Monday, March 19, 2012

Hawker, Australian Capital Territory — Tonight, the Japanese national team beat the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) softball team 1–0 in the first of a two game series before Japan plays a three game test series against the Australian national team.

The game was a low scoring pitching duel. Japan brought five pitchers to Canberra for their Australian tour. Since the last Olympics, Japan has been in a rebuilding period. The side is young and many of their best players have not had much international experience. One of their best pitchers is only nineteen years old.

The ACT side included Australian national team members Aimee Murch and Clare Warwick; Olympic bronze medalist Brenda De Blaes; Victorian state team representative, national team member and Olympic bronze medalist Justine Smethurst; and Clare Currie, who narrowly missed the cut for the national team.

De Blaes started the top of the first with a hit. She ended the inning stranded on base. Murch was pitching for the ACT to start the bottom of the first. Number 15 for Japan opened the inning with a single, and was advanced to third on another single. She was tagged out after trying to score a run after her teammate hit a pop up caught by the ACT’s centre fielder. Number 6 hit a double during this inning, scoring Japan’s only run.

The top of the second saw ACT players 1, 5 and 3 tagged out after hits to the infield. The bottom of the second saw number 13 out on a foul ball caught on the fly by the ACT’s third baseman, and number 11 and 24 out on balls hit into and caught by the ACT’s centre fielder.

The top of third inning saw numbers 24 and 21 ground out. De Blaes ended the inning by striking out. The bottom of the third saw Japan’s first batter ground out, number 8 getting a single on an infield hit, another playing getting an out, and the inning ending with number 11 hitting an infield ground out.

The rest of the game followed much the same pattern. Two players, an ACT player and a Japanese, were struck by balls and required trainers to look at them. Smethurst came in and pitched a few innings in relief. Between the fifth and sixth innings, there was a small delay in the game when a dog named Streaker, owned by Australia men’s national softball team player Adam Folkard, ran onto the the infield.

The game ended 1–0. An announcement was made at the end of the game that the match scheduled for tomorrow would start fifteen minutes earlier than the advertised start time of 18:00.

Friday, September 26, 2008

On October 14, 2008, Canadians will be heading to the polls for the federal election. Christian Heritage Party candidate John M. Wierenga is standing for election in the riding of Yellowhead. A journeyman welder with a company in Neerlandia, Alberta, John is an active member of the Neerlandia Canadian Reformed Church. Serving on his church council, he actively volunteers in the community, serving a partial term on the Pembina Pro-Life Board.

Wikinews contacted John, to talk about the issues facing Canadians, and what they and their party would do to address them. Wikinews is in the process of contacting every candidate, in every riding across the country, no matter their political stripe. All interviews are conducted over e-mail, and interviews are published unedited, allowing candidates to impart their full message to our readers, uninterrupted.

Since 2000, the riding has been represented by Conservative Rob Merrifield, originally a Canadian Alliance member. Besides Wierenga, other challengers for the riding include Melissa Brade (Canadian Action), Mohamed El-Rafih (Liberal), Ken Kuzminski (NDP), and Monika Schaefer (Green).

For more information, visit the campaign’s official website, listed below.

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

A freak accident caused twenty deaths and some injuries, according to officials, at the well-known Kintampo waterfall, in Ghana, on Sunday afternoon local time. Those affected were reportedly school students from Wenchi Senior High School on a supervised trip, and several tourists, who were swimming at the time of a rainstorm and strong winds, bringing down a tree and crushing victims.

Eighteen students, according to Ghana National Fire Service spokesman Prince Billy Anaglate, were killed at the falls, while another two were rushed to hospital and died in care. Varying reports indicated possibly up to 18 people remaining in a critical condition who were trapped under the tree, who were then rescued and rushed to hospital, including a Wenchi Senior High School administrator.

Anaglate said the wind uprooted trees, which fell on swimmers.

Students’ bodies have been sent to the Kintampo Municipal Hospital’s morgue.

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Charles Taylor, the former President of Liberia, has been today handed a 50-year sentence for war crimes in neighbouring Sierra Leone. The court previously held he financed a war which left an estimated 50,000 dead.

Taylor, 64, is considered likely to remain incarcerated for life if the sentence stands, but his legal team has vowed to appeal. The prosecution sought an 80-year sentence. Taylor’s is the first conviction of a head of state by an international tribunal since the fallout from World War Two, when the Nuremberg trials were underway.

The Special Court for Sierra Leone, which is operating from the Netherlands to avoid unrest if Taylor were tried in Africa, spent more than a year deliberating before convicting Taylor last month. Acquitted of ordering crimes or of acting in a joint enterprise to conduct them, he was nonetheless convicted of aiding and abetting the offences. There were 94 prosecution witnesses and 21 for the defence.

The allegations date to civil war in Sierra Leone, which ran from 1991 to 2002. Taylor, who had been a warlord since the ’80s, backed the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF). Taylor was elected Liberian president in 1997 after a different civil war concluded.

Six years later he was ousted when an arrest warrant was issued and fled to Nigeria. He was arrested there in 2006 whilst again trying to flee and went on trial later that year. Taylor, who had been facing a rebellion against him since 1999 in Liberia, received training from late Libyan ruler Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.

Testimony included claims that Taylor-backed fighters adorned roads with human intestines and ate human flesh. One claimed to have seen Taylor himself eat human liver, something Taylor denied. One described asking RUF rebels to sever his only hand in exchange for his young son’s life.

Further allegations said teenage children were involved in the fighting and that Taylor sold illegally mined diamonds to finance arms purchases for the RUF. Western celebrities Naomi Campbell, a model, and Mia Farrow, an actress, described an incident at a charity dinner held by Nelson Mandella, then South Africa’s head, in 1997. Campbell and Farrow said Taylor gifted Campbell a number of diamonds. Taylor is claimed to have ordered seizure of Sierra Leone’s diamond deposits by RUF soldiers.

It was claimed in court that child soldiers were used in conflict, as diamond mine guards, and to carry out amputations. Allegations of forced amputation were made. Taylor was convicted in late April of aiding and abetting forcing amputation, as well as rape, murder, child soldier recruitment, sexual slavery, and pillaging.

The court’s panel of judges, presided over by Judge Richard Lussick, heard a 30-minute address by Taylor at an earlier sentencing hearing. “I express my sadness and sympathy for crimes suffered by individuals and families in Sierra Leone,” said Taylor, adding he acted “with honour” and as a peacemaker, asking for “reconciliation, not retribution” in sentencing. Taylor also gave evidence at his own trial, spending seven months of testimony saying he strove for peace in the region.

Lussick noted the panel felt 80 years to be excessive given that Taylor was cleared of directly carrying out offences. However, the court found other factors aggravated the case: In particular, he was a head of state. “Leadership must be carried out by example by the prosecution of crimes, not the commission of crimes,” Lussick said in court. “The special status of Mr. Taylor as a head of state puts him in a different category of offenders for the purpose of sentencing,” the judge said, with the convict “in a class of his own”.

“[His] positions both as president of Liberia and within the west African regional bodies distinguish him from any other individual that has appeared before this court,” Prosecutor Brenda Hollis said at a sentencing hearing. “Taylor’s abuse of his authority and influence is especially egregious given that west African leaders repeatedly entrusted him with a role to facilitate peace.” She had claimed “No significant mitigating circumstances exist in this case.”

Lussick also told the court today Taylor stood convicted of “aiding and abetting, as well as planning, some of the most heinous and brutal crimes recorded in human history”. “The lives of many more innocent civilians in Sierra Leone were lost or destroyed as a direct result of his actions.” These were, the court said, crimes of the “utmost gravity in terms of scale and brutality”. The prosecution had claimed Taylor followed no more motivation beyond simple greed and power lust. Lussick said today the judges were unanimous in imposing a term of 50 years.

The defence had called for a sentence that gave Taylor a realistic prospect of eventual release. They also noted he is set to be sent to the United Kingdom to serve sentence. The defendant would be “culturally isolated”, facing a “punishment within a punishment”. At least one war crimes convict has been attacked in prison in the UK, and it is anticipated Taylor will end up in a high-security prison after the UK Foreign Office has promised to uphold an agreement to imprison him there made by ex-Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett.

“The sentence is clearly excessive, clearly disproportionate to his circumstances, his age and his health and does not take into account the fact that he stepped down from office voluntarily,” said counsel for the accused Morris Anya. The prosecution may also appeal the sentencing, and the verdict itself with intent to increase Taylor’s convictions beyond merely aiding and abetting. The defence also intends to appeal the verdict.

The appeals process means Taylor is likely to remain at The Hague for several months, where the court has been holding sessions in nearby Leidschendam. He is the last defendant to face trial before the Special Court, which has previously convicted and sentenced eight other prominent figures in the conflict.

Sunday, December 9, 2007

The United States Congress has launched its own inquiry into a decision by the U.S spy agency to destroy tapes of interrogations of terror suspects, with Central Intelligence Agency chief Michael Hayden testifying before lawmakers this week.

The Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Democrat Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, says Hayden will appear before his panel.

“CIA director Michael Hayden is going appear before our committee on this coming Tuesday and talk about interrogation and techniques,” said Rockefeller.

During an appearance on the CBS television program Face the Nation, Rockefeller made clear members have a lot of questions about the destroyed videotapes.

“Were there things on those tapes that they did not want to have seen, that did not conform to what the attorney general would allow them to do?” he said.

Rockefeller indicated the session will take place behind closed doors, to enable law makers to delve into areas that are still considered top secret, and have to do with specific interrogation procedures.

The CIA director disclosed the destroyed videotapes last Thursday, after he got word that their existence had been uncovered by the news media. The tapes which were made in 2002, showed the interrogation of top terror suspects. They were destroyed in 2005, and Congressional critics charge that could amount to tampering with legal evidence and obstruction of justice.

Democrat Joe Biden of Delaware, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and former chair of the Judiciary panel, says the preliminary joint inquiry by the Justice Department and the CIA announced yesterday is not enough.

Biden, who is running for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, was interviewed on ABC’s This Week.

“I think that Hayden is not to be the judge of whether or not his condoning the destroying of the tapes was lawful. It appears as though there may be an obstruction of justice charge here, tampering with evidence, destroying evidence,and I think this is one case where it really does call for a special counsel,” said Biden.

Hayden told CIA employees Thursday the tapes were destroyed out of fears that if they ever became public, the identities of the interrogators would be revealed and their lives would be in danger.

President Bush gave the intelligence community the go-ahead to use enhanced interrogation techniques on terror suspects following the September 11th 2001, attacks on the United States.

The Bush administration has refused to specify which methods are permitted, but critics charge some amount to torture, including a procedure known as waterboarding, which simulates drowning.

Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona has called for the White House to publicly disavow the use of harsh interrogation techniques.

He appeared on the Fox News Sunday television program.

“What this does in a larger sense is it harms the credibility and the moral standing of America in the world again,” said McCain. “There will be skepticism and cynicism all over the world about how we treat prisoners and whether we practice torture or not.”

Senator McCain, a former Vietnam War era prisoner of war, has been one of the most outspoken members of Congress on the treatment of detainees in the war on terror. He is campaigning to become the Republican Party’s presidential nominee.

Sunday, May 21, 2006

Three days after the Internet release of the free content 3D short Elephants Dream (see Wikinews coverage), we exchanged e-mails with Ton Roosendaal about the reaction to the film, open source filmmaking, and the changes to Blender that resulted from the production. Ton Roosendaal is the lead developer of the Blender 3D rendering and modelling software that was used for the movie. He is also the chairman of the Blender Foundation, a non-profit organization which was formed in support of the software and projects like Elephants Dream.

How much money did the Blender Foundation spend on producing the movie? Has the money been fully recouped by DVD orders and donations?

We still have to finish the final bookkeeping for this project. It has been executed in co-production with the Netherlands Media Art Institute, and we each had our own internal budgeting for the project. When you exclude expenses of pre-production and producer personnel, the total budget was about 120,000 €, of which we covered half. Our contribution was roughly covered half by the DVD sales, and half by European Union support (http://www.uni-verse.org consortium).

One of the most common criticisms of CGI films is focus on technology over content. For instance, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within flopped with audiences, in spite of being an undisputed technical milestone. I’ve seen many reviews that criticized the plot of “Elephants Dream” as too bizarre or confusing. In retrospect, are you happy with the story development process?

Haha, I knew the story and plot would get a mixed acclaim. There’s a couple of reasons I’d like to mention for it.

First of all; the criticism resembles how people witness Blender itself, too. Many people expect that Free Software is an easy accessible mass audience product. We get a lot of complaints by non-artists that they can’t get into the software easily, whilst the complexity of commercial products like Maya or Houdini is perceived as a confirmation of its “quality”. Apparently an Open Movie created similar expectations with the audience.

Luckily we also got many positive reviews of the artistic result of the movie. It is quite abstract, but definitely has many layers of information, inspiring many of the viewers to see relevant real life messages hidden here.

For this project we’ve teamed up with the Netherlands Media Art Institute, internationally renowned as a resource for video art. So for Elephants Dream, we’ve had the luxury to challenge ourselves to create real independent artistic content as well. The artists had a lot of freedom from the start; they were responsible for the concept, story and creative development of the entire movie. This has resulted in a lot of quite personal choices, based on what the artists liked to do themselves. I really cherish such an approach, it has resulted in a very motivated team working crazy hours the last months to get it all realized.

But, most importantly; the main target of our project was not only to create a 3D movie short, but to experiment with ways to improve the efficiency and quality of open source development. On this aspect only, this project was just a huge success, and the main reason for our sponsors (the DVD pre-sale) to support it. I know they might have liked a cartoonish funny movie with furry animals better, but for that you get already pretty well served by the bigger 3D animation studios. 🙂

I’m the first to admit that – looking back especially – certain aspects worked out quite weakly; there’s loose ends and questionable decisions, especially in story development and continuity. That’s just the risk of doing experiments, and nothing I regret really. The five artists from our user community who were invited to make the movie were young people with no professional background in filmmaking. Their personal incentive to participate in this project was also to learn from it, and to create a good portfolio for their future career. I’ve witnessed them grow in competence in the past year enormously, something I’m incredibly proud of.

On the technical level, the only major criticism I’ve seen of “Elephants Dream” is the character animation, especially in the opening scene — many reviewers felt that the movements seemed a bit unnatural. Do you agree with these criticisms? If so, what do you think can be done to improve on that level?

Yeah, the challenge the artists set themselves – to use quite realistic personages – is also something that easily works against you. In many animation movies they introduce characters in the beginning in a way you get used to their specific characteristic movements, so you accept a certain level of non-realism easily. (Check the weird walk cycles in The Incredibles for example). Another aspect is that we’ve started work on the first scenes, and ended with the last scenes. I can clearly see the animation quality increase, and that whilst the ending scenes were done in much less time due to time constraints.

We also didn’t schedule to do 9.5 minutes of animation either…. Originally it was more like 6. But, it’s always easier to look back to define the right decisions, eh? 🙂

I’m very happy with the reviews we got so far; luckily the movie was perceived as a professional quality product, and reviewed based on comparisons with what the big studios come up with. Even when we couldn’t satisfy all these quality demands, it has luckily not been branded as a pathetic presumptuous attempt by amateurs!

Do you think there is hope for a full-length open movie project in the near future? Would the Blender Foundation be interested in such a project, or do you intend to continue focusing mainly on shorts?

I’d like to wait a little while with defining what a next project would look like. Given the constraints of “organizing projects to improve open source development”, we might have not much choice either. It would probably mean to work with a new team each time, so most likely be based on shorts only. On the other hand, there’s also clear signals that this approach works well, and creates excitement and involvement of a lot of people, also from producers and sponsors. That might enable us to set up a next project based on larger targets. For a full-length feature film however, we should involve a sufficient amount of experienced film makers as well, and/or invite the first team to participate again. That would put a lot of pressure on the required budget…. You can’t do that based on a 1000 DVD pre-sale target. Would more be like 20,000 or so…. 🙂

How did the process of making the movie feed back into the development of Blender? Are there major technical changes that were made only or primarily because of the film?

Already during the pre-production phase the artists have defined the key targets for Blender development. This then was coordinated with the online development community too. I’ve done the most crucial (re-)development mostly myself, though. Especially on the character animation tools, on the rendering pipeline and compositing tools.

It is especially the latter I’m most satisfied with. In 3D movie production the compositing stage creates a giant content bottleneck. By transparently integrating this in our render-pipeline, a very efficient workflow has been achieved. And, not to forget, Blender now also offers the first production-level open source compositor on the market!

The current summary you can find in our work-in-progress release notes.

What are the key technical features in Blender you want to add or improve for future movie projects?

Depends on what the movie is about! There’s always hundreds of features you can work on. However, we’ll have to work on that anyway, movie project or not. There’s a lot of professionals using Blender now, and they can’t wait for the Blender Foundation to do movies! Look at this studio for example:http://www.plumiferos.com/

I read that at least one proprietary software package, Reaktor, was used for the sound effects. Is this because no equivalent free software solution exists yet? Will future projects have a “free software only” policy?

We’ve limited the “Open Source tools” requirement to our own Studio Orange only. That was what we could keep in control at least, and I can tell you it was not always easy even… 🙂

For sound and music we’ve decided from the beginning to seek an external sponsor. We have chosen to work with the best quality studio and composer we could find, preferably using open source, but not as a prerequisite.

My own competence is solely within the CG [computer graphics, Ed.] side of movie making. When it comes to music editing, or video encoding and DVD authoring, I could only decide to choose to work with external parties with proven competences in that area. I have to be practical in projects like this, especially to ensure it will be realized.

Hopefully, now we’ve got so much attention world wide, we can involve more non-CG open source next time, too. I will definitely strive for the maximum here, but it will fully depend on the amount of professional support we can get.

Blender itself was originally closed source freeware, until it was “liberated” through a fundraising campaign. If you could choose one proprietary application to “set free” where such a goal could be realistically achieved, which one would it be?

Well, the “realistically achieved” demand makes it quite difficult. 🙂 Looking back at similar cases, like Mozilla and OpenOffice.org, it was always very circumstantial. It just happens sometimes, you can’t organize something like this to happen in advance. The only common denominator is “a company in troubles”… so, who’s in trouble now?

What is your personal favorite computer-animated full-length film?

Uuuh… that differs every week! Probably Ice Age (the first one). Mostly because they didn’t overdo showcasing 3D technology so much, but created truly adorable characters and great funny gags.