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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.

Tuesday, March 29, 2005A team of Australian surgeons yesterday reattached both hands and one foot to 10-year-old Perth boy, Terry Vo, after a brick wall which collapsed during a game of basketball fell on him, severing the limbs. The wall gave way while Terry performed a slam-dunk, during a game at a friend’s birthday party.

The boy was today awake and smiling, still in some pain but in good spirits and expected to make a full recovery, according to plastic surgeon, Mr Robert Love.

“What we have is parts that are very much alive so the reattached limbs are certainly pink, well perfused and are indeed moving,” Mr Love told reporters today.

“The fact that he is moving his fingers, and of course when he wakes up he will move both fingers and toes, is not a surprise,” Mr Love had said yesterday.

“The question is more the sensory return that he will get in the hand itself and the fine movements he will have in the fingers and the toes, and that will come with time, hopefully. We will assess that over the next 18 months to two years.

“I’m sure that he’ll enjoy a game of basketball in the future.”

The weight and force of the collapse, and the sharp brick edges, resulted in the three limbs being cut through about 7cm above the wrists and ankle.

Terry’s father Tan said of his only child, the injuries were terrible, “I was scared to look at him, a horrible thing.”

The hands and foot were placed in an ice-filled Esky and rushed to hospital with the boy, where three teams of medical experts were assembled, and he was given a blood transfusion after experiencing massive blood loss. Eight hours of complex micro-surgery on Saturday night were followed by a further two hours of skin grafts yesterday.

“What he will lose because it was such a large zone of traumatised skin and muscle and so on, he will lose some of the skin so he’ll certainly require lots of further surgery regardless of whether the skin survives,” said Mr Love said today.

The boy was kept unconscious under anaesthetic between the two procedures. In an interview yesterday, Mr Love explained why:

“He could have actually been woken up the next day. Because we were intending to take him back to theatre for a second look, to look at the traumatised skin flaps, to close more of his wounds and to do split skin grafting, it was felt the best thing to do would be to keep him stable and to keep him anaesthetised.”

Professor Wayne Morrison, director of the respected Bernard O’Brien Institute of Microsurgery and head of plastic and hand surgery at Melbourne’s St Vincent’s Hospital, said he believed the operation to be a world first.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Saturday that the UK’s natural gas reserves will not run out in spite of record demand. This spike in demand is caused by the recent cold weather.File:Latenight-1.jpg

A supplier, National Grid, issued two “balancing alerts”, which mean a possible supply shortfall, which were promptly lifted. A spokeswoman for the company said that there was a possible shortfall of 35 million cubic metres (1.2 billion cubic feet). This third balancing alert is expected to last for the next few days, and is said not to be due to the cold weather – which is expected to continue for at least a week – but due to problems in Norwegian gas fields.

Another staple related to the cold snap, rock salt, is feared in short supply. The Automobile Association reports that supplies have been reduced by 250,000 tonnes over the last ten years. Local governments pledged to conserve supplies through a 25% reduction in the amount used; 12,000 tonnes of white salt have been redirected for use on roads.

Non-profits have asked that the allowance for gas money be temporarily raised for pensioners. The Red Cross reports that it is having the highest volume of aid being given out in nearly 30 years.

The cold snap has caused at least two further deaths, a 90-year-old woman who had frozen to death in her garden in Barnsley, and a 42-year-old who was found frozen in Newcastle, taking the total to 26.