Sunday, October 18, 2020

The spread of coronavirus led to a global pandemic, affecting various daily activities. Originated in Wuhan, China, the virus spread globally, and by March, drastic measures were taken by the Indian government. Some branches of the South Western Railway of India had started taking precautions by distributing masks to ticket collectors and guards from as early as March 8. Some colleges were suspended by March 13, their exams post-poned as the government introduced lockdown and enforced social distancing.

Announced in the evening, Indian Prime Minister asked the countrymen to get the essential products and avoid going out as much as possible. Long queues outside the grocery shops, people in masks, some in N-95 masks, and hand sanitisers at the gates of megamarts were a common sight. There were reduced items in the shops, and some stores had a limit of number of customers allowed in the store at any given time. Food delivery services, and taxi services were on haitus — workers who dependent on the profession for their daily income, while software engineers were working from home. Physical classes in schools and colleges were replaced by online lectures to prevent social gatherings.

While many relied on technology for continuing their work and earn their livelihood, Wikinews reached out to sex workers in Mysore in June who unlike others can’t maintain social distancing for their work. Two sex-workers, Akram Pasha, and Jaya (a pseudonym), who were a part of sex-worker’s group called “Ashodaya Samithi” discussed how their lives had been affected by the coronavirus, the lockdown and the restrictions they had faced.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

As the World Turns, the longest-running soap opera on American television, was canceled Tuesday by CBS, the network which has aired the show since its first episode in 1956. This news comes just three months after the ending of Guiding Light, formerly the longest-running soap in radio and television history, which had entertained generations of Americans for seven decades.

In the announcement, Barbara Bloom, senior vice president of daytime programing at CBS, wrote, “It’s extremely difficult to say good-bye to a long-running series that’s been close to our hearts for so long…The almanacs will show As the World Turns as a pioneer of the format, a hallmark for quality with its numerous Emmys, the launching pad for many television and film stars and a daytime ratings powerhouse for parts of three decades.”

The cancellation comes at a particularly bad time not only for the people involved with producing the soap, but also for the soap opera industry in general. With the cancellation announcement, the number of daytime soap operas on the air in the United States will shrink from seven to six. By comparison, there were 12 soap operas on the air in 1997 and 19 in 1973.

While the revelation may have hurt, it was not entirely a surprise. The ratings for the soap opera have fallen to 2.5 million viewers, over 60% from 1993, when the show was watched by 6.5 million viewers daily. Soap Opera Digest editorial director Lynn Leahey said not to call for the death of the genre; its next act may prove more profitable on the Internet. “It has to be turned into a business model. I do think there’s huge potential there. I think if we can deliver the content where people are instead of expecting them to sit in front of their TVs, there’s hope,” Leahey said.

The news was taken particularly hard at As the World Turns’ Brooklyn studios, where the building was closed off to press on Tuesday. “We are disappointed and saddened by the news that the show is not being renewed. It will certainly be a loss for all of us, and for the show’s loyal audience,” said executive producer Christopher Goutman in a prepared statement. “It’s a hell of a Christmas present,” said actress Eileen Fulton, whose spitfire character Lisa was an integral part of the canvas in the show’s top-rated years in the 1960s and 1970s. “I’m just very sad. I’m sad for all of the people who work out there in Brooklyn. We’re a family. I hate to be split up. It’s like a divorce.”

The series, which focuses on the lives, loves and torments in the small Midwestern town of Oakdale, will have a nine-month swan song; the final episode will not be airing until September 2010. Until that time, Procter & Gamble’s TeleNext Media will be trying to find a new home for the show, either on another television network or online. If As the World Turns leaves the air entirely, Procter & Gamble, the company which coined the term “soap opera,” will officially end its 76-year partnership between its cleaning products and the dramatic medium.

Friday, February 10, 2006

The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) will meet in Canberra today for its first meeting of 2006. Members of COAG are the Prime Minister, State Premiers, Australian Capital and Northern Territory Chief Ministers, and the President of the Australian Local Government Association. COAG is chaired by the Prime Minister.

On the agenda is a wide range of issues such as health, economic reform, regulation, and education.

The state leaders (all of whom are members of the Australian Labor Party), met last night to develop a strategy for dealing with John Howard, Australia’s Prime Minister.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

British royal Princess Beatrice, age 20, has become the victim of thieves, who stole her prized £17,000 black 1 Series BMW while she and her police bodyguard were shopping in Devonshire Place in Kensington — leaving the vehicle’s keys in the ignition.

The luxury car, which has a personalised number plate and contained some personal items, was a gift from her father, Prince Andrew, for her 17th birthday in 2005.

Media reports said that Beatrice was “extremely embarrassed” about the theft in a street in the West 1 area, which happened Wednesday just after 9am in London. She later joined her sister, Princess Eugenie, age 18, at a nearby pub. Metropolitan Police said Westminster officers were investigating the reports.

The BMW 1 Series (code names E82 and E87,) is a small-luxury car / small family car produced by the German automaker BMW since 2004. The 1 Series is the only vehicle in its class featuring rear-wheel drive and a longitudinally-mounted engine.

Princess Beatrice of York (Beatrice Elizabeth Mary; born 8 August 1988) is the elder daughter of Prince Andrew, Duke of York and Sarah, Duchess of York. Thus, she is fifth person and the first female in the line of succession to the thrones of sixteen independent states. When she was born, she was the first princess born into the immediate royal family since Princess Anne in 1950.

This is not the first time the Princess suffered a loss. In December, her Norfolk terrier Max went missing in Windsor, but reappeared three weeks later on Saturday, alive and well.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Human brains cannot manage more than 150 friendships – even with the advent of social networking websites like Facebook, Bebo and Myspace. This is the conclusion of Robin Dunbar, Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Oxford. Dunbar originally carried out research in this area in the 1990s, looking at social groups from modern offices back to ancient villages. He found that the neocortex in the brain, used for thinking and language, cannot cope with more than 150 friends – a conclusion known as “Dunbar’s number“. Groups of people tend to be limited to about 150 as, beyond that, social cohesion suffers. Revisiting the topic, Dunbar’s view is that this number has not increased even with online methods of keeping in touch with friends, like Facebook.

Dunbar compared the online activity of those with thousands of internet friends and those with hundreds, before concluding that there was no appreciable difference in their levels of activity. He defined a friend as someone that the individual cared about and made contact with at least yearly. “The interesting thing is that you can have 1,500 friends but when you actually look at traffic on sites, you see people maintain the same inner circle of around 150 people that we observe in the real world. […] People obviously like the kudos of having hundreds of friends but the reality is that they’re unlikely to be bigger than anyone else’s”, he observed.

Another conclusion of his study was that women were better at keeping friendships going on Facebook than men – “girls are much better at maintaining relationships just by talking to each other. Boys need to do physical stuff together”. The full results of his study are due to be published later in 2010.

Dunbar, 52, has been an Oxford professor since 2007, having previously been Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Liverpool. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Countries and relief organisations around the world are sending aid to Haiti, which was hit by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake on Tuesday, affecting up to three million people, most of them in the capital, Port-au-Prince. Relief efforts, however, have been hampered by damaged or destroyed infrastructure, lack of shelter, and communications difficulties.

As of today, at least 300,000 people were estimated to be homeless in the capital, according to the United Nations; the organisation reports that one in ten buildings completely collapsed due to the tremors and resulting aftershocks. The UN said it believes 45,000 to 50,000 people were killed by the quake, while Haitian President Rene Preval said that seven thousand bodies were buried in a mass grave.

Port-au-Prince’s main airport remained open as of today, and relief airplanes were arriving faster than they could be unloaded, prompting fears that planes could run out of fuel while waiting their turn to land. As a result, all non-military flights out of the airport were restricted. Air traffic controllers from the US were present to help handle the flow.

The main port, meanwhile, was severely damaged, and unable to handle any cargo.

To see more images related to the disaster, you may wish to look at the companion article Haitian earthquake: in pictures.

Even with the amount of aid coming in, it is proving difficult to deliver it where it is needed; many roads have been blocked by rubble. Alejandro Lopez-Chicheri, a senior spokesman for the World Food Programme (WFP), commented: “The roads, many of them are still to be opened, and on the ones that are open there are still people concentrated on the sides of the roads.” He described Haiti as being “completely on the ground”.

“This is a logistical challenge. Before the earthquake struck we were already assisting one million people here, we are considering it will be at least double that after this earthquake,” he told the Al Jazeera news agency.

The WFP has estimated that two million people will need food aid; however, only four thousand have so far been fed.

“The physical destruction is so great that physically getting from point A to B with the supplies is not an easy task,” said a WFP spokeswoman in Geneva at a news conference.

Transporting supplies was made even harder due to lack of communications. Telephone lines were down. “There have been a lot of criticism from local authorities about the relief efforts, but in all fairness, if we could catch a break and get some communication up and running, things would go a lot faster,” commented Louis Belanger, spokesman with the humanitarian aid group Oxfam International.

Looting has also been an issue. Delfin Antonio Rodriguez, the rescue commander from adjacent Dominican Republic, said to the Agency France-Presse news agency earlier today that “[o]ur biggest problem is insecurity. Yesterday they tried to hijack some of our trucks. Today we were barely able to work in some places because of that.”

Elisabeth Byrs, a UN humanitarian spokeswoman in Geneva described the desperation of those in the capital. “People who have not been eating or drinking for almost 50 hours and are already in a very poor situation. If they see a truck with something, or if they see a supermarket which has collapsed, they just rush to get something to eat.”

The WFP initially reported that its warehouses in the capital were looted, but this was later retracted. WFP spokeswoman Caroline Hurford told the BBC that “[a]pparently there were unconfirmed reports of looting taking place but once our teams got down to the dockside they were able to see that there was some mistake.”

The earthquake also destroyed Port-au-Prince’s main prison. According to International Red Cross spokesman Marcal Izard, 4,000 inmates escaped the jail and are now on the city streets. “They obviously took advantage of this disaster,” he said.

Haitian police were “not visible at all,” according to a UN spokesman, probably because they had to deal with lost family members and homes, further exacerbating the situation. Around 3,000 international UN peacekeeping troops were present to try to maintain law and order in lieu of the local police force.

According to a reporter for Al Jazeera, frustration among Port-au-Prince’s residents was increasing because they were not receiving enough help, and there was an exodus out of the city to try and find areas with more supplies. “A lot of people have simply grown tired of waiting for those emergency workers to get to them,” said Sebastian Walker. “Thousands of people are streaming out of the city towards the provinces to try to find supplies of food and water, supplies that are running out in the city.”

A spokesman for the Brazilian-commanded UN peacekeeping force, David Wimhurst, also commented that “unfortunately, they’re slowly getting more angry and impatient. I fear, we are all aware that the situation is getting more tense as the poorest people who need so much, are waiting for deliveries. I think tempers might be frayed.”

Photographer Shaul Schwarz for the TIME magazine reported seeing at least two roadblocks downtown, made of rocks and corpses. “They are starting to block the roads with bodies. It’s getting ugly out there. People are fed up with getting no help,” he said.

“We hear on the radio that rescue teams are coming from the outside, but nothing is coming,” said one resident, Jean-Baptiste Lafontin Wilfried, as quoted by the BBC.

“We need food. The people are suffering. My neighbors and friends are suffering,” said another resident, Sylvain Angerlotte, aged 22, as quoted by the Associated Press. “We don’t have money. We don’t have nothing to eat. We need pure water.”

Due to lack of buildings or shelter, many relief members were facing the same difficulties as were residents. “Even the aid workers themselves are sleeping in cars or in tents on the streets,” said Jamieson Davies, the international programmes director of the Caritas relief organisation, to Al Jazeera. She described the situation as being “extremely difficult”.