lwsimmons.org

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, October 30, 2006

On November 13, Torontoians will be heading to the polls to vote for their ward’s councillor and for mayor. Among Toronto’s ridings is Parkdale—High Park (Ward 13). Two candidates responded to Wikinews’ requests for an interview. This ward’s candidates include Linda Coltman, David Garrick, Greg Hamara, Aleksander Oniszczak, Bill Saundercook (incumbent), and Frances Wdowczyk.

For more information on the election, read Toronto municipal election, 2006.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

India is the latest of the countries where the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) experiment has started. Children from the village of Khairat were given the opportunity to learn how to use the XO laptop. During the last year XO was distributed to children from Arahuay in Peru, Ban Samkha in Thailand, Cardal in Uruguay and Galadima in Nigeria. The OLPC team are, in their reports on the startup of the trials, delighted with how the laptop has improved access to information and ability to carry out educational activities. Thailand’s The Nation has praised the project, describing the children as “enthusiastic” and keen to attend school with their laptops.

Recent good news for the project sees Uruguay having ordered 100,000 of the machines which are to be given to children aged six to twelve. Should all go according to plan a further 300,000 machines will be purchased by 2009 to give one to every child in the country. As the first to order, Uruguay chose the OLPC XO laptop over its rival from Intel, the Classmate PC. In parallel with the delivery of the laptops network connectivity will be provided to schools involved in the project.

The remainder of this article is based on Carla G. Munroy’s Khairat Chronicle, which is available from the OLPC Wiki. Additional sources are listed at the end.

Monday, June 7, 2010

An acrobatic group known by the name of Spelbound has been declared as the winner of Britain’s Got Talent 2010, a televised variety talent show competition broadcast on ITV in the United Kingdom. As the winning act of the show, Spelbound have won £100,000 (US$144,580, €120,313, A$175,079) and a place at The Royal Variety Performance, an annual gala evening that is attended by senior members of the British Royal Family.

In no particular order, the top three acts were revealed to be two dancers known by their stage name of Twist and Pulse, gymnastic group Spelbound and Kieran Gaffney, whose act involves playing on the drum kit. After Kieran Gaffney was revealed to be in third place, Anthony McPartlin, who hosts Britain’s Got Talent with Declan Donnelly, said to Kieran: “Well done Kieran. Kieran, you’re a star, you came back, you got all the way to the final. I know you’ve loved this. You’ve loved this, haven’t you?” In response to this, Kieran Gaffney stated: “Thank you very much. Thank you, everyone for supporting me. Thank you.”

Shortly afterwards, on the episode that was broadcast live on ITV1 on Saturday, Anthony announced: “After tens of thousands of auditons, five semi-finals and an amazing final, this…this is it. One of you is about to walk away with £100,000 and a place at this year’s Royal Variety Performance. The winner of Britain’s Got Talent 2010 is…Spelbound!” Glen Murphy from Twist and Pulse commented about finishing in second place, stating: “Yeah, it’s amazing. I can’t even believe it. I can’t believe it at all.”

Alex Uttley, a 24-year-old member of Spelbound, commented on the gymnastic group’s victory, commenting: “Oh, my god. This is unbelieveable. We just want to say thank you to everyone out there. It just shows that all our hard work has paid off.” One of the coaches of Spelbound, named Neil Griffiths, stated about Spelbound: “Oh, they’ve worked so hard over the last few weeks. Um, since the semi-final, we…we really had to pull out the stops to try and up the game. They’ve not known they’ve worked in the gym from six in the morning till twelve…twelve o’clock of the night. I couldn’t have asked for more. Um, it’s a team of coaches. I don’t take all the credit myself. There’s, uh, two people up there that know who they are who’ve been fantastic.”

Spelbound consists of 24-year-old Alex Uttley, Nicholas Illingworth, aged 24, Adam Buckingham, aged 21, 20-year-old Adam McAssey, 19-year-old Douglas Fordyce, 18-year-old Edward Upcott, 18-year-old Leighanne Cowler, 17-year-old Katie Axten, 17-year-old Lauren Kemp, 15-year-old Jonathan Stranks, Abigail Ralph, aged 15, 13-year-old Hollianne Wood and Amy Mackenzie, aged 12. Bookmakers had previously predicted that Spelbound would be the most likely act to become the winner of the series.

The running order for the final started with Twist and Pulse. The second act to perform was Liam McNally, a 14-year-old singer. The running order subsequently continued with 40-year-old impressionist Paul Burling, singer Christopher Stone, aged 28, Tina & Chandi, a woman and dog dancing act, Connected, a five-piece singing group, Kieran Gaffney, aged 12, 22-year-old Tobias Mead, a dancer, 80-year-old singer Janey Cutler and Spelbound in that particular order.

Earlier on in the final, Britain’s Got Talent judge Amanda Holden has stated to Spelbound: “We are hosting the 2012 Olympics and I think ‘what a brilliant opening act’.” Fellow judge Piers Morgan also commented that “[t]he purpose of this show is to identify hidden great British talent. You are that act.” After Spelbound won in the final, another judge, named Simon Cowell, stated that “the right boys and girls won on the night” and that he could “only say on live TV that that was one of the most astonishing things I have ever seen. Seriously.”

Saturday, December 10, 2016

Members of the U.S. Senate offered words of tribute to U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday on the floor of the Senate.

Senator Barbara Mikulski spoke for several minutes, calling Biden a ‘champion of the people’ and a ‘great leader’. Mikulski also praised Biden’s wife, calling her a leader ‘in her own right.’ Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky called Biden a ‘real friend and trusted partner.’ Although scheduled to run for one hour, the tribute extended beyond two hours.

Two senators mentioned Biden’s work on the Violence Against Women Act, and commented on the positive impact made by that legislation. In January of this year, President Obama asked Biden to lead an effort to target cancer diagnosis and treatment. At least two Senators praised Biden’s efforts on that program, named the ‘Cancer Moonshot’ program.

Earlier in the week, Biden presided over a vote on the $1.8 billion bill, intended to fund the ‘Cancer Moonshot’ effort. Biden’s son Beau died of a brain tumor in 2015. Later that evening, Biden told a reporter, “I’m going to run in 2020.” When asked later to clarify what he meant, Biden stated, “For President […] What the hell, man.”

Friday, May 7, 2010

US stock markets saw an unusually turbulent day yesterday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) losing almost a thousand points in thirty minutes, although later recovered somewhat to end the day with a smaller loss.

The DJIA had its worst fall since 1987, a drop of 9% or 998.50 points, before going back up a bit to close with a loss of 3.30% or 347.80 points to a level of 10,520. The Nasdaq fell 82.65 points or 3.44%, and the Standard & Poor’s 500 index dropped 3.24% or 37.75 points.

According to some reports, the quick loss happened because a trader mistyped an order to sell a large amount of stock, causing the stock price to go down enough to trigger orders to sell elsewhere in the market. (By the following day this theory had been abandoned.) Other reports suggested that the biggest markets “slowed” their executions when it became clear that computerized errors were occurring; as a result, the vast majority of buy orders were briefly withdrawn, allowing the free-fall to continue for several minutes.

Stock for the Procter & Gamble company fell almost 37% during the sell-off, about 75 minutes to the closing bell. An investigation started into whether any erroneous trades happened.

Procter & Gamble spokeswoman Jennifer Chelune spoke about the incident: “We don’t know what caused it. We know that that was an electronic trade […] and we’re looking into it with Nasdaq and the other major electronic exchanges.”

The Reuters news agency reports that, at their height, the losses cause equity values to lose $1 trillion.

Some stocks saw extreme, but short, changes; for instance, consulting firm Accenture saw its shares plummet from about $42 to four cents, although it later rebounded to close the day at $41.09.

Meanwhile, oil prices also dropped to lows not reached since February. Benchmark crude was down $2.86 to $77.11 in New York.

“The potential for giant high-speed computers to generate false trades and create market chaos reared its head again today,” said Delaware senator Edward Kaufman. “The battle of the algorithms — not understood by nor even remotely transparent to the Securities and Exchange Commission — simply must be carefully reviewed and placed within a meaningful regulatory framework soon.” Kaufman, along with senator Mark Warner from Virginia, called on Congress to investigate the cause of the mass sell-offs.

Nasdaq, meanwhile, says that all trades of stocks at prices 60% higher or lower than the preceding price at or around 2.40 PM “or immediately prior” are to be cancelled; it noted that it coordinated its move with the other exchanges.

Chief investment officer at Fort Pitt Capital Group Charlie Smith said: “I think the machines just took over. There’s not a lot of human interaction. We’ve known that automated trading can run away from you, and I think that’s what we saw happen today.”

In the past three days, the DJIA has lost 631 points, or 5.7%, mainly over concerns about Greece’s ailing, debt-burdened economy. Peter Boockvar an equity strategist for Miller Tabak, commented: “The market is now realizing that Greece is going to go through a depression over the next couple of years. Europe is a major trading partner of ours, and this threatens the entire global growth story.”