Author: Admin

Thursday, June 8, 2006

The international forces in East Timor have reached an agreement about the coordination of the military and police forces in the field. Representatives of the four countries reached the agreement during an urgent meeting after an incident between Australian and Portuguese soldiers yesterday.

In the agreement reached between Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Portugal and the Timorese government, operational autonomy is given to the international forces, which will operate in cooperation and coordination with each other.

The agreement also stated that in an initial phase Dili will be divided into sectors, and each area will be under the control of an international force. Outside of its area of responsibility, the military or police force will only be able to operate if other international forces request their actions. Also was agreed that the police forces will assume total control of the city after the military forces leave their current occupied positions. A situation that is expected after the arrival of the remaining equipment, mainly vehicles, for the Portuguese Republican National Guard (GNR) and the arrival of the remaining Malaysian police officers and their equipment.

In an official notice, the Timorese Foreign Minister, José Ramos Horta stated that “the objective on a long run is for the GNR to operate has a tactical intervention force in all the city of Dili”.

Ramos Horta explained that “in the next days, maybe already tomorrow morning, they [the Australian, Malaysian, New Zealand and Portuguese forces] will do some coordination training, in way to assure that the four forces know exactly what each one will do”. “Since some are from the Army and the others [Portuguese Republican National Guard] are a specialized police and that they never worked together, its useful to carry out some practical exercises”, he added.

In another subject, Ramos Horta explained that the Australian soldiers that are in Maubisse, next to a rebel group lead by major Reinado, and in Gleno, Ermera, next to another group of “military opponents”, are there “containing those elements”.

“Those groups are not comparable with other people that are here in Dili and that must be disarmed”, Ramos Horta said.

“The Australian presence in Maubisse and Gleno aims in containing those groups on their areas, until arrives the moment in which the President decides that is time for also mister Alfredo Reinado and the others to put down their weapons”, he said. “This is not urgent because they are not causing problems to anyone”, he justified.

The urgency of the resolution and clarification of the command and cooperation of the international forces was originated after an incident between Australian and Portuguese soldiers. When yesterday a Portuguese GNR patrol transported three people to a temporary detention center managed by Australian soldiers.

The detainees were arrested by a GNR Special Operations team, after being caught looting a governmental warehouse, in Balide, Dili.

The Australian soldiers then refused to receive the detained men, questioning the legitimacy of the Portuguese soldiers to make arrests. The Portuguese contingent transported the detainees to the Timorese prison services in Dili.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Art Linkletter, creator of the television show Kids Say the Darndest Things, died peacefully in his Los Angeles, California home Wednesday.

Linkletter was best known for his television broadcasting hits, Kids Say the Darndest Things, People Are Funny, The Art Linkletter Show, and House Party. Linkletter was also a famed author, compiling the quotes from Kids Say the Darndest Things into a best-selling book of the same name. Bill Cosby says that “because of Art Linkletter, adults found themselves enjoying children.” A few of Linksletter’s other books are I Didn’t Do It Alone, Old Age is Not for Sissies, How To Be a Supersalesman, Confessions of a Happy Man, and Hobo on the Way to Heaven.

The Grammy-winning song We Love You, Call Collect was recorded jointly by Linkletter and his daughter Diane, who had later died from a fall from a sixth floor Hollywood apartment.

As the owner of Linkletter Enterprises, Linkletter owned real estate in Australia and invested in oil wells.

Linkletter, originally known as Gordon Arthur Kelly, was born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan before being adopted by the Linkletter family. Linkletter was predeceased by his daughter and two sons, and is survived by his wife, two other daughters, seven grandchildren, and numerous great grandchildren.

Monday, August 21, 2006

A report by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) says rising demand for irrigation to produce food and biofuels will aggravate scarcities of water. “One in three people is enduring one form or another of water scarcity,” states the report compiled by 700 experts.

IWMI warns there has to be a radical transformation in the management of water resources – citing as examples Australia, south-central China, and last year’s devastating drought in India. Report authors claim that the price of water could double or triple over the next two decades. The report, backed by the United Nations and farm research groups, shows that globally, water usage had increased by six times in the past 100 years and would double again by 2050 – driven mainly by irrigation and demands by agriculture.

Record oil prices and concerns about rapid onset climate change are driving more countries to produce biofuels – from sugarcane, corn or wood – as an alternative to fossil fuel. “If people are growing biofuels and food it will put another new stress,” says David Molden, who led the study at the Sri Lanka-based IWMI. “The big solution is to find ways to grow more food with less water. Basically, more crop per drop,” Molden said. “The number one recommendation… is to look to improve rain-fed systems in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.”

The report says conquering hunger and coping with an estimated 3 billion more humans by 2050 will result in an 80 percent increase in water use for agriculture. Irrigation absorbs around 74 percent and is likely to surge by 2050.

“We will have to change business as usual in order to deal with growing scarcity,” said Frank Rijsberman, director general of the IWMI, of the report released at the 2006 “World Water Week” conference in Stockholm. Solutions included helping poor countries to grow more food with available fresh water via simple, low-cost measures, a shift from past policies that favoured expensive dams or canals, the report said.

According to Rijsberman, there are two types of shortages: those observed in regions where water is over-exploited, causing a lowering of groundwater levels and rivers to dry up; and those in countries lacking the technical and financial resources to capture water – despite its abundance.

Billions of people in Asia and Africa already faced water shortages because of poor water management, he said. “We will not run out of bottled water any time soon, but some countries have already run out of water to produce their own food,” he said.

The report said that a calorie of food took roughly 1 litre of water to produce, with a kilo of grain needing only 500-4,000 litres compared to a kilo of industrially produced meat taking 10,000 litres.

“Without improvements in water productivity the consequences of this will be even more widespread water scarcity and rapidly increasing water prices.” Rijsberman said water scarcity in Africa was caused by a lack of infrastructure to get the water to the people who needed it. “The water is there, the rainfall is there, but the infrastructure isn’t there,” Rijsberman told reporters.

Other recommendations for certain regions include the extension and the improvement of agriculture using rainwater, the introduction of cereal varieties that need less water as well as the development of irrigation systems.

But the priority, Rijsberman stresses, is to change mentalities and often outdated government policies. “Government policies and their approach to water are probably the most urgent that need changing in the short term,” he said.

There is, he says, enough land, water and human capacity to produce enough food for a growing population over the next 50 years, but one of the challenges is to provide enough water for agriculture without damaging the environment. “Agriculture is driving water scarcity and water scarcity is driving environmental degradation and destruction,” he said.

In Australia last week, Rijsberman said he would “not be surprised to see the price of water double or triple over the next two decades.”

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Sharks lead series 1-0. (Best of Seven)

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Hundreds of developers of freely licensed and open source software from all over Europe met in Brussels, Belgium this weekend for FOSDEM 2008. The 8th edition attracted considerably more visitors than previous editions, mainly from Belgium and its neighbouring countries the Netherlands, Germany, France and the United Kingdom, but also from other European countries and even from the United States.

During the conference weekend, presentations touched on programming languages, build systems, gaming (such as Battle for Wesnoth, Crystal Space, Globulation 2), packaging, virtualisation and web applications. The conference also has rooms (called DevRooms) were developers who usually work together via the internet can meet in real life and share thoughts on their projects; CentOS, Fedora, CrossDesktop, Drupal, GNOME, KDE, Mozilla, OpenSUSE and X.org had the biggest rooms this year. The corridors were filled with stands from organisations such as the Free Software Foundation Europe and the Free Knowledge Foundation, Debian, Ubuntu, OpenOffice.org, etc.

Since FOSDEM brings many European open software developers to Brussels, it also provides an important networking opportunity. FOSDEM traditionally kicks off Belgium-style on Friday with a beer event, but during the entire weekend several groups hold parties all over town. Wikinews reporters attended a barbecue hosted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on Friday for an interview with EFF and Open Rights Group representatives about the upcoming E.U. proposal to extend copyright for performers to 95 years. Wikinews also interviewed Drupal founder and Acquia CTO Dries Buytaert about Drupal and how Acquia will relate to the Drupal developer community.

• Main lecture theatre on Sunday.

• Lecture on Conary.

• Young hackers

• Hackers room

• Free Knowledge Foundation stand.

• DevRoom (Drupal)

• One of the talks in the Drupal DevRoom ?was about the Dutch municipality Vught and its journey towards a home page with Drupal.?

• DevRoom

• DevRoom (Drupal)

• DevRoom

• DevRoom (Mozilla)

• Key signing party.?

?

Saturday, October 3, 2020

Very early yesterday morning, the United States President Donald Trump reported he and his wife First Lady Melania Trump tested positive for COVID-19. Officials said the Trumps’ 14-year-old son Barron tested negative as did First Family and Senior Advisors Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.

Trump took to social media, posting at 12:54 am local time (0454 UTC) on Twitter, “Tonight, [Melania] and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!” Yesterday afternoon Marine One landed on the White House’s South Lawn flying Trump to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center (WRNMMC) in Bethesda, Maryland.

Reports said both were showing “mild symptoms”. Senior administration officials were tested as people were informed of the positive test. Senior advisor Hope Hicks had tested positive on Thursday.

Presidential physician Sean Conley issued a statement saying Trump has been given zinc, vitamin D, Pepcid and a daily Aspirin. Conley also gave a single dose of the experimental polyclonal antibodies drug from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.

According to official statements, Trump, now operating from the WRNMMC, is to continue performing his duties as president during a 14-day quarantine. In the event of Trump becoming incapacitated, Vice President Mike Pence could take over the duties of president via the 25th Amendment of the US Constitution. The Pence family all tested negative as of yesterday and there were no changes regarding Pence’s campaign events.

Wednesday, April 8, 2020

Yesterday, Bangladesh has confirmed five new deaths due to COVID-19 on the day. This is the highest number of fatalities in a day due to the virus. As of yesterday, Bangladesh’s Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) reported the number of recorded infected cases included 114 active cases and 33 recovered cases who were staying home. A total of 17 deaths have been recorded.

In an online news briefing, the director of IEDCR, Dr Meerjady Sabrina Flora, said the fatalities included four males and one female. According to Dr Meerjady, two cases were aged above 60, two between 51 and 60, and one 41-50 years old. She also said two of the victims were from Dhaka. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11.

A hospital official told Anadolu Agency, a local news outlet, that one of the deceased was Jalal Saifur Rahman, a director of Bengali Anti-Corruption Commission, who was cared for at the Kuwait Maitree Hospital.

On Saturday, in an online video announcement, Bangladeshi Road Transport and Bridges Minister Obaidul Quader said public transport would be shut down for longer than initially planned, until this coming Saturday. This public transport shutdown had initially started on March 26 and was planned to end on Saturday, April 4. Transport of essential goods — medical, fuel and food — was still allowed.

The first recorded incidents of COVID-19 infection in Bangladesh were on March 8, in two people who returned from Italy and also the wife of one of them. As of March 19, these three had already recovered.