Author: Admin

Monday, February 11, 2008

Brazilian aircraft maker Embraer on Friday announced it has signed a firm order with Air Moldova for one Embraer 190 jet, to be delivered in March 2010. The contract includes an option on another plane of the same model, Embraer said in a statement. The value of the deal was not disclosed.

At present, renowned companies such as Air France, Lufthansa group and Spanish Iberia Airlines own Embraer 190 jets, specified the representative of Air Moldova. The same source specified that Embraer 190 jet is one of the most economic and optimal aircrafts for operation, and it will be configured in a single-class cabin with 114 seats.

Air Moldova, which links the Moldovan capital, Chi?in?u, to cities in Europe and the Middle East, intends to use the new plane to open new markets.

The Embraer 190 is one of the four members of the E-Jets family. On December 31, the Embraer 170/190 E-Jets had logged 764 firm orders and 786 options.

Embraer is the world’s fourth-largest commercial plane maker. It finished 2007 with a firm order backlog of US$18.8 billion.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Safia Ahmed-jan, the director of the Afghan Ministry of Women’s Affairs for the Khandahar province and an advocate of women’s rights and a strong critic of the Taliban‘s repression of those rights, was shot dead by unidentified gunmen outside her home in Khandahar city in southern Afghanistan on Monday.

Safia Ama-jan, as she was known locally, is the first woman official to be targeted by the Taliban-led insurgency since it was deposed in 2001.

Safia Ahmed-jan taught at a girls’ school and was a high-school principal in Khandahar prior to the Taliban’s 1996 rise to power in Afghanistan. When the Taliban regime banned education for girls and forbade women from working outside the home, she ran an underground school for girls at her home, said her son Naqibullah, speaking to the Associated Press.

After the Taliban government was overthrown in 2001, Ahmed-jan became the provincial chief for women’s affairs in 2002, when the ministry was established and has since then held that position, worked for women’s rights and particularly, championed the cause of educating girls. Her secretary, Abdullah Khan told Associated Press that among her most successful projects were the vocational training schools she opened in Khandahar, where almost 1000 women were taught baking, tailoring and other skills.

Ahmed-jan has also been fiercely critical of the repression of women during the Taliban rule, in a region that has remained conservative and emerged as a hotbed of the Taliban’s insurgent activity. Her requests for personal security guards and transport went unheeded by the government, according to local media reports, though her nephew, Muhammad Asif told the New York Times that Ahmed-jan preferred to keep a low profile and used a taxi or public transport even though her office maintained cars and drivers.

Ahmed-jan was shot dead outside her house at about 7:30 a.m. local time (UTC+4:30) on Monday, as she left for work in a taxi. The gunmen are believed to have left scene on a motorcycle, and tyre marks have been found by the police, said the provincial governor Asadullah Khaled, who visited the scene of the attack.

Ahmed-jan was shot four times with a pistol, Muhammad Haidar, who worked in her office told the New York Times. Mohammad Nader, the head nurse at Khandahar’s main hospital where Ahmed-jan was taken to, confirmed to the Chicago Tribune that she was shot four times, including once in the head.

She was about 65 years old.

Accounts of the shooting are sketchy, several reports suggesting no one witnessed it. However, one man, identified as Allaudin told Al Jazeera that he saw two men on motorcycles waiting on the road, who attacked Ahmed-jan as she left her house.

A spokesman for the Khandahar governor, Daud Ahmadi confirmed the death and said that Ahmed-jan had died on the spot. An investigation into the attack has begun, and local officials have blamed the Taliban.

Hundreds of men and women, including the Governor Asadullah Khaled were present at Ahmed-jan’s funeral on Monday evening, which took place in Khandahar’s main Shia mosque.

The killing has been strongly condemned by the Afghan President Hamid Karzai as well as aid and human rights organisations in Afghanistan.

Aleem Siddique, a spokesman for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), said that UNAMA was “appalled at the senseless murder” of a woman who was working to ensure a full and equal part in the future of Afghanistan for its women. He added, “We share the sentiment of the majority of Afghan people who are appalled at this killing.”

Abdul Quadar Noorzai, head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) for the Khandahar region told IRIN News that Ahmed-jan’s death will have a “serious impact on women’s activities in the south where women are already suffering from … the deteriorating security and conservative traditions,”.

Fariba Ahmedi, a woman MP from Khandahar who was present at Ahmed-jan’s funeral told the Associated Press, “The enemy of Afghanistan killed her, but they should know it will not derail women from the path we are on. We will continue on our way,”.

Sonja Bachmann, a U.N. political officer who knew Ahmed-jan well told the New York Times that Ahmed-jan “did a good job, she worked in a very low-key way and worked hard to raise awareness about women’s issues.”

Reuters and Associated Press received phone calls, claiming responsibility for the attacks on behalf of Mullah Sadullah, a regional Taliban commander, but no confirmation of the claim has been possible.

Another caller, who identified himself as Taliban commander Mullah Hayat Khan told Al Jazeera that Ahmed-jan was killed because she worked for the government.

The Taliban-led insurgency has stepped up attacks in recent months, killing hundreds of people this year.

Last week, 19 Afghans working for reconstruction projects in the region were killed after their bus was ambushed.The Governor of Paktia province, a close associate of President Karzai, was killed in a suicide bombing on September 10.

Attacks on schools have also been stepped up. According to the Afghan education ministry, there have been 158 attacks on schools this year, compared to 146 last year. The attacks on schools are believed to be due partly to the Taliban’s opposition to educating girls, as well as a way to undermine the Afghan government and it’s reconstruction efforts.

Twelve suspected militants and two Afghan police officers were reported killed on Monday in separate incidents which also left eight others and a U.S. soldier wounded.

“People are scared, of course,” Ahmad-jan’s co-worker Haidar said, “How can we feel secure when the head of our department is killed in front of her house?”

Saturday, April 16, 2011

The operators of the stricken Fukushima I nuclear power plant in northeast Japan have been ordered to pay compensation to families affected by the ongoing crisis at the site, amid calls for the resignation of the Japanese prime minister over how he is handling the crisis, which has now been designated on par with the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.

Japanese officials ordered TEPCO to pay ¥1 million (US$12 thousand,£7.35 thousand) to each household affected by the crisis, which the company says will add up to approximately ¥50 billion (US$599 million,£367 million). Earlier this week, officials announced plans to expand the nuclear exclusion zone around the plant to include five more communities as radiation continues to leak from the plant. Pressure is now mounting for the resignation of Naoto Kan, the Japanese prime minister, for his handling of the nuclear crisis in Fukushima; some of his opponents have called for an independent inquiry into how he reacted to the disaster.

TEPCO has this week announced plans to move equipment to higher ground after a series of strong aftershocks that have hampered efforts to repair the crippled facility. Officials have warned some of the nuclear rods in the reactors at the plant may have been damaged, but likely remain intact. Workers at the plant are still fighting a desperate battle to stop radiation leaking from the plant, but have been hit by constant setbacks.

Earlier this week officials of NISA, the Japanese government nuclear authority, said officials had upgraded the crisis to a level seven on the International Nuclear Event Scale—the same applied to the Chernobyl disaster—designating the crisis as a “major accident” with “wider consequences” than previously thought. “We have upgraded the severity level to seven as the impact of radiation leaks has been widespread from the air, vegetables, tap water and the ocean,” he said.

Akihito, the emperor of Japan, travelled to the northeast of the country on Wednesday to visit survivors of the tsunami which devastated the area last month against a backdrop of mounting anger over the at a nuclear plant, where technicians are continuing to battle to cool the reactors as radiation continues to leak from the site. Akihito and his wife, Michiko, met people displaced by the tragedy at two emergency shelters in Asahi, near the northeast coast where the tsunami struck. 140,000 people are now living in emergency shelters across Japan after their homes were destroyed in the disaster.

Emergency workers, dressed in protective white suits, gloves and goggles, have began searching for bodies within the exclusion zone around the stricken nuclear plant, much of which was left muddied and destroyed by the tsunami. Officials fear up to 1,000 bodies may be among the wreckage in the area. Search efforts in the area have been put off because of high radiation levels, but authorities want to recover bodies before they deteriorate to the point where they become a health hazard and impossible to identify.

Japanese television reported radiation levels in the ocean off the plant have fallen but remain high. Health officials have found radiation 25 times the legal limit in fish caught south of the nuclear plant, and radioactivity had been detected in 11 different vegetables in Fukushima earlier this week. The death toll from the disaster is continuing to rise; Japanese police have reported 13,300 people have been confirmed dead and more than 15,000 are still missing.

Another aftershock, with a magnitude of 6.1, struck on Thursday morning, following a more powerful one, measuring magnitude 6.6, on Monday. Hundreds of aftershocks have rattled northeast Japan in the month since the initial earthquake. Before the aftershock on Monday, people across Japan marked the one month anniversary of the earthquake with a moment of silence, and Kan paid tribute to countries who had sent aid to the stricken country. However, Kan has been criticised for his handling of the nuclear crisis. An entrepreneur in Fukushima, Yoshihisa Kato, complained about how he had been left abandoned by the government. “I am physically and mentally worn out by the nuclear crisis,” he said. “They have done nothing so far to help us.”

Saturday, June 27, 2009

On Friday, the United States House of Representatives passed House Resolution 2998, better known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, following days of debate. The final vote was 219–212, with only 8 Republicans voting for the legislation, and 44 Democrats voting against it. The resolution addresses the “greenhouse effect,” and calls for a 17% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, and an 83% reduction by 2050. In addition, the legislation will establish new requirements for utilities, and various incentives for “going green.”

The resolution was sponsored by Representative Henry Waxman of California, and Representative Edward Markey of Massachusetts. At 3:09 a.m. (EDT) on Friday morning, a 341 page amendment was added to the resolution. In an attempted filibuster, House Minority Leader John Boehner read the majority of the added amendment, and stated that “…when you file a 300-page amendment at 3:09 a.m., the American people have a right to know what’s in this bill.”

Reactions to the legislation have been mixed, with opponents and advocates speaking out. The President of the Union of Concerned Scientists, Kevin Knobloch, said that the Union was “thrilled that Congress has finally caught up with science and the American people in recognizing the need to switch on clean energy.” A report by the The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, stated that the legislation would “damage the economy and hobble growth.”

Most House Republicans opposed the bill for going too far in its regulation, with GOP chairman Mike Pence saying that “raising the cost of energy is a bad idea in prosperous times.” Democrat Dennis Kucinich, on the other hand, opposed the bill for not going far enough, calling it an “illusion” that “locks us into a framework that will fail.” Kucinich pointed out that the bill gives subsidies to coal, which is not a clean source of fuel, and includes greenhouse gas emitters such as trash incinerators under its definition of “renewable energy.”

Monday, September 8, 2008

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a rights group called the American Rights Counsel LLC has attempted to have at least 4,000 anti-Scientology videos removed from the video sharing website YouTube. Upon further investigation, Wikinews found that most videos and clips were added to YouTube by the copyright holders of the material; as DMCA requests are for the purposes of requesting removal where service providers host material that infringe on the copyright of the complainant, the merit of these requests remain questionable. It was also discovered that the alleged rights group does not exist as a physical entity. In an in-depth report, Wikinews investigated the incident and obtained exclusive information and comments from individuals, including XenuTV producer Mark Bunker.

Within the past 24 hours, according to the EFF, the Counsel “sent out over 4000 DMCA takedown notices to YouTube, all making copyright infringement claims against videos with content critical of the Church of Scientology.” A DMCA notice, or Digital Millennium Copyright Act notice means an attempt to limit the use of copyrighted material that is often infringing on the rights of an alleged copyright.

Wikinews made attempts to contact American Rights Counsel LLC for comment on the take-down notices, but was unable to obtain contact details for the alleged organisation. One post on a YouTube discussion page related to the organization states that they “do not appear to exist outside of these claims on YouTube.” Wikinews contacted YouTube several times asking them if they have a process of verifying DMCA requests from individuals or entities claiming copyright infringement, but when they responded, they directed Wikinews to their terms of service saying, “item 8 addresses the DMCA and 8 B addresses counter-notice procedures.”

YouTube’s terms of use in regards to filing DMCA requests states that only “A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed” can make such claims. It also goes on to say, “Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, or, if multiple copyrighted works at a single online site are covered by a single notification, a representative list of such works at that site.”

The EFF says the videos attempting to be removed had shown clips from Anonymous protests of the Church and news footage from Australia and Germany which were critical of Scientology. Some videos were also messages from Anonymous to Scientology, and vice versa. Others were also video clips from a City Commission meeting in Clearwater, Florida. Accounts hosting the material were “suspended by YouTube in response to multiple allegations of copyright infringement.”

YouTube does, however, have a process for users that wish to file a counter-notice against a take-down under the DMCA. After the DMCA notices were sent, YouTube users began to revolt, by sending “DMCA counter-notices” to YouTube. The EFF states that the counter attack resulted in many of the accounts being reinstated and their videos restored.

One user claimed that he had shot and uploaded one of the videos that was taken down. “How can someone else file a claim against a video I MADE?,” said ShadowVsScientology, one of the YouTube users who had a video deleted. Since he owned the rights to the video, he alleges that the American Rights Counsel had no legal grounds to request its removal.

A video posted on YouTube by a user called ‘Church0fScientology’, who was responsible for the original ‘Message to Scientology’ in January of 2008 created after the Church had a video of a Tom Cruise interview removed from the site, states that the organization responsible for the DMCAs does not exist and is run by a man named Dr. Oliver Schaper. They state that he “fronts” the organization for Scientology. It also calls Schaper’s actions “deceptive”. Schaper also had an account on YouTube which has since been suspended. Wikinews obtained a cached version of his account page in which he states to the group Anonymous, “I respect your efforts as long your efforts remain within the limits of the law and remain fair. Although I don’t censor any postings, I would appreciate if any conversation could remain civil and insult free.” Schaper also states that he “will not censor because I strongly believe in the freedom of speech.” They accuse him of running and owning media companies that distribute gay pornography, something Schaper later admits, but only that it’s an “adult television network.” Homosexuality is not accepted within the Church of Scientology and is not tolerated. Scientology believes that homosexuality is a disease and can be cured.

A user named “Oschaper” has written articles on the online encyclopedia Wikipedia about Peephole TV and Volksmusik TV. Oliver Schaper is the founder of Peephole TV, and is also involved with Volksmusik TV. In an e-mail to Wikinews, Wikipedia user Oschaper claims that his first name is Olaf, and that he is “not related” to Oliver Schaper. “Olaf” writes: “My name is Olaf Schaper and I use the handle oschaper on Wikipedia. I’m not related to Oliver Schaper and we share only the last name … If you like to contact Oliver Schaper please see his companies website at www.acos.tv”. When asked how he managed to get an e-mail address with that last name, Olaf replied, “I got the email because my best friend works for his networks hence the creation of my postings on Wikipedia.”

Wikinews contacted Schaper for exclusive comments. Schaper replied saying that he is a “very strong advocate for the Church of Scientology, the religion of Scientology and a free speech advocate” and “I don’t need to go into details but I felt that my family and myself have been direct targets and in an attempt to control the situation, I started to track down and remove online links between me and my religion. This included postings made by HouseSpiderAnon on his videos, who publicly connected the dots and made them available to a larger audience.”

“I requested several times to have my information removed from his videos as I wanted no association with his work but he refused, even after I stated several times that he has the right to protest but that I would like to enforce my right of privacy. He refused and demanded documentation of the attacks, something I refused because it was not my attention to allow more documents to be available online in public hand,” added Schaper who also said he has been a victim of identity theft and now has the FBI involved in investigating his claim.

“Tustin PD [police department] has been on the case and now the FBI is involved as well. Social Security has been notified and we have seen about 200 attempts to use the SSN [social security number] for fake credit cards applications,” Schaper told Wikinews.

Schaper admits that he contacted YouTube to have videos which contained images of him that were being used without permission and videos “which violated [his] privacy removed.” Those requests made by Schaper were eventually accepted by YouTube but “videos that contained just a text messages directed against me or my church remained,” he added. He also admits to owning “several broadcasting companies, ACOS Broadcasting Corp. (eight mainstream television and two radio networks) & Media House Enterprises, Inc. (adult television network PEEPHOLE TV).”

“I had the power to go fully against copyrighted material because we own or licensed large amounts of content. But it was not my responsibility to enforce all copyright violations on YouTube. In addition with the attacks on our servers, websites and infrastructure, no time would have been available to take on a fight,” added Schaper.

Schaper also denies any involvement with the alleged rights group and also states he was just notified that it doesn’t even exist.

“As many other people, and even members of the Church of Scientology received information about a company that removed anti-Scientology content from YouTube, shit hit the fan and members of Anonymous went on a full attack on me. I still have to this date no information about the American Rights Counsel and I have no connection, knowledge or involvement in this company which I have been informed of does not even exists,” Schaper told Wikinews.

One critic of Scientology, television producer Mark Bunker also had his accounts deleted by YouTube, but had them quickly restored. Bunker also believes that the American Rights Counsel does not exist.

“American Rights Counsel LLC does not exist. When I got my take-down notices from YouTube I tried to file a DMCA counter-notice but in order to do that you need to get the name of the contact person to be served with the notice and the contact information of the company which the government lists on the web,” said Bunker to Wikinews who also added that their name is not registered with the United States copyright office.

“I next did a google search for American Rights Counsel LLC which brought up absolutely no results so clearly this was fraud from the beginning. I contact[ed] YouTube and they quickly restored everything to my account and others,” added Bunker.

Wikinews has also learned that a contributor on Wikipedia, claiming to be a member of Anonymous, has posted what is allegedly personal information of Schaper. The edit, made to the article Peephole TV states that he is a lawyer, employed with a firm on Ricklinger, Stadtweg in Hanover, Germany. It also stated that he is affiliated with the “Tustin Org” in California. In what seems to be a gathering of information on Schaper from other online sources, according to Enturbulation.org, the result of releasing the information has resulted in legal and physical threats from Schaper to someone, known as ‘HouseSpiderV2’ on Enturbulation, who has claimed to have released e-mail correspondence between him and Schaper.

“Don’t think I will not be able to track you down and serve you with papers. I would make the case so expensive for you that you would not be able to even fight this on your own funding as I have the money at my disposal,” allegedly states Schaper to ‘HouseSpiderV2’ in an e-mail. “You have 24 hours to remove the postings or I will start to make this a legal issue. That makes it simple,” he added.

Despite the claims that the Wikipedia contributor is Oliver Schaper, he claims to have never registered an account with Wikipedia. He also says he has never made any threats of physical harm to members of Anonymous.

“I had not the need to register an account with Wikipedia and after all this trouble will not get involved at all. There has never been any threat of violence against Housespideranon or any other member of Anonymous made by me,” Schaper told Wikinews.

Bunker, who recently spoke with Schaper, says he believes Schaper is not involved, but that he also doesn’t know who or what was responsible for filing the DMCA requests.

“I had never heard of Schaper before he was accused of this. I don’t know anything about him other than he contacted me and said he was not involved. I don’t know who was responsible. 4000 deletions in a matter of hours is a pretty major feat. It would be worth a subpoena to find out who committed this crime. I wouldn’t blame Schaper without knowing he did it,” Bunker added.

Saturday, April 30, 2005

The British Food Standards Agency (FSA) has announced a recall of foods containing banned dyes which increase the risk of cancer. The food products were sold at the Tesco, Waitrose, and Somerfield supermarkets.

A Bristol company called “Barts Spices” found the illegal Para Red substance in their Barts Ground Paprika, which was sold in 48g and 46g jars with a “Co-op” label. The batch codes on the affected products are 5032 and 5089 (expiration Dec 2007), and 5075 (expiration February 2007).

Tesco also found that their 130g package of BBQ rice cakes (expiration November and December 2005) contained both Para Red and Sudan I.

“It would be very prudent to assume that it could be a genotoxic carcinogen,” FSA scientific advisers told reporters.

“As a company committed to supplying only the very finest quality food ingredients, we took the immediate decision to withdraw our ground paprika spice from all outlets selling the product and advertised a product recall in the national press,” a Barts Spices spokesman said in a statement.

Sudan I is only authorized for industrial use to colorize petroleum products, such as shoe polish. Para Red and Sudan I are banned under the British Colours in Food Regulations of 1995.

Britain last went through a major food recall in February, when Worcester Sauce was found to contain chili powder dyed with Sudan 1.

Thursday, June 15, 2006

A Russian Soyuz rocket successfully launched a civilian Earth observation satellite into orbit today at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in central Kazakhstan. The satellite’s mission is mainly to assist exploration of natural resources, monitor pollution and natural or man-made disasters.

The three-stage Soyuz rocket lifted off at 0800 UTC (4:00 a.m. EDT), little under nine minutes later in an orbit with an apogee of approximately 230 miles, a perigee of around 125 miles, and an inclination of about 70 degrees. The Resurs DK1 spacecraft, weighing close to 15,000-pound, successfully separated from the Soyuz upper stage.

The DK1 is the newest member of the Resurs satellite fleet, the first in an upgraded series of spacecraft, and is capable of producing one-meter resolution images in black-and-white(two meters in color). The DK1 can document an area of up to 270,000 square miles a day and its advanced communications system allows fast downlinking of recent images to ground stations.

Images from the new satellite will be used by Russian government agencies, international groups, as well as sold commercially. The satellite will also monitor sea surface status, polar weather and ice conditions as well as assist in topographic and thematic mapping in remote regions.

In addition to the DK1, two secondary payloads were attached. One is the Italian PAMELA (Payload for Antimatter-Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics) instrument, housed on the upper side of the satellite designed to examine cosmic rays in order to learn more about dark matter and the relationship between matter and antimatter. The other is a Russian particle detector for designed for identifying earthquake precursors in Earth’s magnetic field.

Further launches of these updated satellites are expected in the next few years. The Soyuz rocket’s next scheduled launch is a cargo delivery flight to the International Space Station, to be followed by the launch of the Eurosat MetOp-A weather satellite.