Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Newsweek magazine apologized to the victims of last week’s deadly protests in Afghanistan, which were sparked when a Newsweek report stated that U.S. officials defiled the Koran.

But Islamic parties in Pakistan say the Newsweek apology is a transparent attempt to defuse Muslim anger. Qazi Hussain Ahmad, the head of an Islamic party alliance told the BBC on Monday that Newsweek’s clarification held no weight. “There have been reports by the prisoners who have been released from Guantanamo Bay of desecration of the holy Koran, and different atrocities perpetrated on them.”

On Tuesday Mr.Ahmad said,”Whatever (Newsweek) magazine has done now is under pressure (from the U.S. government),” he said. “It has not denied what it has reported and many people freed from Guantanamo Bay have narrated the same thing.”

The Tuesday edition of the Pakistani daily newspaper the News quoted Hafiz Ehsan Saeed, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, as saying that the Koran was routinely desecrated at Guantanamo.

Reuters reported that Muslims said they suspected that pressure from Washington was behind the magazine’s backing off. On Monday, presidential spokesman ScottMcClellan had criticized Newsweek’s initial response to the incident, saying it was “puzzling.” Later in the day, Newsweek retracted the story which the White House said was a “good first step”.

Newsweek defended its reporting and said its investigation is continuing into allegations that the Koran had been desecrated by U.S. personnel.

“Unfortunately relations are so bad at this point that the perception will linger;” said Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “Many people won’t believe it. They’ll believe the magazine was pressured into doing a retraction.” Hooper said.

“We will not be deceived by this,” Sadullah Abu Aman, an Islamic cleric, told Reuters in Afghanistan.

The magazine said it had made a mistake in its May 9th report regarding the accusations, which led to violent anti-American protests in Afghanistan. Over 16 were killed, and more than 100 were injured. While many officials supporting the protests vowed for non-violence, some in the streets threatened to start a religious war against the United States.

Newsweek’s Editor, Mark Whitaker, said the magazine’s error was reporting confirmation by U.S. military investigators that Guantanamo personnel flushed the Koran down a toilet. The source initially said he had read of the event in a military investigative report, but the source later told the magazine he might have seen the account of the Koran incident in other investigative documents or drafts.

Mr Whitaker told Reuters, “As to whether anything like this happened, we just don’t know. We’re not saying it absolutely happened but we can’t say that it absolutely didn’t happen either.”

The Newsweek report was not the first public allegation alleging Quran desecration at Guantanamo Bay. News stories came out in August and October 2004, reporting that British citizens who had been released from Guantanamo claimed U.S. guards threw their Qurans into the toilet. Also, in January, 2005, Kristine Huskey, a lawyer representing Guantanamo detainees, said a detainee witnessed a guard tossing a Quran into a toilet.

Saturday, June 4, 2005

On Friday, the U.S. military released the results of their investigation and confirmed that in 5 separate incidents, American guards at the Guantánamo Bay prison “mishandled” the Islamic holy book. However, they stress that guards were usually “respectful” of the Qur’an.

One incident involved splashing a Qur’an with urine by urinating near an air vent while others involved kicking, stepping on and writing in Qur’ans.

Brigadier-General Jay Hood, the commander of the jail, said that these incidents are the exception to the rule. In a statement issued late Friday, he said: “The inquiry … revealed a consistent, documented policy of respectful handling of the Qur’an dating back almost two-and-a-half years.”

Gen. Hood looked into the allegations, published and then retracted by Newsweek, that American personnel flushed a Qur’an down a toilet. He said that the inquiry did not find any evidence supporting this particular allegation. “The inquiry found no credible evidence that a member of the Joint Task Force at Guantanamo Bay ever flushed a Qur’an down a toilet. This matter is considered closed.”

The incidents reported are:

• a guard kicking a prisoner’s Qur’an;
• Qur’ans wetted by water balloons thrown by guards;
• a “two-word obscenity” written, in English, inside the cover of a Qur’an. Military officials state that it is equally possible that a guard wrote this in the prisoner’s Qur’an or that the prisoner wrote this in his own Qur’an;
• a guard who urinated too close to an air vent, spraying a Qur’an with urine;
• an interrogator who stepped on a Qur’an during an interrogation.

The investigation also revealed 15 alleged cases of Qur’an mistreatment by detainees themselves. Detainees used Qur’ans as pillows, urinated on them, and, several times, tore pages out of copies of the books, according to the report. For example, the report states that a guard observed a “detainee place two Qur’ans in his toilet and state he no longer cared about the Qur’an or his religion,” on February 23, 2004. It is believed that such behavior is intended to cause disruption and problems for the guards.

Tuesday, December 25, 2018

On Saturday, a tsunami struck Indonesia’s Sunda Strait coastline at around 21:30 local time (1430 UTC). Indonesian officals suggested it was caused by an undersea landslide that followed the recent eruptions of Anak Krakatoa, later receiving support from geological experts.

The BBC reported on Sunday 222 dead and 843 injured, with Indonesian government officials saying the numbers were likely to rise further. NPR reported at least 281 killed; more recently The Guardian gave a minimum death toll of 373. Early reports indicated the wave was about 3–7 feet (1–2 meters) high. No earthquake accompanied it; victims had no warning before the surge arrived.

On Sunday a tsunami warning siren went off accidentally, causing panic because of the false alarm. The affected area incorporates Java and Sumatra, the nation’s most populous islands. The Sunda Strait forms a link between the Java Sea and the Indian Ocean.

The International Federation of the Red Cross said on Sunday it was on the scene working to support survivors and locate the deceased. President Joko Widodo spoke of his sadness at the disaster.

Three months ago a tsunami hit Sulawesi, causing thousands of deaths. A 2004 tsunami that hit thirteen nations killed over 220,000 with Indonesia the worst affected. The island nation is in an area of high tectonic activity known as the Ring of Fire, making earthquakes and tsunamis relatively common.

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

In a 7-2 decision handed down on Monday, the US Supreme Court struck down California’s violent video game law and ruled that video games are protected speech covered by the First Amendment. The California law banned the sale and rental of violent video games to minors.

The underlying question was whether the violence in video games has the ability to affect children more than violence in other media, such as books, movies, plays and other forms of entertainment.

Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, said that depictions of violence have never been regulated by the US government. Thus violent videos are not to fall under government control as does pornography but is to be accorded the same First Amendment protections as other forms of entertainment. The sale of violent video games is not to be criminalized and California’s attempt to do so was “unprecedented and mistaken.” Scalia noted, referring to fairy tales, that “the books we give children to read—or read to them when they are younger—contain no shortage of gore.”

The beginning of the decision states, “Video games qualify for First Amendment protection. Like protected books, plays, and movies, they communicate ideas through familiar literary devices and features distinctive to the medium. And ‘the basic principles of freedom of speech…do not vary’ with a new and different communication medium.”

“The most basic principle—that government lacks the power to restrict expression because of its message, ideas, subject matter, or content, Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union, 535 U. S. 564, 573—is subject to a few limited exceptions for historically unprotected speech, such as obscenity, incitement, and fighting words. But a legislature cannot create new categories of unprotected speech simply by weighing the value of a particular category against its social costs and then punishing it if it fails the test.”

The justices were not convinced by the existing research that the interactive nature of video games pose a greater risk to society because of their interactive nature. None of the results of the existing research put before the court showed that violent games cause violent behavior. “Psychological studies purporting to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children do not prove that such exposure causes minors to act aggressively. Any demonstrated effects are both small and indistinguishable from effects produced by other media. Since California has declined to restrict those other media, e.g., Saturday morning cartoons, its video-game regulation is wildly under-inclusive, raising serious doubts about whether the State is pursuing the interest it invokes or is instead disfavoring a particular speaker or viewpoint.”

According to Nadine Kaslow, professor and chief psychologist at Emory University Department of Psychology and Grady Hospital, the evidence regarding the effects of violent video games is mixed. While there is evidence to suggest that exposure of children to violence results in more aggressive and less pro-social behavior, some studies show there is no negative effect, she said. She point out that toy guns were popular and parents monitored whether toy guns were allowed in the home.

This ruling does not prevent private retailers from placing restrictions on their sale of video games. The video game industry currently has its own rating system, much like that used for movies, and educates retailers in using the rating system to prevent minors from buying mature-rated games. According to PC World the industry’s compliance is better than that of other entertainment industries. Further, parental controls have been added to game consoles.

The view of the Entertainment Software Association that a better strategy is the education of parents rather than court battles.

Friday, May 11, 2007

NASA has unveiled the new telescope that will replace the Hubble Space Telescope in Washington D.C. called the James Webb Space Telescope [JWST]. Currently, NASA has a life-sized model on display to the public which is as tall as a two story house and weighs several tons.

Researchers at NASA say that the Webb telescope will be able to see farther than Hubble “to the beginning of time.”

“It will find the first galaxies and will peer through dusty clouds to see stars forming planetary systems, connecting the Milky Way to our own Solar System,” said a statement posted on NASA’s website. It will be sent into space where it will orbit nearly 2,000,000 miles from Earth.

JWST will have a large mirror, 6.5 meters (21.3 feet) in diameter and a sunshield the size of a tennis court.

Northrop Grumman is contracted to build the telescope and will be jointly operated by NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. It is scheduled to launch in 2013 from Arianespace’s ELA-3 launch complex at European Spaceport located near Kourou, French Guiana.

Saturday, October 14, 2006

An American inventor has patented a pair of new time formats with a footprint less than 50% of that of conventional four-digit time. The more unusual of the two new formats, called “TWELV”, dispenses with numerals altogether. In place of clock hands or digits, the new clock uses color to convey the hour and a moon image to convey the minute, which moon slowly grows throughout the course of an hour from a narrow crescent to a full-fledged circle.

The second and more approachable of the new formats retains numerical digits to indicate the minute but uses colors to convey the hour.

Early critics question whether the aesthetic benefits of the moon-clock will be sufficient to encourage users to learn the color-based time-telling system. However, the size advantages of the new system may make it particularly suitable for mobile applications, particularly cell phones, wearable computers, and head-mounted displays.

Friday, March 17, 2006

A U.S. raid near Balad on Wednesday resulted in the deaths of between nine and 13 civilians. An Associated Press photographer recorded pictures of the bodies of two men, five children, and four covered corpses reported to be women. The victims had bits of rubble tangled in their hair and were covered in dust. Police Capt. Hakim Azzawi said in an interview with the Washington Post that 13 in total were dead, two men, five children, and six women. The U.S. military confirmed the attack but said only four people died — two women, a man and a child.

Family of the victims said the 11 dead people were wrapped in blankets and driven in three pickup trucks to the Tikrit General Hospital.

The US military said that the raid resulted in a “foreign fighter facilitator” being taken into coalition custody for questioning.

Police Capt. Laith Mohammed stated that the attack 50 miles north of Baghdad involved U.S. warplanes and armored vehicles, which flattened a house in the village of Isahaqi.

Ahmed, the brother of the dead man, told the Associated Press, “The dead family was not part of the resistance. They were women and children. The Americans have promised us a better life, but we get only death.”

Thursday, March 18, 2010

On the Feb. 27, Chile was hit by an magnitude 8.8 earthquake; almost 500 were killed, with resulting tsunami destroying most coastal towns between Llolleo and Araucanía Region. A second earthquake last week, with its epicentre in Pichilemu, caused destruction in the Coquimbo and Bío Bío regions.

A Wikinews contributor is in the area, and we look at the extent of this natural disaster’s damage through his photographs.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

BellSouth, said in a statement yesterday that the telecommunications company did not hand over customer call records to the National Security Agency or NSA. On May 11, 2006, USA Today reported that the NSA collected millions of call logs from telecommunications companies in 2001 under a contract the NSA claims to have had with the company.

BellSouth said that they conducted a “internal review” and that the review “confirmed no such contract exists and we have not provided bulk customer calling records to the NSA,” said Jeff Battcher, spokesman for BellSouth.

“We do not believe that any final review will turn up anything different from what we have currently found. There is no link between the NSA and BellSouth that we can find in what we feel is a very exhaustive review. We wouldn’t have made this bold statement if we weren’t confident about this,” added Battcher.

AT&T and Verizon Communications were also said to have handed over customer call logs, but Verizon said on Friday that they don’t “and will not, provide any government agency unfettered access to our customer records or provide information to the government under circumstances that would allow a fishing expedition.”

On Monday, Massachusetts Representative Edward Markey of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on telecommunications asked for help from the Federal Communications Commission or FCC, to investigate whether Verizon, AT&T, and BellSouth violated privacy rights under communication laws and regulations.

Friday, March 20, 2009

In the United States, a suspended Pennsylvania state trooper has been convicted of first-degree murder for killing his girlfriend’s estranged husband.

Kevin Foley, 43, faces a mandatory life sentence without parole for slashing to death John Yelenic, a Blairsville dentist who was in the final stages of divorcing his wife, Michele. Foley’s attorney said he plans to appeal the decision. Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty.

Foley previously said he “loathed Dr. Yelenic” and asked another fellow trooper to help kill him. During his testimony, which lasted several hours, Foley claimed he was joking and had no true intention of carrying out the threat, but the Indiana County jury rejected that defense after about six hours of deliberations.

John Yelenic was found dead in his home on April 13, 2006, one day before he was planning on signing his divorce papers. Charges were brought against Foley in September 2007, more than 17 months after the murder.

Foley, who had been on suspension from the Pennsylvania State Police, was himself the final witness to take the stand Wednesday in the trial. Foley insisted he was innocent during his testimony, and even made jokes that the jury laughed at on a few occasions.

“I never made a threat with the intention of carrying it out,” Foley said under cross-examination by the prosecution.

When Senior Deputy Attorney General Anthony Krastek pressed Foley for what was funny about asking another state trooper to help him kill Yelenic, Foley answered, “There isn’t any joke. It’s just my personality, my behavior (with co-workers).”

Prosecutors said Foley killed Yelenic after going to the dentist’s house to confront him over the terms of the divorce. Prosecutors claim Foley slashed Yelenic several times with a knife and pushed his head through a small window. Yelenic bled to death.

“John has his justice tonight,” Mary Ann Clark, a cousin of Yelenic, told MSNBC. “John deserved this; he was the most wonderful person in the world. He died the most horrible death and tonight, this is his night. The system worked.”

Foley had been living with Michele Yelenic for two years at the time of the homicide. Prosecutors previously said Foley and Michele helped perpetuate rumors that Dr. Yelenic molested their son. John and Michele Yelenic had been separated in 2002. Michele Yelenic stood to collect Dr. Yelenic’s estate and a US$1 million life insurance policy, and could lose about $2,500 a month in support if the divorce was finalized, a Pennsylvania grand jury previously determined.

Michele Yelenic, who has not appeared at the trial, may face legal action herself, media reports indicated. A sentencing hearing for Foley is scheduled for June 1.