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Thursday, March 31, 2005A report Tuesday from a United Nations-backed project, consulting more than 1,300 scientists from 95 countries, and written over the last four years, warns that 60 percent of the basics of life on Earth — water, food, timber, clean air — are currently being used in ways which degrade them. Furthermore, fisheries and fresh water use-patterns are unsustainable, and getting worse.

“The harmful consequences of this degradation could grow significantly worse in the next 50 years,” according to a press release from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), a massive four-year study begun in 2001.

“We’ve had many reports on environmental degradation, but for the first time we’re now able to draw connections between ecosystem services and human well-being,” Cristian Samper, director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington and a chief architect of the study, told the Christian Science Monitor.

The project’s Synthesis Report, first in a series of eleven documents and published yesterday, explains the objective: “to assess the consequences of ecosystem change for human well-being and to establish the scientific basis for actions needed to enhance the conservation and sustainable use of ecosystems and their contributions to human well-being.”

It then goes on to report on four main findings:

• Changes over the last 50 years to meet rapidly growing demands for food, fresh water, timber, fiber and fuel, have effected substantial and largely irreversible loss in the diversity of life on Earth.

• Net gains in human well-being and economic development are offset by growing costs, in the form ecosystem degradation, the possibility of abrupt and unpredictable ecosystem changes, and worsened poverty for some groups. Unless addressed, these problems will substantially diminish the benefits that future generations obtain from ecosystems.

• Ecosystem degradation could grow significantly worse over the next 50 years, presenting a barrier to meeting UN Millennium Development Goals.

• The challenge of reversing the degradation while meeting increasing ecological demands can be partially met under some scenarios, but only with significant changes in policies, institutions and practices — changes that are not currently under way.

Walter Reid, the study’s director, speaking at yesterday’s London launch of the report said it shows that over the last 50 years “humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable time in human history.”

“This has resulted in substantial and largely irreversible loss in the diversity of life on Earth,” he said.

It is unclear what this will mean to future generations or the possible emergence of new diseases, absence of fresh water and the continuing decline of fisheries and completely unpredictable weather.

With half of the urban populations of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean suffering from several diseases associated with these problems, the death toll is reaching 1.7 million people a year. Entire species of mammals, birds and amphibians are disappearing from the planet at nearly 1,000 times the natural rate, according to the study. Oxygen-depleted coastal waters and rivers result from overuse of nitrogen fertilizer – an effect known as “nutrient loading” which leads to continuing biodiversity loss.

With the United States’ non-participation in the Kyoto Treaty, former U.S. Senator Timothy Wirth, president of this U.N. Foundation, says “U.S. leadership is critical in providing much-needed expertise, technological capabilities and ingenuity to restore ecosystems.

“We can take steps at home to reduce our nation’s adverse impact on the global environment.”

“At the heart of this assessment is a stark warning,” said the 45-member board.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

The name Robert Cailliau may not ring a bell to the general public, but his invention is the reason why you are reading this: Dr. Cailliau together with his colleague Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, making the internet accessible so it could grow from an academic tool to a mass communication medium. Last January Dr. Cailliau retired from CERN, the European particle physics lab where the WWW emerged.

Wikinews offered the engineer a virtual beer from his native country Belgium, and conducted an e-mail interview with him (which started about three weeks ago) about the history and the future of the web and his life and work.

Wikinews: At the start of this interview, we would like to offer you a fresh pint on a terrace, but since this is an e-mail interview, we will limit ourselves to a virtual beer, which you can enjoy here.

Robert Cailliau: Yes, I myself once (at the 2nd international WWW Conference, Chicago) said that there is no such thing as a virtual beer: people will still want to sit together. Anyway, here we go.

Friday, April 7, 2006

Accra —The Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre for Excellence in ICT introduced the Semacode technology and the Semapedia application to a segment of the Ghanaian public in a presentation delivered by Guido Sohne, Developer-In-Residence at the Centre and Chief Software Architect of CoreNett Ltd, a Ghanaian electronic transaction processing company.

Introduced for the first time in Africa, Semapedia is a way of associating Internet sites with physical barcodes that can be read by cameraphones, enabling one to look up information about physical objects quickly and easily.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

A case is currently being tried in England over the alleged assault of a ‘Goth’ couple, resulting in the death of the female victim. A fifteen-year-old youth, who was one of a gang of five, is charged with having kicked and stamped the 20-year-old woman to death in Stubby Lee Park, Bacup, Rossendale in Lancashire on the 11 August 2007.

The couple; Robert Maltby, an art student, 21 and Sophie Lancaster, 20; became engaged in an initially civil conversation with the drunken gang while walking in the park.

The attack began with a kick to the head of the male victim by the accused 15-year-old. the gang then continued to kick and stamp on Robert Maltby while laughing and encouraging each other. As Miss Lancaster begged the gang to stop beating her boyfriend they turned on her.

The jury were played a recording of a 999 call made shortly after the attack by an eye witness. In the recording, a girl is heard sobbing and crying who details the attack and pleads: “We need, we need an ambulance at Bacup Park, this mosher’s just been banged because he’s a mosher.” referring to the attack on Robert Maltby.

This motive was referred to by Michael Shorrock QC during the prosecution: “It would appear that [they] were singled out, not for anything they had said or done, but because they dressed differently to the defendant and his friend”.

Miss Lancaster sustained such extensive injuries that on the arrival of the paramedics they were unable to determine her gender. The couple were taken to hospital where both victims fell in to comas. Robert Maltby regained consciousness and survived his injuries but Sophie Lancaster died two weeks later.

The youth denies the charge but admits to causing grievous bodily harm with intent. Three other youths, two aged seventeen and one sixteen have been remanded in custody by Judge Anthony Russell QC after admitting to playing a part in the attack. They will face sentencing after the trial of the fifteen-year-old.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006File:Greenpeace Vessels Esperanza and Arctic Sun.jpg

Anti-whaling protesters have joined forces across Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, and the U.S.A calling for an end to the killing of whales for meat by Japan. Greenpeace organised the international day of action as it continued its efforts to disrupt the hunting of minke whales by the Japanese whaling fleet currently in the Southern Ocean.

The day of action was being marked to protest the actions of the fleet which protesters believe violate the 1986 International Whaling Commission (IWC) global ban on commercial whaling. Japan’s JARPA Japanese Whale Research Program was allowed to operate under a Special Permit in the Antarctic according to Article VIII of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling. In its JARPA-2 plan, Japan plans to double its annual scientific research catch of Minke whales to 935, and to add 10 Fin whales to its quota. The International Fund for Animal Welfare states that over the next two years, Japan plans to kill 50 endangered Humpback whales and an additional 40 fin whales.

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

An anti-war demonstration in the streets of New York City failed to apply for a sound permit, normally granted for public demonstrations of all kinds. As a result of what police claim was an unauthorized use of an amplification device, the New York Police Department took action. Anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan was speaking to a crowd of 150 before the microphone was removed by the authorities, according to a report published in The Village Voice. The organizer of the event, Paul Zulkowitz (nicknamed “Zool”), was arrested moments before the demonstration was dispersed.

Sheehan’s speech was almost over Monday when the police interrupted. As Sheehan was escorted off the scene, the crowd shouted at the cops to “let her speak”.

Sheehan said that “I was speaking and someone grabbed my backpack and pulled me back pretty roughly,” and that “I was shoved around.”

She added that “I think their use of force was pretty excessive for someone that didn’t have a permit.” Mrs Sheehan noted that this happened when police broke up the rally.

The Sheehan tour’s previous stop was in downtown Richmond, Virginia where she addressed a small gathering in front of the Virginia Army National Guard office. The small afternoon demonstration drew only a dozen supporters; and as many pro-war demonstrators joined the gathering.

Sheehan achieved national prominence following her peace vigil at the beginning of August 2005, when she camped in a ditch by a road near United States President George W. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, vowing to stay until the President agreed to meet and speak with her about the Iraq War.

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 prosecutors.

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.