Saturday, March 31, 2018

On Wednesday, Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced Australian cricketers David Warner and Steve Smith were banned from this year’s Indian Premier League (IPL) after the ball tampering incident in a Cape Town test match versus South Africa.

The ban imposed by the Committee of Administrators, appointed by the Indian Supreme Court, came a day after Cricket Australia (CA) announced Warner and Smith were banned from international as well as domestic cricket in Australia for a year for breaking Cricket Australia’s code of conduct — violating spirit of the game — per Article 2.3.5, and Cameron Bancroft received a similar ban from CA for nine months.

In a statement, BCCI said, “The BCCI hopes that the cricketers participating in the IPL hold the highest regard for the Spirit of Cricket and Code of Conduct for Players and Match Officials.” This dissolved AU$2.4 million contracts of the two. Smith and Warner had vacated their positions as Rajasthan Royals’ and Sunrisers Hyderabad’s captains earlier.

BCCI’s President CK Khanna, IPL Chairman Rajeev Shukla and BCCI Secretary Amitabh Choudhary were consulted by the Committee of Administrators for the ban.

Rajasthan Royals named Indian batsman Ajinkya Rahane as the new captain, while Sunrisers Hyderabad announced New Zealand’s Kane Williamson as the captain. Both the franchise are allowed to make replacements, BCCI had said in the statement. Warner was the highest run-scorer in last year’s IPL and won the 2016 edition of IPL with Hyderabad. This year’s IPL is to start on April 7.

Cameron Bancroft was banned for nine months for actually tampering with the match ball, instructed by David Warner. Bancroft later mislead the match officials when he was caught tampering with the ball. The sanctions by CA include Warner never to be considered for Australia’s captain for demonstrating and instructing a junior player how to tamper with the ball. Bancroft, and captain Steve Smith, who knew about the misconduct, but did not act to prevent it, as well as tried to cover up the matter, may be considered for the captaincy after two years.

Bancroft, who was seen rubbing the match ball with something, later identified as sandpaper, said, “I’m not proud of what’s happened and I have to live with the consequences and the damage to my own reputation that comes with”. Initially, when Bancroft was seen tampering with the ball, he lied to on-field match umpires Richard Illingworth and Nigel Llong that the instrument used was sticky tape, rather than sandpaper, and he was using it to apply granules to the ball.

Bancroft said, “I saw an opportunity to potentially use some tape and get some granules from the rough patches on the wicket and I guess try to change the ball condition […] It didn’t work. The umpires didn’t change the ball. Once I was sighted on the screen having done that I panicked quite a lot and that obviously resulted in me shoving [the tape] down my trousers.” Sandpaper is prohibited to be used with the match ball, however it is used to smooth the cricket bat.

Smith said the decision to change the ball was made during Day 3’s lunch break. Eventually, South Africa went on to win the match by 322 runs as they lead the series 2–1. For altering the ball conditions, the International Cricket Council (ICC) fined Bancroft 75% of the match wage. Bancroft violated ICC’s Article 2.2.9, “changing the condition of the ball”.

On Thursday, Warner posted a tweet apologising the cricket fans. He said, “Mistakes have been made which damaged cricket. I apologise for my part and take responsibility of it.” On social media, Steve Smith said, “I made a serious error of judgement and I now understand the consequences. It was a failure of my leadership. I will do everything I can to make up for my mistake and the damage it has caused”.

CA named Tim Paine as the captain on Tuesday. The three sanctioned were sent back to Australia on Wednesday. Glenn Maxwell, Joe Burns and Matthew Renshaw were called for the team as replacements. Bancroft, Smith and Warner can appeal the sanctions within one week. The sanctioning CA board consisted of former Australian Test players Mark Taylor and Michael Kasprowicz as well as Cricket Australia’s Chairman David Peever, Earl Eddings, Dr Bob Every, John Harnden, Tony Harrison, Jacquie Hey, and Michelle Tredenick.

Tuesday, January 16, 2018

On Sunday, the head of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Ajit Pai, described the erroneous alert, sent on Saturday, warning of an imminent nuclear missile strike, as an “absolutely unacceptable” mistake by the Emergency Management Agency of the state of Hawaii. He emphasized that the FCC would “focus on what steps need to be taken to prevent a similar incident from happening again.”

At 8:07 am local time on Saturday, the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency (HI-EMA) sent out the following alert: “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.” It appeared on people’s mobile phones throughout the state and caused widespread panic. It took 38 minutes for the state to retract the warning, which Pai said made the error worse. Vern Miyagi, the HI-EMA’s administrator, stated that an employee had mistakenly sent out the alert during a test performed at shift change. On Sunday, Cindy McMillan, communications director for state governor David Ige, clarified that after accidentally pressing the button to send the alert, the employee had gone on to accidentally confirm the command. Richard Rapoza, spokesperson for HI-EMA, said the employee had since been reassigned.

Pai said that FCC analysis of the incident showed that the state had failed to put “reasonable safeguards or process controls” in place to prevent a false alert from being sent. According to The New York Times, the state will now require two people to authorize the issuance of an alert. Also, a “cancellation template” will be created to solve the problem of quickly sending corrections over the mobile phone networks.

Both HI-EMA administrator Miyagi and Hawaii governor Ige apologized for the mistake, with Ige saying “I, too, am extremely upset about this.” Tulsi Gabbard, a House Representative from Hawaii, referred to an “epic failure of leadership” in an interview with ABC News.

Tests by North Korea of missiles that, according to a report in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, could strike Hawaii 20 minutes after launch have heightened tensions in the state. Air raid sirens used in the Cold War have been reactivated there.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

It turns out that dogs may not be the only ‘man’s best friend.’ A parrot in Muncie, Indiana is being credited with saving the lives of its owners.

According to the owner 33-year-old Shannon Conwell along with his 9-year-old son were watching television when they both fell asleep on the living room couch when a fire began to spread through the house around 3:00 a.m. on Friday October 19.

The Amazon, yellow-headed Parrot named Peanut reportedly imitates the sounds of several objects and began to emit one very similar to a fire alarm, waking the family from their sleep.

“He was really screaming his head off. I grabbed my son and my bird and got out of the house,” said Conwell who also said that the fire alarm was also going off, but the bird woke her and her son. Conwell said that there were several pieces of medical equipment inside the house that also make a lot of noise. The equipment was there due to an accidental finger amputation which occurred only a few hours prior to the fire.

A bedroom, the kitchen and the dining room were all severely damaged in the fire, but no one was injured or killed. The fire department says that they are currently investigating the incident and have not said what the cause was.

Monday, May 14, 2018

On Friday, German beer company Eichbaum issued a public apology and said they have halted their marketing campaign of printing caps of beer bottles with flags of 32 countries participating in next month’s FIFA World Cup in Russia. Saudi Arabia’s flag printed on a beer bottle was condemned by many on social networking platforms.

Alcohol is banned in Saudi Arabia. It is considered haraam in Islam, meaning Muslims are prohibited from consuming alcohol. Saudi Arabia’s flag bears the Islamic shahada, or the creed “Kalimat al-Tawheed”, that is “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammed is the messenger of Allah”^{((ar))Arabic language: ??? ?????? ?????? ???? ????????? ??????? ????}. Saudi Arabia’s embassy in Germany published a statement on Twitter saying printing the flag with shahada on beer beverage “constitutes a violation to the holiness of the word, an insult to the flag and a provocation against the feelings of Muslims”.

The Mannheim-based company, in their statement, said, “We have no interest in religious or political manifestations — certainly not about our products. If we have offended you unintentionally, we apologise.” Company’s marketing director Holger Vatter-Schönthal said, “We did not know that the characters were a creed. We have only checked whether the flags of the participants are correct.”

The marketing strategy was condemned by Saudi Arabia’s embassy in German capital Berlin. Eichbaum said they are trying to remove all the beer bottles bearing the Saudi Arabian flag.

Saturday, January 15, 2005

United States –”IBM hereby commits not to assert any of the 500 U.S. patents listed below, as well as all counterparts of these patents issued in other countries, against the development, use or distribution of Open Source Software.” [1]

So begins the pledge IBM has made to “any individual, community, or company” writing or using software defined as “open source” by the Open Source Initiative (OSI).

The patents include software for text recognition and database management.[2]

“True innovation leadership is about more than just the numbers of patents granted. It’s about innovating to benefit customers, partners and society”, said Dr. John E. Kelly, IBM senior vice president, Technology and Intellectual Property. “Our pledge today is the beginning of a new era in how IBM will manage intellectual property.”[3]

“This is not a one-time event”, said Dr. Kelly. “While IBM will continue to demonstrate leadership in patent output, through measures such as today’s pledge, we will increasingly use patents to encourage and protect global innovation and interoperability through open standards and we urge others to do so as well.”

Lawrence Lessig, law professor at Stanford Law School and free software proponent commented: “This is exciting. It is IBM making good on its commitment to encourage a different kind of software development and recognizing the burden that patents can impose.”[4]

Not all are confident of IBM’s motives, though.

Florian Mueller, campaign manager of anti-patent website,NoSoftwarePatents.com, accused IBM of hypocrisy because of lobbying in the European Union to push through theComputer Implemented Inventions Directive.

“IBM is just being hypocritical because they want to appease the open source community and make themselves popular,” said Mueller.

“In Europe, IBM is a driving force behind the extension of the scope of patentability with respect to software. If IBM wants to assume the role of a post-Christmas benefactor, they’d better stop their aggressive patent lobbying in the EU and their shameless squeezing of small and medium-sized companies with its patent portfolio.” [5]