Tuesday, February 26, 2008

A judge has ruled today that Nigeria‘s 2007 election results, which saw Umaru Yar’Adua’s become president, will not be annulled. Opposition parties claimed that the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), of which the President is leader, fixed the results of the 2007 election in his favour and called for a re-run.

The tribunal ruled unanimously against the claims, with Judge Abdulkadir Abubakar Jega stating that there was no evidence that Mr. Yar’Adua had rigged the polls. Muhammadu Buhari and Atiku Abubakar, leaders of the two opposition parties who launched the case, have both said they will take their complaints to the Supreme Court.

International suspicions were also raised at the time of the election, with some voicing concern over the politcal process.

The ruling could have negative impacts – it could be seen as an admittance of a ‘false democracy’ occurring in the last election and therefore undermining the political process in Nigeria. This could cause instability between political rivals and may spark protests.

Yar’Adua assumed office on 29th May 2007 after the election in April, where he won 70% of the vote. Since then, he has became the first Nigerian leader to declare his personal assets, as well as overturning hikes in petroleum and tax made by the previous government. Despite these positive steps, he has also been surrounded by controversy, with several governors who served him before 2007 being charged by the EFCC, the anti-corruption commission.

Election annulments have been passed for seven of thirty-six state governors and even the senate president, David Mark.

Tuesday, June 30, 2020

Recently, Finnish open-source video game developer Perttu Ahola discussed Minetest, his “longest ever project”, with Wikinews.

Started in October 2010, Minetest was an attempt by Ahola to create a sandbox game similar to Minecraft. Minecraft is a multi-platform commercial game, which was in alpha version when Ahola challenged himself to create something similar to it from scratch, he told Wikinews.

Minetest is an open-source game, which is free for anyone to download and play. It is written in the C++ programming language, and the source code is available on code-hosting site GitHub. According to Ahola, Minetest attempts to run on older hardware, with limited graphics, but to be accessible to more people: those who have outdated technology, and making it available for no cost. Minecraft, on the other hand, is a paid game, currently costing USD 26.95 for its computer version. Minecraft is currently owned by Microsoft, and performs poorly on older hardware.

A correspondent from French Wikinews contacted Perttu Ahola via Internet Relay Chat a few weeks ago, discussing Minecraft. This interview is built on top of the previous interview, as we take a deeper dive into knowing more about this free game which is about to turn ten years old in a few months.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

The James Bond film series is one of the most popular and successful, having grossed over US$4 billion worldwide. The suave, sophisticated secret agent has secured his place in popular culture as the definitive action hero that has appeared in twenty-three films between 1954 and 2006.

Daniel Craig was announced as the seventh actor to portray 007 in late 2005, making his debut in the 2006 smash hit Casino Royale. While fans await Craig’s second outing in Quantum of Solace, due later this year, they have been able to watch Shamelady, a fan film made by the French film production company Constellation Studios.

Shamelady is a tribute to Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond novels on which many of the films are based, and EON Productions, the makers of the official 007 films. The film was first released in 2007 and runs just under an hour long. It can be downloaded from Constellation’s website or viewed on YouTube.

Legally, the filmmakers cannot profit from Shamelady, but they didn’t make it for the money, rather the thrill of creating an original Bond film. The plot is fairly simple, and reminiscent of Casino Royale. Bond is sent to a casino to nab a vicious crime lord, but gets betrayed by a fellow agent in the process. Viewer reaction to the film was positive for the most part, and Constellation Studios has now planned a sequel to Shamelady, which director Eric Saussine speaks of in the interview below.

Thursday, March 26, 2020

In a new study released by the Florida Museum of Natural History on Monday, scientists report spiky skulls evolved at least 25 separate times in different kinds of frogs. The survey was reportedly to be published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Lead author Daniel Paluh, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Florida, said, “Superficially, frogs may look similar, but when you look at their skulls, you see drastic differences […] Some of the weirdest skulls are found in frogs that eat birds and mammals, use their heads as a shield, or in a few rare cases, are venomous. Their skulls show how strange and diverse frogs can be.”

Some scientists had previously suggested smaller frogs would tend to develop spiky skulls, but that is not what this study reports. Here, researchers evaluated CT scans on 158 different species. They found frogs that had similar ecological niches — meaning they either acquired food in the same way or defended themselves from predators in the same way — tended to develop skulls with similar grooves, spikes, or specialized jaw joints regardless of whether they were ancestrally related to each other.

According to the study, skulls with spikes, grooves or ridges — called hyperossification — often accompanied frogs eating very large prey relative to their own body size. The strong, spacious skulls would allow the frogs to have very big mouths with which to catch birds, rodents, reptiles and other frogs. Spikes sometimes coincided with venomous frogs. The researchers speculated the spikes make it dangerous for predators to hit the frog’s head, as the spikes would break venom sacs under the frog’s skin.

Other bone formations included projections resembling fangs or lower teeth that different species of frogs use for catching prey and fighting. Very few frogs have true lower teeth.

One of the study’s authors, herpetologist David Blackburn, told Discover Magazine the frequency of spiky skulls evolving in otherwise unrelated frogs suggested some deep pattern frogs fell into as circumstances arose: “Somehow, these frogs are turning on some ancient developmental machinery in their DNA.”

Since 1973, when frogs skulls were last comprehensively surveyed, scientists have documented enough new species to double the number known to humans. Also, modern techniques exploit CT scans, of which Paluh and his team made liberal use. The research was part of the oVert project, funded by the National Science Foundation, meant to comprehensively CT-scan over 20,000 vertebrate specimens from United States museums.

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

Wikinews extended invitations by e-mail on March 23 to multiple candidates running in the Texas’ 6th congressional district special election of May 1 to fill a vacancy left upon the death of Republican congressman Ron Wright. Of them, the office of Democrat Daryl Eddings, Sr. agreed to answer some questions by phone March 30 about their campaigns and policies. The following is the interview with Ms Chatham on behalf of Mr Eddings, Sr.

Eddings is a federal law enforcement officer and senior non-commissioned officer in the US military. His experience as operations officer of an aviation unit in the California National Guard includes working in Los Angeles to control riots sparked by the O. J. Simpson murder case and the police handling of Rodney King, working with drug interdiction teams in Panama and Central America and fighting in the Middle East. He is the founder of Operation Battle Buddy, which has under his leadership kept in touch with over 20 thousand veterans and their families. He was born in California, but moved to Midlothian, Texas. He endeavours to bring “good government, not no government”. Campaign manager Faith Chatham spoke to Wikinews on matters ranging from healthcare to housing.

An Inside Elections poll published on March 18 shows Republican candidate Susan Wright, the widow of Ron Wright, is ahead by 21% followed by Democrat Jana Sanchez with 17% and Republican Jake Ellzey with 8% with a 4.6% margin of error among 450 likely voters. The district is considered “lean Republican” by Inside Elections and voted 51% in favour of Donald Trump in last year’s US presidential election. This is down from 54% for Trump in 2016’s presidential election, the same poll stated.

Monday, January 5, 2009

On Sunday afternoon, a Lafayette-based Petroleum Helicopters Inc. (PHI, Inc.) helicopter bound for the offshore oil fields crashed shortly after taking off from its Amelia base, into a marshy area near Bayou Penchant about 100 miles southwest of New Orleans. The helicopter had been carrying oilfield workers and 2 pilots. Eight people were killed and the Coast Guard helicopter rushed the lone survivor, a 28-year-old medevacted man, in critical condition, to Leonard J. Chabert Medical Center and then taken to Houma‘s Hebert Medical Center.

According to Pamela Norton, age 37, a Gretna woman, her ex-husband, Jorey A. Rivero Sr., age 35, of Westwego, was aboard the oil-services helicopter. “He got onto that chopper about noon Sunday,” she said. The largest helicopter company in the world, Petroleum Helicopters Inc. (PHI, Inc. – formerly Petroleum Helicopters International) has its home base in Lafayette Regional Airport. It provides helicopter services to oil and gas businesses and also flies medical helicopters. “Eight deceased passengers were recovered by the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Department,” Coast Guard spokeswoman Jaclyn Young said. According to Richard Ravinelli, PHI Director of Human Resources, the victims’ names would not be released until all family members concerned are duly notified.

According to Barbara Bryant, her son who worked for three years on oil rigs, was one of the fatalities. “He just spent 3 months offshore, just because he wanted to save up enough money for a down payment on his own house, and he’s been living with me to save his money to do that. He didn’t make it,” she said.

The New Orleans Eighth Coast Guard District Command Center received a distress signal from the Langley, Va. Air Force Rescue Coordination Center (AFRCC), at 3:30 p.m. Helicopter owner PHI earlier called the Coast Guard, informing about a distress call from its helicopter. Upon AFRCC request, Coast Guard’s Air Station New Orleans’ HH-65C and crew were dispatched to the site of the crash.

Rescue workers at Bob’s Bayou Black Marina in Gibson, Louisiana, an unincorporated community in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, arrived at boat launch to coordinate recovery efforts for the bodies in the wilderness. The Terrebonne Sheriff’s Office Water Patrol and a Coast Guard helicopter also cooperated in search of bodies in waters near Bayou Penchant, a soupy, grassy area which is only accessible by airboat.

Federal investigators led by the National Transportation Safety Board are scheduled to arrive to the crash site Monday to probe the tragedy.

In June, another PHI Air medical helicopter also crashed in Texas. The Sam Houston National Forest accident killed the pilot, paramedic, nurse and a patient who was being transferred from Huntsville to Houston.

Monday, March 12, 2007

24 of 26 Swiss Cantons rejected the proposal for a single health insurance system, in which premiums would be based on income and wealth. The vote on Sunday was the latest in a series of attempts to cut rising costs and ease the financial burden on citizens.

Around 71% of voters rejected the reform. Turnout was at about 46%, slightly above the Swiss average.

As expected, voters in the main German-speaking part of the country turned down the planned reform, which was supported by the centre-left but opposed by the centre-right as well as the business community, parliament and the government.

Opposition in the French and Italian speaking regions was less pronounced. The cantons Jura and Neuchâtel in the French speaking regions voted in favor of the proposed reforms.

Health insurance premiums are higher in southern and western Swiss cantons than in German-speaking areas.

The Swiss Interior Minister Pascal Couchepin said an important part of the Swiss Population appeared to be opposed to “a revolution” in health insurance but he said that he wanted current reforms currently under discussion in the Swiss Parliament to go ahead. He called on all sides, especially health insurers and the cantonal authorities, to make efforts to reduce spending on health insurance and aim for a greater cost efficiency. Currently Switzerland has 87 private insurers providing mandatory basic health care coverage for Swiss residents under a 1996 law. But costs have sky-rocketed. Over 100,000 people are not covered by health insurance due to non payment.

Opponents to the initiative argued that a single insurance system would lead to complacency and create a two-tier system, in which the wealthy would be the only ones available to afford to have additional private insurance coverage.

Supporters of the initiative said a single health insurer would increase the system’s efficiency and allow for annual savings of at least 300 million Swiss Francs (about $245 million) in administrative costs. Currently, the funding system is unbalanced, since many clients on low incomes use state subsidies to pay their premiums, according to the Green Party and the Social Democrats.

The initiative to unite all the insurance companies and introduce premiums based on wealth and income was the most recent in a series of attempts over the past ten years to reduce the public spending on health care. A proposal, similar to this recent proposal, to modify the funding system of the health insurance companies was rejected by 73% of voters in 2003.

Switzerland has the most expensive health system in Europe. Switzerland’s expenditure on health care was 11.6% in 2005, in front of Germany and France but behind the United States.