Thursday, April 2, 2009

Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark has been appointed as head of the United Nations Development Program.

The appointment follows a unanimous vote by the UN General Assembly yesterday. Clark will take up the role by April 20, replacing current UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervis.

Clark is reportedly eager for the role, comparing it to winning her first election and becoming Prime Minister. “I guess this is another of those moments,” she said.

The UNDP gives training and advice to developing countries to spur global development and to help them meet the Millennium Development Goals. It has offices in 166 countries and an annual budget of around US$5 billion. Its Administrator is the third highest ranking member of the United Nations after the United Nations Secretary-General and Deputy Secretary-General.

Clark has a long political career, having been first elected to Parliament in 1981. She was New Zealand’s first elected woman Prime Minister, serving for three terms between 1999 and 2008. She became leader of the social-democratic New Zealand Labour Party in 1993, and led it until her defeat in the 2008 general election.

She has previously held a number of Cabinet portfolios, including Health, Housing, Conservation, and Arts, Culture and Heritage. In January 2008 Clark won the United Nations Environment Programme Champions of the Earth award in recognition of her government’s promotion of sustainability initiatives. In January 2009 she was recognised by the New Zealand Herald as the Greatest Living New Zealander.

Clark’s appointment is expected to lead to a by-election in her Mt Albert electorate.

Monday, October 11, 2010

British journalist Andrew Marr has angered bloggers by suggesting they are “inadequate, pimpled and single.” Marr, who was formerly the BBC’s political editor, also said that citizen journalism is “spewings and rantings of very drunk people late at night”. He made the comments at the Cheltenham Literary Festival, saying: “A lot of bloggers seem to be socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed young men sitting in their mother’s basements and ranting. They are very angry people.”

Marr, who now hosts a flagship Sunday morning show, The Andrew Marr Show, on which he has recently interviewed British Prime Minister David Cameron and ousted BP executive Tony Hayward, added: “OK – the country is full of very angry people. Many of us are angry people at times. Some of us are angry and drunk”. His comments sparked outrage from bloggers, one of whom dismissed them as “stupid generalisations.” Another said that they were “sure that Andrew Marr did not mean all bloggers, but it is unfortunate that he did not seem to make much of a distinction in his statement.” Another blogger, writing on Twitter, said they supported Marr’s arguments. “Just read Andrew Marr’s comments on blogging,” they said. “I blog and I agree with most of what he says. I don’t read blogs for news, doubt I ever will.”

Other journalists also criticised the comments. Krishnan Guru-Murthy, a newscaster for Channel 4 News, said that it is “true that flicking through the comment section of some political blogs can easily make you think the blogosphere is populated by obnoxious trolls. But there are plenty of thoughtful, insightful people writing online too: you just need to find them. They might not be household names, or worthy of a slot on Radio 4, but to dismiss them out of hand seems wrong. As for bloggers being ‘inadequate, pimpled and single,’ that’s no way to talk about Jon Snow. He isn’t single.”

“We know our viewers want commentary and analysis alongside their news and our blogs help us give more of that,” Murthy said. “Obviously we can’t give opinion in the way bloggers who aren’t also public service broadcasters can, but we enjoy reading other people’s opinions and the best blogs are much more than rants, often breaking stories, too. And anyway, I like reading the occasional rant. But as a blogger if you offer up something to the wider world you should expect people to say what they think of it.”

Roy Greenslade, a professor of journalism at City University London, and former editor of the Daily Mirror, said: “Aside from the paradox of him indulging in a rant to complain about other ranters, it is the one-sidedness of his argument that is so striking. None of us who write blogs are unaware of vituperative contributions from people who like to remain anonymous … It’s the price we [bloggers] pay –a small price, in my view– for a communications system that allows for public participation.” Greenslade added that he thought Marr “seems to be damning the whole blogosphere when, as we all know, there are thousand upon thousand of bloggers who are making valuable public interest contributions on the net day by day, even hour by hour. Marr, to use an archaic but apposite idiom, simply can’t see the wood for the trees.”

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

David S. Touretzky, prominent free speech activist and critic of Scientology, discussed his opinions on the recent Internet backlash against the Church of Scientology in an interview with former Scientologist and Wikinews reporter Nicholas Turnbull. The recent conflict on the Internet between critics of Scientology and the Church has been spurred on in declarations by a nebulous Internet entity using the name Anonymous that the Church of Scientology “will be destroyed”. Anonymous has directed recent protests at Scientology centres across the world, which have attracted significant numbers of individuals supporting the cause. In recent e-mail correspondence with Wikinews, a representative of the Church of Scientology declared that the Church considers the activities of Anonymous to be illegal, and that Anonymous “will be handled and stopped”.

Touretzky, a research professor in artificial intelligence and computational neuroscience at Carnegie Mellon University, has been a prominent critic of the Church of Scientology since mid-1995, and has been protesting against Scientology vociferously since then; he has also run websites that publish material that Scientology wishes to keep suppressed from the public eye, such as extracts from Scientology’s formerly-confidential Operating Thetan (OT) materials. Touretzky views the actions of the Church of Scientology as being “a threat to free speech”, and has endured harassment by the Church of Scientology for his activities.

The Church of Scientology continues to suffer damage to its public reputation through increased exposure on the Internet and vocal protests by Scientology critics such as Prof. Touretzky. A recent event that focused intense attention on Scientology’s totalitarian attitude was the leak of an internal Church of Scientology propaganda video to the Internet video sharing site YouTube, in which celebrity Scientologist Tom Cruise spoke heavily in Scientology’s jargon and stated that that “we [Scientology] are the authorities” on resolving the difficulties of humanity. The declaration of war by Anonymous followed shortly after this leak, in the form of a video posted to the Internet.

The ongoing dispute, cast by some as Scientology versus the Internet, brought Scientology terms such as “SP” (Suppressive Person, an enemy of Scientology) and “KSW” (Keeping Scientology Working) into general usage by non-Scientologists from the late 1990s onwards; increased attention has been drawn to Scientology by the release of the Cruise video in addition to media coverage. This focus has caused an even greater propagation of these terms across the outside world, as Touretzky comments in the interview.

Wikinews asked Prof. Touretzky about the impact that the activities of Anonymous will have on Scientology, the public relations effect of the Tom Cruise video, the recent departure of individuals from the Church of Scientology’s executive management, the strategies that Anonymous will employ and Touretzky’s experiences of picketing the Church.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Researchers say that new, ten million-year-old fossils found in Ethiopia, prove that the theory that humans may have evolved from a species of great apes eight million years ago, may not be true, but that humans may have split from apes as long as 10.5 million years ago.

At least nine fossilized teeth, one canine tooth and eight molars, of a previously unknown species of apes found in Africa were discovered by a team of researchers from Ethiopia and Japan who then compared the 3-D make up of the teeth to other fossils that date back as far as 8 million years and found that the fossils are likely a “direct ancestor” of apes currently living in Africa and that the new ape fossils were that of a species of gorilla who ate mostly plants high in fiber.

Current fossils and research say that the evolutionary split from apes to humans occurred at least eight million years ago. The new fossils say that the split may have happened as long as 10.5 million years ago.

“Based on this fossil, that means the split is much earlier than has been anticipated by the molecular evidence. That means everything has to be put back,” said researcher at the Rift Valley Research Service in Ethiopia and a co-author of the study, Berhane Asfaw.

Despite the finds, other researchers are not convinced that the findings are correct.

“It is stretching the evidence to base a time scale for the evolution of the great apes on this new fossil. These structures appear on at least three independent lineages of apes, including gorillas, and they could relate to a dietary shift rather than indicating a new genetic trait,” said a Professor at the London Natural History Museum in the United Kingdom, Peter Andrews who also added, “but the fossil evidence for the evolution of our closest living relatives, the great apes, is almost non-existent.

Researchers have named the newly discovered species Cororapithecus abyssinicus whose remains were found in the Afar Region of Ethiopia, the same place where the remains of Lucy were discovered in 1974.