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Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Hurricane Florence was positioned at 35.8 N 63.9 W, at 11 p.m. EDT (UTC – 4 hr), with maximum winds blowing at 85 mph and gusts of up to 105 mph. The hurricane is moving in a north-easterly direction at 18 mph and is showing signs of weakening.

The government of Bermuda has discontinued the Tropical Storm warning it issued only after it blew away window panes, glasses and roofs. No deaths have been reported though there are reports of minor injuries. The hurricane has knocked out power supply to thousands of people.

The Bermuda Electric Light Company (BELCO) expects the restoration of supply to be complete in few days.

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Sunday, March 8, 2020

This Thursday, an all-women crew ran the Mysore–Bangalore Tippu Express in the Indian state of Karnataka. The state-run Indian Railways launched this event ahead of International Women’s Day, for promoting gender equality at work places. Aparna Garg — who has been the Divisional Railway Manager (DRM) for Mysore Division for almost two years — discussed this initiative with Wikinews. International Women’s Day is observed on March 8.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

The Associated Press (AP) news agency has come under fire from the blogging community after issuing a number of DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown notices against bloggers who have used extracts from AP articles.

Quoting from correspondence surrounding the takedown notices, a Drudge Retort contributor claims in his personal blog that not only is AP asserting that the quotes are a copyright violation, but that they also constitute ‘”hot news” misappropriation.

Wikinews contacted several people in an effort to get to the bottom of this issue. Rogers Cadenhead, one of the copublishers of the Drudge Report blog, brought Wikinews up to speed on the DMCA notices. The takedown notices were received by email on June 10, he said. This, in and of itself, constitutes an improper filing. The letter of the law requires that a DMCA notice be sent to the appropriate party by recorded postal delivery.

Cadenhead remains unaware of any other bloggers who have been similarly notified, and says receiving seven takedown notices left him “dumbfounded”. Previous Drudge Retort interaction with AP’s legal team had seen AP complain about people posting entire reports in the comments section of the site. These were quickly removed and users warned that this was inappropriate and indisputably a copyright violation, says Cadenhead.

Cadenhead goes on to discuss how blogs, and other social networking sites, are of benefit to mainstream media such as AP. He describes how the posting of excerpts and quotes helps drive visitors to the sites where the full article text can be found, “MSNBC publishes its news videos with an “embed” button that makes it possible to share them on blogs. If NBC sees the value of that, print-based media should recognize the benefits of encouraging the link-and-excerpt culture of bloggers. I heard on NPR yesterday that 20 percent of the New York Times web traffic is referred by blogs.”

There may be a longer-term strategy behind these actions from the Associated Press. A report on ChannelWeb indicates that AP wants to charge for excerpts of their online content. The pricing schedule reported on this site starts at US$12.50 for quoting five to twenty-five words and goes up to US$100.00 for over 251 words. This, a challenge to the very existence of fair use, is to be managed by the company iCopyright operating as a copyright protection service. Cory Doctorow goes into this in some depth on the Boing Boing site, commenting that those who inform on violators may receive up to one million dollar rewards. In addition, the “no disparagement” clause is highlighted, whereby AP reserves the right to revoke the license where they are unhappy with the usage.

“Welcome to a world in which you won’t be able to effectively criticize the press, because you’ll be required to pay to quote as few as five words from what they publish,” Doctorow wrote.

The controversy provoked by these moves from AP, apparently, prompted them to schedule a meeting with the Media Bloggers Association to hammer out a set of guidelines.

The Associated Press case seems to rely on the 1918 U.S. Supreme Court case, International News Service v. Associated Press where, following INS being prevented from using allied telegraph lines following unfavourable reporting, they used AP reports as a source to rewrite in their own words. With one vigorously dissenting justice, the case was closed in AP’s favour, with the INS usage described as “misappropriation”. Today sees a similar battle played out where bloggers and other citizen journalists simply do not have the resources to place their own reporters at the scene and must excerpt or rewrite from sources such as AP.

According to Michael Kwun, a senior staff attorney with the EFF, one of their blog entries describes the action as biting the hand that feeds them. Kwun questioned whether the 1918 ruling could still be considered “good law”, that changes in Federal law likely rendered it inapplicable, and that there was only a small chance that at state level this could still be applied.

Despite several attempts to get input from the Associated Press, they had not responded to Wikinews at time of publication. Attempts to contact Reuters and the BBC for input also went unanswered.

On June 20, Cadenhead released a statement saying that after receiving additional information from AP, he is “glad” the dispute is over. AP said it had a “constructive exchange” with a “number of interested parties in the blogging community” and will seek to continue dialogue.

“I think it would be helpful for bloggers and users of social news sites to know what the AP believes to be fair use of their copyrighted work,” said Wade Duchene, attorney for Cadenhead. “I hope that any guidelines that are issued are not interpreted as an agreed definition of fair use.”

Sunday, November 6, 2005

Authorities are looking for USD$75,000 in frozen bull semen stolen Sunday from liquid nitrogen tanks at a farm in Frederick County, Maryland. Eric Fleming, the owner, says the semen took 4 to 5 years to collect from 40 to 50 bulls. He had planned to sell the semen at an upcoming Denver cattle show.

The collection and storage of semen can be a very profitable business—the ease of transportation reduces the costs normally associated with insemination, namely the transport of bull and cow to one another. Collection can be tricky, however, as bulls do not always produce as expected and the process is not particularly easy.

“I will give a nice fat reward for any information on semen that was stolen from my tank today,” Fleming posted to a livestock breeder’s message board. “It was a mother load of semen.”

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi peace activist who lives in the United States, was forced to change his T-Shirt, which bore an Arabic slogan, because it was found “offensive”.

The incident took place in JFK airport in New York. The activist Jarrar reported in his blog RaedInTheMiddle that he had checked-in his bags and was issued a boarding pass. After waiting near the gate to board his jetBlue airlines flight, and after having to gone through a secondary search, two officials approached him.

“People are feeling offended because of your t-shirt,” Raed reported that one of the men said to him. The writings on the T-Shirt said in both Arabic and English: “We will not be silent”.

Raed asked why this has offended anyone, and insisted his right to freedom of expression was violated.

According to Jarrar, one of the inspectors said, “You can’t wear a T-shirt with Arabic script and come to an airport. It is like wearing a t-shirt that reads ‘I am a robber’ and going to a bank”. The airport official, unable to read Arabic, was unyielding to protests by Jarrar that the English language version of the Arabic was accurate, and suggested he wear the shirt inside out.

“Many people called and complained about your t-shirt. Jetblue customers were calling before you reached the checkpoint, and customers called when you were waiting here in the boarding area”, Jarrar was told after he complained.

One employee from JetBlue offered to buy Jarrar a T-shirt to replace the one he was wearing, since the activist had none other after his bags were checked. Refusing at first, he agreed to wear one with “New York” written on it.

The officer on the scene commented that it need not have gone from one extreme to the other: wearing a T-Shirt with an Arabic peace slogan on it, to wearing one with ‘New York’. There is no reason to hate New York if you are an Arab speaking peace activist, according to Jarrar.

“I feel very sad that my personal freedom was taken away like this. I grew up under authoritarian governments in the Middle East, and one of the reasons I chose to move to the U.S. was that I don’t want an officer to make me change my t-shirt. I will pursue this incident today through a constitutional rights organization, and I am sure we will meet soon,” Raed said.

He was issued another boarding pass, with a different seat at the back of the plane.

JetBlue said it was investigating the incident but a spokeswoman said: “We’re not clear exactly what happened.” The spokeswoman also said the airline does not forbid Arabic T-shirts, but that it does take into account the concerns of its passengers.

The American-Arab Anti-discrimination Committee said the US Transportation Department and the Transportation Security Administration were also investigating the incident after the committee lodged complaints on behalf of Jarrar.

“We Will Not Be Silent” is a slogan adopted by opponents of the war in Iraq and other conflicts in the Middle East.

It is said to derive from the White Rose dissident group which opposed Nazi rule in Germany.