Author: Admin

Thursday, November 30, 2006

Armed Fijian soldiers took control of the streets of Suva, Fiji just before dawn

In a show of force, the troops fired a mortar into the harbour and over Nukulau Island, where George Speight, leader of the Fiji Coup of 2000, is currently serving a term of life imprisonment for his role in the overthrow of the constitutional government. Most of the mortar rounds fell into the ocean.

Soldiers, travelling in a convoy of trucks, set up barricades on key roads that led into the central business district of Suva while others patrolled the city.

Major Neumi Leweni, a military spokesman, said that the activity is not a military coup in disguise. “The exercise is in anticipation of any foreign intervention and the [Fiji military] is taking all precautionary measures.” He pointed out to sea where an Australian black hawk helicopter had crashed and where three Australian warships were moored. Australian officials said the ships were there in case Australian citizens needed to be evacuated.

The black hawk helicopter that had crashed was attempting to land on the HMAS Kanimbla, and its passengers were Special Air Service soldiers. Referring to the crash, Major Leweni said: “[It] just confirms that there are other forces out there and that is exactly why we are doing this exercise”.

Talks in New Zealand between Laisenia Qarase, Prime Minister of Fiji, and , military commander Commodore Frank Bainimarama concluded without an agreement. Winston Peters, foreign minister for New Zealand, said the talks were “lengthy, serious and meaningful”, but ultimately unsuccessful. Mr. Qarase said the three hour talks were not long enough to get to any conclusion, “…it was a good start and there is need for further consultations on some of the issues.”

Mr Qarase arrived at Nadi via a Royal New Zealand Air Force plane and then flew on an Air Chatham Islands plan to Suva. He was met by questioning media. Mr Qarase remained quiet. Commodore Bainimarama also said nothing to the awaiting media when he arrived in Fiji on a commercial flight.

Mr Qarase has requested that all regional foreign ministers come to a meeting being held in Sydney, Australia tomorrow that is related to the coup threats.

Countries that are part of the Pacific Forum are able to help other member countries, if the government asks for help.

Ambassadors from the United States of America, Australia and Britain have all met with Fijian military officers to seek insurances that there wasn’t going to be a coup. Major Lewini responded angrily, “[It is] inappropriate for a civilian diplomat to visit a military camp and seek to speak directly to officers,” he said.

“I’m not aware anyone’s threatening foreign intervention. I can assure you New Zealand isn’t,” Helen Clark, Helen Clark, Prime Minister of New Zealand, said.

At the same time, Andrew Hughes, police commissioner for Fiji, is currently on leave in Brisbane following threats. Moses Driver will now act as the police commissioner.

The military has said they will “clean up” the government if the armed forces do not get three controversial bills passed and all investigations into senior military officers are dropped.

The military has said that they do not need police permission to conduct such exercises.

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Wikinews has obtained a letter by Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill to former Conservative justice spokesman John Lamont in response to questions raised by our correspondent about the Mikaeel Kular murder case. Wikinews has investigated possible contempt by media publishing potentially prejudicial material, and MacAskill wrote he has “been following the case of Mikaeel Kular and [is] acutely aware of the unusual publicity this case has attracted.”

When Mikaeel Kular, three, vanished from his Edinburgh home last month police and volunteers scoured the capital for him. His body was found in Fife just before midnight on January 17, and his mother was arrested on January 18. That’s when Wikinews first reported on possible widespread contempt by UK and Scottish media.

Our correspondent is based in Scotland and has been advised by a lawyer not to identify anybody detained until they have appeared in court, even if they have been arrested and charged. Professor James Chalmers of the University of Glasgow has since reviewed our coverage and confirmed this position. Despite that a large number of major media outlets identified Rosdeep Adekoya, nee Kular, 33, as the arrested individual.

Adekoya has since been in Edinburgh Sheriff Court charged with murdering her son. She is in custody pending indictment and trial, but any eyewitness evidence may be tainted because her image has been widely published. This is common practice elsewhere in the UK but Scottish justice works differently and courts have viewed publication of photos as potentially prejudicial. Professor Pamela Ferguson of the University of Dundee notes “journalists do seem to be walking a dangerous line if publishing photos etc of suspects.” Crown Office, which is in overall charge of prosecutions, has indicated to journalists that no further comment will be made at least until indictment.

MacAskill however expressed confidence in the Scottish court system to deal with the situation. “I am confident… the courts themselves will intervene if they believe publicity is in danger of being prejudicial.” He also wrote to Lamont that he has faith in the court to successfully direct any jury that may try the case in order to maintain fairness.

The Contempt of Court Act 1981 is designed to prevent prejudicial material going in front of juries before trial. Although UK-wide legislation, the law is interpreted differently north of the border than in England and Wales. Witnesses in Scotland may be asked to identify accused persons standing in the dock. The BBC College of Journalism advises legal advice be sought ahead of publishing photos and notes it has previously been ruled contempt. The BBC used the accused’s photo prominently in their own online coverage.

Chalmers explains: “It may be a contempt of court to create a substantial risk of serious prejudice to someone’s right to a fair trial. A photograph might do this in a case where identification is an issue; on the face of it, that does not seem especially likely in this case, but it is impossible to know for certain at this point. The courts have said that the only safe route to avoid committing a contempt is to avoid publishing a photograph, but that does not mean that publishing a photograph is automatically a contempt.” MacAskill noted “the kind of issue that publicity might raise may become apparent only during the trial itself.”

Contempt has been a considerable issue in the UK in recent years after high-profile cases. In one instance a charge against serial killer Levi Bellfield was dropped owing to publicity while the jury were deliberating; in another, newspapers were fined and sued for libel over reporting on the arrest of a suspect who turned out to be innocent in a prominent investigation.

A proposal was mooted to ban identification of suspects arrested anywhere in the UK, but this was subsequently shelved. MacAskill confirmed “the Scottish Government is content with the way the courts are operating the rules on contempt of court in Scotland at the moment and has no plans to make changes.” He also wrote of the difficulties with trying to individually cover all eventualities with prescriptive legislation, saying “A trial for a sexual offence will raise very different issues — particularly of protecting victims — from those that are raised by a tax fraud trial.”

MacAskill says it is the Scottish Government’s position that the task of “counterbalancing the public interest in reporting with upholding the criminal law should be left to those whose job it is to do so — the courts and the judiciary, acting in the individual circumstances of the case”.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

United States defense officials acknowledged that Iraqi insurgents successfully intercepted live video feeds from U.S. MQ-1 Predator unmanned aerial vehicles with widely available software. The story broke on Thursday in the Wall Street Journal with a defense official, anonymously, informing them it is an old problem, which has already been fixed.

The Journal says U.S. military personnel in Iraq discovered the problem late last year when they seized a Shi’ite militant’s laptop containing drone video feeds.

Senior defense and intelligence officials say insurgents were able to take advantage of an unprotected communications link in the systems of the remotely-piloted aircraft. The insurgents used software that is available online and costs about $26.

While U.S. defense officials say the issue has been fixed, the Journal quoted senior intelligence officials as saying it was not yet clear if the problem had been completely resolved.

U.S. officials say there is no evidence that militants had been able to take control of the drones. But the intercepted video feeds could show where the planes are operating.

The Journal also reported that U.S. drone feeds have also been intercepted in Afghanistan.

Officials say the U.S. government has known about a flaw in the drone communication system since the NATO intervention in Bosnia in the 1990s. At the time, the military assumed local adversaries would not know how to exploit it.

The report says fighters in Iraq used software programs such as one called “SkyGrabber” from the Russian company SkySoftware, which is designed to intercept data transmitted by satellite Internet.

The Journal quoted one of the program’s developers, Andrew Solonikov, as saying it was designed to download legal content — such as music and video — and that it was never intended to intercept military data. Solonikov said in a email to the paper, “It was developed to intercept music, photos, video, programs and other content that other users download from the Internet — no military data or other commercial data, only free legal content.”

Saturday, January 12, 2019

A United-States-based team of scientists released findings on Thursday about the large statues that dot the island of Rapa Nui, also called Easter Island. The study, published on Thursday in PLOS One, employed quantitative spatial analysis to establish that the platforms, or ahu, built to support the Easter Island statues, or moai, are usually located near sources of drinkable water. This feeds into the scholarly discussion of whether the purpose of the statues was exclusively ritualistic, practical or some combination of these.

The study examined 93 statues on the western side of the island, all of which were built before contact with Europeans. They compared the sites of the statues to sites associated with the specific resources: the kind of rock the statues are made of, the kind of rock used for tools, fishing, vegetable and potato cultivation, and water sources. The archaeologists say that this study is the first attempt to formally examine the idea that the locations of the moai are correlated to locations of resources important to the people who built them, such as fresh water.

Easter Island does not have streams that run nonstop but it does have an aquifer that produces freshwater seeps of brackish but drinkable water during low tide. Most of these water harvesting sites are along the coast but a few are inland—and so are the ahu.

“What is important about it is that it demonstrates the statue locations themselves are not a weird ritual place – [the ahu and moai] represent ritual in a sense of there is symbolic meaning to them, but they are integrated into the lives of the community,” said study co-author Professor Carl Lipo of Binghamton University. He went on to add “The exceptions to the rule about being at the coast where water comes out actually are met by the fact there is also water there – it is found through cave locations,” referring to caves with fresh water, and that some historical evidence suggests there may have been wells dug near the ahu that are not near caves.

The researchers plan to gather information on more freshwater resources so they can evaluate statue sites on the rest of Easter Island.

Jo Anne Val Tilburg of the University of California, Los Angeles disagreed with these findings: “The existence of fresh water seeps near coastal ahu is well-known and was certainly important at European contact. However, such seeps are today, and probably always were, minor resources. It is highly unlikely, in my view, that these resources were of major importance in locating ahu during prehistory.”

The earliest moai date to the 13th century. They vary in size but are about fourteen feet (four meters) tall and can weigh about fourteen tons. Scholars have long wondered about the role they played for the people who built them.

Easter Island is today a relatively barren place with scanty resources. Easter Island is located 2300 miles (3700 km) off the west coast of South America and 1,100 miles (1770 km) from its nearest neighbor island. It today has a grass-dominated landscape but it was once mostly covered by palm forests and it was home to a significant human population for a few hundred years. Scientists debate whether its environmental degradation, in the form of the loss of its palm forests and soil to erosion, was caused by human activity, natural climate change, or by rats and other introduced species that stowed away on the colonists’ boats, but there is consensus that the island’s environment changed considerably over time.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

General Motors (GM) announced on Tuesday a recall of 1.3 million Chevrolet and Pontiac cars in the US, Mexico, and Canada over problems with the power steering system.

The models, the 2005–2010 Chevrolet Cobalt and 2007–2010 Pontiac G5 in the US, the 2005–2006 Pontiac Pursuit in Canada and the 2005–2006 Pontiac G4 in Mexico, were affected by a fault that causes the power steering in the vehicles to fail. The company says that cars can still be safely controlled even after the loss of power steering, although more effort to turn the car would be required.

GM is currently working on developing a fix for the problem, after having conducted an internal investigation for more than a year, beginning last January. In addition to GM’s investigation, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also conducted an investigation on the Cobalt, which began in January 2010. The investigation was begun after more than a thousand complaints about the model were received by the agency, including reports of 14 crashes caused by the fault. GM contacted the NHTSA about the problem on Monday.

GM blamed the issues on an external supplier partially owned by Toyota, another company currently in the process of a major recall of more than eight million vehicles. According to GM vice-chairman Bob Lutz, the supplier, which was not named, had not met “all requirements for reliability and durability.” In his comments, given at the Geneva Motor Show, Lutz also said that financial responsibility for the recalls had yet to be determined.

• A Chevrolet Cobalt

• A Pontiac G5

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

If you are in the market for new bedding, and not too concerned with the new United States guidelines for mattress fire resistance, now might be a good time to buy. Mattresses sold in the U.S. must meet new federal guidelines for flammability starting on July 1.

The flammability of mattress sets sold in the U.S. is subject to a new mandatory federal regulation requirement passed by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) on February 16 last year. The requirement, costing mattress manufacturers an estimated $100 million to meet, is scheduled to take effect on July 1. The commission anticipates that the new standards will save 270 lives and 1,330 injuries per year from mattress fires.

“We’ve passed a new open flame regulation and the whole idea behind the regulation is to make sure that if a mattress catches on fire that the fire burns slowly enough that people have enough time to get out of the house and get away,” said Hal Stratton, chairman of the CPSC

Radio and TV advertising spots are reacting to the new regulation by discounting prices on mattresses that fail to meet the new guidelines. Sales made in the mattress industry, like the automobile industry, are highly negotiable on price. The new regulation does not appear to have much “teeth” for mattresses already in the distribution pipeline, but it is a new law that is a bargaining position for potential buyers.

Friday, September 9, 2005

New Orleans, Louisiana —After Category 4 storm Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans, on the night before August 29, 2005, several flood control constructions failed. Much of the city flooded through the openings. One of these was the flood wall forming one side of the 17th Street Canal, near Lake Pontchartrain. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is the primary agency for engineering support during such emergencies. A USACE team was assessing the situation in New Orleans on the 29th, water flow was stopped September 2nd, and the breach was closed on September 5th.