Sunday, June 1, 2008

The United Nations health agency the World Health Organization (WHO) has called for a ban on tobacco advertising and promotion in order to protect the world’s children. The news release from the WHO came on Friday, one day before the annual World No Tobacco Day held each year on May 31.

This year’s World No Tobacco Day focuses on highlighting the practices of tobacco companies in their efforts to promote their products to young people. According to a WHO press release, studies show that young people are more likely to start smoking if exposed to tobacco advertising. The WHO notes that only five percent of the world population “is covered by comprehensive bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship”.

“The WHO appeals to member states and policy-makers to require by law a comprehensive ban on all forms of advertising, promotion, and sponsorship of tobacco products,” said WHO Regional Director for Africa Luis Sambo, in a statement released Saturday in Kampala, Uganda.

“In order to survive, the tobacco industry needs to replace those who quit or die with new young consumers,” said WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan. “A ban on all tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship is a powerful tool we can use to protect the world’s youth.”

The WHO said that tobacco companies are specifically targeting the half billion youth in the Asia Pacific region by tying smoking to the idea of a flashy lifestyle. The agency said the tobacco industry attempts to take advantage of children’s susceptibility to advertising and marketing.

According to the WHO most people take up smoking before they reach age 18, and almost twenty-five percent of smokers worldwide are under the age of 10. The agency said that a survey of 13 to 15 year-olds found that fifty-five percent had seen cigarette ads on billboards in the prior month, and twenty-percent owned something with a cigarette company’s logo.

According to BBC News, in the last ten years female and adolescent smoking in Russia has tripled. Russia does not have many anti-smoking laws. BBC News compared this to Canada, where smoking levels are at their lowest in 40 years and the country has very restrictive laws on smoking advertising.

“The tobacco industry employs predatory marketing strategies to get young people hooked to their addictive drug. But comprehensive advertising bans do work, reducing tobacco consumption by up to 16% in countries that have already taken this legislative step,” said Dr. Douglas Bettcher, Director of WHO’s Tobacco Free Initiative.

A report by the WHO on tobacco use stated that approximately two thirds of the planet’s smokers reside in 10 countries including China, India, Indonesia, Russia, the United States, Japan, Bangladesh, Germany, and Turkey. Reuters reported that companies Philip Morris, Imperial Tobacco, British American Tobacco and Japan Tobacco are among the world’s largest producers of cigarettes.

Thursday, March 24, 2005

Sony launched its eagerly anticipated PlayStation Portable (PSP) in the North American market today. The PlayStation costs $250 and plays MP3 files, movies and of course games.

Launched previously in Japan last year with much fanfare, the PSP quickly achieved sales of more than 800,000 units. The device is Sony’s first major attempt at challenging Nintendo’s long held grip on the market for handheld games.

Nintendo currently holds a 90 percent of the market share for handhelds in North America. With the recent introduction of Nintendo DS, the fight for control of this market is expected to become even more intense.

April 6, 2005

The U.S. television network ABC says its 24-hour news network, ABC News Now, will become a permanent 24-hour television news network starting in July. Currently, the operation is only available on the Internet as a streaming media web site.

The network started as a experiment by the Walt Disney Company-owned ABC in the summer of 2004 during the U.S. presidential campaign nomination conventions. It was mostly broadcast as a subchannel or shared channel within the bandwidth of an existing digital television (DTV) channel already owned by ABC. For instance if the local ABC affiliate is on Channel 7 with a DTV channel of 23, then ABC News Now may have been available on digital channel 23.1, sharing the same bandwidth.

Because few households in the U.S. are equipped to tune in digital over-the-air sub-channels, and virtually none are carried on local cable companies, ratings were low for the fledgling digital channel. Adding to that technical difficulty, cable carriage of the network was small. ABC News Now was delivered to only 6 of the 110 million U.S. households via cable. Most viewers of the network, 30 million at last count, watched the network via the Internet.

Citing money reasons, ABC shuttered the over-the-air ABC News Now broadcasts in January to focus on building the web-based service. But come July, ABC plans to return its news network and its 20 original programs to local TV stations. Without any commitment from national cable or satellite companies, ABC will return to digital sub-channels on local DTV transmissions.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

The English version of Wikipedia, the self-described free, online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, has planned to install new restrictions on its editing system on articles regarding biographies of living people.

Under the new plan, anyone can edit the affected articles, but the changes would have to be approved by a more experienced user before they could be registered. The move is part of an effort to prevent vandalism and unconstructive edits being made to high-profile pages and increase content quality. The system is called “flagged revisions”.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said that there would be a “very, very low threshold to entry” for those who desired editorial rights. “We’re looking at anybody who has been around a very short period of time and hasn’t been blocked [banned],” he said.

Friday, November 25, 2016

On Tuesday instant messaging application Telegram announced publishing service Telegraph. They also introduced “instant view” and “jump to date” features.

Telegraph offers a simple publishing service without an account. It supports embedding photos, tweets from Twitter, and videos from YouTube and Vimeo by dropping in a link. It allows users to create rich posts with markdown by filling the title, author name and the story. Telegraph is similar to other publishing websites like Medium and Quip.

Unlike Medium and Quip Telegraph does not require a login and thus anyone can use a false name to publish a story. The stories can only be edited from the same browser on the same device if the user accepts the cookie policy and does not clear the cache.

According to Telegram, instant view offers “an elegant way to view articles with zero pageload time”. Links to articles on sites including Medium and TechCrunch shows an instant view option which can be viewed directly within the application which was built to save time and data.

Telegram also introduced a jump to date option to search chats by dates. A calendar icon enables user to choose a date to search old messages. Other features in the new update, version 3.14, include improved camera speed, better video compression and photo viewer, and improved security for passcodes. A new interface for notifications and creating groups for the Android operating system is also included, with Telegram saying “Make Android Great Again!”. Telegram also introduced a feature to view an entire sticker pack by pressing a long hold on the recently sent sticker. Users can also view the list of groups the user shares with a particular contact.

Monday, September 24, 2007

Martin Hyde is running for the Green Party of Ontario in the Ontario provincial election, in the Ottawa West-Nepean riding. Wikinews’ Nick Moreau interviewed him regarding his values, his experience, and his campaign.

Note that he did not answer the question “Of the decisions made by Ontario’s 38th Legislative Assembly, which was the most beneficial to your electoral district? To the province as a whole? Which was least beneficial, or even harmful, to this riding? To the province as a whole?”

Stay tuned for further interviews; every candidate from every party is eligible, and will be contacted. Expect interviews from Liberals, Progressive Conservatives, New Democratic Party members, Ontario Greens, as well as members from the Family Coalition, Freedom, Communist, Libertarian, and Confederation of Regions parties, as well as independents.