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< 6-13 December 2004 • Index • 26-31 December 2004 >

Articles dated 14 to 25 December 2004 are included in the compilation below.

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Matthew Higa, 23, has been arrested in connection with the death of a 23-month-old boy. Higa is alleged to have thrown the child from a pedestrian overpass into oncoming traffic on Honolulu’s H-1 Freeway.

The local coroner’s office noted that the child died on impact after falling 30 feet (9 meters) from the overpass. This occurred during Thursday’s lunch rush hour in the heart of downtown. Upon impact, several cars struck the child, which caused traffic to grind to a halt.

The toddler, Cyrus Nainoa Tupa?i Belt, was pronounced dead at the scene at 12:07 p.m. (2207 UTC), approximately 27 minutes after being allegedly being ejected from the overpass by Higa. The portion of H-1 was closed for approximately five hours with traffic diverted to side streets. The freeway was reopened in time for the evening commute.

At first the relationship between Higa and the child was unclear, but later reports stated that Higa lived adjacent to him and had babysat him on previous occasions. The boy’s mother was out of town at the time of his death, but it was revealed that the child was supposed to be in the custody of his father and not with Higa.

Higa graduated from Roosevelt High School in 2003. In the summer of 2004 Higa was involved in an incident where police reports indicate a three-car race resulted in the death of a friend. Higa has since had a criminal history, with more than a dozen arrests but no convictions, and reports from neighbors of erratic behavior.

Queen’s Medical Center, which houses a psychiatric ward in Honolulu, noted that he was a patient there as recently as December 11, 2007. When arrested, Higa was wearing hospital scrubs, which were not immediately conducive to whether Higa was a patient in Queen’s psychiatric wing in the last couple of days. A representative of Queen’s declined to comment on whether Higa was admitted in the last week.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Flooding caused by torrential rain over several days has killed at least 91 people in El Salvador, according to officials. Sixty are still missing, more than 7,000 are in temporary accommodation and authorities expect to find more bodies. This brings the total up from the 50 reported earlier today.

The sea level has risen up to 1.2 metres (four feet) in some regions. “Unfortunately we have to report the number of dead has increased because of the rains, we now count 50 individuals,” said Jorge Melendez, head of El Salvador’s civil protection service.

The government has declared a state of emergency in five regions in El Salvador after three days of rain, according to Interior Minister Humberto Centeno. He listed the capital San Salvador and the San Vicente department as the hardest-hit regions.

Rescue workers pulled bodies from collapsed buildings. “We rescued a man this morning who had fractures, and a little girl,” said local Cristian Aguilar. “My son and I crossed through the floodwater and brought them here, and now she is with her parents.”

There are conflicting reports as to whether Hurricane Ida is responsible for the flooding, with a spokesman for the United States National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Florida attributing the rain to a separate, low pressure system.

Forecasters have warned that flooding may hit Cuba, and the NHC said that they expect Ira to produce “large and destructive waves”, with flash floods and mudslides in Central America and the Caribbean. The NHC also warns that Ida could reach the US’s Gulf Coast by Tuesday.

On Thursday, Ida reached 120kph (75mph), making it a Category 1 hurricane—the lowest level on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale, a five-level scale that measures a hurricane’s intensity and potential for destruction—causing flooding in Nicaragua leaving thousands of people homeless. No casualties were reported.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Yesterday, a chilly Amsterdam hosted the Wikimedia Conference Netherlands 2007. Held at the Aristo centre in a suburb of the city and run by Wikimedia Netherlands, the conference was a short train ride from Amsterdam Centraal railway station. The topic, Wikis and Education (Wiki’s en Educatie in Dutch). This was an opportunity for Wikimedians and people in education to come together and see how collaboration could help both.

Wikinews freelance reporter Brian McNeil caught a train from Brussels in Belgium and attended, making an impression on the Wikimedia Foundation chair, Florence Devouard, by spilling her coffee over the first two speakers approximately three minutes before they were supposed to officially open the conference.

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

A diverse group of approximately 25 people gathered at the Johnson County Library on Monday to participate in reference librarian Scott Vieira’s class, Wikiwhatia? Wikipedia.

Scott opened the session by sharing a disparaging quote from Robert McHenry (former editor-in-chief of Encyclopedia Britannica) comparing Wikipedia to a public restroom. He then shared a quote from Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur, in which he stated Wikipedia is the blind leading the blind. Scott shared Wikipedia usage data from a 2007 Pew Internet study showing 36% of adults have consulted Wikipedia and that that Wikipedia receives 10,000-30,000 searches per second. Scott also pointed out that Wikipedia now has over two million articles in English alone (over nine million articles in 250 languages). So there is a discrepancy here, lots of critics and lots of use.

Scott then shared some historical information in order to provide a context for understanding Wikipedia. This included some important names and dates in the history of encyclopedias… including Pliny the Elder (23-79 C.E.) who published 37 Volumes of Natural History, and Joachim Sterck van Ringelbergh (c. 1499-1556) who first used the term encyclopedia, and then d’Alembert and Diderot who published 17 volumes of their French Encyclopedia from 1751-1765. Encyclopedia Britannica was first published in Scotland in serial format 1768-1771.

Scott also discussed more recent history, sharing a photo of Ward Cunningham –who is credited with being the inventor of wiki software. Wikipedia was founded on Jan 15, 2001 by Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales. Sanger left Wikipedia in 2002 and founded Citizendium in 2007 a complementary project which now has 4500 articles.

After the historical perspective, the class moved into using Wikipedia. Everyone in the audience had used Wikipedia. The class explored the content of Wikipedia, realising there is a whole lot going on. Scott demonstrated that the article about “frogs” for example, is semi-protected. The “history of science” article was examined, including the history of changes. Discussion covered how people contribute, who contributes and edits. The group also talked about Wikipedia bots, which aid in routine tasks in a semi-automated or automated fashion.

A discussion about teachers, school media specialists and students regarding their use of Wikipedia ensued. Some teachers and school media specialists are negative about Wikipedia, but Scott’s hope is that they will use it to start a discussion about the need to evaluate and critically think about information (even when it’s from more traditionally reviewed and edited sources).

An unanswered question from an audience member was, “What was the first Wikipedia article?”

Discussion topics from Scott to audience were as follows:

• Do you think Wikipedia is less accurate than published resources and how important is that accuracy to you?
• How do we determine authority on a subject? How important is it that an article be written by an expert? How is Wikipedia changing our idea of what an authority is?
• Currency – the ability to publish immediately – what are the advantages and what are the disadvantages?
• What do we think about the content selection in Wikipedia?
• Should Wikipedia be used by librarians?
• What do you think about the future of Wikipedia?

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Satire site Uncyclopedia, a parody of online encyclopedia Wikipedia, has been labeled by the Malaysian government as dangerous. The Internal Security Department of Malaysia issued the warning today, saying that the site has “messages and information insulting Malaysia”.

The warning notes the creation date of the website as being 5 January 2005, and hosted by Wikia, Inc., both of which are correct. However, it claims Wikia owns Wikipedia; Wikipedia is a charitable non-profit website owned by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, while Wikia is an independent, for-profit company.

The report evidently mentions that Uncyclopedia covers Malaysian “history, culture, the political leaders, the government, the national song and the name / history of the national flag,” none of which is “correct”. They accuse the website of helping to reinforce a bad international image of their country.

There are no reports of the site being blocked from access within the country, only this statement, which urges Malaysians not to circulate the content.

Uncyclopedia’s article on Malaysia begins:

The site has fired back with a parody article posted at the site under their UnNews section, titled Uncyclopedia Internal Security Department warns on Malaysia. The article suggests that the “Internal Security Department of the Uncyclomedia Foundation,” which is a facetious and fictitious parent organization of Uncyclopedia, identifies Malaysia “as a dangerous country… It warned its people not to use the country today.”

There are forty-seven individual language editions of Uncyclopedia, including Tolololpedia, which is written in Bahasa Melayu, the Malay language. This is in addition to fictional “language” editions which include Oscar Wilde, Newspeak, N00b, White Supremacist, and Re: PharmaccgRy.

Thursday, September 8, 2005

The US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) website (for requesting disaster aid) is only functional for applicants using the latest version of the Internet Explorer web browser on the Microsoft Windows operating system. Users with other web browsers, such as Netscape, Opera, Safari, Firefox, or operating systems other than Windows, are effectively screened out of the site, which gives them a message that they need to download Internet Explorer version 6 or call FEMA at 1-800-621-3362 to register.

Relief workers are setting up many computer kiosks for evacuees to use. These kiosks are built from donated computers, many of which are unable to run Windows and/or Internet Explorer. Most of these kiosks use LiveCD versions of Linux, leaving evacuees unable to fill out aid forms.

A spokesperson for FEMA told MSNBC they were aware of the problem, and were trying to resolve the issue. They were, however, unable to provide an estimate of when the problem would be solved. Mike Quealy, a FEMA spokesperson, said the issue occurred because this tool was originally designed for in-house use by people working at the call center.

Telling the Opera web browser to spoof its user agent, by identifying itself as Internet Explorer, appears to trick the FEMA website into allowing the user to fill out the form. Firefox users can install the Prefbar extension (http://prefbar.mozdev.org/), and use the “User Agent Spoof” dropdown to achieve the same effect. Safari users can use the Debug drop-down menu (http://developer.apple.com/internet/safari/faq.html#anchor14), and use the “User Agent” option to achieve the same effect. Other options are to run Windows and Internet Explorer in an emulator such as VirtualPC on the Mac or VMware on Linux. This option is slow and requires the user to already own or purchase a license for Windows and the emulator software. Purchasing the software can cost several hundred dollars. Implementing a software compatibility layer, like the GPL wine project, allows the user to run certain Windows software on Linux, but still requires valid licenses for Windows.

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Michael Applebaum, the current interim mayor of Montreal, Québec, Canada, was arrested at about 6am local time (1000 UTC) yesterday morning by the Unité permanente anticorruption ^{((en))French language: ?Permanent Anti-Corruption Unit} on fourteen charges including corruption, fraud, breach of trust, and conspiracy, including reportedly a C$50,000 bribe.

Commissioner Robert Lafrenière said the alleged illegal acts occurred between 2006 and 2011 and relate to two real-estate projects in the Côte des Neiges-Notre Dame de Grâce borough. The CBC indicated one of these projects was the borough’s new 15 million dollar sports complex. Applebaum is now one of several Québec mayors who have been accused of corruption in the past few years, including the previous Montreal mayor Gérald Tremblay and Laval Mayor Gilles Vaillancourt.

Several politicians are calling on Applebaum to resign, including Québec Premier Pauline Marois, to let the city continue on with its affairs. A few others, such as Coalition Avenir Québec leader François Legault, are suggesting to put the city on a trusteeship as Laval was a few weeks ago, but Municipal Affairs Minister Sylvain Gaudreault says this will not happen, as only a few people are implicated, unlike Laval, where nearly the entire city council was implicated.

Two other people were arrested on charges related to the same real-estate deals: Saulie Zajdel, former city councillor, on five charges; and Jean-Yves Bisson, a bourough official, on four charges.

A second interim minister is to be nominated for the rest of Tremblay’s term, until the next municipal election is held in November.