Monday, January 16, 2006

Iran has “barred” Time Warner Inc.’s, CNN, from working in the country “until further notice” due to mistranslating comments made by Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during a press conference Saturday January 14, 2006.

In his speech Saturday, Ahmadinejad defended Iran’s right to continue nuclear research.

State Media complained to CNN that they had used the translation “nuclear weapons” instead of “nuclear technology”.

The ban by the Culture and Islamic Guidance Ministry was read in a statement on state-run television saying, “due to mistranslation of the words of Ahmadinejad during his press conference, activities of the American CNN in Tehran are banned until further notice,” the statement said. “CNN quoted Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying that Iran has the right to build nuclear weapons,” the network said in its report of the ban. “In fact he said that Iran has the right to nuclear energy.” He then adds, “a nation that has civilization does not need nuclear weapons, and our nation does not need them.”

CNN has acknowledged that they had made the mistake.

The network then went on to say, “CNN apologized on all its platforms which included the translation error, including CNN International, CNNUSA and CNN.com, and also expressed its regrets to the Iranian Government and the Iranian ambassador to the UN.”

Mohammad Hossein Khoshvaght, director of foreign media at the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, said on state television that he welcomed CNN’s apology, but that “so far it’s not clear whether it was something pre-planned or a mistake. Therefore, we will ban its activities (in Iran) for the time being. CNN’s right to work in Iran would depend on an assessment of the broadcaster’s future coverage of the Islamic state.”

CNN has told its viewers that it has not yet been officially notified of the ban.

Monday, May 14, 2007

Buffalo, New York —A massive warehouse complex of at least 5 buildings caught on fire in Buffalo, New York on 111 Tonawanda Street, sending a plume of thick, jet black colored smoke into the air that could be seen as far away as 40 miles.

As of 6:40 a.m., the fire was under control, and firefighters were attempting to stop it from spreading, but could not get to the center of the fire because of severe amounts of debris. Later in the morning, the fire was extinguished.

“The fire is mostly under debris at this point. It’s under control, but it’s under some debris. We really can’t get to it. We’re just going to have to keep on pouring water on it so it doesn’t spread,” said Thomas Ashe, the fire chief for the North Buffalo based fire division who also added that at one point, at least 125 firefighters were on the scene battling the blaze. One suffered minor injures and was able to take himself to the hospital to seek medical attention.

Shortly after 8:00 p.m. as many as 3 explosions rocked the warehouse sending large mushroom clouds of thick black smoke into the air. After the third explosion, heat could be felt more than 100 feet away. The fire started in the front, one story building then quickly spread to three others, but fire fighters managed to stop the flames from spreading onto the 3 story building all the way at the back.

According to a Buffalo Police officer, who wished not to be named, the fire began at about 7:00 p.m. [Eastern time], starting as a one alarm fire. By 8:00 p.m., three fire companies were on the scene battling the blaze. Police also say that a smaller fire was reported in the same building on Saturday night, which caused little damage.

At the start of the fire, traffic was backed up nearly 4 miles on the 198 expressway going west toward the 190 Interstate and police had to shut down the Tonawanda street exit because the road is too close to the fire.

At one point, traffic on the 198 was moving so slow, at least a dozen people were seen getting out of their cars and walking down the expressway to watch the fire. That prompted as many as 10 police cars to be dispatched to the scene to force individuals back into their cars and close off one of the 2 lanes on the westbound side.

One woman, who wished not to be named as she is close to the owner of the warehouse, said the building is filled with “classic cars, forklifts, and money” and that owner “does not have insurance” coverage on the property. The building is not considered abandoned, but firefighters said that it is vacant.

Officials in Fort Erie, Ontario were also swamped with calls to fire departments when the wind blew the smoke over the Niagra River and into Canada.

It is not known what caused the fire, but a car is suspected to have caught on fire and there are reports from police and hazmat crews, that there were also large barrels of diesel fuel being stored in one building. Firefighters say the cause of the blaze is being treated as “suspicious.” The ATF is investigating the fire and will bring dogs in to search the debris.

Friday, April 23, 2010

Minas, one of the largest states of Brazil, has stopped the sale of the Toyota Corolla over safety concerns.

The move was made after nine Corolla customers reported that their cars automatically accelerated. The state public prosecutor’s office said in an online statement on Tuesday that the problem is blamed on accelerator pedals sticking underneath floor mats. Local government said the issue was “putting in danger the lives of occupants”.

According to the prosecutor’s office, sales of Corollas may resume when Toyota alters the floormats in its current models. Toyota has recalled over eight million vehicles worldwide due to acceleration problems.

Wednesday, April 21, 2021

On November 16, code-sharing and hosting service GitHub re-enabled the public access to youtube-dl repository, a software which can download videos from the internet via the command-line. This move comes after Mitchell Stoltz, a Senior Staff Attorney of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), sent a letter to GitHub on the behalf of youtube-dl’s maintainers. The repository was previously blocked on October 23, after GitHub received a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) take-down notice from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

Started in July 2008, youtube-dl is a free/libré open source software written in Python which can download videos from various websites. Citing alleged violation of 17 U.S. Code § 1201 Circumvention of copyright protection systems, RIAA’s takedown notice had alleged youtube-dl was intended to circumvent the technological protection measures of streaming services and to redistribute music videos without authorisation. youtube-dl’s source code had a number of unit tests to check if the software works in different circumstances or not. Some of the test cases included URLs of some copyrighted songs.

In the letter to GitHub, EFF’s attorney Stoltz said “This file contains series of automated tests that verify the functionality of youtube-dl for streaming various types of video. The youtube-dl source code does not, of course, contain copies of these songs or any others […] the unit tests do not cause a permanent download or distribution of the songs they reference; they merely stream a few seconds of each song to verify the operation of youtube-dl. Streaming a small portion of a song in a non-permanent fashion to test the operation of an independently created software program is a fair use.” The letter stressed “youtube-dl does not decrypt video streams that are encrypted with commercial DRM technologies”.

The URLs to copyrighted songs were removed from the source code on November 16, and replaced with a test video that uploaded on YouTube by Philipp Hagemeister, former maintainer of youtube-dl. Philipp Hagemeister had previously spoken about the takedown with Wikinews.

youtube-dl comes with a small JavaScript interpreter where it acts as a web-browser would behave while receiving video data from the server. The script has “extractors” for various websites to handle videos from different sources. “Any software capable of running JavaScript code can derive the URL of the video stream and access the stream, regardless of whether the software has been approved by YouTube”, the letter read. It borrowed an analogy of Doors of Durin from J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings for explanation: travelers come upon a door that has writing in a foreign language. When translated, the writing says “say ‘friend’ and enter.” The travelers say “friend” and the door opens. As with the writing on that door, YouTube presents instructions on accessing video streams to everyone who comes asking for it.

Hours after the public access was restored, Sergey M, one of the maintainers of youtube-dl wrote on GitHub, “We would like to thank @github for standing up for youtube-dl and making it possible to continue development without dropping any features. We appreciate [GitHub] for taking potential legal risks in this regard. We would also like to thank [EFF] and personally [Mitch Stoltz] for invaluable legal help. We would also like to heartily thank our main website hoster Uberspace who is currently being sued in Germany for hosting our essentially business card website and who have already spent thousands of Euros in their legal defense.”

Hours after GitHub restored the public access to the repository, Stoltz tweeted “I think of youtube-dl as a successor to the videocassette recorder. The VCR empowered people to take control of their personal use of free-to-air video, but it had to be saved from the copyright cartel. The same goes for youtube-dl. GitHub did the right thing here.”

youtube-dl is used by thousands of people around the world. Multiple Creative Commons-licensed and public domain videos on Wikimedia Commons are uploaded via a tool called video2commons, which relies on youtube-dl to download media. youtube-dl also lets users download videos from LiveLeak — a video-sharing platform for citizen journalism. Videos downloaded using youtube-dl are also used for the purpose of fair use, or for evidence.

When a copyright holder chooses to release their work, be it a photograph, a video, or audio, under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, they allow everyone to freely own, share or modify the work as long as the reusers properly attribute the author of the work. YouTube also hosts many audio and video recordings in the public domain which can be used for any purpose without any restrictions.

In the blog post announcing “youtube-dl is back”, GitHub said, “Although we did initially take the project down, we understand that just because code can be used to access copyrighted works doesn’t mean it can’t also be used to access works in non-infringing ways. We also understood that this project’s code has many legitimate purposes, including changing playback speeds for accessibility, preserving evidence in the fight for human rights, aiding journalists in fact-checking, and downloading Creative Commons-licensed or public domain videos.”

GitHub also announced any new 1201 takedown notices will be “carefully scrutinised by legal experts” to reject “unwarranted claims”, and said it will side with software developers if the claims are ambiguous. The announcement also mentioned GitHub Trust and Safety team would treat developer’s tickets as a “top priority”. GitHub also pledged donation of USD 1 million for developer defense fund “to help protect open source developers on GitHub from unwarranted DMCA Section 1201 takedown claims”.

GitHub had blocked public access to many forks of youtube-dl upon receiving the DMCA notice in October. At that time, Wikinews noted public access was not yet restored for the forked repositories listed in RIAA’s copyright notice and was still displays “Repository unavailable due to DMCA takedown”.

During the period when GitHub had disabled public access for the repository, Sergey M had been developing youtube-dl and hosting it on GitLab, another code-sharing and hosting site. However, since GitHub has restored public access of youtube-dl, Sergey M has made the GitLab repository private.

After this, Wikinews reached out to Richard Stallman, the founder of Free Software Foundation, who has been highly critical of DRM (digital rights management, the subject of the DMCA) for many years now, to discuss the harms of DRM and DMCA 1201.

Monday, September 7, 2015

The US economy added 173,000 jobs in August, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday. The unemployment rate fell from 5.3 to 5.1 percent, the lowest since April 2008.

Although August job gains were lower than most economists forecast, job growth numbers for June and July were revised upwards by a combined 44,000. Average job gains over the past three months stand at 221,000, compared to March-May’s 189,000 monthly average. Over the past twelve months, job growth has averaged 247,000 per month.

Average hourly earnings rose 0.3 percent, or 8 cents, marking the largest increase in earnings in seven months. Hourly earnings had risen by 6 cents in July. Wages have risen by 2.2 percent over the past year.

Job growth in August was primarily concentrated in the health care and social assistance, financial activities, and professional and business services sectors. Those three areas of the economy added a combined 108,000 jobs. Food service and drinking places employment increased by 26,000 over the month, and other economic sectors saw employment hold steady. Manufacturing, on the other hand, saw employment decline by 17,000 in August. A stronger dollar and worldwide economic weakness make US exports less desirable, leading to a flattening in manufacturing employment so far this year after steadily rising in the early years of the US economic recovery.

The solid overall job gains led analysts to slightly raise expectations for a decision by the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates this month. Investors raised the likelihood of a September rate increase from 26 percent before the jobs report to 30 percent, and stocks dropped by over one percent on Friday. “The payrolls data is certainly good enough to allow for a Fed rate hike in September,” said Deutsche Bank’s head of currency strategy, Alan Ruskin. “The big question is still whether financial market volatility will scupper the plans.”

“This is the first time the market has looked at a Fed meeting and really has no idea what the Fed is going to do,” said Mark Kepner, a New Jersey equity trader with Themis Trading. “Right now you’re looking at the overall uncertainty and that’s what’s hanging on the market. I don’t think this number in and of itself changes how somebody’s going to vote.”

Saturday, September 8, 2007

• Braves 7, Nationals 1: Atlanta Braves pitcher John Smoltz lost a no-hitter after seven innings, giving up a single to Ronnie Belliard in the first at-bat of the eighth inning; after allowing the hit, Smoltz left the game to cheers from the home crowd. Belliard later scored, so Smoltz (13-7) finished with one hit and one earned run for the win. Joel Hanrahan (4-3) pitched 4 1/3 innings, giving up five runs (four earned) for the loss. The Nationals committed five errors in the game, three of them by third-baseman Ryan Zimmerman, who also went 0-4, striking out all four times he batted. In the ninth inning of the game, a fan ran onto the field; he was immediately tackled by security officers, but one officer was injured after he landed on his head in the scuffle, and the game was halted while the officer was carted off the field for treatment. The Braves (72-69) are 7.5 games back of the Mets in the NL East, and 4.5 games back of the Padres in the NL Wild Card race.

• White Sox 11, Twins 10, 13 inn: In a wild game that saw the Twins score six runs in the 9th inning to break a 4-4 tie, only to allow six runs to the White Sox in the bottom half of the inning, A.J. Pierzynski finally won the game in the 13th inning with a bases-loaded walkoff single. Heath Phillips (1-1) got the win, giving up one hit in the 13th. Juan Rincon (3-3) pitched 1 1/3 inning, allowing the winning run for the loss.

• Red Sox 4, Orioles 0: Jon Lester (4-0) gave up four hits in seven scoreless innings for the win. The Red Sox (86-56) lead the Yankees in the AL East by 6.5 games.

• Yankees 3, Royals 2: Bobby Abreu knocked in the winning run in the 7th on an RBI double. The Yankees (79-62) lead the AL Wild Card race by 3 games over the Tigers.

• Angels 3, Indians 2, 10 inn: Ryan Garko tied the game at 2-2 for the Indians in the 9th inning, but Kendry Morales hit a walkoff single to score Chone Figgins in the bottom of the 10th. The Angels (84-57) lead the AL West by 9 games over the Mariners, while the Indians (81-60) lead the AL Central by 5 games over the Tigers.

• Tigers 6, Mariners 1: Curtis Granderson went 2-4, hitting his 20th homer of the year and becoming only the 6th player in MLB history to hit 20 doubles, 20 triples and 20 home runs in the same season. The Tigers (76-65) trail the Indians in the AL Central by 5 games, and trail the Yankees in the AL Wild Card by 3 games.

• Mets 11, Astros 3: Carlos Beltran hit the game-winning solo homer and an RBI single in the game. The Mets (79-61) lead the NL East by 6 games.

• Marlins 6, Phillies 3: Miguel Olivo hit a solo homer and an RBI double, and scored two runs in the game; all three of the Phillies’ runs came off a Pat Burrell three-run homer in the 4th. The Phillies trail the Mets by 6 games in the NL East, and trail the Padres by 3 games in the NL Wild Card.

• Pirates 6, Cubs 1: Jack Wilson finished a triple shy of the cycle, hitting a two-run homer and an RBI double to help the Pirates to a victory. The Cubs (71-69) are tied with the Brewers in the NL Central.

• Reds 11, Brewers 4: A six-run first inning sealed the game for the Reds, led by Ken Griffey Jr., who hit his 30th homer of the year, a two-run shot in the 2nd, and drove in a run off a 1st inning single. The Brewers (71-69) are tied with the Cubs in the NL Central.

• Diamondbacks 4, Cardinals 2: Eric Byrnes drove in the tying run off an RBI double, and scored the winning run off a fielder’s choice in the 6th inning. The Diamondbacks (79-63) lead the NL West by 2 games, while the Cardinals (69-69) trail the Cubs and Brewers by 1 game in the NL Central.

• Rockies 10, Padres 4: The Padres lost their third straight game; Rockies starting pitcher Elmer Dessens left due to injury in the third inning. The Padres (76-64) trail the Diamondbacks by 2 games in the NL West, but lead the NL Wild Card by 2.5 games.

• Rangers 5, Athletics 3: Rangers leadoff batter Frank Catalanotto went 3-4 with a solo homer, an RBI triple, and an RBI infield single.

• Giants 5, Dodgers 4: After the Giants lost a one-run lead on a James Loney solo homer in the top of the 9th, the Giants’ Dan Ortmeier answered back with a walk-off homer to win the game.

• Blue Jays 7, Devil Rays 2: Matt Stairs hit RBI singles to right field in the 5th and 6th innings; in the 5th inning, John McDonald and Vernon Wells scored; in the 6th inning, McDonald scored, but Wells was thrown out at home.