Thursday, September 2, 2010

In a music-themed media event yesterday, Apple Inc. unveiled three new iPod portable music players, as well as an upgraded Apple TV system. Apple also announced updates for its iTunes software and iOS mobile operating system.

The annual event started at 10 a.m. PDT (1700 UTC) in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, California. Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who led yesterday’s keynote speech at the event, was dressed in his typical black long-sleeved shirt, blue jeans, and tennis shoes. He began by discussing new international Apple Stores, an update to the company’s iOS mobile operating system, and the release of a new gaming app, Game Center. Jobs then turned his attention to what he called the “entrée” of the day.

Apple will release new versions of its iPod Shuffle, iPod Nano, and iPod Touch lines next week in what Jobs called “the biggest change in the iPod line ever.” The iPod Shuffle’s VoiceOver capabilities have been extended to playlists, meaning that it will now be able to read off the names of songs, artists, and playlists. The new device is priced at US$49.

Jobs also showed off the company’s new iPod Nano. The Nano, now smaller and without a click wheel, features a new multi-touch screen that allows users to touch virtual buttons to control the device. The new design is 42 percent lighter and 46 percent smaller, but still includes functions on previous Nanos, such as an FM radio and a pedometer. The 8 GB version will cost US$149, while the 16 GB version will be priced at US$179.

Jobs announced an updated iPod Touch as well, an announcement that had been widely expected for some time. The new, thinner Touch has been upgraded with features matching some already on the company’s recently-released iPhone 4, including the high-resolution “Retina” display and dual video cameras. One camera, located on the back the of the iPod Touch, is for recording video, while the other camera, located on the front, is for use with Apple’s FaceTime video calling program. FaceTime allows users of the latest iPhone and iPod Touch models to conduct video chats with each other over Wi-Fi networks. The iPod Touch starts at US$229 for a 8 GB model, US$299 for 32 GB, and US$399 for 64 GB.

Another major product refresh unveiled yesterday was the Apple TV. The digital media receiver was first released in 2007, but was never very popular. Jobs even admitted that, although Apple has “sold a lot of them, they’ve never been a huge hit.” The US$99 second-generation Apple TV is both smaller and cheaper than its predecessor, which was priced at US$229. The new version will let consumers stream content from online sources, including Netflix, and rent both movies and television shows. Apple has made a deal with Fox and ABC to let users rent episodes of shows for 99¢, instead of buying programs. “We think the rest of the studios will see the light and get on board with this pretty fast,” added Jobs. High-definition movies can be rented for US$4.99, and the new Apple TV will be available for purchase in around four weeks.

Among the less-hyped updates was one to AirPlay, previously named AirTunes. AirPlay lets users stream music, photos, and videos from iOS devices to other Wi-Fi-enabled systems. AirPlay would let a video on an iPad be played on a television via Apple TV.

Along with an iOS update came one for Apple’s online music store application, iTunes. The biggest news involving iTunes 10, which is available for download now, is Apple’s new music-based social network, Ping. “It is sort of like Facebook and Twitter meet iTunes,” described Jobs. “It is not Facebook. It is not Twitter. It is something else we’ve come up with. It’s all about music.” Built into iTunes, Ping allows a user to follow both friends and artists to find new music and concert tours, and anyone with an iTunes account will be able to access Ping upon updating to iTunes 10. Ping will have settings for privacy as well, giving users the option to approve followers. Jobs also introduced a new iTunes logo, which does not include an image of a CD on it because music sales on iTunes are expected to overtake CD sales soon.

Jobs concluded the event by bringing out Chris Martin, a member of the award-winning band Coldplay. Martin, who played a few songs on the piano, including the hit song “Yellow,” jokingly called his performance “the toughest closing gig I’ve ever had.”

Although many of yesterday’s announcements had been predicted ahead of time, some had speculated that Apple would go even further. Apple defied expectations of a new cloud-based music service. They also did not extend the amount of time a buyer could sample music on iTunes, as some had guessed.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

India is the latest of the countries where the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) experiment has started. Children from the village of Khairat were given the opportunity to learn how to use the XO laptop. During the last year XO was distributed to children from Arahuay in Peru, Ban Samkha in Thailand, Cardal in Uruguay and Galadima in Nigeria. The OLPC team are, in their reports on the startup of the trials, delighted with how the laptop has improved access to information and ability to carry out educational activities. Thailand’s The Nation has praised the project, describing the children as “enthusiastic” and keen to attend school with their laptops.

Recent good news for the project sees Uruguay having ordered 100,000 of the machines which are to be given to children aged six to twelve. Should all go according to plan a further 300,000 machines will be purchased by 2009 to give one to every child in the country. As the first to order, Uruguay chose the OLPC XO laptop over its rival from Intel, the Classmate PC. In parallel with the delivery of the laptops network connectivity will be provided to schools involved in the project.

The remainder of this article is based on Carla G. Munroy’s Khairat Chronicle, which is available from the OLPC Wiki. Additional sources are listed at the end.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

India is the latest of the countries where the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) experiment has started. Children from the village of Khairat were given the opportunity to learn how to use the XO laptop. During the last year XO was distributed to children from Arahuay in Peru, Ban Samkha in Thailand, Cardal in Uruguay and Galadima in Nigeria. The OLPC team are, in their reports on the startup of the trials, delighted with how the laptop has improved access to information and ability to carry out educational activities. Thailand’s The Nation has praised the project, describing the children as “enthusiastic” and keen to attend school with their laptops.

Recent good news for the project sees Uruguay having ordered 100,000 of the machines which are to be given to children aged six to twelve. Should all go according to plan a further 300,000 machines will be purchased by 2009 to give one to every child in the country. As the first to order, Uruguay chose the OLPC XO laptop over its rival from Intel, the Classmate PC. In parallel with the delivery of the laptops network connectivity will be provided to schools involved in the project.

The remainder of this article is based on Carla G. Munroy’s Khairat Chronicle, which is available from the OLPC Wiki. Additional sources are listed at the end.

Saturday, March 10, 2012

The Kenyan government has dismissed 25,000 striking health workers, mostly nurses, citing failure to heed government orders to recommence work and concern for the welfare of hospital patients. Speaking on behalf of the government, Alfred Mutua stated the workers were dismissed “illegally striking” and “[defying] the directive … to report back to work”, which he called “unethical”. The government asks that “[a]ll qualified health professionals, who are unemployed and/or retired have been advised to report to their nearest health facility for interviews and deployment”, Mutua stated.

The workers, who had been on strike for four days, were wishing to have improvements made to their wages, working conditions, and allowances. The strikes have caused a significant number of Kenyan hospitals to cease operations. According to Kenya Health Professionals Society spokesperson Alex Orina, the average monthly wage plus allowances for health workers in Kenya is KSh25,000 (£193, US$302 or €230) approximately. With an increasing number of reports of patients neglected in hospitals emerging, two trade unions met with the Kenyan government yesterday and negotitated a return to work, although a significant proportion of demonstrators defied the agreement, The Guardian reported.

Orina told Reuters the dismissals were “cat-and-mouse games, you cannot sack an entire workforce. It is a ploy to get us to rush back to work, but our strike continues until our demands are met”. Frederick Omiah, a member of the same society, believed the government’s actions would “make an already delicate and volatile situation worse”, expressing concern that demonstrations may continue in the capital Nairobi, amongst other locations. Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union chairperson Dr. Victor Ng’ani described government actions as “reckless”.

Mutua said the health workers were “no longer employees of the government” and had been eliminated from the payroll. While Ng’ani told the BBC of difficulties with finding other workers as skilled and experienced, Mutua reportedly stated that this would not be an issue. “We have over 100,000 to 200,000 health professionals looking for work today,” Mutua commented. “There will be a lag of a day or two … but it is better than letting people die on the floor, at the gate, or suffer in pain”.

Friday, December 28, 2007

Former Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto, who was killed in a suicide attack yesterday, has been buried in her ancestral home in the village of Garhi Khuda Bakhsh. Meanwhile, violence has erupted across the nation in protest to the 54-year-old opposition leader’s death.

The Pakistani government has claimed to have evidence to suggest that al Qaeda were responsible for attacking her at the end of her address to an election rally. One spokesperson for the Interior Ministry said “We have intelligence intercepts indicating that al Qaeda leader Baitullah Mehsud is behind her assassination.” Mehsud, believed to be in Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan, is one of Pakistan’s most wanted criminals.

Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, a head of al Qaeda in Afghanistan, told the Asia Times by telephone that the group had indeed been responsible, saying “This is our first major victory against those who have been siding with infidels in a fight against Al Qaeda and declared a war against mujahideen,” and that anti-Shi’ite militant group Lashkar-i-Jhangvi carried out the attack on al Qaeda’s behalf.

United States federal bodies are attempting to verify that al Qaeda were responsible. One official told the Associated Press that a bulletin circulated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security to law enforcement groups mentioned several Islamist websites posting claims of responsibility. Director of National Intelligence spokesman Ross Feinstein commented that they were “in no position right now to confirm who may have been responsible.”

Unrest in Sindh, Bhutto’s home province, was to the extent that the military has been called in to the area. According to officials, unrest since her death has resulted in 32 deaths, including those of four police officers. 23 of the deaths were in Sindh. It is feared that recent events could cause Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to postpone an election intended to place Pakistan back under civilian rule, which is currently planned for January 8.

Soldiers were told to shoot to kill violent protesters on sight, as scores of people set up roadblocks and torched hundreds of cars, trucks and buses. Other areas also saw violence; an election meeting in the Northwest suffered a bomb attack that killed a candidate for Musharrif’s party and seven others, whilst one was killed in the city of Lahore.

Thousands lined the way as Bhutto’s coffin, draped in the tricolor of the Pakistan People’s Party, was transported the 7km to the family mausoleum, accompanied by Bhutto’s husband Asif Ali Zardari. She was laid to rest alongside the body of her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, himself a former Prime Minister hung after a military coup. Zardini prayed at the site alongside their three children, son Bilawal, 19, and daughters Bakhtawar, 17 and Aseefa, 14. Bhutto’s two brothers, whose deaths remain officially unexplained, are also buried at the site, which she had herself arranged the construction of.

Reuters reported that many at the scene chanted slogans in opposition to Musharraf and to the United States, who for many years have supported Musharraf. “Shame on the killer Musharraf, shame on the killer U.S.,” the news agency quoted the mourners as saying. Meanwhile, one farmer told them “Bhutto was my sister and Bhutto was like my mother… With her death, the world has ended for us.”

Musharraf, a former army general, seized power in an armed 1999 coup. For many years he has had US support in the hope that he can keep control in the unstable country, which is afflicted with Islamic extremist violence.

Economics in the country have also been much affected, Koichi Ogawa, chief portfolio manager at Daiwa SB Investments, commented that “Unrest in Pakistan is eroding the market sentiment dramatically as Pakistan, unlike North Korea or Iran, is known to really have nuclear weapons.” Although the affect was generally to decrease values, lower risk investments, such as gold, went up in demand.

India has reacted to the violence by ordering immediate suspension of all cross-border bus and rail services with Pakistan amid fears that violence will spread. Extremists are known to attack trains, including one attack in February where 68 people died on an Indian train heading for Pakistan. Indian border forces have been put on alert, although no specific threats have yet been identified. Relations between the two countries are peaceful but tense, and Indian border forces regularly go on alert at times of crisis in Pakistan.

Wednesday, November 15, 2017

On Wednesday, the entertainment company Cards Against Humanity closed an online marketing campaign, “Cards Against Humanity Saves America,” in which they solicited donations to finance the purchase of land on the United States-Mexico border for the express purpose of preventing construction of the border wall proposed by sitting U.S. President Donald Trump. They announced the program on Tuesday, and it sold out the following day.

“Donald Trump is a preposterous golem who is afraid of Mexicans. He is so afraid that he wants to build a twenty-billion dollar wall that everyone knows will accomplish nothing. We’ve purchased a plot of vacant land on the border and retained a law firm specializing in eminent domain to make it as time-consuming and expensive as possible for the wall to get built,” reads the official description of the campaign.

Campaign participants sent Cards Against Humanity US$15 toward the purchase of the land, and the company pledged to send them a map of the area and various other surprises during the next month, such as new cards for the game. Cards Against Humanity has yet to disclose exactly where the land is located.

The construction of a wall on the border with Mexico for the purpose of limited illegal immigration was one of Donald Trump’s campaign promises in last year’s U.S. presidential election. As of this month, several prototype sections of wall have been built, but the United States Congress has not yet allocated enough funds for the project, and so far Congress has not supported other Trump Administration projects, such as repealing his predecessor’s health care law, the Affordable Care Act. More than half of the land on the planned site of the wall is either privately owned or owned by individual U.S. states. Earlier this week, the Trump administration sought funds to hire lawyers to deal with owners who do not wish to sell their land to the U.S. government.

Cards Against Humanity is a playing card game in which participants complete sentences using irreverant phrases printed on black and white cards. The company has held prank marketing campaigns before, such as digging a hole to nowhere and selling empty boxes, fully advertised as such.

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Saturday, November 27, 2010

A 19-year-old Oregon, U.S. resident has been charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction after a sting operation; authorities say Mohamed Osman Mohamud, born in Somalia, tried to detonate a van bomb using a mobile phone at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland.

The device, police stated, was fake; he reportedly obtained it from undercover agents during a sting operation. Reports say Mohamud, a US citizen, had been in regular contact with somebody in north-west Pakistan.

Authorities intercepted e-mails they say were between Mohamud and this contact in August 2009. Holton reassured Oregon residents, adding that there was “no reason to believe there is any continuing threat arising from this case”. Mohamud allegededly told an FBI agent “I want whoever is attending that event to leave, to leave either dead or injured.” Dwight Holton, a U.S. attorney, described Mohamud’s “chilling determination” as a “stark reminder that there are people—even here in Oregon—who are determined to kill Americans.”

An FBI agent told reporters “[t]he threat was very real. Our investigation shows that Mohamud was absolutely committed to carrying out an attack on a very grand scale. I want to reassure the people of this community that, at every turn, we denied him the ability to actually carry out the attack.” On the day of the tree lighting ceremony, he drove a vehicle to the area where the event was to be held, and was arrested, prosecutors said, twenty minutes before the tree was to be lit. He kicked at agents as they tried to apprehend him and shouted “Allahu Akbar!” (God is great!).

Court papers indicated that an undercover agent told Mohamud that he was an associate of the Pakistani contact. When the agent and Mohamud discussed the plan, Mohamud said that he wanted a “huge mass that will be attacked in their own element with their families celebrating the holidays”. Mohamud told the agent that he had wanted to carry out a jihad (holy war) against the U.S. since he was fifteen years old.