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Tuesday, November 17, 2020

Violence broke out on Saturday when several thousand people rallied at Freedom Plaza in the US capital city of Washington, DC in support of US President Donald Trump to protest the results of the 2020 US Presidential Election, where former US Vice-President Joe Biden has been projected to have defeated the incumbent in both the popular vote and the electoral college. The demonstrations were initially peaceful, but clashes with counter-protesters broke out by the evening hours.

Video captured two factions pushing, punching, and throwing projectiles. A report alleged fireworks and flash bangs were used.  

As a result of Saturday’s unrest, according to a report citing the mayor’s office, twenty people were arrested, and two police officers were injured. President Trump lashed out at the capital city’s Democratic mayor Muriel Bowser on Twitter, accusing her of “not doing her job”. The president has blamed Democratic leadership for violence and unrest in various US cities throughout 2020.

The president has not yet conceded the election, and has claimed widespread voter fraud with mail-in ballots, and made various legal challenges. State and federal election officials have stated there is currently no evidence to support the President’s claims of widespread voter fraud.

Thursday, March 24, 2005

A company named Numenta was founded today by Jeff Hawkins, founder of handheld computer company palmOne, and his longtime partner Donna Dubinsky. The company is focused on the creation of technology to emulate the workings of the human brain. They are based in Menlo Park, California.

Hawkins has been intrigued by the faculties of the human brain for years. In 2002, he founded the Redwood Neuroscience Institute. His theories on the working of the brain were explained in “On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines,” co-written with Sandra Blakeslee. Hawkins’ official recognition with the company will only be as ‘founder’, as the company will be led by Dubinsky. Hawkins will continue as chief technical officer of palmOne and remain at Redwood.

The company will not charge fees for its products during the first few years in order to encourage further development of the technology and build up a development community. The annual budget of more than $1 million will be paid by Hawkins and Dubinsky, who have raised an undisclosed amount from a handful of friends and associates.

Hawkins and third co-founder of Numenta, Dileep George, have been working on developing the technology since 2003, and have devised an example piece of software. Data is put into the program by showing it 90 different pictures. The software can then recognise any of the 90 objects, even when drawn incomplete or in bad quality. Pattern matching is still difficult for today’s hardware and software technologies. If outfitted with a camera, a sophisticated pattern matching system could be used by law enforcement to recognise the faces of wanted criminals in crowds.

Other notable attempts at creating more powerful computer systems include artificial intelligence, which started in the 1950s and took off in the mid 1980s and led to disappointment due to high expectations, and the Quantum Computer, both fields are still in active development.

Jeff Hawkins and Dileep George will be publishing a paper on ‘A Hierarchical Bayesian Model of Invariant Pattern Recognition in the Visual Cortex’ at an upcoming neural networks conference.

Wednesday, May 3, 2006

Violence erupted in Vadodara in the state of Gujarat after municipal authorities demolished a dargah (Muslim shrine). The shrine was an unauthorised structure that was obstructing a road-widening project.

The Muslim community objected to its demolition citing the fact that it was at least 200 years old. They also observed that many Hindu temples that were unauthorised were spared. Despite the reservations of the minority community, the authorities decided to proceed with the razing of the dargah, leading to rioting.

At least 6 people were killed in the clashes, and one citizen (35 year-old Rafiq Vora) was burnt alive in his car by an angry mob. Curfew has been imposed in the troubled areas and the sending of instigatory text messages prompted authorities to temporarily block the sending of mobile-phone text messages in the town.

Vadodara is infamous for the horrific Hindu-Muslim clashes in 2002, which left thousands dead. To avoid the recurrence of such a tragedy, six battalions of Rapid Action Force anti-riot police and multiple companies of the Central Reserve Police Force have been rushed to Vadodara. Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who was Chief Minister during the 2002 Gujarat violence, for which the state government was accused by various independent human rights groups as well as major Indian newspapers of supporting, and in some cases instigating, the violence, is visiting Vadodara and has promised that all efforts would be made to prevent the situation from escalating any further. Home Minister Shivraj Patil is also monitoring the situation closely.

Monday, June 21, 2010

Sweden’s first royal wedding since 1976 took place Saturday when Crown Princess Victoria, 32, married her long-time boyfriend and former personal trainer, Daniel Westling, 36. The ceremony took place at Stockholm Cathedral.

Over 1,200 guests, including many rulers, politicians, royals and other dignitaries from across the world, attended the wedding, which cost an estimated 20 million Swedish kronor. Victoria wore a wedding dress with five-metre long train designed by Pär Engsheden. She wore the same crown that her mother, Queen Silvia, wore on her wedding day 34 years previously, also on June 19. Victoria’s father, King Carl XVI Gustaf, walked Victoria down the aisle, which was deemed untraditional by many. In Sweden, the bride and groom usually walk down the aisle together, emphasising the country’s views on equality. Victoria met with Daniel half-way to the altar, where they exchanged brief kisses, and, to the sounds of the wedding march, made their way to the the silver altar. She was followed by ten bridesmaids. The couple both had tears in their eyes as they said their vows, and apart from fumbling when they exchanged rings, the ceremony went smoothly.

Following the ceremony, the couple headed a fast-paced procession through central Stockholm on a horse-drawn carriage, flanked by police and security. Up to 500,000 people are thought to have lined the streets. They then boarded the Vasaorden, the same royal barge Victoria’s parents used in their wedding, and traveled through Stockholm’s waters, accompanied by flyover of 18 fighter jets near the end of the procession. A wedding banquet followed in the in the Hall of State of the Royal Palace.

Controversy has surrounded the engagement and wedding between the Crown Princess and Westling, a “commoner”. Victoria met Westling as she was recovering from bulemia in 2002. He owned a chain of gymnasiums and was brought in to help bring Victoria back to full health. Westling was raised in a middle-class family in Ockelbo, in central Sweden. His father managed a social services centre, and his mother worked in a post office. When the relationship was made public, Westling was mocked as an outsider and the king was reportedly horrified at the thought of his daughter marrying a “commoner”, even though he did so when he married Silvia. Last year, Westling underwent transplant surgery for a congenital kidney disorder. The Swedish public have been assured that he will be able to have children and that his illness will not be passed on to his offspring.

Westling underwent years of training to prepare for his new role in the royal family, including lessons in etiquette, elocution, and multi-lingual small talk; and a makeover that saw his hair being cropped short, and his plain-looking glasses and clothes being replaced by designer-wear.

Upon marrying the Crown Princess, Westling took his wife’s ducal title and is granted the style “His Royal Highness”. He is now known as HRH Prince Daniel, Duke of Västergötland. He also has his own coat-of-arms and monogram. When Victoria assumes the throne and becomes Queen, Daniel will not become King, but assume a supportive role, similar to that of Prince Phillip, the husband of the United Kingdom’s Queen Elizabeth II.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

While it was just a joke, the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros de Colombia doesn’t find a recent “Mother Goose and Grimm” comic terribly funny.

In what the coffee growers association calls “an attack on national dignity and the reputation of Colombian coffee,” the characters in a comic strip by Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Mike Peters call into question the relationship of Colombian coffee growers and the crime syndicates of Columbia.

The cartoonist is being sued not only for “damages [to] the intellectual heritage” of the coffee, but also “moral compensation. A public manifestation,” to the tune of $20 million.

At the start of a week-long series of strips, a dog character named “Ralph” finds out that part of chemist and food storage technician Fred Baur‘s remains was buried in a Pringles can, upon his last wishes. Baur’s best known innovation, among multiple, was the patented can and packing method for the Pringles potato chip. The character theorizes what other remains might be interred in their food packaging. Eventually, the dog states that “when they say there’s a little bit of Juan Valdez in every can, maybe they’re not kidding.”This play on an old advertising slogan refers to fictional character Juan Valdez, created by the Federación Nacional.

In a statement Peters says:

Julio Cesar Gonzalez, El Tiempo newspaper’s famous cartoonist, told the BBC that the lawsuit is “a real waste of time.”

In 2006, the Federación Nacional sued Café Britt over their advertising campaign titled “Juan Valdez drinks Costa Rican coffee. In a counter-suit, Britt presented an affidavit from a Costa Rican man named “Juan Valdez”, acknowledging that he drinks Costa Rican coffee, and that the name is too generic to be exclusive. A variety of legal challenges and charges from both sides were eventually dropped. The phrase was actually first used in a 1999 speech by Jaime Daremblum, then-Costa Rican ambassador to the United States.

Mother Goose and Grimm appears in over 800 newspapers worldwide; Peters has won the Pulitzer for his editorial cartoons for the Dayton Daily News. Thirty years ago, his editorial cartoon about electricity prices featured Reddy Kilowatt, an electricity generation spokescharacter. The Daily News defended that comic image in the United States Supreme Court, winning on the basis that “the symbol was not selling a product”, and thus the satire was legally permissible.

Peters drinks Colombian coffee.

Monday, September 24, 2007

Doug Anderson is running for the Green Party of Ontario in the Ontario provincial election, in the Whitby-Oshawa riding. Wikinews’ Nick Moreau interviewed him regarding his values, his experience, and his campaign.

Stay tuned for further interviews; every candidate from every party is eligible, and will be contacted. Expect interviews from Liberals, Progressive Conservatives, New Democratic Party members, Ontario Greens, as well as members from the Family Coalition, Freedom, Communist, Libertarian, and Confederation of Regions parties, as well as independents.

Friday, July 15, 2005

About 200 cars were burned by young people on the night of July 13 in Île-de-France, the metropolitan area of Paris. As the police cars arrived, youths began to pelt the vehicles with rocks, firecrackers and bottles. Rioters broke store windows at Argenteuil. Police used flash-balls and smoke grenades. The riots ended with 70 men being arrested. A police officer was wounded by a rocket and was taken to hospital. Shop windows were broken at Argenteuil. It is not the first time vehicles have been attacked on 13-14 July in France.