Thursday, November 8, 2007

India is the latest of the countries where the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) experiment has started. Children from the village of Khairat were given the opportunity to learn how to use the XO laptop. During the last year XO was distributed to children from Arahuay in Peru, Ban Samkha in Thailand, Cardal in Uruguay and Galadima in Nigeria. The OLPC team are, in their reports on the startup of the trials, delighted with how the laptop has improved access to information and ability to carry out educational activities. Thailand’s The Nation has praised the project, describing the children as “enthusiastic” and keen to attend school with their laptops.

Recent good news for the project sees Uruguay having ordered 100,000 of the machines which are to be given to children aged six to twelve. Should all go according to plan a further 300,000 machines will be purchased by 2009 to give one to every child in the country. As the first to order, Uruguay chose the OLPC XO laptop over its rival from Intel, the Classmate PC. In parallel with the delivery of the laptops network connectivity will be provided to schools involved in the project.

The remainder of this article is based on Carla G. Munroy’s Khairat Chronicle, which is available from the OLPC Wiki. Additional sources are listed at the end.

Sunday, August 27, 2006

After being held for more than four years at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, German born Turkish citizen Murat Kurnaz was transferred to German custody by U.S. authorities on Thursday. An hour later, he was released.

Kurnaz was picked up in Pakistan in 2001 when riding a bus. He was first transferred to a prison camp in Afghanistan and then transferred to Guantanamo bay. He was designated an “enemy combatant” even after German law enforcement and US intelligence officials concluded that there was no information tying him to al-Qaeda or other terrorist activities.

Kurnaz’s lawyers have charged that Kurnaz was tortured while being held in Afghanistan and – to a lesser degree – while at Guantanamo Bay. Even on the flight back to Germany Kurnaz was shackled on hand and feet, tied to the ground and blindfolded.

Pentagon spokesman Chito Peppler said that the conditions for the prisoner transfer of Kurnaz to Germany included guarantees that Kurnaz be treated humanely by German authorities and that Germany take steps to ensure Kurnaz would not pose any threat to the world.

Monday, November 12, 2018

On Friday at about 4 p.m. local time, four car bombs detonated near Sahafi Hotel in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. About four to five armed attackers reportedly attempted to enter the hotel through a hole in the wall. The attackers were shot by police and the hotel security guards. This has resulted in the death of at least 53 people and injury of at least 100 people, Agence France-Presse news agency quoted officials on Sunday morning.

A witness, Abdiaziz Ibrahim, who was a former spokesperson for the Internal Security Ministry, said the attackers were dressed in police uniform, according to CNN. The victim count continued to rise on Saturday. According to a police official, some of the bodies were burnt and impossible to identify.

al-Shabab, a militant Islamist group in Somalia, claimed the attack. According to Reuters, they said the hotel was a “government base” where “government officials” were always present.

The owner of the hotel also died in the attack. The hotel was located in the vicinity of Somalia’s Criminal Investigations Department.

Tuesday, February 6, 2007

Official pressure on the Hare Krishna community near Almaty in Kazakhstan is mounting, according to Norwegian religious rights organisation Forum 18. Following on from the demolition of homes at the end of last year three more home owners have been issued with demolition notices. If the owners fail to demolish their own houses the authorities have warned they will do so themselves and charge them for the cost.

Thirteen homes owned by members of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness were bulldozed last November, although other homes in the village owned by non-Hare Krishna residents were not touched. Gauhar Beyeseyeva of the Kazakh Foreign Ministry is quoted as saying (to the members of the Hare Krishna commune) “We were denied the OSCE chairmanship specifically because of you people.”

Amanbek Muhashov, the chair of the committee for religion under the justice ministry told the Kazakh daily Kazakhstanskaya Pravda that some of the group members acquired land for the settlements by giving misleading information and thus the property did not conform to local regulations. This is refuted by the members of the community.

The OSCE’s Advisory Council on Freedom of Religion or Belief examined the dispute in detail last year and concluded that “state sponsored action has been focused upon members of the Hare Krishna community in a manner that suggests they have been targeted on the basis of their religious affiliation,” and that “this raises serious issues regarding the enjoyment of the freedom of religion and belief.” The Advisory Council also stated its “willingness to meet with the Kazakh authorities in order to discuss the situation and to extend its good offices to assist in the resolution of that dispute”. The Kazakh authorities have thus far given no official answer to the Advisory Council’s 27 November 2006 offer.

A. Kravchenko, the head of the prosecutor-generals denied any “religious implications” in the legal proceedings.

On 29 January Viktor Golous, Chair of the Hare Krishna Community, was summoned to a court hearing to continue the case on the ownership of the commune’s farm. At the same time, demolition notices were served on three more Hare Krishna home owners, who were told that they must demolish their own homes within five days. According to Forum 18 no previous notices had been given to any of the three Hare Krishna targets in regards to any claims filed against them, court hearings or court rulings. Thus they were unable to file an appeal and defend their property.

Golous appeared in court on January 30th with request that that – due to the short notice given – the hearing should be adjourned at least until lawyers were able to appear. Judge Jurhan Zhailybayev accepted the application for an adjournment and told Golous that he could leave as notice of the new date of the hearing would be sent to him. However, after Golous left the court, Judge Zhailybayev ruled – with only one of the three defendants present – that the Hare Krishna-owned farm should, in fact, be confiscated.

Members of the ‘Sri Vrindavan Dharm’ community in Karasai district question who is benefiting from the confiscation of their property?

Rati Manjari of the Hare Krishnas told Forum 18 on January 20th that “by this new claim the authorities are preparing to cancel a 2005 Supreme Court decision that the Hare Krishna community are the bona fide purchaser and user of the land.” She suggested that the authorities plan – “after they win this case” – to appeal to the Supreme Court to annul the Hare Krishna community’s purchase and thus ownership of the land.

Sunday, August 21, 2005

A robotic system at Stanford Medical Center was used to perform a laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery successfully with a theoretically similar rate of complications to that seen in standard operations. However, as there were only 10 people in the experimental group (and another 10 in the control group), this is not a statistically significant sample.

If this surgical procedure is as successful in large-scale studies, it may lead the way for the use of robotic surgery in even more delicate procedures, such as heart surgery. Note that this is not a fully automated system, as a human doctor controls the operation via remote control. Laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery is a treatment for obesity.

There were concerns that doctors, in the future, might only be trained in the remote control procedure. Ronald G. Latimer, M.D., of Santa Barbara, CA, warned “The fact that surgeons may have to open the patient or might actually need to revert to standard laparoscopic techniques demands that this basic training be a requirement before a robot is purchased. Robots do malfunction, so a backup system is imperative. We should not be seduced to buy this instrument to train surgeons if they are not able to do the primary operations themselves.”

There are precedents for just such a problem occurring. A previous “new technology”, the electrocardiogram (ECG), has lead to a lack of basic education on the older technology, the stethoscope. As a result, many heart conditions now go undiagnosed, especially in children and others who rarely undergo an ECG procedure.

Tuesday, June 6, 2006

Google has launched an online spreadsheet site, in a private beta.

The site will allow spreadsheets to be shared between up to 10 users, which is aimed to be useful to teams and small businesses. “Many people already organise information into spreadsheets. Where they are struggling is to share it” said the product manager, Jonathan Rochelle.

Google recently bought the online word-processor Writely, launched a calendar product, as well as a desktop search tool. Many see this as them straying into Microsoft‘s markets.

Google Spreadsheets uses very advanced AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript And Xml) and Client Side Scripting to mimic very effectively it’s desktop counterparts’ functions.

It is surprisingly fast, has very good formatting and advanced formula support, but best of all it has complete support for Microsoft Excel .xls files, and very good collaboration: just enter the e-mail address and you can share easily.