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Saturday, February 27, 2010

At 06:34 UTC today, an 8.8 magnitude earthquake hit Chile, triggering a tsunami in the Pacific Ocean. The tsunami has already hit the French Polynesia islands, with waves reaching two metres (six feet) high damaging to the coast. In Fiji Japanese officials expect waves 2.3 metres (7.5 feet high). Australia and New Zealand are expected to receive waves of one metre (three feet) which are expected to hit within 24 hours of the earthquake.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center reported that there may be “widespread damage” from the waves, saying that “authorities should take appropriate action in response to this threat.”

In a special report, Wikinews looks at how different parts of the world have been affected by the disaster.

Hawaii is expecting to receive waves reaching 2.5 meters (8 feet) high. A warning went into effect at 6AM local time – 5 hours before the expected arrival of the Tsunami; Hawaiian Governor Linda Lingle declared a state of emergency. At present, there are confirmed reports from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center of waves hitting the islands’ eastern coasts.

Additionally, the western coast of the United States – extending from California to portions of Alaska – is under a tsunami advisory.

The civil defence spokesman for the Hawaiian island of Oahu, John Cummings, encouraged people to “get off the shoreline. We are closing all the beaches and telling people to drive out of the area.”

The tsunami hit the Gambier archipelago at approximately 6:30 am local time. The Marquesas islands were hit about an hour later. Reports from the islands indicate that there was no significant damage or casualties yet. The islands followed the tsunami alert plans put in place following the major 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

In a statement, the New Zealand Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management commented, “[the] current assessment is for a non-destructive tsunami for New Zealand with wave heights at the shore of between 0.2 and one metre [three feet]. The first wave may arrive later and may not be the largest. Waves may continue for several hours.”

The centre, which also confirmed the initial Chile earthquake, also added that “sea-level readings confirm that a tsunami has been generated which could cause widespread damage. “Authorities should take appropriate action in response to this threat.”

The government noted that the waves were not predicted to have destructive force. According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the first waves would not hit the country’s shores until fifteen hours after the initial quake.

“Stay away from the beaches. Don’t go out on the water and if you are already out on the water up anchor and head to deeper water at least half a mile off shore,” warned Coastguard Northern Region duty officer John Cowan.

Meanwhile, the Marsden Point oil refinery, the only refinery in New Zealand, put all of its operations on hold as they were waiting for further information about the strength of the expected tsunami, according to production controller Ted Rye.

“We’ve just had a report from a trader fishing boat out at the Hen and Chick islands, about 10 kilometres off the coast, and they have noticed quite a significant surge,” he remarked.

New Zealand Civil Defence Minister John Carter also appealed for residents to heed officials’ warnings and stay away from shorelines throughout the day.

The east coast of Australia was placed under a tsunami alert; the impact expected in Sydney from 8:45am local time, Sunday there, and along other parts of the New South Wales coast. Areas in Tasmania potentially affected by the quake would be under tsunami alert until 7:45am local time.

“Boats in harbors, estuaries or shallow coastal water should return to shore. Secure your boat and move away from the waterfront. Vessels already at sea should stay offshore in deep water until further advised,” read a warning by the Joint Australian Tsunami Warning Center. “[…] Tsunami waves are more powerful than the same size beach waves, with the first wave not always the largest.”

The centre noted that among the areas with a “potential tsunami threat” include New South Wales state, Queensland state, Lord Howe Island and Norfolk Island. However, it also added that the bays and harbours of Sydney would not likely be affected by waves.

Friday, March 20, 2009

The owner of a New Jersey real estate investment firm has been charged with using $2 million of his company’s money for construction at his home and other projects not related to work.

Gary Klein, owner of the Asbury Park-based REI Group Inc., surrendered himself to police after a Monmouth County grand jury indicted him on one count of theft by deception charges.

The charges were the result of a three-year investigation into his practices. Klein, 45, of Colts Neck Township, faces up to 10 years in state prison if convicted. Klein was released Friday after posting $75,000 bail.

Klein attracted clients by telling them he would invest their money in projects that would result in returns of 12 and 85 percent. Prosecutors said the actions mirrored those of a Ponzi scheme.

Robert Weir, Klein’s attorney, said the operation was not a Ponzi scheme, but legitimate business investments that went bad as the economy declined. Weir also said Klein hired a receiver to try and return the investors’ money once the investments started to go sour.

“It’s a shame that a business that experienced a turn in the real estate market is now being treated as a criminal problem. That was not Mr. Klein’s intent,” Weir said to The Star-Ledger.

Weir said the investments were used for building rehabilitation projects in Asbury Park and the construction of Florida condominium complexes, but authorities said Klein used the money to repay earlier investors who were cashing out, as well to help build his own home.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

On Friday, the Los Angeles Police Department arrested and charged a woman with murder, after she reportedly stabbed her ten-year-old daughter to death at the Air Force base Fort MacArthur residential facility in San Pedro, California. The girl’s father is a former member of the Navy.

The 49-year-old mother, Bong Sook Chavez, allegedly slit her daughter’s wrists and neck. Chavez slit her own wrists after attacking her daughter. In a statement issued on Monday, investigators say Chavez likely stabbed her daughter while she was asleep in bed.

Deputy Chief Pat Gannon told the Los Angeles Times Chavez has a history of mental health problems. According to Gannon, “The father was able to get the weapon away from her.” The father awoke at around 2:30 a.m. local time to find Chavez attacking her daughter.

The daughter, Quesi Chavez, later died at the University of Southern California’s Medical Center as a result of her wounds. As of Monday, the mother remained in the hospital in stable condition, but was scheduled to appear in court yesterday.

Monday, October 19, 2009

A report accidentally published on the Internet provides insight into a secretive European Union surveillance project designed to monitor its citizens, as reported by Wikileaks earlier this month. Project INDECT aims to mine data from television, internet traffic, cellphone conversations, p2p file sharing and a range of other sources for crime prevention and threat prediction. The €14.68 million project began in January, 2009, and is scheduled to continue for five years under its current mandate.

INDECT produced the accidentally published report as part of their “Extraction of Information for Crime Prevention by Combining Web Derived Knowledge and Unstructured Data” project, but do not enumerate all potential applications of the search and surveillance technology. Police are discussed as a prime example of users, with Polish and British forces detailed as active project participants. INDECT is funded under the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), and includes participation from Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

Indicated in the initial trial’s report, the scope of data collected is particularly broad; days of television news, radio, newspapers, and recorded telephone conversations are included. Several weeks of content from online sources were agglomerated, including mining Wikipedia for users’ and article subjects’ relations with others, organisations, and in-project movements.

Watermarking of published digital works such as film, audio, or other documents is discussed in the Project INDECT remit; its purpose is to integrate and track this information, its movement within the system and across the Internet. An unreleased promotional video for INDECT located on YouTube is shown to the right. The simplified example of the system in operation shows a file of documents with a visible INDECT-titled cover taken from an office and exchanged in a car park. How the police are alerted to the document theft is unclear in the video; as a “threat”, it would be the INDECT system’s job to predict it.

Throughout the video use of CCTV equipment, facial recognition, number plate reading, and aerial surveillance give friend-or-foe information with an overlaid map to authorities. The police proactively use this information to coordinate locating, pursuing, and capturing the document recipient. The file of documents is retrieved, and the recipient roughly detained.

Technology research performed as part of Project INDECT has clear use in countering industrial and international espionage, although the potential use in maintaining any security and predicting leaks is much broader. Quoted in the UK’s Daily Telegraph, Liberty’s director, Shami Chakrabarti, described a possible future implementation of INDECT as a “sinister step” with “positively chilling” repercussions Europe-wide.

“It is inevitable that the project has a sensitive dimension due to the security focussed goals of the project,” Suresh Manandhar, leader of the University of York researchers involved in the “Work Package 4” INDECT component, responded to Wikinews. “However, it is important to bear in mind that the scientific methods are much more general and has wider applications. The project will most likely have lot of commercial potential. The project has an Ethics board to oversee the project activities. As a responsible scientists [sic] it is of utmost importance to us that we conform to ethical guidelines.”

Although Wikinews attempted to contact Professor Helen Petrie of York University, the local member of Project INDECT’s Ethics board, no response was forthcoming. The professor’s area of expertise is universal access, and she has authored a variety of papers on web-accessibility for blind and disabled users. A full list of the Ethics board members is unavailable, making their suitability unassessable and distancing them from public accountability.

One potential application of Project INDECT would be implementation and enforcement of the U.K.’s “MoD Manual of Security“. The 2,389-page 2001 version passed to Wikileaks this month — commonly known as JSP-440, and marked “RESTRICTED” — goes into considerable detail on how, as a serious threat, investigative journalists should be monitored, and effectively thwarted; just the scenario the Project INDECT video could be portraying.

When approached by Wikinews about the implications of using INDECT, a representative of the U.K.’s Attorney General declined to comment on legal checks and balances such a system might require. Further U.K. enquiries were eventually referred to the Police Service of Northern Ireland, who have not yet responded.

Wikinews’ Brian McNeil contacted Eddan Katz, the International Affairs Director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (E.F.F.). Katz last spoke to Wikinews in early 2008 on copyright, not long after taking his current position with the E.F.F. He was back in Brussels to speak to EU officials, Project INDECT was on his agenda too — having learned of it only two weeks earlier. Katz linked Project INDECT with a September report, NeoConopticon — The EU Security-Industrial Complex, authored by Ben Hayes for the Transnational Institute. The report raises serious questions about the heavy involvement of defence and IT companies in “security research”.

On the record, Katz answered a few questions for Wikinews.

((WN)) Is this illegal? Is this an invasion of privacy? Spying on citizens?

Eddan Katz When the European Parliament issued the September 5, 2001 report on the American ECHELON system they knew such an infrastructure is in violation of data protection law, undermines the values of privacy and is the first step towards a totalitarian surveillance information society.

((WN)) Who is making the decisions based on this information, about what?

E.K. What’s concerning to such a large extent is the fact that the projects seem to be agnostic to that question. These are the searching systems and those people that are working on it in these research labs do search technology anyway. […] but its inclusion in a database and its availability to law enforcement and its simultaneity of application that’s so concerning, […] because the people who built it aren’t thinking about those questions, and the social questions, and the political questions, and all this kind of stuff. [… It] seems like it’s intransparent, unaccountable.

The E.U. report Katz refers to was ratified just six days before the September 11 attacks that brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Center. In their analysis of the never-officially-recognised U.S. Echelon spy system it states, “[i]n principle, activities and measures undertaken for the purposes of state security or law enforcement do not fall within the scope of the EC Treaty.” On privacy and data-protection legislation enacted at E.U. level it comments, “[such does] not apply to ‘the processing of data/activities concerning public security, defence, state security (including the economic well-being of the state when the activities relate to state security matters) and the activities of the state in areas of criminal law'”.

Part of the remit in their analysis of Echelon was rumours of ‘commercial abuse’ of intelligence; “[i]f a Member State were to promote the use of an interception system, which was also used for industrial espionage, by allowing its own intelligence service to operate such a system or by giving foreign intelligence services access to its territory for this purpose, it would undoubtedly constitute a breach of EC law […] activities of this kind would be fundamentally at odds with the concept of a common market underpinning the EC Treaty, as it would amount to a distortion of competition”.

Ben Hayes’ NeoConoptiocon report, in a concluding section, “Following the money“, states, “[w]hat is happening in practice is that multinational corporations are using the ESRP [European Seventh Research Programme] to promote their own profit-driven agendas, while the EU is using the programme to further its own security and defence policy objectives. As suggested from the outset of this report, the kind of security described above represents a marriage of unchecked police powers and unbridled capitalism, at the expense of the democratic system.”

See the discussion page for instructions on adding schools to this list and for an alphabetically arranged listing of schools.

Due to the damage by Hurricane Katrina and subsequent flooding, a number of colleges and universities in the New Orleans metropolitan area will not be able to hold classes for the fall 2005 semester. It is estimated that 75,000 to 100,000 students have been displaced. [1]. In response, institutions across the United States and Canada are offering late registration for displaced students so that their academic progress is not unduly delayed. Some are offering free or reduced admission to displaced students. At some universities, especially state universities, this offer is limited to residents of the area.

Friday, September 8, 2006

From September 3 to 8, experts gathered at the 10th International Congress on Obesity in Sydney, Australia, to discuss what they call the worldwide “obesity epidemic”. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 1 billion people in the world today are overweight, and 300 million of those are obese. “Obesity and overweight pose a major risk for serious diet-related chronic diseases, including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension and stroke, and certain forms of cancer“, a WHO fact sheet states. According to AP, experts at the conference “have warned that obesity is a bigger threat than AIDS or bird flu, and will easily overwhelm the world’s health care systems if urgent action is not taken”.

Of particular concern is the large number of overweight children. Dr. Stephan Rossner from Sweden’s Karolinska University Hospital, a leading obesity expert who was present at the conference, has warned that as a result of the increasing number of overweight children, “we will have, within a decade or two, a number of young people who are on kidney dialysis. There will not be organs for everybody”. UK-based International Obesity Task Force has said that junk food manufacturers target children, for example, through Internet advertising, chat rooms, text messages, and “advergames” on websites. Politicians are not doing enough to address the problem of obesity, including childhood obesity, the experts said.

According to Wikipedia, examples of junk food include, but are not limited to: hamburgers, pizza, candy, soda, and salty foods like potato chips and french fries. A well-known piece of junk food is the Big Mac. The US version of just one Big Mac burger contains 48% of calories from fat, 47% US Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) of fat, 52% RDA of saturated fat, 26% RDA of cholesterol, 42% RDA of sodium, and little nutritional value. It also has 18% of calories from protein. According to WHO, most people need only about 5% calories from protein. Staples such as rice, corn, baked potatoes, pinto beans, as well as fruits and vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, oranges, and strawberries, provide more than this required amount of protein without the unhealthy amounts of fats or sodium, without cholesterol, and with plenty of fiber, vitamins, and minerals.

Both WHO and the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) define overweight in adults as a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 25 or above, and obese as a BMI of 30 or above. To combat overweight and obesity, WHO recommends that, among other things, people should be taking the following steps

• eating more fruit and vegetables, as well as nuts and whole grains;
• engaging in daily moderate physical activity for at least 30 minutes;
• cutting the amount of fatty, sugary foods in the diet;
• moving from saturated animal-based fats to unsaturated vegetable-oil based fats.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

A United States Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter crashed Monday (before 3:00 pm CST) after takeoff at Duncan Field at Campus of Texas A&M University, during a routine mission flight shuttling cadets from the university to Camp Swift. Two active-duty soldiers were killed in the crash, and four Army National Guard soldiers were injured.

Second Lt. Zachary Cook, 22, a native of Lufkin, Texas and a December 2008 graduate of Texas A&M University, was killed in the incident. Cook was a member of the Reserve Officers Training Corps cadre at Texas A&M University and also graduated from Lufkin High School. U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards on Wednesday paid tribute to Cook on the floor of the U.S. Congress. “His loss brings a great sadness to his family and friends, the extended Texas A&M family, and the Army, all of us deprived of this patriotic citizen who was dedicated to serving our great nation in uniform,” he said. Edwards is a Democratic Party member of the United States House of Representatives from the 17th District of Texas, based about Waco.

The crash also killed Sgt. Charles C. Mitts, 42, of Spring, Texas. He died about 9 p.m. Wednesday night at Memorial Hermann Hospital, said hospital spokeswoman Ann Brimberry. Mitts was the oldest of five men on board the ill-fated helicopter. He was assigned to Iraq from September 2006 to September 2007 with Company C of the 1st Battalion, 108th Aviation Regiment, based in Topeka, Kansas. Mitts was posthumously promoted from his present rank, Chief Master Sgt. Gonda Moncada announced.

The three others on board the UH-60 Black Hawk were injured in the accident. The pilot, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Matthew J. Smith, 41, of Leander, and 1st Lt. Ellis W. Taylor, 31, of Buda, were in stable condition Thursday at Brooke Army Medical Center. Sgt. Richard D. Ravenscraft, 24, of Austin, also was initially listed as critical but upgraded to stable in College Station.

The accident is under investigation by the Combat Readiness/Safety Center in Fort Rucker, Alabama, home of the U.S. Army Aviation Center. “They have a reputation for extreme thoroughness and quickness,” said Texas Guard Capt. Adam Collett. The probe team will review the wrecked helicopter and debris scattered on Duncan Field next to Duncan Dining Hall, near the Corps of Cadets field on the school’s College Station campus, about 100 miles northwest of Houston, Texas. “Every piece the way it landed is still in place,” said Texas Army National Guard Chief Master Sgt. Gonda Moncada, adding that investigators began the expert examination of evidence Wednesday morning.

As part of a five-ship training exercise, the Blackhawk helicopter was performing a training demonstration for about 190 Corps of Cadets in the ROTC Rudder’s Rangers Annual Winter Field Training Exercises. It was also used to transfer the students to Duncan Field just off George Bush Drive. When the helicopter was attempting to take off, a rudder reportedly malfunctioned. “At first, it looked like he was hot-dogging and then very quickly it was obvious he was in trouble and not messing around. All of a sudden he dropped straight back down into the ground,” Scott Walker Walker, publications manager for the A&M Association of Former Students said. “There was a bunch of people on Duncan Field and everyone went running and diving for cover,” he added. The aircraft entered a rotational spin upon take off and plummeted down on its tail boom, with its cabin section largely intact.

The chopper will be transferred to the Austin Aviation Support Facility, where it is was based. Some parts of the Blackhawk will also be sent to the Corpus Christi Army Depot for testing, Officials with Texas Military Forces officials said.

“Our thoughts and prayers go to the crew members involved in this tragedy, and especially to the family and friends of the crew member who reportedly died as a result of injuries sustained in the crash,” A&M President Elsa Murano stated.

The UH-60 Black Hawk is a four-bladed, twin-engine, medium-lift utility helicopter manufactured by Sikorsky Aircraft. It is a utility tactical transport helicopter that replaces the UH-1 “Huey” and has been in use since 1979.It was based at the Austin Army Aviation Support Facility at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. The aircraft’s soldiers came from Austin and San Antonio. They were part of the 36th Combat Aviation Brigade, at Austin’s Camp Mabry.

The Campus of Texas A&M University, also known as ‘Aggieland’, is located in College Station, Texas, USA. College Station is a city in Brazos County, Texas, situated in Central Texas. It is located in the heart of the Brazos Valley. Aggieland is centrally located within of three of the 10 largest cities in the United States and 75% of the Texas and Louisiana populations. Southside of the campus contains halls both for the Corps of Cadets members and “non-regs”. Facilities for the Corps of Cadets are located in the Quadrangle, or “The Quad”, an area consisting of dormitories, Duncan Dining Hall, and the Corps training fields.

Thursday, April 14, 2005

Legislators in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, are proposing a new law that would make pet owners criminally responsible for their animal’s actions.

This follows the death of a boy after a dog attack. The proposal would make it a category IV misdemeanor if a conviction for negligence is gained against a pet owner charged for their dog biting someone, punishable by a $250 fine. For a second offense, the penalty can go up to $1000 or 6 months in jail, and for a third offense, $2500, or a year in jail. The legislation, if enacted, would enable the creation of a criminal profile for a negligent animal owner and the animal itself.

On a CBS6 news report broadcast recently on an Orange County boy killed by the family dog, they said the station received many angry e-mails from dog owners about the story when it was aired earlier that day. It is a topic that draws strong views from both sides of the argument, and probably explains why the Commonwealth of Virginia has been strangely quiet on the subject. It appears the state government is willing at this point to let it be slugged out at the county level, while remaining distant and learning from it above the fray. This means that if a Spotsylvania County dog owner cannot abide a new law that might fine him $250 because his dog bit the mailman, he can move to a nearby county where no such law exists.

The legal wording the county might use in drafting the legislation should not concern itself with the species of pet. All pets should be affected because the legislation should be indiscriminate. What it needs to concern itself with is what meets the definition of a pet, and exactly what negligence is.

Recall that Dianna Large, now charged with a felony, originally said she owned only 1 of the 3 pit bulls involved in the attack that killed an elderly woman. Even if she later recanted that, if her defense can show that her status as pet owner of the other 2 dogs is only slight, or if it exists at all under current law, that would have a big impact on the case.

There will be a public hearing on May 10 to discuss proposals that may change county legislation.

Wednesday, April 5, 2006

Glen Stollery is a New Zealand website developer who created the site ScienTOMogy.info in mid 2005. The site, which is a parody of Tom Cruise and his involvement with the Church of Scientology, became the centre of controversy when it was served with a number of cease and desist orders initiated by the Church. On March 19, 2006, Glen issued a media release stating that his web hosting provider, YouTube, had removed videos of Tom Cruise which formed part of the site. The release suggested that YouTube had taken this action under external pressure from Cruise or Viacom.

Responding to a query by Wikinews reporters, YouTube stated “We have not received a DMCA notification letter from Viacom.” The Church of Scientology was offered the opportunity to respond to the claims made by Stollery during the interview. No reply was received.

This exclusive interview deals with these issues and others relating to the website. It was conducted with Glen via email between March 21 and April 3, 2006.

Monday, March 20, 2006

Fears of contaminated bone and skin grafts are being felt by unsuspecting patients following the revelation that funeral homes may have been looting corpses.

Janet Evans of Marion Ohio was told by her surgeon, “The bone grafts you got might have been contaminated”. She reacted with shock, “I was flabbergasted because I didn’t even know what he was talking about. I didn’t know I got a bone graft until I got this call. I just thought they put in screws and rods.”

The body of Alistair Cooke, the former host of “Masterpiece Theatre,” was supposedly looted along with more than 1,000 others, according to two law enforcement officials close to the case. The tissue taken was typically skin, bone and tendon, which was then sold for use in procedures such as dental implants and hip replacements. According to authorities, millions of dollars were made by selling the body parts to companies for use in operations done at hospitals and clinics in the United States and Canada.

A New Jersey company, Biomedical Tissue Services, has reportedly been taking body parts from funeral homes across Brooklyn, New York. According to ABC News, they set up rooms like a “surgical suite.” After they took the bones, they replaced them with PVC pipe. This was purportedly done by stealth, without approval of the deceased person or the next of kin. 1,077 bodies were involved, say prosecuters.

Investagators say a former dentist, Michael Mastromarino, is behind the operation. Biomedical was considered one of the “hottest procurement companies in the country,” raking in close to $5 million. Eventually, people became worried: “Can the donors be trusted?” A tissue processing company called LifeCell answered no, and issued a recall on all their tissue.

Cooke’s daughter, Susan Cooke Kittredge, said, “To know his bones were sold was one thing, but to see him standing truncated before me is another entirely.” Now thousands of people around the country are receiving letters warning that they should be tested for infectious diseases like HIV or hepatitis. On February 23, the Brooklyn District Attorney indicted Mastromarino and three others. They are charged with 122 felony counts, including forgery and bodysnatching.