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Friday, February 4, 2005

Europe —The government of Cuba has re-established official contacts with all of the European Union countries. The diplomatic relationship with the EU had been limited for more than 18 months.

The EU relationship with Cuba was injured on March-June 2003 after the arrest and conviction of 75 “dissidents” by the Cuban government. In a separate case, three Cubans were executed on foot of a sentence handed down by a civil court, and confirmed on appeal by the Cuban Supreme Court, which found them guilty of hijacking a ferry and endangering the lives of its occupants. Cuba accused the dissidents of collaboration with the US and sabotage against the Cuban communist system. All 75 “dissadents” appear to have pleaded guilty of receiving illegal payments from US agents in court when confronted with the evidence. 14 of the 75 convicted mercenaries, who the US continues to insist were “dissadents”, have since been released on licience.

Cuba and the EU began to come close again after the efforts of the President of the government of Spain, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. At that time, the German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder didn’t agree with Zapatero about unfreezing the relationships between Cuba and the EU. Schröder believed Cuba should first show real commitment to improving the human rights conditions on the island. However, on November 25, 2004, the Cuban Chancellor Felipe Pérez Roque announced the re-establishment of official contacts with the government of Spain.

On November 30, 2004, Cuba released four political dissidents: Marcelo López, Margarito Broche, Óscar Espinosa Chepe and Raúl Rivero. The Dutch Presidency of the European Union praised the Cuban decision. Cuba said that the decision was not influenced by the Spanish government.

On December 15, 2004 the Council of the European Union for Latin America committee recommended the suspension of the diplomatic sanctions against Cuba, according to alleged Spanish diplomatic sources.

Finally, on January 10, 2005, the Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque told journalists:”We can say that from this moment onward Cuba has re-established government-level official contacts with all European Union countries.” On January 31, 2005, the EU council of foreign ministers agreed to a suspension of EU sanctions against Cuba. The international non-governmental organization Reporters Without Borders protested and sent a open letter to the president of the European Commission on February 1, 2005.

Thursday, October 30, 2014

A launch failure occurred at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Tuesday.

The failure occurred when Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Antares rocket, which was carrying the Cygnus vehicle with cargo of 5,000 pounds (about 2,300 kg), exploded after liftoff at 6:22 p.m. local time (2222 UTC), creating a massive fireball in the sky. Nobody was reported injured during the explosion, but the rocket was destroyed. The cargo was supplies for the International Space Station (ISS). Despite the explosion, the astronauts working on the ISS will not run out of food or supplies, according to a NASA statement released on Tuesday.

Orbital’s vice president Frank Culbertson said the contractor’s spacecraft will not fly until the cause of the failure is determined. NASA plans to continue the mission of delivering supplies to astronauts once it fully understands how this happened.

The rocket was to launch on Monday night, but a boat entered the hazard area, delaying the launch until the following night.

The cause of the explosion is under investigation by NASA and Orbital Sciences. NASA said the National Transportation Safety Board is monitoring the investigation.

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

Wikinews extended invitations by e-mail on March 23 to multiple candidates running in the Texas’ 6th congressional district special election of May 1 to fill a vacancy left upon the death of Republican congressman Ron Wright. Of them, the office of Democrat Daryl Eddings, Sr. agreed to answer some questions by phone March 30 about their campaigns and policies. The following is the interview with Ms Chatham on behalf of Mr Eddings, Sr.

Eddings is a federal law enforcement officer and senior non-commissioned officer in the US military. His experience as operations officer of an aviation unit in the California National Guard includes working in Los Angeles to control riots sparked by the O. J. Simpson murder case and the police handling of Rodney King, working with drug interdiction teams in Panama and Central America and fighting in the Middle East. He is the founder of Operation Battle Buddy, which has under his leadership kept in touch with over 20 thousand veterans and their families. He was born in California, but moved to Midlothian, Texas. He endeavours to bring “good government, not no government”. Campaign manager Faith Chatham spoke to Wikinews on matters ranging from healthcare to housing.

An Inside Elections poll published on March 18 shows Republican candidate Susan Wright, the widow of Ron Wright, is ahead by 21% followed by Democrat Jana Sanchez with 17% and Republican Jake Ellzey with 8% with a 4.6% margin of error among 450 likely voters. The district is considered “lean Republican” by Inside Elections and voted 51% in favour of Donald Trump in last year’s US presidential election. This is down from 54% for Trump in 2016’s presidential election, the same poll stated.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

In the lead-up to the 2008 Canadian federal elections much speculation was made about environmental issues and initiative, with various parties maneuvering to claim some portion of the green mantle. But it was the Liberal party which first brought a full-blown policy to the public.

In the months since the Green Shift initiative was brought forth, the political pundits and activists have both talked about this year as the first election where the environment would be a major issue on the minds of voters, and possibly a decisive one for the electorate.

It’s indeed true the environment ranks very high in minds of voters across the country, particularly among young voters. One national survey of Canadians between 18 and 25 finds the environment is the top issue. A poll of all voters found it to be the third most important single issue over all, behind the economy and health care, but the poll suggested that no one issue has really caught the attention of the electorate with many issues gaining similar attention.

The parties themselves seem indecisive, trying to claim a focus on environmental issues but rarely making specific proposals or promises, with the notable exception of the Liberals whose platform has been targeted by opponents and commentators as “wildly experimental” and “doesn’t go deep enough” by turns.

Examining the platforms of the New Democratic Party regarding air pollution and global warming as available on their website, one is struck by a lack of substance. Reference is made to C-377, the Climate Change Accountability Act, which the NDP calls “Layton’s Kyoto-Plus Bill”, which was passed in 2006. The party believes Canada can achieve its Kyoto requirements by 2012, though no mention is made of how a Layton government would do so.

In June of 2008 the Liberals tabled a plan, the Green Shift, which they claim would reduce Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions 20% under 1990 emissions – well below the 6% required by Canadian law when Canada ratified the Kyoto Accord – by 2020, which is rather after the 2008-2012 phase-in period required by that same law. The method of performing this reduction would be to shift the Canadian tax system, reducing income and revenue taxes by replacing them with taxes on greenhouse gas emissions. The plan generated considerable discussion and opposition, and the party has back-pedaled in some portions and added on in others, as well as announcing a couple of separate initiatives to soften the effects for farmers, homeowners, and fishermen among others.

A more diverse approach than solely a “Carbon Tax” is proposed in the Green Party’s platform, which presents an almost holistic approach of adherence to the Kyoto obligations, “Cap and trade” of carbon emissions, industry development with both green technology R&D and regulation as well as consumer subsidies, and their own version of a carbon tax. Alone of the parties they specifically mention the role of international diplomacy/trade as a part of their approach.

Such an approach appears to be anathema to the Conservatives, whose mantra since their election has been that Kyoto cannot be complied with without forcing an economic recession on the country, and used the Throne Speech of 2007 to reiterate that position. They have opposed cap-and-trade schemes in the past, but their platform for this election states their plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions includes emissions caps for “four air pollutants commonly associated with smog and acid rain,” as well as “tough emission reduction targets”.

In contrast to the laundry-list of unconnected initiatives on the Conservative’s website, the clean platform pamphlet created by the Bloc Québécois makes a simple and apparently heartfelt statement on the environment:

La lutte aux changements climatiques est devenue un enjeu fondamental pour l’humanité et le Québec est déterminé à apporter sa contribution, à sa façon. À Ottawa, c’est le Bloc Québécois qui mène la lutte en faveur de l’application du protocole de Kyoto dans le respect des choix du Québec.

Tackling climate change has become a fundamental issue for all of humanity and Québec is determined to make its contribution, in its own way. In Ottawa, the Bloc Québécois, respecting Québec’s choices, is leading the fight to enforce the Kyoto Protocol.

Just how they plan to enforce the Kyoto obligations is not stated, though they do discuss a carbon market, and tax incentives for home heating upgrade and transportation.

There seems to be a wide if somewhat shallow interest in the electorate as to just what each party is offering on the environmental file. But with sketchy platforms regarding environmental issues, it’s no wonder some of the parties have turned to the subject of economics in recent days.

Wednesday, November 30, 2005File:Turing1.jpg

More than 50 programmers, scientists, students, hobbyists and fans of the A.L.I.C.E. chat robot gathered in Guildford, U.K. on Friday to celebrate the tenth birthday of the award winning A.I. On hand was the founder the Loebner Prize, an annual Turing Test, designed to pick out the world’s most human computer according to an experiment laid out by the famous British mathematician Alan Turing more then 50 years ago. Along with A.L.I.C.E.’s chief programmer Dr. Richard S. Wallace, two other Loebner prize winners, Robby Garner and this year’s winner, Rollo Carpenter, also gave presentations, as did other finalists.

The University of Surrey venue was chosen, according to Dr. Wallace, not only because it was outside the U.S. (A.L.I.C.E.’s birthday fell on the Thanksgiving Day weekend holiday there, so he expected few people would attend a conference in America), but also because of its recently erected statue of Alan Turing, who posed the famous A. I. experiment which inspired much of the work on bots like A.L.I.C.E. University of Surrey Digital World Research Centre organizers Lynn and David Hamill were pleased to host the event because it encourages multi-disciplinary interaction, and because of the Centre’s interest in interaction between humans and computers.File:ALICE Birthday Cake.jpg

Dr. Wallace gave a keynote address outlining the history of A.L.I.C.E. and AIML. Many people commented on the fact the he seemed to have moved around a lot in the last ten years, having lived in New York, Pennsylvania, San Francisco, Maine, Amsterdam and Philadelphia, while working on the Alicebot project. The A.L.I.C.E. and AIML software is popular among chat robot enthusiats primarily because of its distribution under the GNU free software license. One of Dr. Wallace’s PowerPoint slides asked the question, “How do you make money from free software?” His answer: memberships, subscriptions, books, directories, syndicated ads, consulting, teaching, and something called the Superbot.

Rollo Carpenter gave a fascinating presentation on his learning bot Jabberwacky, reading from several sample conversations wherein the bot seemed amazingly humanlike. Unlike the free A.L.I.C.E. software, Carpenter uses a proprietary learning approach so that the bot actually mimics the personality of each individual chatter. The more people who chat with Jabberwacky, the better it becomes at this kind of mimicry.

In another interesting presentation, Dr. Hamill related present-day research on chat robots to earlier work on dialog analysis in telephone conversations. Phone calls have many similarities to the one-on-one chats that bots encounter on the web and in IM. Dr. Hamill also related our social expectations of bots to social class structure and how servants were expected to behave in Victorian England. He cited the famous Microsoft paperclip as the most egregius example of a bot that violated all the rules of a good servant’s behavior.

Bots have advanced a long way since philanthropist Hugh Loebner launched his controversial contest 15 years ago. His Turing Test contest, which offers an award of $100,000 for the first program to pass an “audio-visual” version of the game, also awards a bronze medal and $2000 every year for the “most human computer” according to a panel of judges. Huma Shah of the University of Westminster presented examples of bots used by large corporations to help sell furniture, provide the latest information about automotive products, and help customers open bank accounts. Several companies in the U.S. and Europe offer customized bot personalities for corporate web sites.

Even though Turing’s Test remains controversial, this group of enthusiastic developers seems determined to carry on the tradition and try to develop more and more human like chat bots.Hugh Loebner is dedicated to carry on his contest for the rest of his life, in spite of his critics. He hopes that a large enough constituency of winners will exist to keep the competition going well beyond his own lifetime. Dr. Wallace says, “Nobody has gotten rich from chat robots yet, but that doesn’t stop people from trying. There is such a thing as ‘bot fever’. For some people who meet a bot for the first time, it can pass the Turing Test for them, and they get very excited.”

Thursday, August 14, 2014

On Tuesday many internet routers, used to find the pathways to different parts of the web, reached their memory limit of 512,000 entries in the tables they use to store the routes, causing problems for many users.

A router is used to direct a user towards the area of the internet where they will find the content they are looking for, e.g. a web page. The recent problem was caused by the arbitrary memory limit built into the design of many aging routers. A limit was needed to prevent the cost of hardware from becoming prohibitively expensive in the days when physical data storage was still comparatively expensive. This small amount of memory in turn limits the number of directions which can be stored on a single router leading to different parts of the internet. When this limit was reached, it caused outages of services among Internet Service Providers. Many routers, including older ones provided by Cisco Systems Inc., are limited to storing a total of 512,000 routes or paths.

This limit was reached on Tuesday, reported to have been triggered by Verizon publishing another 15,000 paths. Those affected included eBay, LastPass, and clients of the web hosting company Liquid Web, who lost much of their services until Verizon withdrew some of these new paths. Problems nevertheless continued throughout the day, even after the withdrawal.

A longer term fix is possible, but it would require manually replacing old routers with newer, more capable ones. It is hard to tell what issues would temporarily cascade though the internet by taking down routers from part of the internet for maintenance. Many experts have warned that problems could continue until these difficult fixes have been implemented, although the recent switch to a newer form of IP Addresses, IPv6, will temporarily help the issue. Wired News reported that Andre Toonk, a network engineer, had stated that the number of network outages on the internet, typically around 1,500, yesterday peaked at 2,587, enough to become clearly noticeable.