Saturday, October 17, 2009

Voters in Botswana will head to the polls this Friday to vote in parliamentary elections. The incumbent Democratic Party, in power since 1966, is expected to win the vote.

Some voters left their homes as early as 04.00 local time to be in time for the opening of polling stations two hours later, and voters moved through polling stations at a steady pace throughout the day.

About 700,000 residents are registered to vote. Joseph Gaie, lecturer in political ethics at Botswana University in Gaborone, told the Voice of America news agency that a good turnout had been expected.

“Well a lot of people, elderly people take this as a duty – every five years they have to go and vote,” he said. “And then a lot of youth that have just come, this will be the first time that 18-year-olds vote, so they are very excited about it.”

Voting had proceeded without incidents or violence at polling stations, officials said. “We have not received any complaints of intimidation from any of the political parties,” said the head of the Southern African Development Community observer mission Francisco Madeira.

The two major opposition parties, the Botswana National Front and the Botswana Congress Party, are hoping to do much better this time than in previous elections and have indicated they may cooperate in parliament after the poll.

Botswana is a democracy that has seen consistent economic growth in the 43 years since it won independence from the UK. That growth is largely due to exports from the country’s diamond industry, which suffered dramatically in the global economic crisis. The net effect of that has seen an 11.5% contraction of the economy in the year that ended in June. The election results will be known on Saturday.

Monday, November 2, 2020

The following is the sixth and final edition of a monthly series chronicling the 2020 United States presidential election. It features original material compiled throughout the previous month after an overview of the month’s biggest stories.

This month’s spotlight on the campaign trail: the Free and Equal Elections Foundation holds two presidential debates, three candidates who did not participate in those debates give their final pleas to voters, and three political pundits give their predictions on the outcome of the election.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

The European Commission currently has proposals on the table to extend performers’ copyright terms. Described by Professor Martin Kretschmer as the “Beatles Extension Act”, the proposed measure would extend copyright from 50 to 95 years after recording. A vast number of classical tracks are at stake; the copyright on recordings from the fifties and early sixties is nearing its expiration date, after which it would normally enter the public domain or become ‘public property’. E.U. Commissioner for the Internal Market and Services Charlie McCreevy is proposing this extension, and if the other relevant Directorate Generales (Information Society, Consumers, Culture, Trade, Competition, etc.) agree with the proposal, it will be sent to the European Parliament.

Wikinews contacted Erik Josefsson, European Affairs Coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (E.F.F.), who invited us to Brussels, the heart of E.U. policy making, to discuss this new proposal and its implications. Expecting an office interview, we arrived to discover that the event was a party and meetup conveniently coinciding with FOSDEM 2008 (the Free and Open source Software Developers’ European Meeting). The meetup was in a sprawling city centre apartment festooned with E.F.F. flags and looked to be a party that would go on into the early hours of the morning with copious food and drink on tap. As more people showed up for the event it turned out that it was a truly international crowd, with guests from all over Europe.

Eddan Katz, the new International Affairs Director of the E.F.F., had come over from the U.S. to connect to the European E.F.F. network, and he gladly took part in our interview. Eddan Katz explained that the Electronic Frontier Foundation is “A non-profit organisation working to protect civil liberties and freedoms online. The E.F.F. has fought for information privacy rights online, in relation to both the government and companies who, with insufficient transparency, collect, aggregate and make abuse of information about individuals.” Another major focus of their advocacy is intellectual property, said Eddan: “The E.F.F. represents what would be the public interest, those parts of society that don’t have a concentration of power, that the private interests do have in terms of lobbying.”

Becky Hogge, Executive Director of the U.K.’s Open Rights Group (O.R.G.), joined our discussion as well. “The goals of the Open Rights Group are very simple: we speak up whenever we see civil, consumer or human rights being affected by the poor implementation or the poor regulation of new technologies,” Becky summarised. “In that sense, people call us -I mean the E.F.F. has been around, in internet years, since the beginning of time- but the Open Rights Group is often called the British E.F.F.“

Sunday, September 15, 2019

Yesterday, oil facilities belonging to Saudi Arabia’s state-owned Saudi Aramco were hit by multiple drone strikes in a pre-dawn raid. The attacks triggered major fires at a processing plant and an oil field, which state media said were under control. The Yemen-based Houthi movement claimed responsibility for the attacks.

According to the Saudi Press Agency, the attacks occurred at 4:00 A.M. local time (0100 UTC) and struck the largest processing plant at Abqaiq and the Khurais oil field. The oil field is about 160 km (100 miles) east of the capital, Riyadh. The agency did not mention if there were casualties, but said exports were continuing.

Reuters, citing anonymous sources, reported both production and export of oil had been disrupted. Saudi officials subsequently said 5.7 million barrels of per-day production had been disrupted. This would be nearly half of Saudi Arabia’s entire production and around five percent on a global basis.

Speaking on al-Masirah TV in Yemen, Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Sarea said it had carried out the attack using ten drones. According to him, it was among the largest Houthi operations inside of Saudi Arabia and was accomplished with the help of “honourable people inside the kingdom”.

“These attacks are our right, and we warn the Saudis that our targets will keep expanding”, Saree said. “We have the right to strike back in retaliation to the air strikes and the targeting of our civilians for the last five years.”

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo posted a message on Twitter blaming Iran for the attacks, saying there was “no evidence the attacks came from Yemen.” BBC’s Jonathan Marcus said questions remain how much direct Iranian assistance is received by the Houthis who are ideologically aligned with Iran.

In 2015, Saudi Arabia started supporting the government of Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi against the Houthi rebellion, providing airstrikes with the Royal Saudi Air Force. The United Nations called the resulting humanitarian crisis the worst in the world.

In 2006, Abqaiq was the target of an Al-Qaeda suicide attack.

Thursday, November 2, 2006

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has announced today the release of the first version of gNewSense, a new GNU/Linux distribution based on both Ubuntu and Debian. The goal of the newly created distribution is to offer an operating system which is 100% proprietary software free.

Generally, GNU/Linux distributions comes with proprietary software such as kernel drivers (eg. NVIDIA and ATI card drivers), the Opera web browser or the VoIP Skype software among others. According to its developers: “From a philosophical perspective we wanted to create a GNU/Linux distribution where the user has access to all the sources for all software on the system. This includes everything from the heart of the kernel through to the everyday desktop applications.”

Ted Teah, FSF’s free software directory maintainer explained, “With all the kernel firmware and restricted repositories removed, and the reliance on Ubuntu’s proprietary distribution management tool gone, this distribution is the most advanced GNU/Linux distribution that has a commitment to be 100% free.”

gNewSense will provide users with full security updates and is available for immediate download in LiveCD ISO format along with a version of the Ubiquity graphical installer. The developers have also created a set of tools called Builder that allows users to create their own gNewSense-based distributions.

In the new 1.0 version, gNewSense has removed all non-free firmware from the kernel, removed access to the Ubuntu Restricted component (such as links to LaunchPad which are redirected to the gNewSense webpage for now) and replaced the Ubuntu logos with its own. Also the UniVerse component is enabled by default and Emacs, BSD games, NetHack, and build-essential part of the default install.

There already exists such a distribution called Ututo which aims for zero proprietary software but it never really took off in popularity. A few years ago, Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the Ubuntu distribution, also initiated a similar initiative dubbed Gnubuntu but it never materialized.

[edit]

Sunday, February 5, 2006

A BHP Billiton nickel mine at Leinster, 645Km northeast of Perth, Western Australia has halted operations after the death of a mine worker. WA Police say Mark Quinn, 32, an employee of mining contractor MacMahon’s, working about 900 metres underground, was killed in an explosion.

The cause of the explosion is not yet known. Department of Community and Employment Protection investigators have travelled to the site from Kalgoorlie to conduct an inquiry.

Global resources giant BHP Billiton Ltd./Plc, says employees are being briefed and counselled over the incident. The mine will remain closed until the investigation is complete. Police will prepare a report for the coroner.

According to media reports, no-one else was injured in the explosion – the cause of which is not yet known. The accident comes almost two years after a BHP Billiton worker died in a gas explosion at the Boodarie iron plant in Port Hedland, WA. The plant was then abandoned after the incident in May 2004.

In April 2004, a man was killed at BHP Billiton’s Nelson Point facility, also at Port Hedland in WA. In May 2000 a truck driver was killed at a BHP Pilbara iron ore operation in WA. BHP Billiton employ some 37,000 people at over 100 operations in 25 countries.

Coal mines in the United States’ West Virginia district were also suspended earlier this week, due to increased amounts of miners’ deaths.