Saturday, November 15, 2008

Scotland has refused bail to the Libyan man convicted of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 despite his terminal cancer, as he can receive treatment in prison. Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi was jailed in 2001 for the 1988 bombing of the transatlantic airliner, killing 270 people, but is seeking to have his conviction overturned.

Minutes after Edinburgh’s Appeals Court rejected bail on compassionate grounds Jim Swire, spokesman for the victim’s families who lost his daughter in the disaster, complained about the ruling. “It has never been a goal of our group to seek revenge,” said a lawyer outside the court reading from his statement. “The refusal of a return to his family for a dying man whose verdict is not even yet secure looks uncomfortably like either an aspect of revenge — or perhaps timidity.”

Al-Megrahi, a former intelligence officer, is 54 and serving a minimum of 27 years for the bombing. He has advanced prostate cancer which is spreading through his body. His request for bail was rejected by Lord Hamilton, Scotland’s head judge, who said that as doctors say he could live a few more years he should not be released unless and until after his appeal succeeds or his condition worsens.

Some other doctors give his time as just months, as the cancer has reached his bones. Hamilton however said that palliative hormone treatment could prolong his life. Hamilton also said Al-Megrahi was not suffering “material pain or disability”.

The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission ruled last year that the conviction may be a miscarriage of justice. It said there was significant doubts to be raised over several key pieces of evidence in the original trial.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

At the company’s own Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) keynote at the Moscone West center in San Francisco, Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the next generation of software products from Apple. Apple unveiled Lion, the new version of their Mac OS X operating system for desktop and laptop computers that brings new features to the software. They also demonstrated iOS 5, a new version of the operating system that powers iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads. Alongside both announcements, Jobs also announced a new iCloud service to sync data among all devices. All 5,200 participating developers will spend the rest of the week in workshops with Apple employees; developer releases of each product were made available today.

Mac OS X Lion will be shipped in July through the online Mac App Store available on Mac computers for US$29. According to Apple, the update adds over 250 new features to the OS. Employee Phil Schiller discussed new multitouch gestures along with a dynamic task manager named Mission Control that shows open applications. During the keynote, Schiller said, “The Mac has outpaced the PC industry every quarter for five years running and with OS X Lion we plan to keep extending our lead.” It also adds full support for the Mac port of the popular App Store, full screen applications, iOS-style app icon lists called Launchpad, and other iOS-like features including a revamped Mail and Auto Save among others. Mac OS X Lion was announced at a different Apple event several months ago and will replace Mac OS X Snow Leopard, which was released in 2009.

Soon after, the company also introduced the latest installment in its popular mobile operating system iOS. The fifth version (iOS 5) introduces around 200 new features, including a revamped notification system, which combines messages and notifications from all applications installed on the user’s device. Scott Forestall, an Apple employee, also revealed that iOS devices would no longer require a computer for setup, allowing users to ‘cut the cord’ between their devices and PCs. Magazines and newspapers also have a new folder interface; the Twitter social network is now integrated significantly into iOS devices. Improvements to the mobile Safari browser were also announced; tabbed browsing and a Reader feature introduce desktop-like functionality. Finally, new camera features are built in, including the ability to take snapshots from the lock screen, as well as iMessages, a new messaging platform for iPhones and iPads.

CEO Steve Jobs returned to the stage to reveal Apple’s new cloud services offering, iCloud. The service integrates with Lion and iOS applications and syncs data between a user’s iOS devices. For example, calendar events created on a user’s laptop would be sent to their iPhone through iCloud. Apps, books, documents, photos, and more purchased or created on one device will be shared with others. The service is intended to launch in the fall of 2011 alongside iOS 5 and will be available with 5 gigabytes (GB) of storage for 10 devices for free. Earlier this year, Apple opened a 500,000 square foot data center in North Carolina intended to facilitate this new service. Jobs rounded the services off by unveiling a new iTunes feature that mirrors a user’s library in the cloud, allowing them to listen and download music to authorized devices. “We are going to demote the PC to just be a device. We are going to move the digital hub, the center of your digital life, into the cloud,” said Steve Jobs during the keynote. iCloud and iOS 5 will be released in the fall of 2011; Apple announced no new hardware products.

Friday, March 11, 2005Many infertile American women would choose the sex of their next child if given the option.

A survey of 561 women being treated for infertility has found that 41% would use sex selection if it were offered at no cost.

Contradicting fears that such sex selection would cause gender imbalance, the survey found that women with no children would choose baby girls and boys in approximately equal numbers.

Furthermore, women with only daughters wanted to select a male child while women with only sons wanted to select a female child.

“Sex selection is a topic that’s almost taboo for physicians to talk about,” says study lead author Tarun Jain of the University of Illinois at Chicago. “Prior to this study, there has been no data to indicate what the demand might be.”

Of 561 survey respondents, 229 would want to select the sex of their future child.

Among these, 45% had no children and 48% had children of all the same sex.

Half would choose to select the sex of their next child even if they had to bear the cost.

About 55% would choose sperm separation, 41% would choose preimplantation genetic diagnosis and 4% would choose neither.

Sex selection is controversial. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists opposes it for nonmedical reasons and so does the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics.

The American Society of Reproductive Medicine supports it for nonmedical reasons for family gender balancing provided methods used are safe and effective.

“As the techniques gain more popularity, physicians will have to decide if they will offer the procedure to patients with and without children,” says Jain.

The research is reported in the journal Fertility and Sterility.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

The name Robert Cailliau may not ring a bell to the general public, but his invention is the reason why you are reading this: Dr. Cailliau together with his colleague Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, making the internet accessible so it could grow from an academic tool to a mass communication medium. Last January Dr. Cailliau retired from CERN, the European particle physics lab where the WWW emerged.

Wikinews offered the engineer a virtual beer from his native country Belgium, and conducted an e-mail interview with him (which started about three weeks ago) about the history and the future of the web and his life and work.

Wikinews: At the start of this interview, we would like to offer you a fresh pint on a terrace, but since this is an e-mail interview, we will limit ourselves to a virtual beer, which you can enjoy here.

Robert Cailliau: Yes, I myself once (at the 2nd international WWW Conference, Chicago) said that there is no such thing as a virtual beer: people will still want to sit together. Anyway, here we go.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

A resident of Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound his whole life, Correctional Services officer Paul Johnstone is running for the Ontario New Democratic Party in the Ontario provincial election. Wikinews’ Nick Moreau interviewed him regarding his values, his experience, and his campaign.

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.

Friday, October 5, 2007

The winners of the 2007 Ig Nobel Prize have been announced. The awards, given out every early October since 1991 by the Annals of Improbable Research, are a parody of the Nobel Prize, which are awards given out in several fields. The awards are given to achievements that, “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They were presented at Harvard University’s Sanders Theater.

Ten awards have been presented, each given to a different field. The winners are:

• Medicine: Brian Witcombe, of Gloucestershire Royal NHS Foundation Trust, UK, and Dan Meyer, who studied the health consequences of sword swallowing.

• Physics: A team from the USA and Chile, who made a study about how cloth sheets become wrinkled.

• Biology: Dr Johanna van Bronswijk of the Netherlands, for carrying out a census of creatures that live in people’s beds.

• Chemistry: Mayu Yamamoto, from Japan, for creating a method of extracting vanilla fragrance and flavouring from cow dung.

• Linguistics: A team from the University of Barcelona, who discovered that rats cannot tell the difference between Japanese and Dutch when spoken backwards.

• Literature: Glenda Browne of Blue Mountains, Australia, for her study on how the word “The” confuses people when they try to put things in alphabetical order.

• Peace: The US Air Force Wright Laboratory for trying to develop a “Gay bomb” that would turn enemy soldiers homosexual.

• Nutrition: Brian Wansink of Cornell University for his investigation into the limits of the human appetite, by using a self-refilling “bottomless” bowl of soup.

• Economics: Kuo Cheng Hsieh of Taiwan, for patenting a machine that catches bank robbers by dropping a net on top of them.

• Aviation: A team from the National University of Quilmes, Argentina, for discovering that impotency drugs can help hamsters recover from jet lag.

Friday, April 11, 2008

Wikinews held an exclusive interview with Jeremy Hanke, editor of MicroFilmmaker Magazine. The magazine, which is free to read online, was started as a resource for the low budget moviemaker and features book, independent film, equipment and software reviews as well as articles on film distribution, special effects and lighting.

He says that one of the goals of the magazine is to “connect low-budget filmmakers via a feeling of community, as many…..often compete so viciously against one another in film festivals for coveted “shots” with Hollywood, that they can quickly forget their similarities.”

When asked if films made on a shoestring budget can really compete with those made for millions of dollars, he replied, “no…yes…and absolutely. Allow me to explain.” And so he does in the interview below.