Monday, April 24, 2006

Investors are rushing to fund new ventures in renewable energy as Americans continue to see rising gasoline prices at the pump. The price for crude oil continues to rise to new record highs ($75 per barrel of crude oil on NYMEX as of Friday’s close). According to the results of a survey reported by the San Francisco Gate, in the 1st Quarter of 2006 investments in the clean technology sector has increased by 13% to $3.36 Billion in the US. In addition to attracting venture capital, clean technology companies are receiving a buzz from high profile investors.

Bill Gates, Founder of Microsoft, announced last week that his venture group (Cascade Investments) initiated the purchase of 25.5% ownership in Pacific Ethanol Inc. Pacific Ethanol is an ethanol production company that plans to expand operations by opening a new facility in California. Gates is not alone in high profile investments into the clean energy market, Bob Metcalfe (Founder of 3COM and Inventor of Ethernet), who acts as the managing partner of Polaris Ventures, announced the VC’s first investment into the energy market. Polaris, which manages over $3 Billion in funds, invested $6.8 million into GreenFuel Technologies Corporation of Cambridge, MA. GreenFuel Technologies is an emissions to biofuels company, that utilizes natural algae in their patented bioreactors to turn greenhouse gas emissions from power plants into rich bio fuel. Polaris’s investment into GreenFuel was part of the company’s $18 Million Series B financing round that also included a high profile venture capital investor: Draper Fisher Jurvetson. When asked about the new industry venture, Bob Metcalfe said, “Energy has got to be one of the top five problems the world faces, and it’s been frustrating to watch activists and politicians fail to solve the problem,…Now it’s time for the entrepreneurs and scientists to give it a try.”

According to the International Energy Association, demand for renewable energy fuels will more than quadruple in the next decade. The current jump in oil prices is fueling investment into this relatively new market as investors view clean technology as an emerging opportunity rather than a public relations campaign. As gasoline prices continue to rise, alternative fuels become respectively cheaper and more attractive. In his latest State of the Union Address, President Bush outlined a plan to direct new investment into ethanol production and other clean technologies. According to a poll conducted by CBS News, Americans now see gas prices as one of their top three main concerns. With pressure coming from constituents, politicians are beginning to exert pressure on new spending on renewable technology to promote energy independence. Yet another front in this debate is that of environmental concern. With global warming on the rise, and many European governments eagerly searching for a Carbon Dioxide solution, the promise of reducing these emissions by 46% (as claimed by GreenFuel’s bio reactor system) begins to resonate as a promising environmental and business opportunity.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

A luxury train derailed in South Africa outside the capitol of Pretoria yesterday, killing at least two people and leaving 25 injured.

The train had been entering a station in Pretoria when seventeen cars derailed, apparently during a switch between steam and electric locomotives, although the exact cause is not known. The train had been coming from Cape Town, with 55 passengers and an unknown number of crew on board.

None of the dead were identified, and nationalities were not released. However, a spokesperson for the operator of the train, Rovos Rail, said that passengers were from several different countries, and that most customers of the railroad were from the US or Europe.

Chris Botha, an emergency worker at the scene said that the derailment had produced “absolute carnage.” According to him, “[s]ome of the railway coaches are lying on top of each other and absolute wreckages. They had to use hydraulic rescue equipment to cut some of the people free.” The section of track where the incident occurred has been closed off.

Sunday, June 29, 2014

Spain’s men’s national goalball team arrived in Espoo, Finland Friday for the start of the 2014 IBSA Goalball World Championships. The team comes into the tournament with the goal of securing a medal, which would qualify them for the 2016 Summer Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro. The team missed the 2012 Summer Paralympics.

Head coach Francisco Monreal said, “The objective is to reach the medal round, and qualify directly for the 2016 Games, but we need to be realistic and not think game by game, we can get a surprise. […] The competition will be decided in one game, head or tails, where it doesn’t matter what happened before. ^{((es))Spanish language: ?el objetivo previsto es alcanzar las medallas y clasificarnos directamente para los Juegos de 2016, pero hay que ser realistas y como no vayamos pensando partido a partido, nos podemos llevar una sorpresa. […] La competición se decidirá en un partido a cara o cruz, como son los cruces de cuartos, y donde no sirve de nada lo realizado en la primera fase}“

Coming into the competition, the team was ranked eleventh in the world based on the IBSA Unofficial rankings published late last month, down one spot from the April rankings. The team is scheduled to play their first game against the ninth ranked United States men’s team on Monday morning, before playing twenty-first ranked Germany later in the afternoon. Their other scheduled competitors in pool play are top ranked Iran, third ranked Algeria, seventh ranked Finland, twelfth ranked Czech Republic and twentieth ranked Ukraine. The team needs to finish in the top four in their group to advance to the second round.

The team’s roster includes Jose Daniel Fernández, Cristian Santamaria, Félix Vargas, Roman Martínez, Jesús Santana, and Javier Serrato. They are led by head coach Monreal, with assistant coach Carles Estrany and physiotherapist José Bravo. The team is drawn from around the country, with Santana playing for a club in the Canary Islands, Serrato playing for Valencia, Fernández for Madrid area Chamartín, Santamaría for Cantabria, Vargas coming from Barcelona and Martínez from Aragón.

Absent from the 2012 Summer Paralympics, the last major international competition the team competed in was the 2010 Goalball World Championships in Sheffield, England where the team finished fifth. In last year’s IBSA European Goalball Championships in Turkey, the team finished second, behind World Championship hosts and Paralympic gold medalists Finland.

Goalball was created in 1946, exclusively for people with a visual disability and designed to help with the rehabilitation of veterans returning from World War II. Play in the Paralympics consists of two twelve-minute periods, with a three minute break between halves. Players are blindfolded to ensure all are equally visually handicapped on-court, and the game can be stopped to ensure goggles are properly fitted. Standing in front of a long goal, they throw the ball at the opposition team’s net who in turn try to block it by listening to the ball, which contains a bell, and using their bodies to prevent the ball from going in. The audience is asked to remain silent during play.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Four people were killed and another four wounded in an early-morning shooting at a Buffalo, New York restaurant yesterday. The shooting occurred as a party held in the restaurant was coming to a close.

At about 2:30 a.m. EDT (06:30 UTC), shots were fired outside the City Grill in downtown Buffalo. The victims were leaving a party in the restaurant, said authorities. The City Grill’s managers had just decided to close the restaurant until it was scheduled to next open due to an argument inside when the shooting happened.

At least 100 people had attended the party, in order to celebrate the first anniversary of a couple whose wedding was held last year. A formal anniversary event was scheduled for a later date, officials said. The couple had married in Texas one year ago and came to Buffalo to celebrate with friends and relatives. The 30-year-old husband, who was born in Buffalo, was one of the four killed in the shooting, but his wife was not hurt.

Police have not yet released the identities of the victims. Of the three others killed, one was a 26-year-old man and two others were women. Those two were identified as 27-year-old Shawntia McNeil by McNeil’s mother, Ruby Martin, and 32-year-old Tiffany Wilhite by Martin and Tiffany Wilhite’s father, Raymond Wilhite. Three of the four were pronounced dead at the crime scene, while the fourth died in a hospital. The four injured in the shooting were all men, said authorities. As of Saturday afternoon local time, one was in critical condition at an area hospital, two were in stable condition, and one was in good condition.

Latoya Nuness, who witnessed the shooting as she was leaving the restaurant with friends, said, “I’ve never been through anything so crazy.” She and her companions then ran into the kitchen for cover. “They were just shooting whoever they could shoot,” she said.

Police arrested 25-year-old Buffalo resident Keith Johnson in connection with the shooting on Saturday afternoon. Johnson was charged with four counts of second-degree murder. Police do not know if he was a part of the fight that happened inside the City Grill, and have asked witnesses to step forward.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

A civilian known as ‘Jimmy Justice’ who resides in New York City (NYC), New York, the largest city in the United States, has been videotaping NYC police officers and city workers, breaking the law while on the job.

Since 2007, he claims to have caught “hundreds of officers and other city employees violating the law,” and says he has them all on camera. He has posted his best confrontations with them to the video sharing website YouTube. As a result, Justice states that he has been asked to do a United States television show and Wikinews got an exclusive interview with him. For protection, Justice wished not to be called by his real name in fear of police retaliation.

Last year, Justice videotaped a police officer parking in front of a fire hydrant, but has only recently gained attention on social networking news sites such as Digg and reddit.com. So Wikinews contacted Mr. Justice, known as JimmyJustice4753 on YouTube, for an exclusive interview to find out what caused him to get revenge on the law.

On June 30, 2007, Justice caught officer E. Anderson of the NYPD, traffic division, parking directly in front of a fire hydrant while she went inside a restaurant to take a 15 minute lunch break.

“Do you think there is something wrong with parking a vehicle, blocking a fire hydrant,?” says Justice while following Anderson to her car after her meal.

“Mrs. Anderson I’m talking to you,” says Justice as Anderson ignores him. “You parked your vehicle blocking a fire hydrant. You are not allowed to do that. Somebody else would get a ticket for that. Why are you allowed to do it? You should be ashamed of yourself Mrs. Anderson.”

By this time, the incident has gained the interest of people nearby the scene and passing it. One unidentified woman, who claims to be a retired NYC police officer decides to intervene stating that people “are not supposed to film any police, [or] anybody employed with the police department because of the terrorism.” A short time later the woman walked off camera.

Since 2007 Justice says he has caught “hundreds of law enforcement officers and city officials” on “over 30 hours of video” violating laws from illegal U-turns in business districts to blocking bus stops and fire hydrants. Justice has only uploaded the “most colorful ones to YouTube” and recently, on April 8, 2008, Justice videotaped a NYPD tow truck officer blocking a hydrant while he also ate lunch inside a restaurant. According to NYC law, it is illegal for any vehicle to park within 15 feet of a fire hydrant and to park in front of a bus stop. It is also illegal for any person to make a U-turn in a business district. Fines for these violations can cost a driver up to US$115.00 for each violation occurred.

When Wikinews asked Justice why he decided to start filming the violations made by officials he answered, “what bothers me is watching an officer write someone a summons and then commit the exact same violation with their official vehicle. I started making these videos to remind the officers (and complacent civilians) that City employees have to abide by the same laws that they are paid to enforce. I plan on doing this and inspiring others to do this as well as a means of leveling the playing field against discourteous officers.”

“In NYC, the traffic cops are notorious for their draconian indiscretion in handing out summonses to civilians for petty violations. Obviously the laws are not enforced as a matter of public safety, but rather to raise revenue,” added Justice.

Justice makes little effort to get the violations on videotape saying “all I have to do to catch them is open my eyes.”

“The problem with abuse of authority is rampant in New York City. I take my video camera with me on the way to work and on the way to social events and band rehearsals and when I see action it takes me less than 4 seconds to have the camera out and in record mode,” states Justice.

His videos have drawn the attention of media and he has been featured on ABC’s ‘I-caught videos’ and Inside Edition. Justice also states that the popularity of his videos have gotten the attention producers in Hollywood, California and as a result, there are plans for a television show.

Since Justice began getting even with officials and their violations, he states that there has been a positive change in the communities.

“The publicity my videos have received has effected positive change in the community, but we still have a long road ahead of us,” added Justice.

As a result of his videos, at the time the NYPD launched an investigation into the violations, but it is not known if any officers were charged or punished. Justice himself has never been arrested, but has been assaulted.

“I have never been arrested for this yet but they have threatened me with arrest. I have been spit on, cursed at, assaulted, and I had 2 cameras broken already,” added Justice.

Monday, August 26, 2013

German non-profit organization Definetz announced on Friday the development of the ‘Defikopter’: a medical drone, launched by smartphone app, designed to be able to fly defibrillators to heart attack victims in remote areas quicker than an ambulance.

The Defikopter is to be launched by an app that sends out the GPS coordinates of the victim. With the ability to fly at 70km per hour in all weather conditions, the eight-armed octocopter could reach any patient within a ten kilometre radius.

The invention has received cautious praise from German medical services; the drone is still in the development and testing stage. Definetz and collaborating drone builder Height Tech have not issued any information about the release of the smartphone app or about when the drone will be available for medical services to purchase.

“We’ll have to see how much these drones can help,” German emergency services union representative Marco König told The Local. German news site Mittelbayerische reports a price tag of €20,000 (US$26,000) apiece.

One major problem Definetz faces is the law that requires all unmanned flying vehicles in Germany to be supervised. Another is that only members of the public who downloaded the app ‘just in case’ of an emergency, plus emergency workers with the app, could summon a drone.

Tuesday, June 30, 2020

Recently, Finnish open-source video game developer Perttu Ahola discussed Minetest, his “longest ever project”, with Wikinews.

Started in October 2010, Minetest was an attempt by Ahola to create a sandbox game similar to Minecraft. Minecraft is a multi-platform commercial game, which was in alpha version when Ahola challenged himself to create something similar to it from scratch, he told Wikinews.

Minetest is an open-source game, which is free for anyone to download and play. It is written in the C++ programming language, and the source code is available on code-hosting site GitHub. According to Ahola, Minetest attempts to run on older hardware, with limited graphics, but to be accessible to more people: those who have outdated technology, and making it available for no cost. Minecraft, on the other hand, is a paid game, currently costing USD 26.95 for its computer version. Minecraft is currently owned by Microsoft, and performs poorly on older hardware.

A correspondent from French Wikinews contacted Perttu Ahola via Internet Relay Chat a few weeks ago, discussing Minecraft. This interview is built on top of the previous interview, as we take a deeper dive into knowing more about this free game which is about to turn ten years old in a few months.