Monday, June 5, 2006

A new report, titled “Global Deserts Outlook,” has been released on World Environment Day by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The report suggests that the world’s deserts face dramatic changes as a result of global climate change: high water demands, tourism and salt contamination of irrigated soils. Desert margins and mountainous areas within deserts that have been important for people, wildlife and water supplies for millennia, are under particular threat, say UNEP.

2006 is the United Nations‘ International Year of Deserts and Desertification. Yet deserts could become the “carbon-free power houses of the 21st century,” some experts believe. They argue an area 800 by 800 km of desert, such as the Sahara, could capture the solar energy to generate all the world’s electricity needs – and more.

The report, prepared by experts from across the globe, flags options that may help governments and relevant bodies deliver a more sustainable future for the Earth’s desert regions.

“There are many popular and sometimes misplaced views of deserts which this report either confirms or overturns. Far from being barren wastelands, they emerge as biologically, economically and culturally dynamic while being increasingly subject to the impacts and pressures of the modern world,” said Shafqat Kakakhel, UNEP’s Officer in Charge and Deputy Executive Director.

“If the huge, solar-power potential of deserts can be economically harnessed the world has a future free from fossil fuels. And tourism based around desert nature can, if sensitively managed, deliver new prospects and perspectives for people in some of the poorest parts of the world,” said Mr Kakakhel.

Almost one-quarter of the earth’s land surface – some 33.7 million square kilometres – has been defined as “desert” in some sense. These deserts are inhabited by over 500 million people, significantly more than previously thought. In many parts of the world desert cores remain pristine, representing some of the planet’s “last remaining areas of total wilderness,” stated the UNEP in a news release.

Desert species are on the brink of extinction the Global Deserts Outlook reports. At risk animals include various species of Gazelle, Oryx, Addax, Arabian Tahr and the Barbary sheep as well as one of the falconers favourite prey, the Houbara. “At greatest risk are the few patches of dry woodlands associated with desert mountain habitats which may decline by up to 3.5 per cent per year,” said the study.

As a result of their valuable water supplies being diverted to domestic or agricultural use, desert wetlands, fed by the large rivers crossing deserts, are probably the most threatened ecosystem. Probable impacts include those created by roads, settlement expansion and other infrastructure developments around areas of desert montane. By 2050 the report estimates that desert wilderness – those areas where there are no nearby roads – will decline from just under 60 per cent of the current total desert area to just over 30 per cent.

The pharmaceutical potential of desert plants has yet to be tapped, suggests the report. Scientists across the globe are analysing many desert plants for potential medicinal compounds – including anti-cancer and anti-malarial substances, antioxidants, as well as appetite suppressants.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research have found that stressed plants produce an aspirin-like chemical, methyl salicylate. Methyl salicylate is also known as oil of wintergreen. This semi-volatile plant hormone was detected in the air above the plants in the experiments conducted in a walnut grove near Davis, California. According to the scientists the chemical may be a sort of immune response that help protect the plants.

Acetylsalicylic acid, commonly called aspirin, had originally come from the bark of Willow trees. It had never been observed to be emitted as a gas. The researchers observed spikes in methyl salicylate after nighttime temperatures dipped low, which suggested the plants were reacting to cold stress. The peaks were higher during a dry period, pointing to combined stress of cold nighttime temperatures and mild drought.

Laboratory observations have shown that numerous plants produce methyl salicylate, but this is the first time the phenomenon has been observed in nature. Previous studies have shown that plants being eaten by animals produce chemicals that can be sensed by other plants. A study conducted in 1997 found that methyl salicylate is produced by tobacco plants inoculated with tobacco mosaic virus. Emitting methyl salicylate may be a means for the plants to warn other plants about a threat.

The finding may help to more readily identify plants under stress by monitoring for the airborne distress signal.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Top broker and Wall Street adviser Bernard L. Madoff, aged 70, was arrested and charged by the FBI on Thursday with a single count of securities fraud, also known as stock fraud and investment fraud. He allegedly told senior employees of his firm on Wednesday that his $50 billion business “is all just one big lie” and that it was “basically, a giant Ponzi scheme (since at least 2005).” Mr. Madoff faces up to 20 years imprisonment and a fine of up to $5 million. FBI agent Theodore Cacioppi said Mr. Madoff’s investment advisory business had “deceived investors by operating a securities business in which he traded and lost investor money, and then paid certain investors purported returns on investment with the principal received from other, different investors, which resulted in investors’ losses of approximately $50 billion dollars.”

The former chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market is also the founder and primary owner of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, the closely-held market-making firm he launched in 1960. The firm is one of the top market maker firms on Wall Street. He founded his family firm with an initial investment of $5,000, after attending Hofstra University Law School. He saved the money earned from a job lifeguarding at Rockaway Beach in Queens and a part time job installing underground sprinkler systems.

A force in Wall Street trading for nearly 50 years, he has been active in the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), a self-regulatory organization for the U.S. securities industry. His firm was one of the five most active firms in the development of the NASDAQ, having been known for “paying for order flow,” in other word paying a broker to execute a customer’s order through Madoff. He argued that the payment to the broker did not alter the price that the customer received. He ran the investment advisory as a secretive business, however.

Dan Horwitz, counsel of Mr. Madoff, in an interview, said that “he is a longstanding leader in the financial-services industry with an unblemished record; he is a person of integrity; he intends to fight to get through this unfortunate event.” Mr. Madoff was released on his own recognizance on the same day of his arrest, after his 2 sons turned him in, and posting $10 million bail secured by his Manhattan apartment. Without entering any plea, the Court set the preliminary hearing for January 12.

Madoff’s hedge fund scheme may rank among the biggest fraud in history. When former energy trading giant Enron filed for bankruptcy in 2001, one of the largest at the time, it had $63.4 billion in assets. The scheme would dwarf past Ponzis, and it would further be nearly five times the telecommunication company WorldCom fraud and bankruptcy proceedings in 2002.

The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a separate civil suit on Thursday against Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities and its eponymous founder Mr. Madoff. It was docketed as “U.S. v. Madoff,” 08-MAG-02735, by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (Manhattan). SEC, New York associate director of enforcement, Andrew M. Calamari, asked the judge to issue seizure orders on the firm and its assets, and appoint a receiver. The SEC pleads, among others, that “it was an ongoing $50 billion swindle; our complaint alleges a stunning fraud that appears to be of epic proportions.” It further accused the defendant of “paying returns to certain investors out of the principal received from other, different investors” for years. Madoff’s hedge fund business had previously claimed to have served between 11 and 25 clients and had $17.1 billion in assets under management. But virtually all of the assets were missing.

United States District Court for the Southern District of New York Louis L. Stanton on Thursday appointed Lee Richards, a Manhattan lawyer, as the firm’s receiver. A hearing is set for Friday, for a ruling on the SEC’s petition to grant plenary powers to the receiver over the entire firm, and an absolute asset sequestration.

Doug Kass, president of hedge fund Seabreeze Partners Management said that “this is a major blow to confidence that is already shattered — anyone on the fence will probably try to take their money out.”

Monday, June 23, 2008

2008 COMPUTEX Taipei, the largest trade fair since its inception in 1982, featured several seminars and forums, expansions on show spaces to TWTC Nangang, great transformations for theme pavilions, and WiMAX Taipei Expo, mainly promoted by Taipei Computer Association (TCA). Besides of ICT industry, “design” progressively became the critical factor for the future of the other industries. To promote innovative “Made In Taiwan” products, pavilions from “Best Choice of COMPUTEX”, “Taiwan Excellence Awards”, and newly-set “Design and Innovation (d & i) Award of COMPUTEX”, demonstrated the power of Taiwan’s designs in 2008 COMPUTEX Taipei.

Monday, January 14, 2008

Today, NASA’s spacecraft MESSENGER, or the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging spacecraft, is expected to begin its two day mission at about noon (eastern time), of data collecting and photographing of the planet Mercury. It is the first spacecraft to visit the planet in 34 years, since Mariner 10’s visit to the planet in 1974.

“This is raw scientific exploration and the suspense is building by the day. What will MESSENGER see? Monday will tell the tale,” said Alan Stern, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C..

This encounter will provide a critical gravity assist needed to keep the spacecraft on track for its March 2011 orbit insertion, beginning an unprecedented yearlong study of Mercury. The flyby also will gather essential data for mission planning. It will flyby an impact crater called the Caloris basin which is almost 800 miles (1,287 kilometers) in diameter. The basin is one of the largest impact craters in our solar system.

“Caloris is huge, about a quarter of the diameter of Mercury, with rings of mountains within it that are up to two miles high. Mariner 10 saw a little less than half of the basin. During this first flyby, we will image the other side,” said Louise Prockter, the instrument scientist for the Mercury Dual Imaging System at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

It also will study the global magnetic field and improve our knowledge of the gravity field from the Mariner 10 flyby. The long-wavelength components of the gravity field provide key information about the planet’s internal structure, particularly the size of Mercury’s core. The flyby also will map Mercury’s tenuous atmosphere with ultraviolet observations and document the energetic particle and plasma of Mercury’s magnetosphere. In addition, the flyby trajectory will enable unique particle and plasma measurements of the magnetic tail that sweeps behind Mercury.

MESSENGER was launched on August 3, 2004 and will travel just under five billion miles in total. It already has flown past Earth once and Venus twice. The spacecraft will use the pull of Mercury’s gravity during this month’s pass and others in October 2008 and September 2009 to guide it progressively closer to the planet’s orbit. Insertion will be accomplished with a fourth Mercury encounter in 2011.

Sunday, October 2, 2005

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has filed 757 lawsuits against people who they alleged illegally shared music online. The vast majority of the lawsuits, 693, are against people who used peer-to-peer file-sharing networks such as eDonkey and LimeWire to exchange music files. Of the remaining lawsuits, 64 are against students at 17 different universities who used the Abilene Network and a peer-to-peer file sharing program called i2hub.

The i2hub program is designed for use in sharing files over the Abilene Network. The Abilene Network is a high speed network in use by 207 U.S. universities. It was designed by Internet2 to provide a high speed alternative for researchers and other educators to share information. The Abilene Network allows for very high speed connections, many times faster than DSL or Cable connections. The RIAA became a corporate member of Internet2 two weeks ago.

Over the past two years, the RIAA has filed more than 14,800 lawsuits against people accused of illegally sharing music online. Over 3,400 of these cases were settled for an average of between $4,000 to $5,000 each. Almost 500 of these lawsuits were against students using the Internet2 network.

Saturday, March 30, 2013

Yesterday, the Milwaukee County district attorney charged Cory J. Feerick, a 33-year-old from Brookfield, Wisconsin, with five misdemeanor counts of stealing US$35,000 worth of flush valves from fast food restaurants and university toilets and urinals. If convicted, Feerick could spend to 9 to 45 months in jail, and pay between US$10,000 and US$50,000 in fines.

Initially arrested in late January following a local news television story on the thefts, he stands accused of stealing parts worth between US$300 and US$600 each from locations that included Milwaukee Area Technical College, Waukesha County Technical College, ITT Technical Institute, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Marquette University, the Pick ‘n Save on Capitol Drive in Brookfield, and the Arby’s also located on Capitol Drive in Brookfield.

Feerick was dubbed the “Backpack Bathroom Bandit” by the media because video showed him committing the thefts while wearing a backpack. The thefts reportedly took place in September and October of last year, with several area police departments involved in investigating them.

Friday, May 19, 2006 State schools Superintendent Jack O’Connell has his lawyers working “around the clock” to prepare to ask the State Supreme Court to overturn a lower court judge’s ban on using the California State High School Exit Exam as a graduation requirement, he said today.

“In an effort to seek resolution of this issue as quickly as possible, I have asked my attorneys to appeal directly to the California Supreme Court,” said O’Connell in a prepared statement, “They are working around the clock to prepare those papers, and we expect to file within 24 to 30 hours. This is a remarkably fast turnaround for an appeal of a ruling that was made less than a week ago.”

Most appeals of a Superior Court decision go to an appellate court first.

Last Friday, Alameda County Superior Court judge Robert Freedman ruled against maintaining the California High School Exit Exam as a condition of graduation for the class of 2006, saying that the law requiring high school students to pass the test is unconstitutional because economically and racially disadvantaged students weren’t offered equal educations and therefore didn’t have an equal chance to pass.

In his statement, O’Connell acknowledged that some students need more help than others, but said the test should stand, anyway: “We know that some students at some schools need extra attention to overcome challenges brought to the classroom and challenges within the schools they attend. We agree those students must have every option available to them to learn the skills on the exam. But I strongly disagree that the remedy for students still struggling to pass the exam is to simply hand them a diploma whether or not they have learned what they need to know.”

Arturo J. Gonzalez, the San Francisco attorney who persuaded Freedman to stop the use of the test, told reporters that Freedman had ruled correctly and that the state should give up and let the students graduate. “There is no basis for the Supreme Court to take diplomas away from 45,000 students who have passed all required courses,” he said in an email exchange with the James Logan Courier. “To do that, they would have to find that Judge Freedman abused his discretion. Given the overwhelming evidence in support of his ruling, I do not think that any of the seven justices will find an abuse of discretion.”

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said he supported O’Connell’s bid to reinstate the test and would “put the full weight of my administration behind reinstating the California High School Exit Exam graduation requirement.”

O’Connell, who wrote the law, wants the requirement to be enforced against this year’s would-be graduates who haven’t yet passed the test and so is set to ask the State Supreme Court to immediately stay Freedman’s injunction to allow the state to withhold high school diplomas as originally planned.. At last count, the ruling affects about 47,000 California Seniors, including about 70 from James Logan High School.

“The decision came as more than 1,100 California high schools prepare for graduation ceremonies,” he said, “It created confusion and uncertainty not only for seniors in the class of 2006 but for juniors in the class of 2007.”

Cynthia O’Brien, who oversees testing at James Logan High School, told The Courier she wants the confusion to end. “If the Exit Exam is going to go forward, then it needs to go forward. If not, then it needs to be cancelled completely,” she said last week.

“Many students now wonder whether they should enroll in summer school or plan to take a summer administration of the exit exam,” he said, “Administrators and teachers are left wondering whether students who need the extra assistance will bother to enroll. And students who should be buckling down to learn the skills they need to succeed in college or the workplace have now been told they can get a diploma whether or not they have those skills.

“It is our responsibility to all of California’s children, especially our disadvantaged and minority students, to equip them with the most basic skills they will need in college, in work and in life,” said Schwarzenegger. “ Postponing the exam graduation requirement will hurt our children in the long run by depriving us of the best tool we have to measure how well schools are doing their job.”

He said he’s budgeted more money to help students pass the test: “My 2006-07 budget will add $7.7 million for three additional administration of the exam and we will also provide $65 million this year to give students at risk of failing the exam the support they need to pass it.”

The high court has 90 days to decide whether to hear O’Connell’s appeal once it’s filed, but could act more quickly if it chooses.

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Wikinews has obtained a letter by Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill to former Conservative justice spokesman John Lamont in response to questions raised by our correspondent about the Mikaeel Kular murder case. Wikinews has investigated possible contempt by media publishing potentially prejudicial material, and MacAskill wrote he has “been following the case of Mikaeel Kular and [is] acutely aware of the unusual publicity this case has attracted.”

When Mikaeel Kular, three, vanished from his Edinburgh home last month police and volunteers scoured the capital for him. His body was found in Fife just before midnight on January 17, and his mother was arrested on January 18. That’s when Wikinews first reported on possible widespread contempt by UK and Scottish media.

Our correspondent is based in Scotland and was been advised by a lawyer not to identify anybody detained until they have appeared in court, even if they have been arrested and charged. Professor James Chalmers of the University of Glasgow has since reviewed our coverage and confirmed this position. Despite that a large number of major media outlets identified Rosdeep Adekoya, nee Kular, 33, as the arrested individual.

Adekoya has since been in Edinburgh Sheriff Court charged with murdering her son. She is in custody pending indictment and trial, but any eyewitness evidence may be tainted because her image has been widely published. This is common practice elsewhere in the UK but Scottish justice works differently and courts have viewed publication of photos as potentially prejudicial. Professor Pamela Ferguson of the University of Dundee notes “journalists do seem to be walking a dangerous line if publishing photos etc of suspects.” Crown Office, which is in overall charge of prosecutions, has indicated to journalists that no further comment will be made at least until indictment.

MacAskill however expressed confidence in the Scottish court system to deal with the situation. “I am confident… the courts themselves will intervene if they believe publicity is in danger of being prejudicial.” He also wrote to Lamont that he has faith in the court to successfully direct any jury that may try the case in order to maintain fairness.

The Contempt of Court Act 1981 is designed to prevent prejudicial material going in front of juries before trial. Although UK-wide legislation, the law is interpreted differently north of the border than in England and Wales. Witnesses in Scotland may be asked to identify accused persons standing in the dock. The BBC College of Journalism advises legal advice be sought ahead of publishing photos and notes it has previously been ruled contempt. The BBC used the accused’s photo prominently in their own online coverage.

Chalmers explains: “It may be a contempt of court to create a substantial risk of serious prejudice to someone’s right to a fair trial. A photograph might do this in a case where identification is an issue; on the face of it, that does not seem especially likely in this case, but it is impossible to know for certain at this point. The courts have said that the only safe route to avoid committing a contempt is to avoid publishing a photograph, but that does not mean that publishing a photograph is automatically a contempt.” MacAskill noted “the kind of issue that publicity might raise may become apparent only during the trial itself.”

Contempt has been a considerable issue in the UK in recent years after high-profile cases. In one instance a charge against serial killer Levi Bellfield was dropped owing to publicity while the jury were deliberating; in another, newspapers were fined and sued for libel over reporting on the arrest of a suspect who turned out to be innocent in a prominent investigation.

A proposal was mooted to ban identification of suspects arrested anywhere in the UK, but this was subsequently shelved. MacAskill confirmed “the Scottish Government is content with the way the courts are operating the rules on contempt of court in Scotland at the moment and has no plans to make changes.” He also wrote of the difficulties with trying to individually cover all eventualities with prescriptive legislation, saying “A trial for a sexual offence will raise very different issues — particularly of protecting victims — from those that are raised by a tax fraud trial.”

MacAskill says it is the Scottish Government’s position that the task of “counterbalancing the public interest in reporting with upholding the criminal law should be left to those whose job it is to do so — the courts and the judiciary, acting in the individual circumstances of the case”.