Wednesday, March 19, 2014

On Monday, Texas police identified Rodris Webster, 25, as a person-of-interest in the recent disappearance of a 19 year-old woman. The woman, Alicia Benefield, of DeBerry, Texas, was reported missing on Friday.

Webster is described as Benefield’s boyfriend. He was arrested in January and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Benefield was the complainant in that charge according to media reports. Webster remained jailed until Benefield dropped the charge on March 5.

Police investigators inspected a trash dumpster located in the nearby town of Waskom on Sunday morning. In it they reportedly found Webster’s wet, muddy hoodie with Benefield’s keys in the pocket. Police interviewed Webster for 5 hours on Sunday, but released him around 6pm. The woman, still missing on Tuesday morning, is described as petite size, about 110 pounds, with a nose piercing and a tattoo on one arm saying “Wanda Ree”. She was last seen wearing a white sweater and brown tights.

A police official told reporters Webster had not confessed to any criminal activity: “The story is out there that he has confessed and we do not have a confession”. Benefield’s mother told reporters she expects her daughter to call her. “She is going to call. I’m going to be the first one she calls, matter of fact. I don’t care how mad she think[s] I am. She’s going to call me.”

Thursday, July 21, 2005

The government of China has decided to stop its currency peg to the U.S. dollar. The country will revalue its currency, the yuan, for the first time in a decade. This comes after international pressure from Western countries, especially from the United States. The yuan will now be linked to a variety of different currencies.

The People’s Bank of China has announced a 2.1% revaluation increase which will allow the yuan to fluctuate +/- 0.3 yuan in daily trading. This means, like other currencies, that closing prices one day become opening prices the next day.

The U.S. government has been pressuring China to revalue its currency since China joined the WTO. The U.S. said that China has kept the yuan up to 40% under its real value to increase exports, thus giving China an unfair advantage against western industrial competitors as well as industry in developing nations.

Since the announcement the yuan has strengthened to 8.11 yuan to the US dollar instead of 8.28 as it has been for the last ten years. This means the yuan is more expensive and that Chinese goods will become more expensive in western countries.

Economic growth in China might also slow down, but it has been soaring for the last several years. This could have serious consequences in China, but a People’s Bank of China person has said that the exchange rate will be “basically stable”.

China linked the yuan to the dollar in 1997 during the major economic crisis in Asia. This has provided the stability which has allowed the Chinese economy to grow over the last ten years. This move will make China vulnerable to future financial fluctuations.

This move could also mean that the US dollar would fall if China switches from holding dollars to holding for example the euro or other strong currencies.

December 22, 2004

The controversial European Union Directive on the Patentability of Computer Implemented Inventions, also called the “software patent directive” has been put to rest for 2004. The directive was expected to easily pass through the European Council’s Fisheries Council on Tuesday, December 21, but was removed from the agenda at the request of Poland’s Minister of Science and Computerisation, Wlodzimierz Marcinski.

The directive’s opponents, some of whom had conceded defeat on Tuesday before the vote was taken, will continue the debate informally until meetings resume in 2005.

Software developers, who supported the European Parliament‘s proposal last year to definitively rule out software patents, welcomed the delay as a chance to reintroduce those provisions into the current draft.

Florian Mueller, campaign manager of NoSoftwarePatents.com, which is supported by three IT companies (1&1, Red Hat, and MySQL AB), applauded Poland’s move.

“The Polish government deserves greatest admiration for its courage!” said Mueller in a press release. “Now Europe has the opportunity to have a constructive debate on the severe shortcomings of the current Council text, under the new Luxembourgish EU presidency next year.”

Germany’s representative also backed the delay, saying it would allow everyone to align the current proposal to changes proposed by the European Parliament last year.

“We were well aware that [the current proposal] has room for improvement with an eye to the objective of arriving at a consensus position between the EU Council and the European Parliament,” Germany’s Federal Minister of Justice Brigitte Zypries said in a Tuesday statement. “We will continue to work constructively toward finding a solution that even better meets the needs of those concerned than the decision taken in May of this year.”

On May 18, 2004 EU Council reached a political agreement on a “Common Position” on the directive which ignored the European Parliament’s vote from last year. The Council vote generated a lot of controversy. Later, the Dutch parliament failed to convince its EU representatives to reverse their vote.

According to the new voting weights which took effect on November 1, the majority needed to formally adopt the Common Position (after translations were done) is questionable. The 20 countries that supported the Directive on May 18 fall short of the new qualified majority by 16 votes.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

After an early morning fire began, four out of the nine people living at the Riverview Individual Residential Alternative group home located in Wells, New York were killed by the blaze. The Sunmount Developmental Disabilities Services Office, which supervises the home, told the media that the fire started at approximately 5:30 AM Eastern Daylight Time. Two staff members were at the home at the time, who safely evacuated four of the five survivors.

The names of the residents killed in the fire were not able to be released due to New York’s Mental Hygiene Law, but are able to be identified as two adult men, aged 32 and 52, and two adult women, aged 43 and 60. A 71-year-old male was injured in the fire, and was taken to a hospital in Utica, a nearby city. The other four residents have been relocated to an unnamed group home. Both staff members are also being examined at the hospital.

“On behalf of all New Yorkers, I wish to extend my heartfelt condolences to the families, loved ones and friends of the four victims and to continue to pray for the full recovery of those five people and two staff members who survived this incident. I also want to express my thanks and appreciation for the first responders and volunteers who worked swiftly and diligently to respond to this tragedy,” David Patterson, the governor of New York, said to the media.

The exact cause of the fire has yet to be determined. However, the New York Civil Liberties Union stated that “the blaze appears to have been an electrical fire and the sprinkler system was knocked out immediately.” They also called for “an immediate investigation into the causes of and contributing factors of the fire.”

The New York State Department of State Office of Fire Prevention and Control is currently investigating the causes of the blaze, with help from New York State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation and the New York State Commission on Quality of Care and Advocacy for Persons with Disabilities.