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Thursday, May 27, 2010

Canadian researchers from C-crest Laboratories have discovered an “unusually high” amount of bacteria in bottled water. Researchers don’t blame specific brands, but bottled water in general.

A random study found unusually high rates of heterotrophic bacteria in the bottled water, more than 500 cfu, the legal limit set by United States Pharmacopeia on how much bacteria should be present in drinking water in Canada. Unusually high amounts of bacteria were present in 70% of the test samples across several brands of bottled water. “Heterotrophic bacteria counts in some of the bottles were found to be in revolting figures of (100) times more than the permitted limit,” said Sonish Azam, a Canadian researcher involved in the study, “This amount of bacteria is alarming, as if we are ingesting a cup of culture.” “Microbiologically speaking,” she said, “tap water is purer than bottled water — most bottled water. We didn’t know this until we conducted the research.”

The bacteria are not very harmful to an average person, but many sensitive groups, such as the young, sick or elderly, could get sick from it. “Heterotrophic bacteria counts in drinking water are not a health concern to the general public,” was the concluding analyses of a recent study by the World Health Organization.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Almost exactly one year ago, on March 7, Garuda Indonesia Flight 200 crashed during landing at Adisucipto International Airport, near Yogyakarta, after a scheduled domestic Indonesian passenger flight. 21 people – 16 Indonesians and five Australians – were killed when the Boeing 737-400 overshot the runway, crossed a road, struck an embankment and burst into flames in a rice paddy. Overall, the plane had traveled 252m beyond the extreme end of the runway.

The final report, released in October, blamed pilot error for the disaster. The report stated that the aircraft had approached at a speed far exceeding that at which the wing flaps could properly operate, and attempted to execute a landing at 408 kph (254 mph), which is 160 kph (100 mph) above the safe speed. It also found that captain Marwoto Komar had ignored fifteen activations of the Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS) informing Mr Komar that the aircraft was flying at a speed beyond that at which it could safely land, but he failed to abort.

It also commented that he missed one further opportunity for emergency evasive action when the airliner struck the runway and bounced into the air, at which point co-pilot Gagam Rochmana requested a ‘go-around‘ procedure be initiated, but was also ignored. It further criticised Mr Komar for singing during final approach, a direct violation of the Garuda Basic Operations Manual, which calls for activation of the Sterile Cockpit Rule at 10,000 feet and below.

Mr Rochmana was also criticised for his failure to take control away from Mr Komar when it became apparent that the aircraft was being operated in an unsafe manner. However, the report did note that Garuda Indonesia had failed to give him any simulator training replicating a situation whereby the co-pilot would take over control duties from the pilot in charge due to unsafe handling of the plane; in fact, training was found to be inadequate for both members of the cockpit crew.

Further criticisms were also leveled at airport and governmental authorities for failures in their respective roles to provide safety features and to enforce regulations.

However, the Indonesian authorities have recently generated intense controversy by deciding to prosecute Mr Komar for his role in the disaster. The move has been pushed for by some, but met with opposition by others.

Alexander Downer, Australian foreign minister at the time of the crash, immediately said “…I am very glad that they have reached a point now where they have charged the captain of the aircraft.” The unusually high number of Australians amongst the 140 passengers on board was attributable to a visit by Mr Downer.

One of those was Morgan Mellish of the Australian Financial Review, who died in the crash. His sister, Caroline Mellish, had specifically called for prosecution to be avoided, saying “I think having 21 deaths on your conscience is probably enough. I don’t think prosecuting the man is going to make any difference.”

There were fierce calls for prosecution of both pilots immediately after the report’s release, with Downer himself pressuring the Indonesian authorities, citing the “very credible report” and saying “I’ve asked our ambassador today (October 24) to make it absolutely clear to the Indonesians that we want people prosecuted for this accident. I want to see people who have negligently allowed Australians … to be killed, I want to see those people brought to justice.”

Australian Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd also made clear a desire for prosecutions, saying he had telephoned secretary-general of Indonesia’s foreign affairs department and former ambassador to Australia Imron Cotan, telling him that he wanted those responsible “prosecuted to the absolute full”. “This is a serious matter, many Australians visit Indonesia, Garuda is an often used airline and there is a basic national interest at stake here as well,” he said.

National Transport Safety Committee chairman Tatang Kurniadi said at the time that no information from the report could be used in any criminal or civil liability investigations. “I would like to go back to the objective of this, the report was made by NTSC for safety purposes only, not for blaming, he said. “If any institution wants to … follow up that accident, that’s their own decision. The report contained the results from the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder, but according to international regulations on aviation these black boxes are not allowed to be used for… liability purposes. We will not give police or any institution (information) other than for safety purposes only – it’s in international regulations and we want to follow those regulations.” He also confirmed that investigators cannot speak to the police, with the only permitted testimony under the legislation being to testify at a court hearing, and pointed out that the document does not actually appoint any blame.

The international legislation he was referring to is probably the Convention on International Civil Aviation, which stipulates that accident reports and related material, specifically transcripts of interviews, communications with crew and cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder (collectively known as black boxes) readouts, must not be used for any purpose other than determining the cause of an accident or incident. The only possible exception to this is where potential benefit would outweigh the “adverse domestic and international impact” on the investigation in question or any other either in progress or in the future. This legislation is in place to provide protection to witnesses on the basis that without it they may be less likely to cooperate with investigational procedures.

The law caused was actively opposed by some. Aridono Sukman, the police member in charge of the criminal investigation, said that the contents of the black box were vital evidence. Officials commented that some relatives had expressed their frustration over the legal challenges involved in the prosecution effort.

Early in February Mr Komar was arrested; he has subsequently been charged with manslaughter charges which carry a maximum sentence of five years’ imprisonment. The London-based International Federation of Air Line Pilots Associations (IFALPA) issued a press release condemning this move, saying that further investigations are needed into the crash, and that criminal proceedings could prevent an accurate version of events from ever being known. Specifically, the release said that “IFALPA believes that the circumstances of the accident as set forth in the final report of the Indonesian investigation authority leaves many serious questions concerning the crew actions prior to the accident. Central to these concerns are the underlying reasons for the reported behavior of Captain Marwoto Komar. Experienced pilots have considerable difficulty in attempting to explain what is reported in the context of normal airline operations. The Federation believes that the explanations proffered by the report do not square with the collective experience of our members.” The release went on to state the opinion that prosecution may bring total foreclosure to the case and could only be counterproductive. It also said “He remains a professional who was involved in an unfortunate tragedy.”

One possible explanation had previously been suggested by the head of the Garuda pilots association, Stephanus Geraldus. He said that marital problems between Mr Komar and his wife Norma Andriani were “common knowledge” and was backed up by an industry analyst and pilot who said he believed the couple had been arguing late into the night, and expressed concern that the report had not addressed psychological issues. Mr Geraldus also said sleep deprivation could have contributed, with the flight crew reporting for duty at 4:30 am and the flight departing an hour and a half later.

The report had hinted at problems, saying The pilot was probably emotionally aroused because his conscious awareness moved from the relaxed mode “singing” to the heightened stressfulness of the desire to reach the runway by making an excessively steep and fast, unstabilised approach,” and “His attention was fixated or channelised on landing the aircraft on the runway and he either did not hear, or disregarded the GPWS alerts, and warnings, and calls from the copilot to go around.” It is also known that Mr Komar had been under police surveillance, during which time he was receiving psychological treatment.

The Indonesian Pilot’s Association has also said that the criminal prosecution should be avoided, arguing that the only people who can judge whether mistakes were made in aviation are those professionally involved and not the police. There were protests in Jakarta demanding his release and dozens of pilots across the nation also campaigned. Meanwhile, two survivors, Adrianus Meliala and Retno Gunowati, went to the House of Representatives (DPR) to challenge those opposed to legal processes against the pilot.

Mr Komar was released on police bail on February 15, and is currently awaiting trial. He was forced to resign late in February with being fired his only alternative, and his licence has been suspended. He is believed to be the only man ever prosecuted in Indonesian history over an airliner crash.

The issues thrown up by this ongoing case have now been exclusively commented on for Wikinews by Paul McCarthy. Mr McCarthy is IFALPA’s representative to the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). He is both a pilot – as are all of IFALPA’s roughly 100,000 members – and a lawyer, and is an acknowledged expert on issues concerning the criminal liability of pilots. Mr McCarthy’s comments, obtained by email via IFALPA media representative Gideon Ewers are available below.

Sunday, April 24, 2005

New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) announced last Wednesday that it has agreed definitively to merge with Chicago-based Archipelago Exchange (ArcaEx) and form a new publicly traded, for-profit company known as NYSE Group. This announcement was followed two days later by NASDAQ®, which independently announced a definitive agreement to purchase Instinet Group.

Archipelago and Instinet are innovative e-trading (electronic trading) companies, and formerly were the two largest American rivals to NYSE and NASDAQ, in recent years taking increasingly large portions of their market share. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and other regulatory agencies still have to review and approve the transactions, particularly with respect to US securities law and antitrust law, in order to ensure that the marketplace remains lawful and competitive.

Other pending issues for NASDAQ include obtaining the approval of Instinet shareholders, as well as customary closing conditions. NYSE must obtain the approval of its members and Archipelago shareholders.

These changes, a reaction to increased e-trading competition and a changed regulatory environment, will result in NASDAQ and NYSE trading each other’s shares and attempting to grab market share, which many hope will drive down transaction costs and ultimately benefit consumers. However, at least one commentator, Dan Ackman writing in Forbes, has noted that the trading commission at the NYSE currently averages less than a nickel (US$0.05) per share, and was less enthusiastic about potential efficiency gains from electronic trading at the exchange.

The transactions are also intended to make the two leading American stock exchanges more globally competitive with such exchanges as the London Stock Exchange, the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, the Toronto Stock Exchange, and the Australian Stock Exchange located in Sydney.

Sunday, October 7, 2007

There are two things one can expect on a trip to see Michael Musto at the offices of the Village Voice: a 20-minute round-trip wait for the elevator and rapid fire answers from one of the most recognizable gossip columnists in the United States. Musto, in addition to his appearances on Countdown with Keith Olbermann and the E! network, has been writing his column for the Voice since 1984. He has recently compiled the best of them in a book released this year titled, La Dolce Musto: Writings by the World’s Most Outrageous Columnist. He was Carrie Bradshaw, replete with a prodigious use of puns, before Sex in the City was a thought. His column is a romp through his life, spats and opinions on socio-political issues. As David Thigpen of the Chicago Tribune wrote, Musto is “a funny and caustic satirist who masquerades as a gossip and nightlife columnist.”

Musto, a Columbia University graduate, is a rarity in today’s celebrity world: he is accessible. He often corresponds with his readers and his public functions are a mix of parties, nightclubs, academic lectures, university panels and film premieres.

He is friendly and frank, and he welcomes people to join him in his world (“I just got a message that Michael Lucas died!” he says staring wide-eyed at his phone; the message turned out to be false). Wikinews reporter David Shankbone spoke with Musto about his life and his relationship to the world of celebrity journalism. And he did not hold back.

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Every September, the Apple iPod is redesigned. Last year saw the release of the iPod Nano 5th generation, bringing a video camera and a large range of colours to the Nano for the first time. But as Apple again prepares to unveil a redesigned product, the company has released their quarterly sales figures—and revealed that they have sold only 9m iPods for the quarter to June—the lowest number of sales since 2006, leading industry anylists to ponder whether the world’s most successful music device is in decline.

Such a drop in sales is not a problem for Apple, since the iPhone 4 and the iPad are selling in high numbers. But the number of people buying digital music players are concerning the music industry. Charles Arthur, technology editor of The Guardian, wrote that the decline in sales of MP3 players was a “problem” for record companies, saying that “digital music sales are only growing as fast as those of Apple’s devices – and as the stand-alone digital music player starts to die off, people may lose interest in buying songs from digital stores. The music industry had looked to the iPod to drive people to buy music in download form, whether from Apple’s iTunes music store, eMusic, Napster or from newer competitors such as Amazon.”

Mark Mulligan, a music and digital media analyst at Forrester Research, said in an interview that “at a time where we’re asking if digital is a replacement for the CD, as the CD was for vinyl, we should be starting to see a hockey-stick growth in download sales. Instead, we’re seeing a curve resembling that of a niche technology.” Alex Jacob, a spokesperson for the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which represents the worldwide music industry, agreed that there had been a fall in digital sales of music. “The digital download market is still growing,” they said. “But the percentage is less than a few years ago, though it’s now coming from a higher base.” Figures released earlier this year, Arthur wrote, “show that while CD sales fell by 12.7%, losing $1.6bn (£1bn)in value, digital downloads only grew by 9.2%, gaining less than $400m in value.”

Expectations that CDs would, in time, become extinct, replaced by digital downloads, have not come to light, Jacob confirmed. “Across the board, in terms of growth, digital isn’t making up for the fall in CD sales, though it is in certain countries, including the UK,” he said. Anylising the situation, Arthur suggested that “as iPod sales slow, digital music sales, which have been yoked to the device, are likely to slow too. The iPod has been the key driver: the IFPI’s figures show no appreciable digital download sales until 2004, the year Apple launched its iTunes music store internationally (it launched it in the US in April 2003). Since then, international digital music sales have climbed steadily, exactly in line with the total sales of iPods and iPhones.”

Nick Farrell, a TechEYE journalist, stated that the reason for the decline in music sales could be attributed to record companies’ continued reliance on Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, saying that they had considered him the “industry’s saviour”, and by having this mindset had forgotten “that the iPod is only for those who want their music on the run. What they should have been doing is working out how to get high quality music onto other formats, perhaps even HiFi before the iPlod fad died out.”

When Jobs negotiated a deal with record labels to ensure every track was sold for 99 cents, they considered this unimportant—the iPod was not a major source of revenue for the company. However, near the end of 2004, there was a boom in sales of the iPod, and the iTunes store suddenly began raking in more and more money. The record companies were irritated, now wanting to charge different amounts for old and new songs, and popular and less popular songs. “But there was no alternative outlet with which to threaten Apple, which gained an effective monopoly over the digital music player market, achieving a share of more than 70%” wrote Arthur. Some did attempt to challenge the iTunes store, but still none have succeeded. “Apple is now the largest single retailer of music in the US by volume, with a 25% share.”

The iTunes store now sells television shows and films, and the company has recently launced iBooks, a new e-book store. The App Store is hugely successful, with Apple earning $410m in two years soley from Apps, sales of which they get 30%. In two years, 5bn apps have been downloaded—while in seven years, 10bn songs have been purchased. Mulligan thinks that there is a reason for this—the quality of apps simply does not match up to a piece of music. “You can download a song from iTunes to your iPhone or iPad, but at the moment music in that form doesn’t play to the strengths of the device. Just playing a track isn’t enough.”

Adam Liversage, a spokesperson of the British Phonographic Industry, which represents the major UK record labels, notes that the rise of streaming services such as Spotify may be a culprit in the fall in music sales. Revenues from such companies added up to $800m in 2009. Arthur feels that “again, it doesn’t make up for the fall in CD sales, but increasingly it looks like nothing ever will; that the record business’s richest years are behind it. Yet there are still rays of hope. If Apple – and every other mobile phone maker – are moving to an app-based economy, where you pay to download games or timetables, why shouldn’t recording artists do the same?”

Well, apparently they are. British singer Peter Gabriel has released a ‘Full Moon Club’ app, which is updated every month with a new song. Arthur also notes that “the Canadian rock band Rush has an app, and the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails, led by Trent Reznor – who has been critical of the music industry for bureaucracy and inertia – released the band’s first app in April 2009.” It is thought that such a system will be an effective method to reduce online piracy—”apps tend to be tied to a particular handset or buyer, making them more difficult to pirate than a CD”, he says—and in the music industry, piracy is a very big problem. In 2008, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry estimated that 95% of downloads were illegitimate. If musicians can increase sales and decrease piracy, Robert says, it can only be a good thing.

“It’s early days for apps in the music business, but we are seeing labels and artists experimenting with it,” Jacob said. “You could see that apps could have a premium offering, or behind-the-scenes footage, or special offers on tickets. But I think it’s a bit premature to predict the death of the album.” Robert concluded by saying that it could be “premature to predict the death of the iPod just yet too – but it’s unlikely that even Steve Jobs will be able to produce anything that will revive it. And that means that little more than five years after the music industry thought it had found a saviour in the little device, it is having to look around again for a new stepping stone to growth – if, that is, one exists.”

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Former Salt Lake City mayor and human rights activist Rocky Anderson took some time to discuss his 2012 U.S. presidential campaign and the newly-created Justice Party with Wikinews reporter William S. Saturn.

Anderson served as mayor of Salt Lake City for eight years (2000–2008) as a member of the Democratic Party. During his tenure, he enacted proposals to reduce the city’s carbon emissions, reformed its criminal justice system, and positioned it as a leading sanctuary for refugees. After leaving office, Anderson grew critical of the Democratic Party’s failure to push for impeachment against President George W. Bush, and for not reversing policies on torture, taxes, and defense spending. He left the party earlier this year and announced that he would form a Third party.

Anderson officially established the Justice Party last week during a press conference in Washington D.C.. He proclaimed “We the people are powerful enough to end the perverse government-to-the-highest-bidder system sustained by the two dominant parties…We are here today for the sake of justice — social justice, environmental justice and economic justice.” The party promotes campaign finance reform and is attempting to appeal to the Occupy Wall Street movement. It is currently working on ballot access efforts, and will hold a Founding Convention in February 2012 in Salt Lake City.

Among other issues, Anderson discussed climate change, health care, education, and civil liberties. He detailed his successes as mayor of Salt Lake City, stressed the importance of executive experience, and expressed his views on President Barack Obama and some of the Republican Party presidential candidates. He spoke in depth about former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, with whom he worked during the 2002 Winter Olympics, and fellow Utahan, former governor and U.S. ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, Jr..

Friday, March 21, 2008

Israel has announced plans to begin fitting missile defense systems to airliners within weeks.

The systems will emit flares designed to confuse the guidance systems on heat-seeking missiles. Greatest priority will go to adding the equipment – already in use with the Israeli air force – on aircraft that fly to destinations deemed high-risk, such as Asia and Africa.

The plans were initiated in 2002 after a failed attempt by Islamic insurgents with shoulder mounted missile launchers to shoot down an Israeli airliner during takeoff from Mombassa, Kenya. Israel immediately began seeking ways to protect its commercial aviation fleet.

Testing was initiated shortly afterwards, but plans were shelved while arguments as to who would pay were ongoing – either the government or El Al and Arkia. Hezbollah has recently threatened action against Israel in response to a car bomb assassination of terrorist Imad Mughniyeh, prompting the government to agree to pay the costs. Despite no claim of responsibility, Hezbollah and its backers in Iran blame the attack on Israel.

Singapore, the United States and other nations are considering similar measures. As well as flares, some proposed systems use lasers to jam heat-seeking equipment.