Tuesday, November 20, 2007

British Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling announced to a shocked House of Commons today that two password-protected — but not encrypted — computer disks containing the entire Child Benefit database have been lost in transit between the offices of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) in Washington, Tyne & Wear and the National Audit Office (NAO) in London, in what has been described as “one of the world’s biggest ID protection failures”.

The database contains details of all families in the UK who receive Child Benefit — all families with children up to 16 years of age, plus those with children up to 20 years old if they are in full-time education or training — estimated to contain 25 million individuals in 7.25 million families. Among other items of information, the database contains names, addresses, dates of birth, child benefit and National Insurance numbers, and where appropriate, bank or building society account details.

The discs were created by a junior official at the HMRC in response to a request for information by the NAO, and were sent unregistered and unrecorded on 18 October using the courier company TNT — which operates the HMRC’s internal mail system. When it was found that the discs had not arrived for audit at the NAO, a further copy of this data was made and sent — this time by registered mail — and this package did arrive. HMRC were not informed that the original discs had been lost until 8 November, and Darling himself was informed on 10 November.

The violation of data protection laws involved in the creation of the discs has led to strong attacks on the government’s competence to establish the proposed National Identity Register, when all UK residents will have an identity card. Conservative Shadow Chancellor George Osborne described the loss of data as “catastrophic” and said “They [the government] simply cannot be trusted with people’s personal information”.

The Chairman of HMRC, Paul Gray, has resigned over the affair, and critics are calling for Darling to do likewise.

This is the third data embarrassment for HMRC in recent weeks — earlier this month it was reported that the details of over 15,000 Standard Life customers had been put on disk, and then lost en route from HMRC in Newcastle to Standard Life in Edinburgh — and last month a laptop containing the data of 400 people with high-value ISAs was stolen from the boot of a car belonging to a HMRC official who had been carrying out a routine audit.

Monday, September 24, 2007

Marion Schaffer is running for the Green Party of Ontario in the Ontario provincial election, in the Oakville riding. Wikinews’ Nick Moreau interviewed her regarding her values, her experience, and her 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, August 2, 2007

The Interstate 35W Mississippi River eight-lane bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota has collapsed on both sides of the highway over the Mississippi River during rush hour.

Previous reports indicated at least nine people had died, but Minneapolis police revised this to four during a 7:30 a.m. (local time) press conference. Tim Dolan, the Minneapolis Police Chief later stated that “several [adding to the four] people are confirmed dead at the scene,” but would not elaborate on how many. At least 79 have been injured and at least 8 are still missing, still believed to be in the rubble.

The road was busy with bumper-to-bumper traffic in four lanes when the entire 1907 foot (581 m) steel arch bridge collapsed. At least 50 cars were traveling on the bridge, including a school bus. The Red Cross said that 60 children were aboard a school bus, and that ten of those were admitted to a hospital.

The entire length of the bridge over the river collapsed at 6:05 p.m. CDT (UTC-5). The bridge, built in 1967, cleared the water level by 64 feet; the deck surface and pavement were considerably higher.

Reports say that people may be trapped in the water. Further, “many voids may contain survivors, but we cannot search those voids until it’s safe,” said Jim Clack, Minneapolis Fire Chief, during a press conference.

“One has died from drowning,” said a doctor from the medical center during an 8:00 pm press conference, who also said that so far 22 are in “yellow condition” and at least six are in “critical condition.”

Minneapolis officials have stated during an earlier press conference that “people are being sent downtown and all survivors are off the bridge. We are seeking help from the Red Cross.” and “[…]at least 60 children are receiving trauma care some with severe injures, some with minor injuries.”

Most of the injured have been received by Hennepin County Medical Center in downtown Minneapolis for medical treatment. Area hospitals are requesting all off duty staff and all Minneapolis ambulances to report. Residents are being encouraged to stay away from the area to let emergency crews do their work.

It is not known what caused the collapse, but there was construction being performed on the bridge’s road surface which included the use of jackhammers and the FBI has ruled out terrorism.

“Although it is much too early to make any determination of the cause, we have no reason at this time to believe there is any nexus to terrorism,” said Paul McCabe, an FBI spokesman.

In 2001 a stress inspection was done and Minnesota Department of Transportation stated that the bridge “should not have any problems with fatigue cracking in the foreseeable future.”

Typically an eight-lane bridge, the bridge was reduced to four lanes (two in each direction) during the current construction. The Minnesota Department of Transportation (Mn/DOT) had just announced overnight lane reductions on the bridge to one lane in each direction for the late evening hours of July 31 and August 1.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

2008 Computex Taipei (a.k.a Taipei International Information Technology Show), the second largest IT show in the world, will start on June 3 to 7 at the TWTC Hall 1 & 3, Taipei International Convention Center (TICC), and TWTC Nangang, in conjunction with 2008 WiMAX Expo Taipei, which will start earlier at the Taipei Show Hall 2. With two IT-related industry shows will be concurrently showcased in different venues, it will bring on many convergences and opportunities for networking and mobile-related industries worldwide including Taiwan.

Since the Taipei Computer Association, Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA), and Industrial Technology Research Institute preliminary imported the “WiMAX Forum Showcase & Conference” into the TICC, WiMAX-related topics were mostly focused by several worldwide media and industrial elites. In extremity, some technologies and solutions like eSNG, wireless medical care, wireless transmission, and mobile entertainment were showcased there. And the MOEA also signed MOUs with 5 world-class WiMAX companies to help the networking industry last year in Taiwan.

Even though the signing of MOUs and new technologies will bring opportunities for WiMAX-related industries, and the mobile devices will be progressively popular in the future and more slim like an UMPC, but some companies from information security industry were worried about the future trend because of invisible threats on the Internet.

As of “Asia-pacific IT Security Forum” and “IT Security Pavilion” of SecuTech Expo 2008, there were several changes on participation from IT industry, but due to a major impact of “Edison Chen’s photo scandal“, several crisis were exposed with improper habits on modern people when using the Internet.

It’s a real deal that the WiMAX will bring different kind profits and benefits for different industries, but before the WiMAX became the trend, if Internet users didn’t cultivate proper habits on using the Internet, the WiMAX will still bring on threats for end-users and industries.

Sunday, October 8, 2006

Renault driver Fernando Alonso won the FIA Formula-1 2006 Fuji Television Japanese Grand Prix on the Suzuka International Racing Course. Though Ferrari drivers Felipe Massa and Michael Schumacher started the race from the first row, Alonso managed to overtake both Toyotas on the first part of the race and Massa after the pit stops. Then Alonso started to push on Michael Schumacher and closed the gap to about 5 seconds. An engine failure forced Schumacher to park his car after the tunnel on lap 36 and the Spaniard rushed to his seventh victory in this season.

Giancarlo Fisichella, Fernando’s teammate, had a bad start, but burst through Toyota and finished on the back of the second-placed Filipe Massa. Toyota drivers Jarno Trulli and Ralf Schumacher lost even more positions, when Honda driver Jenson Button and McLaren Mercedes driver Kimi Räikkönen slipped in front of them and finished on 4-th and 5-th place respectively.

The situation in the drivers’ championship became almost critical for Schumacher, who lost 10 points this week-end. Only one chance remains for Schumacher to win his eighth champion’s title – if he wins the final 2006 Brazilian Grand Prix and Alonso doesn’t score any points. “I have to say clearly I don’t really believe in the championship anymore,” was Schumacher’s reaction.

There remains a battle for the third place in drivers’ championship, where Massa has a one point lead ahead of Fisichella. In the constructor’s championship Renault is 9 points ahead of Ferrari.

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Kent Hovind‘s motion for acquittal was denied on Wednesday, April 18, 2007. Hovind, a Pensacola young Earth creationist and operator of Dinosaur Adventure Land, along with his wife, Jo Hovind, were found guilty in November 2006 on 58 federal counts of “willful failure” to payroll taxes, structuring bank withdrawals, and obstructing federal agents.

On January 19, 2007 Kent was sentenced to ten years in prison and ordered to pay US$640,000 in owed funds to the Internal Revenue Service, pay prosecution’s court costs of $7,078, and serve three years parole once released.

In his motion, Hovind had contended that under the rule in a case called United States v. Davenport the crime is not the individual withdrawals, but is instead the total transaction, also known as the “unit of the crime.” Thus, Hovind argued that in his case there was no “unit of the crime” “separate and distinct from the alleged act of withdrawing, and without such a separate amount to be structured [. . .] there could be no crime alleged, and no conviction on any charge in Counts 13 through 57.” The trial court rejected Hovind’s “unit of the crime” argument.

Had the judge ruled in Hovind’s favor his sentence would have reduced Hovind’s prison sentence from ten years to five years.

Jo Hovind sentencing was delayed pending the ruling on the motion. She will be sentenced soon though no date has been set.

Thursday, January 4, 2007

Bicycle sales in Australia have recorded record sales of 1,273,781 units for 2006, exceeding car sales by 32 percent. It is the fifth year in a row that the bicycle industry has sold more than one million units, a figure yet to be realised by car manufacturers.

The Cycling Promotion Fund (CPF) spokesman Ian Christie said Australians were increasingly using bicycles as an alternative to cars. Sales rose nine percent in 2006 while the car market stalled. Mr Christie said people were looking to cut their fuel costs and improve their fitness.

Mr Christie said organisations were beginning to supply bicycles as a company vehicle. “There is an emerging trend towards people using bikes as their official company-supplied vehicle in place of the traditional company car,” he said.

“Some of Australia’s biggest corporations now have bicycle fleets, and when you add in government organisations, we now know of at least 50 organisations which operate fleets of bikes.”

“Although the company bicycle is a long way from taking over from the company car, it’s an important trend when you consider that nearly half of all cars sold are to company fleets.”

The CPF claims most commutes to work are less than 5 kilometres (3 miles) making bicycle travel a viable alternative.