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Riots in Greece enter fourth night
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
The riots in Greece that started on December 6 have entered their fourth night. These are the worst riots the Hellenic Republic has witnessed in decades.
The riots were triggered when Alexandros Grigoropoulos, a 15-year-old student, was shot and killed by police. The police claim that Grigoropoulos was throwing a bomb at them when they fired.
Cities throughout Greece have been hit by the unrest, not just Athens. Hundreds of shops and businesses have been destroyed.
“No one has the right to use this tragic incident as an excuse for acts of violence,” said Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis, New Democracy party.
“The government cannot handle this crisis and has lost the trust of the Greek people,” George Papandreou of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement said. “The best thing it can do is resign and let the people find a solution … We will protect the public.”
The rioters are organizing on the campus of National Technical University of Athens (Athens Polytechnic). A constitutional clause enacted after the overthrow of the Greek military junta of 1967–1974 prevents security forces from entering the campus.
The Guardian is reporting that the University is being used by young men and women to stock up on firebombs and break up marble slabs to throw at police. From behind their makeshift barriers, they vowed the unrest would become “an uprising the likes of which Greece has never seen.”
“We are experiencing moments of a great social revolution,” leftist activist Panagiotis Sotiris told Reuters. Sotiris is among those occupying a university building. “The protests will last as long as necessary,” he added.
“A switch has been flicked and the pressure cooker’s boiled over,” said David Lea, an analyst at Control Risks Group in London, to Bloomberg News. “There are certain places where anarchists are more likely to inspire violence, and that’s Greece.”
Two police officers have been charged in the shooting death of Grigoropoulos, who was buried on Tuesday.
Glenn Beck loses domain name case over parody website
Saturday, November 7, 2009
American political commentator Glenn Beck has lost his case against a satirical website which parodies him, in a ruling from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva, Switzerland. The website argued Beck’s actions to shut it down were an attempt to silence free speech. On Friday, the website’s creator sent a letter to Beck saying he would voluntarily turn over the domain name to him.
Florida resident Isaac Eiland-Hall created the website in September, and it asserts Beck uses questionable tactics “to spread lies and misinformation”. The website was represented in the case Beck v. Eiland-Hall by free speech lawyer Marc Randazza. Wikinews interviewed Randazza for the article “US free speech lawyer Marc Randazza discusses Glenn Beck parody”, and previously reported on the case in articles, “US free speech lawyer defends satire of Glenn Beck” and “Satirical website criticizes Glenn Beck for ‘hypocritical’ attempts to silence free speech”.
Eiland-Hall registered the website at the domain “www.GlennBeckRapedAndMurderedAYoungGirlIn1990.com”. Its premise was derived from a joke statement made by Gilbert Gottfried about fellow comedian Bob Saget. Users of the Internet discussion community Fark first applied the joke to Beck, and it then became popular on several social media sites. Eiland-Hall saw the discussion on Fark, and created a website about it. The website asserts it does not believe the rumors to be true, commenting, “[b]ut we think Glenn Beck definitely uses tactics like this to spread lies and misinformation.” The website was created on September 1, and just two days later attorneys for Beck’s company Mercury Radio Arts took action. Beck’s lawyers sent letters to the domain name registrar where they referred to the domain name itself as “defamatory”, but failed to get the site removed.
Beck filed a formal complaint with the Switzerland-based agency of the United Nations, WIPO, who operate under regulations laid out by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Beck asserted the website’s usage is libelous, bad faith, and could confuse potential consumers. Beck’s complaint was filed under the process called the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy. This policy allows trademark owners to begin an administrative action by complaining that a certain domain registration is in “bad faith”. Beck argued the site should be shut down because it is an infringement upon his trademark in his own name, “Glenn Beck”.
Eiland-Hall retained Randazza as his attorney after receiving threatening letters from legal representatives of Beck. On September 28, Randazza filed a response brief to WIPO, contending the site is “protected political speech”, due to it’s “satirical political humor”. Randazza stated, “even an imbecile would look at this Web site and know that it’s a parody.” Randazza’s brief commented on Beck’s style of reporting, and highlighted a controversial statement made by him when interviewing a Muslim US Congressman. Beck said to Representative Keith Ellison, “I like Muslims, I’ve been to mosques. … And I have to tell you, I have been nervous about this interview because what I feel like saying is, sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.” According to the Citizen Media Law Project, the website’s joke premise takes advantage of “a perceived similarity between Beck’s rhetorical style and the Gottfried routine”.
Randazza argued in the response filed on behalf of Eiland-Hall that Beck attempted to use the process of the WIPO court to infringe the free speech rights of his client; “Beck is attempting to use this transnational body to circumvent and subvert the Respondent’s [web site owner] constitutional rights [to freedom of speech],” he wrote. Randazza cited the U.S. Supreme Court case, Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, in arguing that Beck’s attorneys advised him against filing legal action in a U.S. court because the website would likely be seen as a form of parody and due to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, such legal action would not be successful.
On September 29, Randazza sent a request to Beck’s representatives, asking that their client agree to stipulate to the United States Constitution, and especially to the First Amendment, during the case before the WIPO. In the request, Randazza quoted a statement from Beck himself about the usage of international law by United States citizens, Beck said, “[o]nce we sign our rights over to international law, the Constitution is officially dead.” In an October 19 interview with Wikinews, Randazza stated that Beck had not replied to his request to stipulate to the U.S. Constitution and the First Amendment in the WIPO case.
On October 20, Randazza filed a surreply – a response document to an October 13 supplementary filing made by Beck in the case. Attorneys for Beck asserted in the supplementary filing that the joke made by the website is difficult to comprehend, and therefore the domain name is confusing. In Beck’s supplementary filing, his lawyers argued, “While there is absolutely nothing humorous or amusing about the statement made by Respondent in his domain name that ‘Glenn Beck Raped and Murdered a Young Girl in 1990,’ the average Internet user finding the domain name GlennBeckRapedAndMurderedAYoungGirlin1990.com (“Disputed Domain Name”) in a search would have no reason not to believe that they will be directed to a website providing factual information (as opposed to protected criticism or similar protected speech) about Mr. Beck.”
Randazza’s surreply asserted, “An average Internet user might not ‘get the joke’. In fact, the average Internet user does not understand any internet memes. That’s the fun of a meme – it is an esoteric inside joke that will leave most people scratching their heads.” In Randazza’s conclusion to the Eiland-Hall surreply, he called Beck “the butt” of a joke he apparently does not understand. Randazza wrote that Beck “should be deeply ashamed” for devaluing the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
| …Respondent can be said to be making a political statement. This constitutes a legitimate non-commercial use of Complainant’s mark under the Policy. | ||
For Beck to have prevailed in the case, the WIPO arbitrator would have needed to rule in his favor on three points: the domain name was confusing with the mark “Glenn Beck”, the registrant Eiland-Hall did not have rights to the domain name, and that the domain name was registered as an act of “bad faith”. Frederick M. Abbott, the WIPO arbitrator, did rule that the domain name was confusing, but also ruled that Eiland-Hall had legitimate interest in the domain name of the website he created. “Respondent appears to the Panel to be engaged in a parody of the style or methodology that Respondent appears genuinely to believe is employed by Complainant in the provision of political commentary, and for that reason Respondent can be said to be making a political statement. This constitutes a legitimate non-commercial use of Complainant’s mark under the Policy,” said the WIPO ruling.
The WIPO decision also commented on the matter of third-party websites which may have derived profit through links from Eiland-Hall’s website, “While there is some evidence that at some stage third-party vendors of goods and services critical of [Beck] may have earned some income on sales of t-shirts and bumper stickers embodying political slogans based on click-throughs from [Eiland-Hall’s] Web site, the panel does not believe this is sufficient ‘commercial activity’ to change the balance of interests already addressed,” said the ruling.
| In this context of this WIPO case, you denigrated the letter of First Amendment law. | ||
After the WIPO ruling, Eiland-Hall decided to voluntarily relinquish ownership of the domain name and hand it over to Glenn Beck. On Friday, Eiland-Hall sent a letter to Beck, and pointed out that Beck’s actions only served to further increase publicity to the meme described on the website. “It bears observing that by bringing the WIPO complaint, you took what was merely one small critique meme, in a sea of internet memes, and turned it into a super-meme. Then, in pressing forward (by not withdrawing the complaint and instead filing additional briefs), you turned the super-meme into an object lesson in First Amendment principles,” wrote Eiland-Hall in the letter to Beck.
| It’s good to see that this WIPO arbitrator had no interest in allowing Beck to circumvent the guarantees of the U.S. Constitution. | ||
Eiland-Hall criticized Beck’s actions with regard to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, writing, “It also bears noting, in this matter and for the future, that you are entirely in control of whether or not you are the subject of this particular kind of criticism. I chose to criticize you using the well-tested method of satire because of its effectiveness. But, humor aside, your rhetorical style is no laughing matter. In this context of this WIPO case, you denigrated the letter of First Amendment law. In the context of your television show and your notoriety, you routinely and shamelessly denigrate the spirit of the First Amendment”. He stated that he persevered in the case in order to uphold the value of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, “I want to demonstrate to you that I had my lawyer fight this battle only to help preserve the First Amendment. Now that it is safe, at least from you (for the time being), I have no more use for the actual scrap of digital real estate you sought…” A representative of Beck declined to provide a comment about the WIPO ruling, after a request from PC Magazine.
Commentators likened the legal conflict between Beck and the site to the Streisand effect, a phenomenon where an individual’s attempt to censor material on the Internet in turn proves to make the material itself more public. Wendy Davis of Online Media Daily commented on the impact of the case, “The decision appears to mark a significant win for digital rights advocates because a ruling in Beck’s favor could have encouraged other subjects of online parodies to take their complaints directly to the WIPO rather than U.S. courts, which are bound by the First Amendment.” Citizen Media Law Project’s assistant director, Sam Bayard, wrote that the ruling was appropriate, “It’s good to see that this WIPO arbitrator had no interest in allowing Beck to circumvent the guarantees of the U.S. Constitution.”
The Bee Removal Process In Oceanside
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byAlma Abell
Bees are a vital part of nature. Like many animals, they have a mechanism to defend themselves if they feel their home is under attack. While this defense is useful for animal predators who love the honey, it is not so welcome when their hive is located in the backyard or inside your walls. Trying to get rid of them through traditional means such as poisonous sprays will really only aggravate them and bring out more of their defensive side. Thus, the only way to get rid of them, and potentially spare the hive, is to remove the honeycomb completely.
One of the first steps in bee removal in Oceanside is to dress up in bee protective gear. Since bees target the eyes and nose first, bee veils are absolutely necessary when working with bees. That is why you see many bee removal experts don this protective gear before the approach the hive. They will also ensure the rest of their clothing prevents angry bees from coming in contact with them. If the bees are very angry because of other removal efforts, they will attack regardless of their strain.
Another step is to use the smoking gun. The smoking gun helps as a means to calm down the bees. It simulates a fire, and bees will scurry to consume a lot of honey. This makes it tougher for them to actually sting a person. The smoke is used judiciously to calm the outside bees so the bee remover can get to the honeycomb the bees have built.
Getting to the honeycomb is the next step of bee removal in Oceanside . This may require the removal of drywall, framing and anything else the bees have built their honeycomb on. Getting rid of it completely is essential because bees will return if there is even a tiny bit of honeycomb left.
While not all strains of bees are aggressive, they can become that way if they aren’t properly removed. All bees will defend their homes, but it is important to save as many honey bees as possible because they are important pollinators. So many honey bees can find new homes with beekeepers and don’t have to be completely eradicated during removal.
Heatwave sweeps USA, many struggling to keep cool
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Temperatures as high as 111°F (48°C) have hit the United States today, a continuation of Monday’s triple-digit (Fahrenheit) record highs in some areas.
High energy costs have many elderly and low income citizens keeping the air conditioning off, fixed incomes being blamed in many cases. In response to this, cities such as Chicago and New York have turned some public facilities into “cooling areas” for the duration. Buildings being converted include homeless shelters, senior centers, libraries and shopping malls. State agencies are urging anyone experiencing heat related symptoms to get to one of these places as soon as possible.
Early reports are attributing at least three dead from heat related complications in Philadelphia, Arkansas, and Indiana
The National Weather Service has issued Red Flag warnings for six states, warning that the heat could easily lead to forest fires. Much of the northeast corridor and central plains states have been issued heat warnings.
Relief is in sight for the northeast, with storms bringing cooler weather from the Ohio Valley through New England; however the central part of the US won’t see a break in the heat until the weekend.
Eurovision ’04 winner Ruslana discusses her paths as singer, spokesmodel, stateswoman and source of inspiration
Monday, March 30, 2009
First becoming famous in her native Ukraine in the 1990s, long-haired self-described “Amazon” Ruslana gained international recognition for winning the 2004 Eurovision Song Contest with her song “Wild Dances,” inspired by the musical traditions of the Hutsul people of the Ukrainian Carpathian Mountains.
In the five years since, Ruslana has decided to use her name and public status to represent a number of worthy causes, including human trafficking, renewable energy, and even the basic concept of democratic process, becoming a public face of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution and later serving in Parliament.
Currently, she is on an international publicity tour to promote her album Wild Energy, a project borne out of a science fiction novel that has come to symbolize her hopes for a newer, better, freer way of life for everyone in the world. She took time to respond to questions Wikinews’s Mike Halterman posed to her about her career in music and her other endeavors.
This is the fifth in a series of interviews with past Eurovision contestants, which will be published sporadically in the lead-up to mid-May’s next contest in Moscow.
Author of My Billion Year Contract reflects on life in elite Scientology group
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Wikinews interviewed author Nancy Many about her book My Billion Year Contract, and asked her about life working in the elite Scientology group known as the “Sea Org“. Many joined Scientology in the early 1970s, and after leaving in 1996 she later testified against the organization. Published in October, Many’s book has gone on to become one of the top selling new books on Scientology at Amazon.com.
Make Your Search For Used Cars For Sale Easy
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Make Your Search for Used Cars for Sale Easy
by
Brainwork
Although the used car market has expanded and the number of used car dealers present in the market have increased over the last few years, yet finding the most suitable used cars for sale can be a tedious and difficult job, if you are unprepared. In order to make your search easy, you need to keep certain things in mind and consider a few things very closely.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKUwt7fP0es[/youtube]
One of the very important things that you need to remember while shopping for used cars is that, among the numerous car dealers present in the market, few are unreliable and fraud dealers. Such dealers always make huge claims and fool customers by selling defected and damaged cars. If you want to have a pleasant car buying experience, then it is essential that you stay away from such dealers and make a purchase from a reliable and reputed carsales company only. Therefore, first look for information about the leading car dealers, who deal in used cars and then proceed with your shopping. The next thing that you need to keep in mind is that, you should be well informed about the car that you are planning to buy. Due to the high competition in the market, today it is possible to find used cars in good condition, at unbelievably low prices. Although the low price of a used car for sale is not because of some problem present in it, yet it will always be wise to check a car thoroughly before buying it. Having the right and necessary information about a car will help you to compare it with other alternatives present in the market and also evaluate a car offered by a dealer in a better manner. Next, finalize a deal only after confirming that it is the best one available in the market. You can first collect information about the expected price of the car of your choice from the internet. After that collect quotes on the car of your choice from two or more reliable car dealer, compare them with one another and then finally go for the most suitable deal available. Whenever you begin your search for the best deals on used cars for sale, you need to remember that a good deal comprises of several things and not the price alone. Some of these include the warranty available with the car, condition of the car, extra value added services offered by a car dealer on used cars etc. Therefore, consider all these things before finalizing a deal.
The author is an experienced Content writer and publisher for Business Development. Visit at http://www.carlinandgazzard.com.au/ to know more about Used Cars For Sale , Carsales and Used Car For Sale.
Article Source:
ArticleRich.com
Gibraltar police investigate suspicious death
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Correction — Aug 2, 2010 A reader drew to our attention that a body was found in Varyl Begg Estate, not Varyl Road as was stated in this report.
The Criminal Investigation Department of the Royal Gibraltar Police (RGP) is carrying out investigations following the discovery of a body at a house in Cumberland Road in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
An RGP spokesman confirmed that a body, that of a British woman in her 50s who lived in Gibraltar, had been found, but he refused to give further details, telling reporters that the victim’s next of kin had not yet been informed. He went on to say that the RGP “are dealing with this as a suspicious death”. The Gibraltar Chronicle reported that the woman had sustained a wound.
Local residents became aware of the activity of the police and ambulance services around midnight.
Forensic investigators were on the scene until mid morning, and several people are believed to be helping the police with their enquiries. A man was arrested on suspicion of murder late Wednesday evening and was being held for questioning, but has now been released on Police bail pending ongoing investigations. Under local law in Gibraltar, he could be held for up to 24 hours without charge, after which time he must be released or charged.
This is the fourth death in Gibraltar in the last week. Others have included a man found hanged in Upper Town, another who was found on a Ministry of Defence base in a secure area, and drowned himself in the harbour, and a third man whose body was found severely decomposed in Varyl Road.
Wikinews attends Maker Faire in Tyler, Texas
Tuesday, April 30, 2019
Wikinews attended the sixth annual Mini Maker Faire in Tyler, Texas, United States on Saturday. Similar to a giant science fair, the event featured a variety of science, engineering and technology projects and items.
An array of technologies were on hand including 3D printers, drones, and various other physics devices. The owner of the Make Crate subscription service stated her company’s products place a strong emphasis on teaching young people about technology and coding. A traditional blacksmith was also on hand displaying metal working techniques.
Numerous Maker Clubs from an array of local schools were on hand, displaying a broad swathe of tech projects. A group of amateur hobbyists diplayed a model of the deck of the aircraft carrier, the USS Ronald Reagan with a solenoid device hooked up to launch paper airplanes.