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Monday, June 25, 2018

On Saturday, the plastic ban in the Indian state of Maharashtra came into force. In an attempt to minimise pollution, the state government has introduced a ban on single-use plastics.

The leader of the Yuya Sena political party, Aaditya Thackeray, said on Twitter, “The ban on single use disposable plastic cups, plastic bags, plastic straws, plastic plates and cutlery, styrofoam cutlery and non woven bags”. He added, “these are global issues now and we have taken a step to combat it”.

Plastic pollution has led to the choking of drains, marine pollution and a risk of animals consuming plastics. This year, India’s motto for World Environment Day — June 5 — was “Beat Plastic Pollution”. People violating the plastic ban are to face a fine of 5,000 Indian Rupees (INR) for the first offence. For the second offence, the fine is INR 10,000 and the third time offence is INR 25,000 and a three-month prison term. Deputy municipal commissioner Nidhi Choudhary said, “To weed out corruption, we plan to give inspectors payment gadgets for electronic receipts of the fines”.

The Maharashtra government has given a 90-day period for manufacturers to dispose of existing polyethylene terephthalate (PET/PETE) plastic spoons and plates, while shopkeepers and citizens in general have six months to dispose of plastics. However, the ban does not prohibit plastic usage for wrapping medicines or milk cartons thicker than 50 microns.

The state government had announced the decision for the plastic ban on March 23. According to NDTV’s report, Maharashtra is the eighteenth Indian state to enforce a state-wide plastic ban. Aaditya Thackeray also said, “I congratulate the citizens for making this into a movement, even before the ban was enforceable, giving up single use disposable plastic.”

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=India:_Maharashtra_plastic_ban_comes_into_force&oldid=4417631”

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Friday, May 26, 2006

Buffalo, N.Y. Hotel Proposal Controversy

Recent Developments

“Old deeds threaten Buffalo, NY hotel development” — Wikinews, November 21, 2006
“Proposal for Buffalo, N.Y. hotel reportedly dead: parcels for sale “by owner”” — Wikinews, November 16, 2006
“Contract to buy properties on site of Buffalo, N.Y. hotel proposal extended” — Wikinews, October 2, 2006
“Court date “as needed” for lawsuit against Buffalo, N.Y. hotel proposal” — Wikinews, August 14, 2006
“Preliminary hearing for lawsuit against Buffalo, N.Y. hotel proposal rescheduled” — Wikinews, July 26, 2006
“Elmwood Village Hotel proposal in Buffalo, N.Y. withdrawn” — Wikinews, July 13, 2006
“Preliminary hearing against Buffalo, N.Y. hotel proposal delayed” — Wikinews, June 2, 2006

Original Story

“Hotel development proposal could displace Buffalo, NY business owners” — Wikinews, February 17, 2006

In February of 2006, the Savarino Services Construction Corp. proposed the construction of a seven million dollar hotel on Elmwood and Forest Avenues in Buffalo, New York. In order for the hotel to be built, at least five properties containing businesses and residents would have to be destroyed. It was not certain whether the properties were owned by Savarino or by the landlord Hans Mobius. The hotel was designed by Karl Frizlen of the Frizlen Group, and is planned to be a franchise of the Wyndham Hotels group.

Elmwood Avenue is known by the community as a popular shopping center, and Nancy Pollina of Don Apparel (who is “utterly against” the construction) claims it’s the only reason why students from Buffalo State College leave campus. Additionally, Michael Faust of Mondo Video said he did not want to “get kicked out of here [his video store property].”

In 1995, a Walgreens was proposed to be built on the same land, but Walgreens later withdrew its request for a variance because of pressure from the community. More recently, Pano Georgiadis tried to get the rights to demolish the Atwater House next to his restaurant on Elmwood Avenue, but was denied a permit due to the property’s historical value. He has since been an opponent to the hotel construction.

In the process of debating the hotel, it was thought that a hotel had previously existed on the proposed site, however; research done at the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society had shown that no hotel had previously existed on the site.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=In_depth:_Buffalo,_N.Y._hotel_proposal_controversy&oldid=4272668”

Thursday, January 25, 2018

In findings published Wednesday in the scientific journal Cell, a team of scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai, China have announced the first-ever cloning of a primate from post-embryonic cells, namely two macaque monkeys. They used somatic cell nuclear transfer, the same method that was used to create Dolly the sheep in 1996.

In somatic cell nuclear transfer, scientists remove the nucleus, which is the organelle that contains the chromosomes, from an unfertilized ovum, or egg cell, and implant the nucleus from a somatic cell, or non-reproductive cell, into that ovum. The ovum is then stimulated and develops in the normal way, growing into a whole organism that has the same nuclear DNA as the donor organism, though it will have all of the ovum’s mitochondria and other cellular machinery. Clones like these have been described as identical twins to their donors, but younger.

The scientists implanted 21 ova into surrogate mother monkeys, resulting in six pregnancies, two of which produced living animals. The young clones were named “Zhong Zhong” and “Hua Hua,” both derived from Zh?nghuá, the Chinese-language word for the Chinese people. They are both cynomolgus monkeys, or crab-eating macaques (Macaca fascicularis). The scientists also attempted to clone macaques using nuclei from adult donors. They implanted 42 surrogates, resulting in 22 pregnancies, but there were still only two infant macaques, and they died soon after birth. The Scotland-based team that created Dolly the sheep in 1996 required 277 attempts and produced only one lamb.

Generally, the older the donor organism, the more difficult it is to get the DNA from the harvested nucleus to reactivate the genes that allow the clone organism to grow. Previous efforts to clone rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) using embryonic donor cells have been successful, but the current attempt used significantly older donors: fetal fibroblast cells, which are key cells in connective tissue, and adult monkey cumulus cells.

“We’re excited — extremely excited,” said study co-author Muming Poo. “This is really, I think, a breakthrough for biomedicine.” He went on to say that the cloned monkeys could be used as test subjects for the study of neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s and Huntington’s. Primates are already a popular model organism for neurological studies. In the United States, for example, non-human primates are used in less than 0.3% of all animal experiments, most of them involving neuroscience, and macaques in particular are a well-established animal model of atherosclerosis, which causes heart disease.

“I think it’s a very exciting landmark. It’s a major advance,” agreed reproductive biologist Dieter Egli of Columbia University. “It should be possible to make models of human disease in those monkeys and study those and then attempt to cure it.”

About 90% of the laboratory animals used in the United States are rodents. Although the first cloned mouse was born in 1998, cloned mice are not currently common in laboratory settings. This may be because producing inbred mouse lines is still relatively effective.

Although the announcement raised enthusiasm from researchers, it also drew caution from bioethicists. “Cloning one individual in the image of another really sort of demeans the significance of us as individuals,” says Harvard Medical School’s Dr. George Daley, speaking specifically of cloning humans. “There’s a certain sort of gut sense that it violates sort of natural norms.” While Muming Poo concedes it is now theoretically possible to clone a human, he says his lab has no plans to do so.

Although somatic cell nuclear transfer was used successfully in amphibians as early as 1952, getting it to work in mammals took much longer. Dolly, the first cloned mammal, was born in 1996. Teams have been trying to clone monkeys for decades, but primate DNA is notoriously difficult to work with. “The trick is we choose the right chemicals to turn on these genes we transfer into the egg,” Mu-ming Poo told the press. “So that’s what we did different. I think that’s the key.” One of the agents used to treat the ova was messenger RNA from the human Kdm4d gene.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Healthy_cloned_monkeys_born_in_Shanghai&oldid=4579233”

Saturday, August 13, 2005

U.S. Dept. of Justice attorney for 40 years, Dave Margolis, was assigned by James Comey on August 12 to take over his position as the acting Deputy Attorney General. The former assistant deputy replaces Comey as the acting boss of Patrick Fitzgerald, the lead prosecutor of the Plame CIA leak case. Comey left the post for the private sector as general council for Lockheed Martin Corp.

Al Martin, ret. Navy Lt. Commander (who testified for Kerry’s Iran-Contra hearings) alleges that when David Margolis was the Domestic Criminal Section Chief, he helped limit the liability of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush in the Iran-Contra affair. Martin is also on record as having alleged that Margolis was part of a “restricted access group” known as RAG-1, which “was first to develop and then to coordinate the CIA’s policy of trafficking in narcotics on a large-scale basis, in order to produce ongoing covert revenue streams pursuant to the aid and sustenance of illegal operations of state,” according to Martin.

President Bush nominated Timothy E. Flanigan for Comey’s job. The Comey departure, without Margolis stepping in, would have left two key posts at the Justice Department unfilled. The head of the Criminal Justice, formerly occupied by Christopher Wray, has been empty since May.

Flanigan is facing tough questioning during his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation process. Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) said he is unsure whether he would vote for his confirmation. Flanigan’s role in the aggressive interrogation techniques used on detainees from Afghanistan and Iraq and his ties to lobbyist Jack Abramoff are being probed.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Veteran_U.S._attorney_appointed_to_oversee_Plame_inquiry&oldid=4314766”

Friday, March 18, 2011

A week ago today, at 2:46 pm JST, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck off the coast of the T?hoku region in Japan. The earthquake created an extremely destructive tsunami that spawned 10 metre (33 ft) high waves just moments later. The tsunami travelled 10 km (6 mi) inland causing massive destruction in the country’s northeast, including crippling a nuclear plant.

The earthquake and resulting tsunami have left 5,692 dead and over 9,506 missing, with nearly 450,000 homeless. The death toll is expected to rise.

In this special photoessay, Wikinews looks at the earthquake and tsunami, the destruction that resulted and efforts to bring aid to the Japanese people.

A Japanese home is seen adrift in the Pacific Ocean. Image: U.S. Navy.

The antenna on top of Tokyo Tower was slightly bent by the earthquake. Image: Morio.

Items were knocked off shelves at a store in Narashino, Chiba after the earthquake. Image: mikuaxe.

Soil liquefaction on a road in Koto, Tokyo. Image: Morio.

An explosion occurs at the Cosmo Oil refinery in Ichihara, Chiba. Image: Cranky5.

View of a fire in Odaiba following the earthquake. Image: Hikosaemon.

Crowds of workers evacuated from Tokyo skyscrapers walk home after the earthquake in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo. Image: Hikosaemon.

A long line of cars stretches down Itsukaichi Street in Tokyo on March 11. Due to disruption of train service because of the earthquake and tsunami, people are trying to find alternate means of getting home. Image: Kellykaneshiro.

Stranded passengers congregate at the Kei? line concourse of Shinjuku Station in Tokyo as public transportation in northern Japan is interrupted following the earthquake and tsunami. Image: ?????.

Stranded passengers evacuate from a Tokyo train. Image: ?????.

Calculated wave height of the tsunami, from a NOAA computer model. Image: NOAA.

This false-color satellite picture from NASA’s MODIS satellite shows the area of Sendai on March 13 (top) and February 26 (bottom) shows how far inland the area near Sendai was flooded by tsunami. A bright orange-red spot near the city of Sendai is the thermal signature from a fire. Image: NASA.

An aerial view of the port of Sendai on March 12. Image: U.S. Navy.

A solemn desk chair lies in a layer of mud and petroleum that now covers much of the U.S. FISC Yokosuka Defense Fuel Support Point Hachinohe facility following the tsunami. Image: DVIDSHUB.

The city of Ofunato, Japan, was severely damaged by the earthquake and subsequent tsunami. Image: U.S. Navy.

A trail of debris is seen floating in Pacific Ocean. The debris was inspected by a helicopter-based search and rescue team from the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan. Image: U.S. Navy.

An up-close aerial view of debris floating in the Pacific. The debris was inspected by a helicopter-based search and rescue team from the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan. Image: U.S. Navy.

A Japanese barge is seen adrift in the Pacific Ocean. Image: U.S. Navy.

An upended house is among the debris in Ofunato, Japan. Image: U.S. Navy.

Members of the Fairfax County, Virginia Urban Fire and Rescue Team head into downtown Ofunato to search for survivors following the earthquake and tsunami. Teams from the United States, United Kingdom and China are on scene to assist in searching for missing residents. Image: DVIDSHUB.

A mother and daughter look at a family photo amid the wreckage of their home. Image: U.S. Navy.

A damaged water pipe shoots into the air after the tsunami.Image: U.S. Navy.

A tug boat among the debris in Ofunato.Image: U.S. Navy.

A Mickey Mouse doll lies among debris in Ofunato.Image: U.S. Navy.

Vehicles and debris line a canal in the downtown area of Ofunato.Image: U.S. Navy.

A large sail boat rests against a building in Ofunato. Image: U.S. Navy.

An aerial view of tsunami damage in an area north of Sendai, Japan, taken from a U.S. Navy helicopter. Image: U.S. Navy.

Empty instant noodle shelves in a supermarket in Tokyo due to stock being bought out on March 16, 2011, 5 days after the earthquake. Image: Kellykaneshiro.

Residents wait in a line outside a convenience store to purchase groceries and supplies on March 13, two days after the earthquake and tsunami. Image: Hitomi.

A blackout in Narashino, Chiba on March 15. Image: mikuaxe.

U.S. Navy sailors transfer humanitarian supplies from an aircraft carrier to a helicopter. Image: U.S. Navy.

Japanese citizens receive supplies from the crew of a U.S. Navy helicopter. Image: U.S. Navy.

A closed petrol station in Tokyo on March 16. Image: LERK.

Entrance of the Japanese Embassy in Berlin after the earthquake and tsunami and subsequent accidents at the Fukushima Daichi power plant on March 15. Image: Jochen Jansen.

Russian people take flowers to the embassy of Japan in Moscow after the 2011 earthquake. Image: Elmor.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=In_pictures:_Japan_earthquake_and_tsunami&oldid=3130626”

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-Article last amended: Mar 5 at 12:05:19 UTC (history)Please check the talk page history before reviewing.

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Tuesday, November 17, 2020

On November 16, code-sharing and hosting service GitHub re-enabled the public access to youtube-dl repository, a software which can download videos from the internet via the command-line. This move comes after Mitchell Stoltz, a Senior Staff Attorney of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), sent a letter to GitHub on the behalf of youtube-dl’s maintainers. The repository was previously blocked on October 23, after GitHub received a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) take-down notice from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

Started in July 2008, youtube-dl is a free/libré open source software written in Python which can download videos from various websites. Citing alleged violation of 17 U.S. Code § 1201 Circumvention of copyright protection systems, RIAA’s takedown notice had alleged youtube-dl was intended to circumvent the technological protection measures of streaming services and to redistribute music videos without authorisation. youtube-dl’s source code had a number of unit tests to check if the software works in different circumstances or not. Some of the test cases included URLs of some copyrighted songs.

In the letter to GitHub, EFF’s attorney Stoltz said “This file contains series of automated tests that verify the functionality of youtube-dl for streaming various types of video. The youtube-dl source code does not, of course, contain copies of these songs or any others […] the unit tests do not cause a permanent download or distribution of the songs they reference; they merely stream a few seconds of each song to verify the operation of youtube-dl. Streaming a small portion of a song in a non-permanent fashion to test the operation of an independently created software program is a fair use.” The letter stressed “youtube-dl does not decrypt video streams that are encrypted with commercial DRM technologies”.

The URLs to copyrighted songs were removed from the source code on November 16, and replaced with a test video that uploaded on YouTube by Philipp Hagemeister, former maintainer of youtube-dl. Philipp Hagemeister had previously spoken about the takedown with Wikinews.

youtube-dl comes with a small JavaScript interpreter where it acts as a web-browser would behave while receiving video data from the server. The script has “extractors” for various websites to handle videos from different sources. “Any software capable of running JavaScript code can derive the URL of the video stream and access the stream, regardless of whether the software has been approved by YouTube”, the letter read. It borrowed an analogy of Doors of Durin from J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings for explanation: travelers come upon a door that has writing in a foreign language. When translated, the writing says “say ‘friend’ and enter.” The travelers say “friend” and the door opens. As with the writing on that door, YouTube presents instructions on accessing video streams to everyone who comes asking for it.

Hours after the public access was restored, Sergey M, one of the maintainers of youtube-dl wrote on GitHub, “We would like to thank @github for standing up for youtube-dl and making it possible to continue development without dropping any features. We appreciate [GitHub] for taking potential legal risks in this regard. We would also like to thank [EFF] and personally [Mitch Stoltz] for invaluable legal help. We would also like to heartily thank our main website hoster Uberspace who is currently being sued in Germany for hosting our essentially business card website and who have already spent thousands of Euros in their legal defense.”

Hours after GitHub restored the public access to the repository, Stoltz tweeted “I think of youtube-dl as a successor to the videocassette recorder. The VCR empowered people to take control of their personal use of free-to-air video, but it had to be saved from the copyright cartel. The same goes for youtube-dl. GitHub did the right thing here.”

youtube-dl is used by thousands of people around the world. Multiple Creative Commons-licensed and public domain videos on Wikimedia Commons are uploaded via a tool called video2commons, which relies on youtube-dl to download media. youtube-dl also lets users download videos from LiveLeak — a video-sharing platform for citizen journalism. Videos downloaded using youtube-dl are also used for the purpose of fair use, or for evidence. When a copyright holder chooses to release their work, be it a photograph, a video, or audio, under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, they allow everyone to freely own, share or modify the work as long as the reusers properly attribute the author of the work. YouTube also hosts many audio and video recordings in the public domain which can be used for any purpose without any restrictions.

In the blog post announcing “youtube-dl is back”, GitHub said, “Although we did initially take the project down, we understand that just because code can be used to access copyrighted works doesn’t mean it can’t also be used to access works in non-infringing ways. We also understood that this project’s code has many legitimate purposes, including changing playback speeds for accessibility, preserving evidence in the fight for human rights, aiding journalists in fact-checking, and downloading Creative Commons-licensed or public domain videos.”

GitHub also announced any new 1201 takedown notices will be “carefully scrutinised by legal experts” to reject “unwarranted claims”, and said it will side with software developers if the claims are ambiguous. The announcement also mentioned GitHub Trust and Safety team would treat developer’s tickets as a “top priority”. GitHub also pledged donation of USD 1 million for developer defense fund “to help protect open source developers on GitHub from unwarranted DMCA Section 1201 takedown claims”.

GitHub had blocked public access to many forks of youtube-dl upon receiving the DMCA notice in October. Wikinews notes public access is not yet restored for the forked repositories listed in RIAA’s copyright notice and still displays “Repository unavailable due to DMCA takedown”.

During the period when GitHub had disabled public access for the repository, Sergey M had been developing youtube-dl and hosting it on GitLab, another code-sharing and hosting site. However, since GitHub has restored public access of youtube-dl, Sergey M has made the GitLab repository private.

After this, Wikinews reached out to Richard Stallman, the founder of Free Software Foundation, who has been highly critical of DRM (digital rights management, the subject of the DMCA) for many years now, to discuss the harms of DRM and DMCA 1201.

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Comparison Of Warranties On Pickup Trucks

In depth: Buffalo, N.Y. hotel proposal controversy

Contents

Healthy cloned monkeys born in Shanghai

Veteran U.S. attorney appointed to oversee Plame inquiry

Find Questions To Ask When Having A Medium Phone Reading

In pictures: Japan earthquake and tsunami

Wikinews discusses DRM and DMCA with Richard Stallman after GitHub re-enables public access to youtube-dl

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Commercial Uses Of Gps Trackers