Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Today H.E. Suzanne Mubarak, wife of the Egyptian president, and H.R.H. Prince Charles inaugurated the British University in Egypt. The visit started with a tour of the campus, where they saw a demonstration physics laboratory as well as seminars in engineering and business. This was followed by speeches in front of the main building (pictured) by the chairman of the board of trustees Mr Farid Khamis, H.E. Suzanne Mubarak and finally by H.R.H. Prince Charles. The ceremony was completed when Mrs Mubarak and Prince Charles unveiled a plaque at the entrance to the main building.

Thursday, May 12, 2005

Amid publicity that arose from deaths and injuries due to dog attacks in the region, the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to impose tougher penalties on dog owners who let their dogs run free. After a public hearing Tuesday evening, the board voted for a new animal control ordinance. Now dog owners who are repeat offenders face a misdemeanor crime of $2,500 or up to a year in jail.

Dogs that repeatedly chase cars and run free, or otherwise trespass on property, could be euthanized if so ordered by a judge. A dog that is “roaming, running or self-hunting off the property or premises of its owner or custodian and not under the immediate control of the owner or custodian or his agent,” meets the county’s legal definition of a dog running at large.

The mauling death of an elderly woman by 3 Pit Bulls in her front yard sparked a public debate on animal control. At the hearing, State Senator Edward Houke said he would raise dog law issues in the January meeting of the Virginia General Assembly. According to The Free Lance Star, Houke said, “It’s pretty obvious to me that the state law needs to be changed, but saying that and it happening, is two completely different phenomena. If there’s one thing you learn quickly it’s that you don’t bring dog bills to the Virginia General Assembly.”

The Sullivan daughters, who lost their mother in the mauling attack, circulated petitions in the county and also attended the hearing. Board chairman Robert Hagan noted the Sullivan family presence and thanked them for their efforts to prevent more tragedies.

Sunday, February 19, 2006

The United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that U.S. public diplomacy efforts need to do more in the media to communicate a message friendly to democracy.

“We’ll need to do all we can to attract supporters to our efforts and to correct the lies that are being told, which so damage our country, and which are repeated and repeated and repeated,” Rumsfeld said in an address to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York city on Friday. He said that insurgent groups have learned to use media and its new satellite and Internet technologies, and are working 24/7, to manipulate public opinion.

Rumsfeld called for the need to implement a “strategic communications framework” to present news information in Afghanistan and Iran. He warned, ” …the [news] vacuum will be filled by the enemy and by news informers that most assuredly will not paint an accurate picture of what is actually taking place.” He said there was a need for communications training of military public affairs officials. The Department of Defense would begin with an emphasis on using out-sourced media expertise found in the private-sector, as was done with the controversial use of Lincoln Group who placed pro-democracy stories in Iraqi media in a business arrangement with the U.S. military.

Rumsfeld was critical of the U.S. media for its sharp response to that program at his address in New York, which he said had the effect of stopping that military effort. In an appearance on the The Charlie Rose Show, a televised program taped earlier and then aired by PBS last Friday, the same day as his New York address, Rumsfeld said “When we heard about it, we said, ‘Gee, that’s not what we ought to be doing.’ … They stopped doing that.” But in a Los Angeles Times report, a Lincoln Group insider and a U.S. commander in Iraq, General George W. Casey, said the program was still in existence.

The White House has signaled a shift towards the use of media in the “War against Terror”. The U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in Senate testimony on Wednesday last week that $10 million is already appropriated to support political dissidents, labor union leaders and human rights activists in Iran. The Bush administration will be asking for an additional $75 million in funding for the 2006 fiscal year to expand the program.

Saturday, February 12, 2005

New Zealand’s Recorded Crime Statistics are now available online from Statistics New Zealand.

In an unheralded change to its website on January 20, 2005, Statistics New Zealand now provides the last 10 fiscal years of Recorded Crime Statistics for New Zealand. Using the Table Builder service, the country’s Crime Statistics can now be examined and analysed online in unprecedented detail.

Although New Zealand Police has previously published Official Crime Statistics reports online, these statistics have only ever been available at a summary level, as a printed style document. This development allows detailed information, that was only ever available though an information request to Police, to now be seen immediately and desired statistics can be manipulated interactively.

Statistics are available either nationally or by each Police district and area for the each of the last 10 years or each of the last 24 months. Recorded Crime Statistics can be analysed down to the individual offence, with scene information for recorded and resolved crime. Offender apprehension statistics are also analysed down to the individual offence as well as the age, gender, ethnicity and resolution action taken with the offender.

The Recorded Crime Statistics also have a significant amount of accompaning metadata. Relevant legislation for each offence, together with caveats and interpretation notes for each parameter accompany these statistics. Users can now interpret these statistics for themselves, rather than relying on other agencies interpreting, or possibly misinterpreting, their requirements.

This innovation appears to be a leading edge breakthrough in publically available crime statistics. Although a number of jurisdictions place statistical reports and summaries of crime statistics on websites, these all are in the form of printed style documents. This move appears to be the first time that internet users can interact with a website to extract their own customised reports from the available crime statistics.

Internationally, crime statistics have been difficult to obtain, and even more difficult to compare. Interpol, the international policing organisation, for example, does not even make international statistics publically available on its website but restricts them to authorised law enforcement officials. Other countries present their statistics in detailed reports that need to be read and interpreted with care to understand them correctly. Different countries also count crime in different ways, often ignoring less serious offences or only counting the most serious of multiple offences occurring at the same time.

In New Zealand’s case the basic data is now online. The analysis can be done by the user.

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Stanley “Tookie” Williams, founder of the Crips street gangs, was executed by lethal injection in the State of California just after midnight local time Tuesday at the San Quentin State Prison after spending 24 years on death row. He was 51 years old.

Williams said no final words before his execution. It took two nurses 12 minutes to insert catheters into each of his arms, one nurse and one catheter per arm. The lethal doses were injected at 12:20 am, and Williams was pronounced dead at 12:35.

Hopes for clemency were dashed Monday when California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declined to commute Williams’s sentence to life imprisonment. Last minute appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court were also denied.

Williams was convicted in 1981 of the murder of Albert Owens during the robbery of a 7-Eleven convenience store, as well as the murders of motel owners Tsai-Shai and Yen-I Yang, and their daughter Yee Chen Lin in 1979.

Following his conviction, Williams became an outspoken anti-gang activist and was four times nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. His anti-gang message began in 1993. He co-authored with Barbara Becnel an elementary school book series called “Tookie Speaks Out”, and wrote a memoir called “Blue Rage, Black Redemption.”

Friday, April 22, 2005

Ireland’s National Pensions Reserve Fund (NPRF) has posted a 2.4% return for the first quarter (9.6% annualized). On March 31, the funds value stood at €12.3bn, a rise of €290m (excluding state contributions) since December 31.

Donal Geaney, the fund’s chairman, told the press that growth in the past quarter had been driven by the Fund’s European equity investments.

Mr Geaney, former Élan CEO, has pursued a policy of diversification since February of this year, with the stated aim of placing a larger amount of the funds assets in companies with small market capitalizations and in property funds.

The fund was set up by the National Pensions Reserve Fund Act, 2000 to partially meet the expected rise in Irish pension costs from 2025 onwards.