms causing this disability (also called stammering) are not understood. Some believe that many forms have genetic origins.
A common form of stuttering is neurogenic. Neurogenic stuttering arise from signal problems between the brain and nerves or muscles. In neurogenic stuttering, the brain is unable to adequately coordinate the different components of speech mechanism.
The disruptions of speech may be accompanied by tremors of the lips and/or jaw, rapid eye blinks and other movements. This disorder commonly becomes more severe when speaking in front of a group of people or on the phone. On the other hand, speaking alone and singing might generally improve it or disappear completely.
Over three million Americans stutter. Stuttering affects all ages, but most frequently, children between the ages of 2 and 6 are the most affected. Preschool and toddler stuttering are especially affected while they are developing their language. When they grow up, most of them improve or cure. One percent or less of adults stutters.
Many famous people stutter. Marilyn Monroe, Bruce Willis, Winston Churchill and Mel Tillis are only a few whose success was not impeded by stuttering. Their speech language issue did not stop them to excel and express themselves magnificently.
With these encoraging news about famous people succeeding in spite of their common issue, I end part 1 of these series of articles. Much more information can be found at a site dedicated to stuttering problems and resources, as well as a library of speech language pathology.
This is the end of Part 1 of Stuttering and speech therapy ideas. On next chapters I will be writing about different and effective therapies developed lately by researchers on the field of stammering or speech language pathology.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Every September, the Apple iPod is redesigned. Last year saw the release of the iPod Nano 5th generation, bringing a video camera and a large range of colours to the Nano for the first time. But as Apple again prepares to unveil a redesigned product, the company has released their quarterly sales figures—and revealed that they have sold only 9m iPods for the quarter to June—the lowest number of sales since 2006, leading industry anylists to ponder whether the world’s most successful music device is in decline.
Such a drop in sales is not a problem for Apple, since the iPhone 4 and the iPad are selling in high numbers. But the number of people buying digital music players are concerning the music industry. Charles Arthur, technology editor of The Guardian, wrote that the decline in sales of MP3 players was a “problem” for record companies, saying that “digital music sales are only growing as fast as those of Apple’s devices – and as the stand-alone digital music player starts to die off, people may lose interest in buying songs from digital stores. The music industry had looked to the iPod to drive people to buy music in download form, whether from Apple’s iTunes music store, eMusic, Napster or from newer competitors such as Amazon.”
Mark Mulligan, a music and digital media analyst at Forrester Research, said in an interview that “at a time where we’re asking if digital is a replacement for the CD, as the CD was for vinyl, we should be starting to see a hockey-stick growth in download sales. Instead, we’re seeing a curve resembling that of a niche technology.” Alex Jacob, a spokesperson for the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which represents the worldwide music industry, agreed that there had been a fall in digital sales of music. “The digital download market is still growing,” they said. “But the percentage is less than a few years ago, though it’s now coming from a higher base.” Figures released earlier this year, Arthur wrote, “show that while CD sales fell by 12.7%, losing $1.6bn (£1bn)in value, digital downloads only grew by 9.2%, gaining less than $400m in value.”
Expectations that CDs would, in time, become extinct, replaced by digital downloads, have not come to light, Jacob confirmed. “Across the board, in terms of growth, digital isn’t making up for the fall in CD sales, though it is in certain countries, including the UK,” he said. Anylising the situation, Arthur suggested that “as iPod sales slow, digital music sales, which have been yoked to the device, are likely to slow too. The iPod has been the key driver: the IFPI’s figures show no appreciable digital download sales until 2004, the year Apple launched its iTunes music store internationally (it launched it in the US in April 2003). Since then, international digital music sales have climbed steadily, exactly in line with the total sales of iPods and iPhones.”
Nick Farrell, a TechEYE journalist, stated that the reason for the decline in music sales could be attributed to record companies’ continued reliance on Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, saying that they had considered him the “industry’s saviour”, and by having this mindset had forgotten “that the iPod is only for those who want their music on the run. What they should have been doing is working out how to get high quality music onto other formats, perhaps even HiFi before the iPlod fad died out.”
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When Jobs negotiated a deal with record labels to ensure every track was sold for 99 cents, they considered this unimportant—the iPod was not a major source of revenue for the company. However, near the end of 2004, there was a boom in sales of the iPod, and the iTunes store suddenly began raking in more and more money. The record companies were irritated, now wanting to charge different amounts for old and new songs, and popular and less popular songs. “But there was no alternative outlet with which to threaten Apple, which gained an effective monopoly over the digital music player market, achieving a share of more than 70%” wrote Arthur. Some did attempt to challenge the iTunes store, but still none have succeeded. “Apple is now the largest single retailer of music in the US by volume, with a 25% share.”
The iTunes store now sells television shows and films, and the company has recently launced iBooks, a new e-book store. The App Store is hugely successful, with Apple earning $410m in two years soley from Apps, sales of which they get 30%. In two years, 5bn apps have been downloaded—while in seven years, 10bn songs have been purchased. Mulligan thinks that there is a reason for this—the quality of apps simply does not match up to a piece of music. “You can download a song from iTunes to your iPhone or iPad, but at the moment music in that form doesn’t play to the strengths of the device. Just playing a track isn’t enough.”
Adam Liversage, a spokesperson of the British Phonographic Industry, which represents the major UK record labels, notes that the rise of streaming services such as Spotify may be a culprit in the fall in music sales. Revenues from such companies added up to $800m in 2009. Arthur feels that “again, it doesn’t make up for the fall in CD sales, but increasingly it looks like nothing ever will; that the record business’s richest years are behind it. Yet there are still rays of hope. If Apple – and every other mobile phone maker – are moving to an app-based economy, where you pay to download games or timetables, why shouldn’t recording artists do the same?”
Well, apparently they are. British singer Peter Gabriel has released a ‘Full Moon Club’ app, which is updated every month with a new song. Arthur also notes that “the Canadian rock band Rush has an app, and the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails, led by Trent Reznor – who has been critical of the music industry for bureaucracy and inertia – released the band’s first app in April 2009.” It is thought that such a system will be an effective method to reduce online piracy—”apps tend to be tied to a particular handset or buyer, making them more difficult to pirate than a CD”, he says—and in the music industry, piracy is a very big problem. In 2008, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry estimated that 95% of downloads were illegitimate. If musicians can increase sales and decrease piracy, Robert says, it can only be a good thing.
“It’s early days for apps in the music business, but we are seeing labels and artists experimenting with it,” Jacob said. “You could see that apps could have a premium offering, or behind-the-scenes footage, or special offers on tickets. But I think it’s a bit premature to predict the death of the album.” Robert concluded by saying that it could be “premature to predict the death of the iPod just yet too – but it’s unlikely that even Steve Jobs will be able to produce anything that will revive it. And that means that little more than five years after the music industry thought it had found a saviour in the little device, it is having to look around again for a new stepping stone to growth – if, that is, one exists.”
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
The wife and sons of Bernard Madoff are now under pressure from prosecutors to give up US$2.6 million worth of jewelery and $31.5 million in loans. Madoff made the news recently when he pleaded guilty to running a Ponzi scheme worth billions of dollars.
Prosecutors, who stated their intent on Sunday to seize bonds and cash from Madoff, filed another notice on Tuesday listing assets that they intend to seize, among them “various pieces of jewelry owned or held in the name of Ruth Madoff valued at approximately $2,624,340,” and “approximately 35 sets of watches and cufflinks owned by Bernard Madoff,” as well as $31.5 million in loans made to Madoff’s sons.
Bernard Madoff, aged 70, pleaded guilty last Thursday to cheating investors out of as much as $65 billion in the largest ever Ponzi scheme. He was jailed immediately after his plea, and faces a prison sentence of up to 150 years. Neither his wife nor his sons have been accused of any wrongdoing.
Wednesday, June 16, 2021
In early May, Wikinews extended an invitation to Vitaly Filipchenko, an independent candidate in the 2021 New York City mayoral election, set to take place November 2nd, alongside other candidates. Filipchenko answered some questions about his policies and campaign during a phone interview.
Filipchenko, registered on the New York City Campaign Finance Board as Vitaly A. Filipchenko, is the first Russian candidate for New York City mayor, being born in Tomsk, Siberia in 1973, according to news agency Sputnik. He has since naturalised as a United States citizen. According to the web site, Filipchenko has been educated in road construction and maintenance and owns a moving services company; he describes himself on his web site as a “small business owner”. On his web site’s platform page, he says that “[m]y English may not be perfect – but my platform is.”
Incumbent Democrat mayor Bill de Blasio, who won re-election in the 2017 New York City mayoral election by 66.5%, cannot run for a third term under term limits. As of April 28, 22 candidates are currently running, the majority of whom are also Democrats. Ahead of the June Democratic primary for New York City mayor, a poll conducted May 23 and 24 by WPIX and Emerson College of 12 Democratic candidates with a margin of error of 3.2 per cent has former commissioner for the New York City Department of Sanitation Kathryn Garcia and Borough President of Brooklyn Eric Adams leading with 21.1% and 20.1%, respectively.
By Russell Benjamin
Making Home Affordable is a new government program designed to help keep people in their homes by lowering monthly mortgage payments for qualifying homeowners. The plan is projected to help somewhere between 7 and 9 million homeowners all across the United States by either refinancing or modifying their mortgage. Do you qualify for the Making Home Affordable program?
There are a few simple questions that will help determine if you are eligible to participate in the Making Home Affordable program. There are two different parts to the Making Home Affordable program, the mortgage refinance and the loan modification.
The Making Home Affordable refinance program targets homeowners who are current on their mortgages, but are currently unable to refinance to a lower rate due to a drop in the value of their home. This plan targets those homeowners who have loans held by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac and whose owe approximately the same or less than the current home value. Here is a quick set of questions to see if you qualify for the Making Home Affordable refinance program:
1. Is your home your primary residence?
2. Do you have a Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac loan? If you are not sure, you can find out if you have a Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae loan.
3. Are you current on your mortgage payments? Current means that you have not been more than 30 days late on your mortgage payment over the past 12 months.
4. Do you believe that the amount you owe on your first mortgage is about the same or less than the current value of your house?
If you answered yes to all four of these questions, then you may be eligible for the Making Home Affordable refinance program. You can find out more about the mortgage refinance program at http://www.makinghomemortgageaffordable.com.
If you answered no to any of these questions, then you will want to find out if you qualify for the second part of the Making Home Affordable – the loan modification plan. This plan is for homeowners who can no longer afford their mortgage payments due to an increase in interest rates, a decrease in their income, or a financial hardship such as medical expenses. This plan works for those who are current on their mortgage, or those who are behind on their mortgages. Here are four basic questions that will help to determine if you may be eligible for the loan modification plan:
1. Is your home your primary residence?
2. Is the amount you owe on your first mortgage equal to or less than $729,750?
3. Are you having trouble paying your mortgage? For example, have you had a significant increase in your mortgage payment OR reduction in your income since you got your current loan OR have you suffered a hardship that has increased your expenses (like medical bills)?
4. Did you get your current mortgage before January 1, 2009?
If you answered yes to all four of these questions, then you may be eligible for the Making Home Affordable loan modification program. Find out more about the Making Home Affordable loan modification program at http://www.makinghomemortgageaffordable.com. If you answered no to any of these questions, then you still have some options available for avoiding a foreclosure.
You can find out more by visiting the Making Home Mortgage Affordable website, the number one informational resource on the Making Home Affordable program.
About the Author: Russell Benjamin is a writer for Making Home Mortgage Affordable, a website dedicated to helping homeowners with valuable information and resources. Please visit our site and find out more on
mortgage refinancing and loan modification
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Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Cheek numbing, eye watering winds whip across the plains of the Laramie Basin, Wyoming. The ground is yellow brown with patches of recalcitrant snow. Sheep Mountain is losing its winter coat. All normal affairs for March. The March edition of the Wyoming Basin Outlook Report also reports, based on February accumulations, that Snow Water Equivalent is at 99% of average.
The SWE is a measure of the snow pack that feeds the streams, rivers and reservoirs that Wyoming, Nebraska and other states depend upon for water. Current averages are compared to the average SWE for 1971-2000. In recent years, snow pack in this region has been anything but normal.
The Outlook Reports are issued January to June. Since March 2000, only five of 46 months have been above normal. While many of the winter months have been near normal, June’s snow pack is far below average. Even in 2006, the wettest year of the last eight years, June snow pack was only 37% of the average.
In an e-mail interview with Wikinews, Lee Hackleman, Water Supply Specialist, said
| The snowpack is melting out several weeks earlier than average. The higher temperatures in the spring are responsible for this. There seems to be a significant drop in the amount of runoff that we are able to retain in our reservoirs, a lot of runoff seems to be soaking into the ground. We do not have the June flood events any more. We use to [sic] be cool then hot, not cool warm then hot. | ||
In a phone interview with Wikinews, Myra Wilensky of the National Wildlife Federation in nearby Colorado, also commented on changing snow patterns.
| In the west, nothing is ever clockwork, the patterns shift, a good amount of snowfall in the season and then a quick warm up. We don’t get the prolonged snowpack that we used to have. May have a really wet snow year, then really dry with rain.
Can’t count on getting estimated amount of snow anymore. March and November have historically been our snowiest months, but this year it’s been a fairly dry in March and November. Winter is shorter now. |
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This is part of a general increase in temperature in the region. An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change cited by the National Wildlife Federation estimates that the temperature will rise almost 7 degrees (F) by 2100.
| This will likely cause most, if not all, of the state’s glaciers to disappear. Wildfires may increase, droughts could get worse and rains–when they do come–will likely come in more severe downpours that may cause more flash flooding. Warmer temperatures also mean less snowpack in the mountains, leading to more winter runoff and reduced summer flows in many Wyoming streams. | ||
The NWF’s main concern is the fate of the wildlife in the region, particularly how the impact of pine bark beetles. Warmer winters have led to mass infestations in Western lodge pole pine forests and The New York Times reports that they are now moving on to white bark pines in Yellowstone particularly impacting grizzly bears there. In turn, the grizzlies are shifting to feeding on Canadian thistle, an invasive species that might be choking out native plants.
Changing weather patterns have also affected large migratory animals.
| This year winter came late. When the heavy snows hit, the mule deer and the elk were spread out, had to be fed. Feeding isn’t newsworthy, happened before like in 1982 but it wasn’t as successful this year because they were so spread out. | ||
Water for people has also become a major issue in the region.
| There is a much greater concern for water rights than there used to be. There is not enough late season water to satisfy everyone all the time. | ||
Kansas has long fought Wyoming over water rights issues. And Montana is currently suing Wyoming, claiming that the Yellowstone River Compact signed in 1950 gives rights to both surface and ground water, while Wyoming disagrees. On February 18, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the lawsuit.
| Wyoming officials say they are adhering to the compact and that the drought has meant less water for both states.
But Montana says Wyoming is storing more water in reservoirs than the compact permits and allowing excessive pumping of groundwater reserves that feed into the two rivers. Those “groundwater” reserves are tapped by some Wyoming farmers to irrigate their fields. Energy companies discharge large volumes of groundwater during production of coal-bed methane, a type of natural gas prevalent in northern Wyoming. |
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Authorities do not see this fight over increasingly limited water resources going away anytime soon.
| Everyone is going to have to learn to get by with less. | ||
| This article mentions the Wikimedia Foundation, one of its projects, or people related to it. Wikinews is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. |
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Satire site Uncyclopedia, a parody of online encyclopedia Wikipedia, has been labeled by the Malaysian government as dangerous. The Internal Security Department of Malaysia issued the warning today, saying that the site has “messages and information insulting Malaysia”.
The warning notes the creation date of the website as being 5 January 2005, and hosted by Wikia, Inc., both of which are correct. However, it claims Wikia owns Wikipedia; Wikipedia is a charitable non-profit website owned by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, while Wikia is an independent, for-profit company.
The report evidently mentions that Uncyclopedia covers Malaysian “history, culture, the political leaders, the government, the national song and the name / history of the national flag,” none of which is “correct”. They accuse the website of helping to reinforce a bad international image of their country.
There are no reports of the site being blocked from access within the country, only this statement, which urges Malaysians not to circulate the content.
Uncyclopedia’s article on Malaysia begins:
| Essentially the penis of Asia which is located to the north of their cousins who live on an even smaller island Singapore, Malaysia (also known as Bolehland) is a young nation of diverse cultures and races such as F1 Formula-1 and Nascar. The timezone of Malaysia is unique because it follows the system of +1/+2 PMT (Predetermined Meeting Time) which is 1 or 2 hours later than PMT. Most foreigners have difficulty adjusting to this new timezone as they tend to show up 1 or 2 hours earlier than the local counterparts. The nation is moving forward with a vision towards becoming a developed nation by the year 2020, 3030, 4040 or whatever catchy number.
…Another common state that Malaysians have is denial (no lah, where got?), which incidentally, is a river in Egypt. |
The site has fired back with a parody article posted at the site under their UnNews section, titled Uncyclopedia Internal Security Department warns on Malaysia. The article suggests that the “Internal Security Department of the Uncyclomedia Foundation,” which is a facetious and fictitious parent organization of Uncyclopedia, identifies Malaysia “as a dangerous country… It warned its people not to use the country today.”
There are forty-seven individual language editions of Uncyclopedia, including Tolololpedia, which is written in Bahasa Melayu, the Malay language. This is in addition to fictional “language” editions which include Oscar Wilde, Newspeak, N00b, White Supremacist, and Re: PharmaccgRy.
Monday, June 5, 2006
British doctors have successfully transplanted a beating heart into the chest of a 58-year old man, the first operation of its kind in the United Kingdom.
The “trial” surgery was performed at Papworth Hospital just outside of London, England in Cambridge. The operation could be “equivalent if not superior” to the current transplanting methods, doctors said. The method has only been performed two other times, in Germany.
Usually hearts would be injected with potassium, which stopped the heart from beating, after which it would be covered with ice. This put the heart in “suspended animation” but gave doctors only a six-hour window to examine and transplant, doctors said.
“Normally the heart is in suspended animation but they still start to deteriorate,” said Professor Bruce Rosengard, head of the team of doctors who operated on the man.
The new method involves connecting the heart to a machine that pumps warm, oxygen enriched blood through the heart. The heart is able to keep beating with this method. The new process allows surgeons to look more closely and longer at the heart for any signs of damage. It also allows them to find a match for whoever may need it.
“Once hearts are hooked up to the device, which takes about 20 minutes, any deterioration is fully reversed. If we look at resuscitating hearts that are currently unusable, the number of transplants could be tripled or quadrupled,” added Rosengard. “The goal of this trial is to demonstrate that this is at least equivalent if not superior,” he added.
The director of transplants in the United Kingdom Chris Rudge also says that doctors are working on using the same new method with different human organs.
“In the longer term it is not just hearts that can be handled by such systems but other organs too, particularly the liver,” said Rudge.
The 58-year old man is doing “extremely well. At his exam one week after the operation, all his functions were absolutely normal,” Rosengard said.
At least 19 more operations are planned in the U.K. and in Germany.