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Friday, June 3, 2016

Swiss mining company Glencore announced yesterday the closure of its coal mine in Tahmoor, New South Wales, Australia. The mine is to be closed by early 2019, pointing to the downturn of coal prices in global markets.

Glencore stated, “The decision has been made as a result of continued low prices in global coal markets, which has meant the economic return from reserves still available at Tahmoor are not sufficient to warrant the investment required to mine them”.

The closure will result in a loss of 350 jobs according to the company, who said they are consulting with the employees.

The mine is not the only operation impacted by the fall of global coal and commodity prices. The Australian arm of mining magnate Peabody Energy has reported losses of almost A$3 billion in 2015. According to latest financial reports for Peabody subsidiary Peabody Australia Holdco lodged via Australian Securities and Investments Commission, the company earned a net loss of A$2.7 billion — after a loss of A$1.2 billion in 2014. Accountants at Peabody Australia have warned the mine might not be able to continue operating, with the market persistently weak since December.

Despite low coal and commodity prices, both the major political parties have been supportive of coal mines. While appearing on the ABC’s Q&A program on Monday night, Coalition MP Steve Ciobo confirmed party support of coal mines. In response to an audience member question, concerning what policies the panellists had planned to combat job and economic loses in Queensland after the mining boom, Ciobo stated the Coalition government supports Adani’s new Carmichael mine in the Galilee Basin — as an example of “transitioning” the state’s economy.

Labor MP Terri Butler said although she doesn’t personally support Adani’s Carmichael project, the state Labor government “didn’t have much discretion” surrounding its approval. Meanwhile, Greens party leader Richard Di Natale criticised responses from the panellists claiming the “great tragedy” is both major parties support of coal mines such as Carmichael.

“If you care about tourism you don’t open up a whopping great big coal mine and fuel catastrophic global warming”, said Di Natale.

Di Natale accused both major parties of being deceitful in “slashing” both the target of and agency funding for renewable energy, leaving no plan to realize the investment potential of the renewable sector.

Sunday, August 21, 2005

A robotic system at Stanford Medical Center was used to perform a laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery successfully with a theoretically similar rate of complications to that seen in standard operations. However, as there were only 10 people in the experimental group (and another 10 in the control group), this is not a statistically significant sample.

If this surgical procedure is as successful in large-scale studies, it may lead the way for the use of robotic surgery in even more delicate procedures, such as heart surgery. Note that this is not a fully automated system, as a human doctor controls the operation via remote control. Laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery is a treatment for obesity.

There were concerns that doctors, in the future, might only be trained in the remote control procedure. Ronald G. Latimer, M.D., of Santa Barbara, CA, warned “The fact that surgeons may have to open the patient or might actually need to revert to standard laparoscopic techniques demands that this basic training be a requirement before a robot is purchased. Robots do malfunction, so a backup system is imperative. We should not be seduced to buy this instrument to train surgeons if they are not able to do the primary operations themselves.”

There are precedents for just such a problem occurring. A previous “new technology”, the electrocardiogram (ECG), has lead to a lack of basic education on the older technology, the stethoscope. As a result, many heart conditions now go undiagnosed, especially in children and others who rarely undergo an ECG procedure.

Tuesday, June 30, 2020

Recently, Finnish open-source video game developer Perttu Ahola discussed Minetest, his “longest ever project”, with Wikinews.

Started in October 2010, Minetest was an attempt by Ahola to create a sandbox game similar to Minecraft. Minecraft is a multi-platform commercial game, which was in alpha version when Ahola challenged himself to create something similar to it from scratch, he told Wikinews.

Minetest is an open-source game, which is free for anyone to download and play. It is written in the C++ programming language, and the source code is available on code-hosting site GitHub. According to Ahola, Minetest attempts to run on older hardware, with limited graphics, but to be accessible to more people: those who have outdated technology, and making it available for no cost. Minecraft, on the other hand, is a paid game, currently costing USD 26.95 for its computer version. Minecraft is currently owned by Microsoft, and performs poorly on older hardware.

A correspondent from French Wikinews contacted Perttu Ahola via Internet Relay Chat a few weeks ago, discussing Minecraft. This interview is built on top of the previous interview, as we take a deeper dive into knowing more about this free game which is about to turn ten years old in a few months.

Sunday, December 4, 2016

A fire broke out at a record release party in Oakland, California late on Friday night. Nine were confirmed dead the following morning with the death toll rising to 24 the next day.

The warehouse, known as Ghost Ship, was hosting a party for the release of the newest album by Joel “Golden Donna” Shanahan. It is in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood, a mix of commercial and residential buildings nestled together. The structure is one block away from Fire Station No. 13 and at least 55 firefighters spent four hours containing and stopping the fire which began at approximately 11:30 p.m.

Firefighters and police cordoned off the block to spectators. The two-story, mixed-use structure also housed the artist collective Satya Yuga who hosted the show and is being searched by firefighters. Out of approximately 50 attendees, at least 25 were declared missing. Shanahan was among the survivors.

Efforts to rescue partygoers were compounded by the roof caving in during the inferno as well as the stacks of furniture, art pieces, and supplies which turned into obstacles for first responders.

Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf:

The structure is owned by Chor N. Ng, who is also the proprietor of several other buildings in the East Bay. On November 13 Ng was cited by the city for having stacks of garbage in and around the warehouse. Most fatalities were reported to have occurred in the upstairs portion of the building where escape was hampered by unstable stairs and miscellaneous art pieces lying in the way. The building lacked any smoke detectors and sprinklers; fire extinguishers were found outside of the premises.

Saturday, March 26, 2005

Beijing’s city legislature has approved a bill, one year in the making, to safeguard the historical and cultural heritage of old Beijing. The new 41-article set of regulations will come into effect May 1, requiring the city to protect listed heritage sites and unlisted sites deemed of historical or cultural value. It also guarantees protection for the area within the city’s Second Ring Road.

Director of the Beijing Administrative Bureau of Cultural Heritage, Mei Ninghua, said “the most encouraging content of the regulations is that Beijing will pay more attention to protecting the old city’s landscape in its entirety, rather than just focussing on scattered heritage sites.” This means the old city layout, colours of buildings, and the names of houses and lanes will have legal protection.

“We took measures to protect the city’s siheyuan courtyard houses by tagging protection plates on more than 650 of them in 2003, preventing them from being demolished or damaged during the city’s massive housing reconstruction projects,” said Mei.

“Now the new regulations give legal buttress to the protection of siheyuan courtyard homes, as well as other unmovable ancient treasures, that have yet to be listed but are at risk of being demolished during urban renovation.”

Modern Beijing, capital of China for 850 years, was built by Mongul Emporer Kublai Khan in 1267 AD. In the vicinity of the current city once was Ji (?), the capital of the State of Yan (?), a power of the Warring States Period – but it has been lost in the mists of time.

Thursday, April 21, 2005

Cambridge, Massachusetts —The 2005 Cyberarts Festival, which runs through May 8, 2005, opened with a gala at the Hotel@MIT, a hotel near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The gala, which took place in a series of function rooms on the third floor of the hotel, started at 6:00 p.m. and ran past its stated end time of 9:00 p.m. The event featured food and drink, as well as computer art from a variety of artists whose work will be featured in the festival.

Local Wikipedia contributor Samuel Klein displayed a customization of Daniel Wunsch’s rcbirds program, which converts Wikipedia recent changes feeds into a series of bird calls and other sounds from the open-sound peep project, differentiating edits by the anonymity of the user, the name and namespace of the article involved, and the user’s contribution history. Different types of edits produced different bird calls; once or twice during the evening, conversation was briefly interrupted to undo vandalism signaled by the stream of sound.

Martin Wattenberg, a researcher at IBM’s local research lab, who has also developed software to visualize the history of changes to Wikipedia pages, exhibited his visualization of the decision tree of a computer playing chess, described jokingly as “Tiny Blue.”

Other presenters included Newbury Open.net’s new Boston Music Project .

Thursday, January 28, 2010

NBA Commissioner David Stern suspended Washington Wizards teammates Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton for the remainder of the 2010 NBA season on Wednesday, January 27. The suspensions came after a fallout stemming from the two bringing guns into the Wizards’ locker room.

The suspensions took place after a one-hour meeting between Arenas and Stern. Stern noted that his decision on the two was to be harsh, as “guns are prohibited from being in our buildings and in team business…it’s very potentially dangerous to our players and to anyone else who might be involved.” Arenas had earlier pleaded guilty to felony gun possession, and Crittenton pleaded guilty earlier this month to a misdemeanor gun charge.

Crittenton had not played for the Wizards this season, and will not likely be back in a Wizards uniform as his contract expires at the end of the season. Arenas’ suspension amounted to 48 games, making his the third longest non-drug related suspension in NBA history, behind Latrell Sprewell and Ron Artest, who missed 68 and 73 games, respectively.

The Wizards backed Stern’s decision, releasing a statement that the two “violated the trust of our fans and stands in contrast to everything that [owner] Abe Pollin stood for throughout his life.”

The team was originally named the Washington Bullets until 1997, when Pollin changed the team name to Wizards to express his abhorrence of gun violence in the Washington, D.C. community.

A compilation of brief news reports for Monday, May 7, 2007.

A 30 meter section of a gas pipeline in Luka (near Kiev) in Ukraine has been destroyed by an explosion. Although supplies to Europe via this pipeline have stopped, Ukrainian Energy Minister Georgi E. Boyko said that supplies to Europe would not be affected.

“There are no changes in volumes of gas being transported,” Yuri Korolchuk said. “Volumes due to pass through the damaged section are being redirected through the Soyuz pipeline.”

Normal flows are reported in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Romania.

Sources

• “Blast damages pipeline in Ukraine” — Russia Today, May 8, 2007
• Natalya Zinets, Reuters. “Blast hits Ukraine gas pipeline” — The Scotsman, May 7, 2007

Copper prices are rising. Between record copper imports from China, and a mining strike in Peru, the prices have climbed to over $8100 (United States dollars) a tonne, for a gain of $575 dollars over the last week. However the upward trend is not new, it has been climbing for quite some time. In April 2003, the price of copper was under $2000 a tonne.

The metal market has been tending up due to growth in the Chinese industrial production. This trickles down to the local level, where the buying price at scrap yards is ever climbing, making scrap metal collection a more profitable endeavour for individual people using pick up trucks or other such vehicles to collect and cash in the scrap metal at metal buying yards. It can be collected via agreements with businesses, from the garbage, or, sometimes, by theft.

Copper prices fell today on the NYMEX commodity exchange from US$3.7545 per pound to US$3.7125 based on the July futures contract.

Sources

• “Copper up but crude oil down” — Financial Express, May 6, 2007
• Millie Munshi. “Metals Bubble Poised to Burst on Increasing Supplies” — Bloomberg L.P., May 7, 2007
• “Commodity Futures” — Bloomberg L.P., accessed May 7, 2007

One man was killed and another injured by an exploding backpack in the parking lot of the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. The explosion happened at 4 a.m. PDT when the victim tried to remove a the object left on top of his car.

Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) are on the scene. Aerial images did not show any apparent damage.

“We believe the victim was the intended target of this,” Bill Cassell said, spokesperson for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. “This is being treated as a homicide in which the weapon used to cause death is a non-traditional weapon.”

Both of the victims worked at the Luxor.

Sources

• Associated Press. “1 dead, 1 hurt in Las Vegas parking lot blast” — MSNBC, May 7, 2007
• “Explosion kills man in Vegas outside Luxor hotel” — Reuters, May 7, 2007