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Wednesday, June 21, 2006

New Zealand farmers have won a key victory in Parliament, with MPs voting to exempt Working farm dogs from microchipping legislation, passing 61:60.

The Federated Farmers debated the law for a long time, saying that the cost of microchipping all their dogs will be a huge cost and an inconvenience. Under previous legislation, all newly registered dogs were to have identification microchips embedded by July 1. The microchips in dogs are for owner identification, in case of attacks on humans. This law was introduced when Carolina Anderson, 7-year-old, was attacked in 2003.

Parliament has been debating several proposed amendments to the Local Government Law Reform bill, which aimed to change the microchipping requirement.

Blogger David Farrar says “It is very messy for the Government to lose the vote after piling so much pressure on.” In the end only Labour, Progressive plus New Zealand First voted for it.

The Green party split votes (rare for a party). Four Greens MPs voted for the farm dog exemption and two against.

The four Green MPs were – Sue Bradford, Keith Locke, Sue Kedgley and Nandor Tanczos. The Greens had previously proposed that only dangerous dogs should be microchipped.

In favour of exempting farm dogs:

• National: 48
• Greens party: 4
• Maori: 4
• United Future: 3
• ACT: 2

Total: 61

Against:

• Labour: 50
• Progressive: 1
• NZ First: 7
• Greens party: 2

Total: 60

Saturday, August 30, 2008

A memorial service was held Friday for Javon Thompson, a toddler that died in Baltimore, Maryland, while under the care of a religious group called “1 Mind Ministries”. Thompson died in late 2006 or early 2007 in an apartment in West Baltimore. According to police statements, members of 1 Mind Ministries refused the boy food and water because he did not say “amen” after group meals. Police say the boy would have been about 19 months old when members of the group stopped feeding him in December 2006.

The Baltimore Sun spoke with Seeta Khadan-Newton, Javon Thompson’s grandmother, at the funeral service which took place at March Funeral Homes in Northwest Baltimore. “I loved this baby more than anything in my life,” she said.

The Baltimore Sun reported that Khadan–Newton told them she had contacted Baltimore’s Division of Social Services at least four times between April and December of 2006 out of worries for Thompson’s wellbeing and location. DSS officials stated that they received only two phone calls, and the complaints about Thompson’s treatment were not enough to look into further.

WJZ-TV reported that “Queen Antoinette”, the 40-year-old leader of 1 Mind Ministries, allegedly concealed Javon Thompson’s body in a blanket and sprayed it with fabric softener to mask the odor before having a member of the group leave the body in a friend’s backyard shed in Philadelphia. According to police, members of 1 Mind Ministries placed Thompson’s remains in a suitcase and took it to Philadelphia in February 2007, where they left it with an elderly friend. Subsequently members of the group moved to Brooklyn, New York. Law enforcement authorities found the suitcase with Thompson’s remains in April 2008.

Ria Ramkissoon, 21, Thompson’s mother, and four others, have been charged with first-degree murder by Baltimore homicide detectives in connection with the boy’s death. The Associated Press reported that police charging documents state that Queen Antoinette instructed her followers to pray for Javon Thompson to be resurrected while he lay dead in the back room of the Baltimore apartment. An informant told police Queen Antoinette left Javon Thompson’s body in the back room of the apartment for over a week, and told her followers: “God was going to raise Javon from the dead”.

Ramkissoon’s mother and her attorney assert that she was brainwashed by the 1 Mind Ministries group and acted under the control of Queen Antoinette. “The members of this cult, who were more than twice her age, were calling the shots,” said Ramkissoon’s attorney Steven Silverman at a court hearing for his client. Inside the group, Ria Ramkissoon referred to herself as “Princess Marie”.

Court documents revealed that 1 Mind Ministries conducted operations in secret, did not believe in medical care and dressed in all-white clothing. Members of the group were referred to as “princes” and “princesses” by Queen Antoinette, also known as Toni Sloan or Toni Ellsberry. Documents also state that they viewed Javon Thompson as a “demon” for not saying “amen” after meals, that they stopped feeding him in December 2006, and did not seek out medical attention when the boy stopped breathing and died.

Rick A. Ross of The Ross Institute Internet Archives for the Study of Destructive Cults, Controversial Groups and Movements spoke with the Associated Press about the nature of the 1 Mind Ministries group, and asserted that it meets the definition of a “cult“. Ross has given expert testimony in cases related to controversial groups and has studied them for 26 years. Law enforcement officials also used the term to describe the 1 Mind Ministries group, specifically characterizing it as a “Christian fundamentalist cult”.

“It fits the profile of a classic cult in the sense that it’s a personality-driven group and that Queen Antoinette is that animating personality and central defining element of the group,” said Ross. He compared the group to others where children were killed because they did not follow the instructions of the group. The Ross Institute Internet Archives maintains a page about 1 Mind Ministries, which contains archived news articles, a photo of Queen Antoinette, and links to other resources.

Prosecutors in the murder case have also referred to the 1 Mind Ministries group as a “cult”, and said that members of the group would likely follow Queen Antoinette’s instructions during the trial. In a hearing August 13 where Queen Antoinette and group member Trevia Williams, 21, were denied bail, they both also refused legal representation from Baltimore public defenders, and both declined a preliminary hearing. “Chances are, the cult members are going to do what she tells them to do,” said Baltimore Assistant State’s Attorney David C. Chiu at the court proceeding. Ria Ramkissoon is being held in the psychiatric unit of a city jail in Baltimore, Queen Antoinette, Trevia Williams and group member Marcus Cobbs are also being held in jail in Baltimore, and federal officials in New York from the United States Marshals Service are searching for another member of the group.

Rev. Anna V. Nelson spoke to the family at the memorial service in Baltimore, saying: “I would like to think that this boy died for us. This baby has left a message here for the whole world. This baby died so that they [1 Mind Ministries] could be exposed.”

The memorial service ended with a presentation of video clips of Javon Thompson playing, being held by his mother, and finally watching the camera as a female voice says goodbye to him.

Wednesday, April 5, 2006

Australian Prime Minister John Howard has announced a five year plan costing AU$1.8 billion to address issues with the country’s mental health system. The plan follows a commitment made at the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting in February.

The federal government will improve access to clinical and health services, increase the number of mental health professionals in Australia, create mental health work teams consisting of GPs, psychiatrists, psychologists and mental health nurses, provide respite services for people suffering mental illness and their carers, and introduce new programs for community awareness.

Mr Howard said the plan addresses issues which fall into its area of responsibility. He hopes that the states and territories will complement the federal government’s package by investing in supported accommodation, hospital and emergency services, crisis care services and the provision of mental health care in gaols.

Under the federal government’s plan, psychologists will play a greater role in the mental health system. From November, Patients will be able to claim a rebate from Medicare (Australia’s universal healthcare scheme) for the services of psychologists if they have been referred by a GP or psychiatrist. At present patients pay around $100 for a standard 30 minute consultation.

Mr Howard claims that there is an issue for mental health professionals in treating patients with a substance abuse problem and mental illness. To address this the government will provide extra funding for drug and alcohol rehabilitation services.

The government will increase the mental health workforce by funding an additional 400 mental health nursing and 200 clinical psychology places. 900 personal helpers and mentors will also be employed.

The government has promised increase funding for telephone counselling and suicide prevention services, living skills programs and additional support for those with a mental illness who are having difficulty finding or keeping work.

The government will also provide 900 personal helpers and mentors, increase funding for living skills programs and provide additional employment assistance to those who have difficulty finding or retaining employment due to their illness.

Monday, December 31, 2007

AOL has decided to discontinue development of the Netscape web browser which brought surfing the Internet to the masses, until its user base began to erode during the “browser wars” of the mid-1990s and resulted in the birth of Mozilla project.

Tom Drapeau, the director of Netscape inside AOL announced on the Netscape blog that support for the recently released Netscape Navigator 9 and all of Netscape’s browsers back to version 1.0, will end because it was unable to gain market share and a low number of users that continues to dwindle. Drapeau noted, “AOL’s focus on transitioning to an ad-supported web business leaves little room for the size of investment needed to get the Netscape browser to a point many of its fans expect it to be,” and that “the success the Mozilla Foundation has had in developing critically-acclaimed products, we feel it’s the right time to end development of Netscape branded browsers, hand the reins fully to Mozilla and encourage Netscape users to adopt Firefox.”

Netscape’s origins lie at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where Netscape’s co-founders, Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina wrote their first copy of NCSA Mosaic which became the first popular web browser and opened up the web for the first time to the general public and started the rise of the Internet in everyday life.

Andreessen along with Jim Clark, the founder of Silicon Graphics, started the Mosaic Communications Corporation and released their first product Mosaic Netscape 0.9 in October 1994. A month later the company became the name it is today, the Netscape Communications Corporation to avoid legal problems from NCSA. A year later, had a successful IPO on August 9, 1995 and the stock closed the day at $75.

Netscape’s early success and virtual monopoly of the browser market was short-lived however as Microsoft viewed Netscape’s idea of a consistent browser across various operating systems a threat and quickly began development of its own browser, Internet Explorer.

This competition between Netscape and Microsoft became known as the browser wars, where both companies tried to outdo each other with their increasingly unstable browsers including: new features that did not always work, not providing bug fixes, deviating from Web standards (including the infamous <blink> and <marquee> HTML tags), program crashes and security holes.

By the end of 1997, Netscape’s glory had run out and it experienced it’s first bad quarter, which resulted in layoffs in January 1998. The new year also brought the world with the arrival of what would eventually become Mozilla and later Firefox, when Netscape decided to make the source code for their browser open source. A year later, Netscape was out of steam and was no longer an independent company but now a subsidiary of America Online.

The most recent version of the Netscape browser, Navigator 9, was for the most part was a re-skinned version of Firefox developed internally by a small group of people inside AOL. Netscape’s actual browser development division was closed back in July 2003 and the workers laid off.

However, AOL continues to run Netscape as a brand including a web portal, including a Digg-like social news aggregator which was branded as Netscape.com from June 2006 till September 2007, when it was spun off into a renamed site called Propeller. Netscape.com is now a dually branded AOL Netscape web portal, which is a duplicate of AOL.com. Netscape is also used as a brand by AOL as a low-cost dial-up Internet service provider.

Firefox’s third version is currently available as a beta and Microsoft is expected to release Internet Explorer 8 sometime in 2008.

Sunday, October 7, 2007

Lloyd Helferty is running for the Green Party of Ontario in the Ontario provincial election, in the Thornhill 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.

Thursday, April 14, 2005

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters that China is protesting Japan’s plan to allow drilling for gas and oil in disputed waters in the East China Sea, characterizing the move as “a serious provocation”.

On Wednesday, Japan announced that they would begin processing applications to allow oil and gas drilling firms to explore in the disputed area, east of the “demarcation line” which has held up applications to drill in the area for decades.

“The Chinese and Japanese positions differ on that matter, but we need to continue talks from a big point of view, without inflaming conflicts, and to turn the sea of conflict into a sea of coordination,” Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told a news conference.

Qin Gang said that China reserved “the right to take further reaction,” according to Xinhua.

“China has never ever recognized and will never recognize the demarcation line,” Qin told reporters.

Japan’s exploration of the disputed zone could start early next month, and will be defended by Japanese military vessels, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.