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Sunday, September 2, 2012

London, England — Yesterday at London’s Basketball Arena, the Canada women’s national wheelchair basketball team earned their first victory of the London Paralympics when they defeated the Australia women’s national wheelchair basketball team 57–50.

Canada took a one point lead into the second half, when the scores were 33–32 because of a last minute foul that sent Canada to the free throw line where they capitalized by making one of their shots. 4.5 point player Janet McLachlan and 2 point player Katie Harnock dominated in minutes played for Canada during the first half, playing all 20 minutes and leading their team in scoring with 11 first half points for McLachlan and 12 for Harnock. The Canadian team was loudly supported by spectators, earning more cheering from the largely Great Britain supporting fans than the Australians.

The second half saw Canada slowly increase their lead, keeping tied with Australia 4–4 in the first half of third, 6–4 in the last half of the third, 6–4 in the first half of the fourth, and 8–6 in the last half of the fourth. McLachlan finished the game as Canada’s leading scorer with 28 total, 17 in the second half. Harnock had a quieter second half only scoring 2 points to finish with 14. Cindy Ouellett was the team’s third leading scorer, finishing the game with ten.

The Canadian team supported their team from the bench, chanting “Get it out! Get it out!” when on defense and “Let’s go Canada” when on the offense. Other times, one player led the team in chanting support for their players on the court. The team was consistently louder than the Australian bench.

Throughout the game, the Canadians tipped themselves over more in their chairs than the Australians. Ouellett tipped once, and bounced in her chair, with a wheel leaving the ground as she attempted to block shots and steal the ball. Ouellett and Australian Cobi Crispin locked wheels, and required a break in the game where Australia’s coach came on to the court and removed Ouellett’s wheel to detach the pair before putting it back on again.

Following the game, Australia’s Amber Merritt said of playing Canada, “I have the utmost respect for Canada. They’re a great team, but we’ll refocus on the game tomorrow [against the Netherlands] and go out and play like we know we can, the Australian way.”

Prior to the start of the game, McLachlan was the team’s dominating player in the competition. She was ranked eighth in the competition in field goal percentage, and was Canada’a highest ranked player in this category. She ranked second in the tournament in total field goals made per game, with 12. Teammate Katie Harnock ranked eighth. Tara Feser ranked fourth in the tournament for 2 point field goal percentage at 57.1%, while McLachlan ranked ninth with 50.0%. McLachlan was second in 2 point field goals made per game, at 12. Harnock was tied for first with Mexico’s Floralia Estrada Bernal in the competition for 3 point field goal percentage at 20%, and was ranked second in the tournament for most 3 point field goals made with one.

As a team coming into the game, Canada was ranked sixth in total field goal percentage, eighth in free throw percentage, sixth in average rebounds per game, second in fouls, and last in turnovers.

Coming into this game, Canada had lost their first game 70–59 to the Netherlands. They are scheduled to play Brazil today.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Wikinews reporter David Shankbone is currently, courtesy of the Israeli government and friends, visiting Israel. This is a first-hand account of his experiences and may — as a result — not fully comply with Wikinews’ neutrality policy. Please note this is a journalism experiment for Wikinews and put constructive criticism on the collaboration page.

Dr. Yossi Vardi is known as Israel’s ‘Father of the Entrepreneur’, and he has many children in the form of technology companies he has helped to incubate in Tel Aviv‘s booming Internet sector. At the offices of Superna, one such company, he introduced a whirlwind of presentations from his baby incubators to a group of journalists. What stuck most in my head was when Vardi said, “What is important is not the technology, but the talent.” Perhaps because he repeated this after each young Internet entrepreneur showed us his or her latest creation under Vardi’s tutelage. I had a sense of déjà vu from this mantra. A casual reader of the newspapers during the Dot.com boom will remember a glut of stories that could be called “The Rise of the Failure”; people whose technology companies had collapsed were suddenly hot commodities to start up new companies. This seemingly paradoxical thinking was talked about as new back then; but even Thomas Edison—the Father of Invention—is oft-quoted for saying, “I have not failed. I have just found ten thousand ways that won’t work.”

Vardi’s focus on encouraging his brood of talent regardless of the practicalities stuck out to me because of a recent pair of “dueling studies” The New York Times has printed. These are the sort of studies that confuse parents on how to raise their kids. The first, by Carol Dweck at Stanford University, came to the conclusion that children who are not praised for their efforts, regardless of the outcome’s success, rarely attempt more challenging and complex pursuits. According to Dweck’s study, when a child knows that they will receive praise for being right instead of for tackling difficult problems, even if they fail, they will simply elect to take on easy tasks in which they are assured of finding the solution.

Only one month earlier the Times produced another story for parents to agonize over, this time based on a study from the Brookings Institution, entitled “Are Kids Getting Too Much Praise?” Unlike Dweck’s clinical study, Brookings drew conclusions from statistical data that could be influenced by a variety of factors (since there was no clinical control). The study found American kids are far more confident that they have done well than their Korean counterparts, even when the inverse is true. The Times adds in the words of a Harvard faculty psychologist who intoned, “Self-esteem is based on real accomplishments. It’s all about letting kids shine in a realistic way.” But this is not the first time the self-esteem generation’s proponents have been criticized.

Vardi clearly would find himself encouraged by Dweck’s study, though, based upon how often he seemed to ask us to keep our eyes on the people more than the products. That’s not to say he has not found his latest ICQ, though only time—and consumers—will tell.

For a Web 2.User like myself, I was most fascinated by Fixya, a site that, like Wikipedia, exists on the free work of people with knowledge. Fixya is a tech support site where people who are having problems with equipment ask a question and it is answered by registered “experts.” These experts are the equivalent of Wikipedia’s editors: they are self-ordained purveyors of solutions. But instead of solving a mystery of knowledge a reader has in their head, these experts solve a problem related to something you have bought and do not understand. From baby cribs to cellular phones, over 500,000 products are “supported” on Fixya’s website. The Fixya business model relies upon the good will of its experts to want to help other people through the ever-expanding world of consumer appliances. But it is different from Wikipedia in two important ways. First, Fixya is for-profit. The altruistic exchange of information is somewhat dampened by the knowledge that somebody, somewhere, is profiting from whatever you give. Second, with Wikipedia it is very easy for a person to type in a few sentences about a subject on an article about the Toshiba Satellite laptop, but to answer technical problems a person is experiencing seems like a different realm. But is it? “It’s a beautiful thing. People really want to help other people,” said the presenter, who marveled at the community that has already developed on Fixya. “Another difference from Wikipedia is that we have a premium content version of the site.” Their premium site is where they envision making their money. Customers with a problem will assign a dollar amount based upon how badly they need an answer to a question, and the expert-editors of Fixya will share in the payment for the resolved issue. Like Wikipedia, reputation is paramount to Fixya’s experts. Whereas Wikipedia editors are judged by how they are perceived in the Wiki community, the amount of barnstars they receive and by the value of their contributions, Fixya’s customers rate its experts based upon the usefulness of their advice. The site is currently working on offering extended warranties with some manufacturers, although it was not clear how that would work on a site that functioned on the work of any expert.

Another collaborative effort product presented to us was YouFig, which is software designed to allow a group of people to collaborate on work product. This is not a new idea, although may web-based products have generally fallen flat. The idea is that people who are working on a multi-media project can combine efforts to create a final product. They envision their initial market to be academia, but one could see the product stretching to fields such as law, where large litigation projects with high-level of collaboration on both document creation and media presentation; in business, where software aimed at product development has generally not lived up to its promises; and in the science and engineering fields, where multi-media collaboration is quickly becoming not only the norm, but a necessity.

For the popular consumer market, Superna, whose offices hosted our meeting, demonstrated their cost-saving vision for the Smart Home (SH). Current SH systems require a large, expensive server in order to coordinate all the electronic appliances in today’s air-conditioned, lit and entertainment-saturated house. Such coordinating servers can cost upwards of US$5,000, whereas Superna’s software can turn a US$1,000 hand-held tablet PC into household remote control.

There were a few start-ups where Vardi’s fatherly mentoring seemed more at play than long-term practical business modeling. In the hot market of WiFi products, WeFi is software that will allow groups of users, such as friends, share knowledge about the location of free Internet WiFi access, and also provide codes and keys for certain hot spots, with access provided only to the trusted users within a group. The mock-up that was shown to us had a Google Maps-esque city block that had green points to the known hot spots that are available either for free (such as those owned by good Samaritans who do not secure their WiFi access) or for pay, with access information provided for that location. I saw two long-term problems: first, WiMAX, which is able to provide Internet access to people for miles within its range. There is already discussion all over the Internet as to whether this technology will eventually make WiFi obsolete, negating the need to find “hot spots” for a group of friends. Taiwan is already testing an island-wide WiMAX project. The second problem is if good Samaritans are more easily located, instead of just happened-upon, how many will keep their WiFi access free? It has already become more difficult to find people willing to contribute to free Internet. Even in Tel Aviv, and elsewhere, I have come across several secure wireless users who named their network “Fuck Off” in an in-your-face message to freeloaders.

Another child of Vardi’s that the Brookings Institution might say was over-praised for self-esteem but lacking real accomplishment is AtlasCT, although reportedly Nokia offered to pay US$8.1 million for the software, which they turned down. It is again a map-based software that allows user-generated photographs to be uploaded to personalized street maps that they can share with friends, students, colleagues or whomever else wants to view a person’s slideshow from their vacation to Paris (“Dude, go to the icon over Boulevard Montmartre and you’ll see this girl I thought was hot outside the Hard Rock Cafe!”) Aside from the idea that many people probably have little interest in looking at the photo journey of someone they know (“You can see how I traced the steps of Jesus in the Galilee“), it is also easy to imagine Google coming out with its own freeware that would instantly trump this program. Although one can see an e-classroom in architecture employing such software to allow students to take a walking tour through Rome, its desirability may be limited.

Whether Vardi is a smart parent for his encouragement, or in fact propping up laggards, is something only time will tell him as he attempts to bring these products of his children to market. The look of awe that came across each company’s representative whenever he entered the room provided the answer to the question of Who’s your daddy?

Saturday, February 4, 2006

The Bush Administration said Thursday that it will request a Defense Department budget of US$439.3 billion for 2007. This is an increase of over 4%. This does not include a planned supplemental bill to fund ongoing actions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The proposal’s details are still not final, but the budget that President Bush will submit next week will be for planning purposes. $2.3 billion of the budget will go to preparing for a bird flu epidemic.

Many weapons programs were tweaked but no major weapon system was cut. Funding for unmanned aircraft will be increased.

Thursday, July 3, 2014

Ian Narev, the CEO of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, this morning “unreservedly” apologised to clients who lost money in a scandal involving the bank’s financial planning services arm.

Last week, a Senate enquiry found financial advisers from the Commonwealth Bank had made high-risk investments of clients’ money without the clients’ permission, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars lost. The Senate enquiry called for a Royal Commission into the bank, and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).

Mr Narev stated the bank’s performance in providing financial advice was “unacceptable”, and the bank was launching a scheme to compensate clients who lost money due to the planners’ actions.

In a statement Mr Narev said, “Poor advice provided by some of our advisers between 2003 and 2012 caused financial loss and distress and I am truly sorry for that. […] There have been changes in management, structure and culture. We have also invested in new systems, implemented new processes, enhanced adviser supervision and improved training.”

An investigation by Fairfax Media instigated the Senate inquiry into the Commonwealth Bank’s financial planning division and ASIC.

Whistleblower Jeff Morris, who reported the misconduct of the bank to ASIC six years ago, said in an article for The Sydney Morning Herald that neither the bank nor ASIC should be in control of the compensation program.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Daybreak, a new breakfast show on ITV in the United Kingdom, launched on Monday at 0600 BST (0500 UTC). The show was hosted by Christine Bleakley and Adrian Chiles, both of whom previously presented The One Show on BBC One.

Opening the broadcast, Bleakley commented: “Dawn is happening, day is breaking behind us here, it’s a beautiful thing here behind us in the studio.” Chiles then commented: “The sun is up and thank goodness. We spent good money bringing you this view […] at least you can see it. Thank goodness for that.” On the website for The Guardian, Stuart Heritage stated that “[a]lthough it does seem like a continuation of GMTV rather than a bold reinvention, some of the new aspects of Daybreak have worked. Adrian and Christine have done reasonably well and the other new faces all seem like good additions.” The set for the programme features two purple sofas with a large round desk in between the sofas and a skyline of London in a backdrop.

The new programme was followed at 0830 BST (0730 UTC) by another new programme, entitled Lorraine — hosted by Lorraine Kelly — which was broadcast until 0925 BST (0825 UTC). Kelly stressed: “I’ve really missed you. I hope you like our new look and we’ve got a packed show for you today.” The Lorraine set contains a pink sofa, a pink armchair and a large round white desk. The two new programmes are the successors to GMTV — which had its last broadcast on Friday.

Previously, Alison Sharman, ITV Director of Factual and Daytime, explained: “Daybreak plays a key part in ITV’s ongoing transformation and reflects the fact that creative renewal lies at the heart of our schedule, which is being modernised and improved under Peter Fincham. We want to ensure that the core audience of housewives with children keep watching but are also determined to attract new viewers to our revitalised breakfast show. As we approach the next stage of this transformational journey our newly confirmed anchors — Christine and Adrian — will be the lynchpins of Daybreak with their unique and brilliant partnership.”

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Dr. Jerald Block is a psychiatrist based in Portland, Oregon, United States. Dr. Block has attracted some media attention due to one theory of his – the idea that Internet addiction can be viewed as a distinct mental condition.

In an interview with Wikinews, Dr. Block discusses this theory, including what needs to be done about it, and the alleged violent response that can arise from an addict’s withdrawal. Below is the full exclusive interview.

Friday, May 26, 2006

In February of 2006, the Savarino Services Construction Corp. proposed the construction of a seven million dollar hotel on Elmwood and Forest Avenues in Buffalo, New York. In order for the hotel to be built, at least five properties containing businesses and residents would have to be destroyed. It was not certain whether the properties were owned by Savarino or by the landlord Hans Mobius. The hotel was designed by Karl Frizlen of the Frizlen Group, and is planned to be a franchise of the Wyndham Hotels group.

Elmwood Avenue is known by the community as a popular shopping center, and Nancy Pollina of Don Apparel (who is “utterly against” the construction) claims it’s the only reason why students from Buffalo State College leave campus. Additionally, Michael Faust of Mondo Video said he did not want to “get kicked out of here [his video store property].”

In 1995, a Walgreens was proposed to be built on the same land, but Walgreens later withdrew its request for a variance because of pressure from the community. More recently, Pano Georgiadis tried to get the rights to demolish the Atwater House next to his restaurant on Elmwood Avenue, but was denied a permit due to the property’s historical value. He has since been an opponent to the hotel construction.

In the process of debating the hotel, it was thought that a hotel had previously existed on the proposed site, however; research done at the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society had shown that no hotel had previously existed on the site.

Monday, May 15, 2006

Honolulu police on Saturday fatally shot a man who reportedly fired a shotgun at them on a residential street in rural Oahu.

Police received a call at about 6:30 p.m. HST that a man in a black trench coat had fired a shotgun at a parked car on Kaukama Road in Ma’ili, on the west coast of Oahu. The Specialized Services Division of the Honolulu Police Department was called to the scene.

When officers ordered him to get out of the car, the gunman fired a shotgun at the officers, then pointed two handguns at an officer, who fired at the gunman, hitting him in the head. The man was pronounced dead at the scene.

The officer involved has been placed on administrative leave, as per standard HPD procedure after a fatal shooting.

The gunman was later identified as Tracy Peters, 47, who had a long criminal history with 23 criminal convictions, including drug possession, firearms violations, and second-degree robbery.

Peters had reportedly been experiencing family problems, and had warned acquaintances that he was going to do something drastic. “The next time you see me, I’m going to be in a casket,” he said.