September
24
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Tuesday, World Bank released the 2012 World Development Report on Gender Equality and Development. In discussing Iceland, it suggests mandatory paid parental leave for mother and father have played an important role in changing norms in the country. Parents have a government mandated nine months leave, three for the mother, three for the father and three to to distribute between the two. Leave is paid at 80% of their wages. The report describes the changes in gender relations in Iceland as “promising” in terms of impact at work and at home.
Iceland’s boys and girls mean scores for the Programme for International Student Assessment mathematics test were nearly identical with boys just edging out girls with both scores around 510. Girls outperformed boys on the literacy test with a mean score of approximately 525 to 480. Iceland’s girls mathematics performance was similar to that of girls from Estonia, Germany and Belgium. Their performance on literacy was similar to Sweden, Poland, Switzerland, Estonia and Belgium.File:MargretSverrisdottir.jpg
Mortality rates in Iceland for 1,000 people aged 15–60 sits at 56, significantly better than the United States at 107, China at 113, India at 213, Iraq at 285, Afghanistan at 479, Malawi at 481 and Zimbabwe at 772. One of the reasons the report cites for Iceland’s relatively low mortality rate is it not located in a conflict country or in an HIV/AIDS affected country.
Iceland was one of 23 countries that currently have over 30% of its Parliamentarians who are female. Other countries with over 30% representation include Rwanda, Argentina, Cuba, Finland, the Netherlands, and Sweden. In the mid-1990s, there were only 5 countries. The report cites the 1983 creation of the Women’s Alliance, an all women’s political party, as bringing additional attention to women’s issues and deliberately attempting to increase the representation of women in Icelandic politics.
Despite some of the good news highlighted in the report about Icelandic women, there exists a systematic gender difference in earning potential. Icelandic women in both the private and public sector earn approximately 22% less than their male counterparts. Icelandic men have slightly more access to the Internet than Icelandic women by about 2%. Despite this slight disadvantage for Icelandic women, it is much better than some countries where the percentage differences are much greater. These countries include Austria, Croatia, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Azerbaijan, Serbia, Turkey, and Macedonia.
September
24
A compilation of brief news reports for Thursday, April 19, 2007.
Wikinews reported previously on an Internet outage in New Zealand that lasted for over five hours. Telecom New Zealand, the company that owns and operates the “local loop”, said that they will review compensation for its customers on a case-by-case basis.
A wholesale ISP is attempting to give its subscribers compensation for the outage. CallPlus says that it is asking Telecom for the thousands of dollars it needs to pass on to its affected customers. They doubt Telecom will give them the money needed.
Related news
Sources
Farmers in Peru striking over the Peruvian government’s stance on coca, have issued an ultimatum. The ultimatum appears to be: negotiate within 24 hours, or face roadblocks indefinitely.
The protests come in response to a coca eradication drive and measures Peruvian president Alan García is taking against cocaine production in the country.
Peruvian police have arrested the leader of the Shining Path rebel group, Jimmy Rodríguez on charges of organising anti-government protests.
Sources
Meetings are underway at NATO headquarters in an attempt to reassure Russia that the missile defence plans pose no threat. The United States maintains the system is to protect against missiles from rogue states, whereas Russia sees the system as compromising its strategic interests in the region.
In today’s talks NATO allies encouraged the United States to make the planned anti-missile shield capable of covering all of Europe. They did this without committing themselves to joining the project.
Reaction to the proposed system in European states has been mixed.
Irrigation water to a substantial proportion of Australia’s farming regions could be cut due to drought conditions, Australian PM John Howard has warned.
Mr Howard’s comments concerned the Murray-Darling Basin, one of the largest systems in Australia. “If it doesn’t rain in sufficient volume over the next six to eight weeks, there will be no water allocations for irrigation purposes in the basin”, adding that the drought conditions could continue until May 2008.
He continued “It is a grim situation, and there is no point in pretending to Australia otherwise,” he said. “We must all hope and pray there is rain.”
Sources
Russia, in coordination with the government of the United States and Canada, is planning to build a tunnel from Russia to Alaska, Viktor Razbegin, deputy head of industrial research at the Russian Economy Ministry, told reporters in Moscow Wednesday.
The tunnel is budgeted to cost US$65 billion and would take 10 to 15 years to build. The tunnel is to provide train and automobile transport between Alaska and the Russian Far East, and to carry petroleum and natural gas pipelines, and high-voltage electrical cable.
The proposed tunnel is 64 miles long, or about 100 kilometers, in total, and is designed to link with two islands in the Bering Strait. The project is expected to have a very positive economic effect in the area.
Derek Brower, an energy market expert, called the project “absurd” and suggested the Russian government is playing political games to threaten its European customers to sign energy deals.
“I’ve never heard of this plan,” said Sergei Grigoryev, Vice President of oil pipeline monopoly Transneft.
“To be honest, anyone who look[s] at the map will realize that the project is too hard to implement,” an anonymous government source told Reuters.
Sources
Saturday, March 17, 2007
The Namibian government has refused to remove value added tax (VAT) on the price of milk. The Namibian Dairy producers organization requested the Namibian directorate of local income in May 2006 to follow the example of South Africa and declare fresh milk as a basic need upon which no taxation is applicable.
Mnr. Calle Schlettwein, permanent Secretary of the Namibia Ministry of Finance said the decision not to discard VAT on milk is because of two reasons: “This industry is already receiving advantages because of Article 26 of the African Customs Union (SACU),” he said.
“Secondly, the ministry cannot decrease the country’s tax basis. Namibia is a country that spend more than what it can collect through tax. We cannot afford to discard VAT on fresh milk.”
The price of fresh milk is to climb by 50c in the beginning of April 2007 following increases in production costs to producers. The dairy industry has warned of a collapse of the industry and a dependence on foreign imports if prices are not increased to match rising production costs.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
United States presidential candidate John McCain announced today that he is suspending his campaign and sought to postpone a scheduled debate with his opponent, Barack Obama, to focus on the country’s financial crisis and says that Obama should also suspend his campaign.
McCain said he would be asking president George W. Bush to call a meeting for members of Congress in order to support Bush’s controversial $700 billion bailout plan, but also said that there is no consensus for the proposal and it will not pass in its current form.
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He called the crisis “historic,” stressing the need for legislation and warning of “devastating consequences”.
“I am calling on the president to convene a meeting with the leadership from both houses of Congress, including Senator Obama and myself. It is time for both parties to come together to solve this problem. It has become clear that no consensus has developed to support the administration’s proposal and I do not believe that the plan on the table will pass as it currently stands. We are running out of time,” said McCain during a press conference.
Early this morning, Obama had called McCain and asked for the two to put aside partisanship and focus on the economic troubles. The two agreed to issue a joint statement supporting an economic fix, just minutes before McCain made his announcement. Bush is scheduled to speak to the people of the U.S. in a televised speech at 9:01 PM EDT tonight.
Obama responded to McCain’s speech minutes later, confirming that he would still attend the debate. He expressed a desire for fairness to taxpayers and an objection to rewarding those responsible for the financial crisis. Both candidates have stated that they intend to put politics aside to work on the financial crisis. Obama said, a president “is going to have to deal with more than one thing at a time.”
The proposal comes in the wake of Congressional hearings where US Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson have urged support of the measures proposed by the administration. Despite such appeals, both McCain and Obama have expressed skepticism over the proposed bailout, and the U.S. Congress has shown a noted concern that the measure may not benefit ordinary home owners as well as those on Wall Street.
September
21
Sunday, June 5, 2005
The latest album of hit British band Coldplay is due to be released worldwide this Monday (in Europe) and Tuesday (in North America) amid rife anticipation among fans. The album, called X&Y, is the band’s third, following Parachutes which came out in 2000 and A Rush of Blood to the Head which appeared in 2002. Combined sales of the first two albums are above 20m copies, making Coldplay one of the biggest bands of recent years.
The majority of music critics have given the album a good review, claiming that the band’s songs have become ‘tougher’ and ‘more diverse’. Radio listeners have already sampled some of the new songs such as Speed Of Sound, and the full album has been leaked onto Internet file-sharing networks.
The album, which features 13 tracks collectively accounting for 62 minutes of music, has topped Amazon.com‘s music sales chart since March thanks to thousands of pre-orders, breaking the record for internet pre-orders previously held by Dido’s Life For Rent.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
After an early morning fire began, four out of the nine people living at the Riverview Individual Residential Alternative group home located in Wells, New York were killed by the blaze. The Sunmount Developmental Disabilities Services Office, which supervises the home, told the media that the fire started at approximately 5:30 AM Eastern Daylight Time. Two staff members were at the home at the time, who safely evacuated four of the five survivors.
The names of the residents killed in the fire were not able to be released due to New York’s Mental Hygiene Law, but are able to be identified as two adult men, aged 32 and 52, and two adult women, aged 43 and 60. A 71-year-old male was injured in the fire, and was taken to a hospital in Utica, a nearby city. The other four residents have been relocated to an unnamed group home. Both staff members are also being examined at the hospital.
“On behalf of all New Yorkers, I wish to extend my heartfelt condolences to the families, loved ones and friends of the four victims and to continue to pray for the full recovery of those five people and two staff members who survived this incident. I also want to express my thanks and appreciation for the first responders and volunteers who worked swiftly and diligently to respond to this tragedy,” David Patterson, the governor of New York, said to the media.
The exact cause of the fire has yet to be determined. However, the New York Civil Liberties Union stated that “the blaze appears to have been an electrical fire and the sprinkler system was knocked out immediately.” They also called for “an immediate investigation into the causes of and contributing factors of the fire.”
The New York State Department of State Office of Fire Prevention and Control is currently investigating the causes of the blaze, with help from New York State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation and the New York State Commission on Quality of Care and Advocacy for Persons with Disabilities.
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Until a patch is issued, Microsoft recommends that users close or block TCP port 3389, the port opened when the Remote Assistance service of its Microsoft Windows operating system (OS) is enabled. The Remote Assistance feature is a service of the OS that allows Internet Technology administrators of corporate workgroups remote access to other desktops to perform maintenance and other configuration tasks from their own computer. It can also be used by on-line tech support sites. A support assistant can go into a user’s machine, if the service is enabled, and themself make changes directly to another person’s computer to resolve an issue.
To initialize the remote assistance feature, the user of the helper computer must first make a request of the user of the target computer. Compliance must be granted by the user of the target machine, which then fully opens the communication port of the target machine to the helper computer. The operator of the helper computer then has control of target computer to make changes at will. The user of the target machine can watch in a separate window the actions of the helper, and either party to the session can end it at any time.
In a telephone conversation with a Microsoft representative Tuesday, it was learned that work to develop a security patch is underway, but when it will be available is unclear. It was cited that a patch must work consistently across multiple platform versions of the OS.
The vulnerability, thought at first to affect only Windows XP SP2, is now believed to affect all current Windows editions, including Windows 2000, Windows XP SP1, Windows XP Professional x64, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 SP1, and Windows Server x64.
The Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is not enabled by default, however if the service is enabled, a Denial of Service attack could cause the OS to restart unexpectedly according to Microsoft, or experience buffer overflows according to Symantec. The RDP is enabled by default on Windows XP Media Center Edition.
Microsoft suggests users block TCP port 3389 (the port used by RDP) on their firewall, or disable Terminal Services or Remote Desktop if not required by the user. The remote desktop connections could also be secured using either Internet Protocol Security or a virtual private network connection until a patch is ready.
To disable Remote Assistance on a Windows XP Edition, the steps are:
The group, Internet Storm Center, detected spikes in scanning for port 3389 beginning July 6. Larger numbers of systems scanned were reported on July 13. Crackers may be scanning for vulnerable machines, the group said.
“It’s a kernel vulnerability,” said VP of engineering for Symantec Alfred Huger, “so it will be difficult to exploit reliably. But he [the original discoverer] found the vulnerability with a commonly-used tool, so if he can find it, so can others. I don’t think it will turn it into a large-scale worm, but then, some kernel vulnerabilities have ended up as just that, like the Witty worm.”
Sunday, April 24, 2005
Friday, September 7, 2012
London, England — On Wednesday, Wikinews interviewed Duncan Campbell, one of the creators of wheelchair rugby.
((Laura Hale)) You’re Duncan Campbell, and you’re the founder of…
((Laura Hale)) And you’re from Canada, eh?
((Laura Hale)) Winnipeg?
((Laura Hale)) You cheer for — what’s that NHL team?
((Laura Hale)) What sort of Canadian are you?
((Laura Hale)) I don’t know anything about ice hockey. I’m a Chicago Blackhawks fan.
((Hawkeye7)) Twenty five years ago…
((Laura Hale)) They said twenty five in the stadium…
((Hawkeye7)) So it was 1977.
((Laura Hale)) You look very young.
((Hawkeye7)) So how did you invent the sport?
((Hawkeye7)) So all wheelchair rugby players are quadriplegics?
((Laura Hale)) When did the classification system for wheelchair rugby kick in?
((Hawkeye7)) Was that copied off wheelchair basketball?
((Laura Hale)) I assume you’re barracking for Canada. Have they had any classification issues? That made you
((Laura Hale)) Do you think the countries that have better classifiers… as someone with an Australian perspective they’re really good at classification, and don’t get theirs overturned, whereas the Americans by comparison have had a number of classification challenges coming in to these games that they’ve lost. Do you think that having better classifiers makes a team better able to compete at an international level?
((Laura Hale)) When you started in 1977, I’ve seen pictures of the early wheelchairs. I assume that you were playing in your day chair?
((Laura Hale)) When did you retire?
((Laura Hale)) When did you get your first rugby wheelchair?
((Laura Hale)) Were you involved in creating a special chair, as Canadians were pushing the boundaries and creating the sport?
((Hawkeye7)) I’d noticed that in wheelchair basketball the low point player actually gets more court time…
((Laura Hale)) Because we know you are going soon, the all-important question: can Canada beat the Australians tonight?
((Laura Hale)) Because Australians love to gamble, what’s your line on Canada?
((Hawkeye7)) Is your colour commentary for the Canadian broadcast?
((Laura Hale)) Are you happy with the level of coverage the Canadians are providing your sport?
((Laura Hale)) Thank you for an honest answer.
((Laura Hale)) Yeah! Go ahead!
((Hawkeye7)) It’s better than the US.
((Laura Hale)) I have one last question: what did it mean for you when they had a Canadian flag bearer who was a wheelchair rugby player?
((Laura Hale)) Thank you!
((Hawkeye7)) Thank you! Much appreciated.