Media
Wikimedia is a global movement whose mission is to bring free educational content to the world. Through various projects, chapters, and the support structure of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia strives to bring about a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. 1)
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a project to build free encyclopedias in all languages of the world.
Wiktionary
Wiktionary is a project to create a multilingual free content dictionary in every language.
Wikiquote
Wikiquote is a repository of quotations taken from famous people, books, speeches, films or any intellectually interesting materials. Proverbs, mnemonics or slogans are also included in Wikiquote.
Wikibooks
Wikibooks aims to build a collection of free e-book resources, including textbooks, language courses, manuals, and annotated public domain books. It aims to help both (self-)instruction of students and teachers in high schools and universities.
Wikisource
Wikisource is a multilingual project to archive a collection of free and open content texts.
Wikispecies
Wikispecies is an open, wiki-based project to provide a central, more extensive species database for taxonomy. It covers living and fossil representatives of Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, Bacteria, Archaea, Protista and all other forms of life.
Wikinews
The Wikinews project was launched with the mission to report the news on a wide variety of subjects. Contributors from around the world write news articles collaboratively. Reports range from original reporting and interviews to summaries of news from external sources. All reports are required to be written from a neutral point of view.
- Wales widens smoking ban, includes at hospitals, schools and playgrounds (2021/03/01 19:04)
Monday, March 1, 2021
Today, Wales extended the prohibition on smoking at hospitals, schools, and playgrounds, with violators to face a £100 fine. Wales is the first of the UK nations to introduce this ban.
File photo of Minister for Mental Health, Wellbeing, and the Welsh Language Eluned Morgan.
Image: Llywelyn2000.This is in addition to various restrictions on the practice, including a ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces in place since 2007 and a ban on smoking in cars with children in place since 2015.
The Welsh government, governed by left-wing party Welsh Labour, said the measure was to discourage adults and children alike from smoking by making it appear less normal, and encourage the already partaking to quit.
Two hospitals in the country's south has installed a button-activated speaker system to remind people hospitals are smoke-free. In 2016, a similar mechanism was tried at hospitals across Wales, where upon pressing a button an announcement would play recorded by local school children.
Minister for Mental Health, Wellbeing, and the Welsh Language Eluned Morgan said she was "immensely proud to have brought into force this law", and "[t]his legislation will benefit the health of future generations in Wales, as fewer children will be exposed to smoking". She concluded, "[w]e need to do everything we can to combat the harmful effects of smoking."
The government was criticised by many smokers rights groups. Simon Clark, Director of the Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco compared the law to "taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut", saying: "There is no evidence that smoking in the open air poses a risk to anyone else's health, including children." The director further explained, "Banning smoking on hospital grounds is particularly unjust because it targets smokers who may be stressed and in need of a comforting cigarette. Most smokers use their common sense and don't smoke around small children. They don't need politicians telling them how to behave."
Sister links[edit]
Sources[edit]
- "Cabinet members and ministers" — Llywodraeth Cymru, March 1, 2021 (date of access)
- "Smoking banned at hospitals and playgrounds in Wales" — BBC News Online, March 1, 2021
- Steven Morris. "Wales bans smoking at hospitals, schools and playgrounds" — The Guardian, March 1, 2021
-
"Push-button announcements warn smokers at hospitals" — BBC News Online, June 17, 2016
- Two Jordanian ministers caught breaking lockdown measures, resign (2021/03/01 05:30)
Monday, March 1, 2021
The Jordanian Ministers for Interior and Justice resigned yesterday after they were found violating anti-coronavirus lockdown measures.
Both Interior Minister Samir Mobeideen and Justice Minister Bassam Talhouni were found at a public banquet violating the social distancing as well as maximum permissible capacity guidelines which their ministries are expected to enforce. Current capacity is limited to 20 people. This comes days after the imposition of new restrictions on Jordanians, including stay-at-home orders, a military-enforced curfew and a 100 dinar (~US$140) fine on those not wearing face masks.
Their resignations was accepted by Prime Minister Bisher Al-Khasawneh and, in one of two Royal Decrees, King Abdullah II. According to multiple reports, the second decree ratified Deputy Prime Minister for Local Administration Tawfiq Kreishan to run the Ministry of the Interior and State Minister for Legal Affairs Ahmad Ziadat to run the Ministry of Justice.
A recent surge in new infections by variants of the coronavirus have led to at least 4627 deaths and over 300 thousand cases in the nation of ten million, Reuters reporterd. Officials attribute it to Jordanians not obeying the restrictions, and have arrested dozens for breaching stay-at-home orders; hundreds of businesses have also been closed, Reuters further added in the report.
Sources[edit]
- "Ministers" — Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, March 1, 2021 (date of access)
- "Jordan's Justice, Interior Ministers Resign" — Asharq Al-Aswat, February 28, 2021
- Suleiman Al-Khalidi. "Two Jordanian ministers fired for partying in breach of their own rules" — Reuters, February 28, 2021
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Laith al-Junaidi. "Jordan: 2 ministers resign for violating virus measures" — Andalou Agency, February 28, 2021
- Anas Sarwar wins leadership of Scottish Labour party (2021/02/27 16:27)
Saturday, February 27, 2021
Today, Anas Sarwar has been elected as leader of Scottish Labour ahead of Scottish Parliament elections scheduled for May 6. Sarwar, a Member of the Scottish Parliament from Glasgow, beat out Monica Lennon with a vote of 57.6% to Lennon's 42.4%, the BBC reported. The leadership election was triggered by the resignation of Richard Leonard.
In his acceptance speech, Sarwar said, "I want to say directly to the people of Scotland, I know Labour has a lot of work to do to win back your trust. Because if we're brutally honest, you haven't had the Scottish Labour Party you deserve. With rising injustice, inequality and division, I'm sorry we haven't been good enough. And I will work day and night to change that, so we can build the country we all need."
Sarwar has received congratulations in his win from both allies and political rivals, including Labour Party leader Keir Starmer, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, Scottish Conservatives leader Douglas Ross, Scottish Greens co-leader Patrick Harvie and Scottish Liberal Democrats leader Willie Rennie.
Sources[edit]
- "Anas Sarwar wins Scottish Labour leadership race" — BBC News Online, February 27, 2021
- Severin Carrell. "Anas Sarwar wins Scottish Labour leadership election" — The Guardian, February 27, 2021
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"Richard Leonard quits as Scottish Labour leader" — BBC News Online, January 14, 2021
- Wikinews mourns loss of volunteer John Shutt (2021/02/27 15:40)
This article mentions the Wikimedia Foundation, one of its projects, or people related to it. Wikinews is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Saturday, February 27, 2021
On Friday, Wikinews learned Dr John Nathan Shutt, a long-time contributor to both Wikinews and Wikibooks, died on Wednesday. Editing under the name Pi zero, he was at the time the top contributor to Wikinews by edit count, and came third on English Wikibooks. Dr Shutt was 56 years old.
Dr Shutt's elder sister, Ms Barbara Shutt, informed Wikinews about his death via email on early Friday. His mother, Elsie Shutt had called 9-1-1 emergency services after he had trouble breathing. By the time the ambulance came, Dr Shutt was unconscious. Ms Barbara Shutt also added the doctors operated on him for two hours, but at the end, Dr Shutt died either by blood clots or by a series of heart attacks.
Dr Shutt was the most active editor and administrator on this project and had been contributing as Pi zero since September 2008. He was promoted to administrator in July 2010 and became a reviewer in August 2010. Since then, he has peer-reviewed then published over a thousand news articles on-wiki, the most recent being just a day before his death. He made over 160 thousand edits and over 120 thousand log entries on English Wikinews.
He also held reviewer and administrator privileges on English Wikibooks, having contributed to several wikibooks including Conlang, World Religions, Solar System and The Elements; and created Stacks, a mechanism for sorting the project's content.
Dr Shutt would occasionally write blogs on his blogger called "Structural insight". Dr Shutt was interested in constructed languages (conlangs). He was an avid reader, and enjoyed J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings novels.
In a discussion about Tolkien's works last year, Dr Shutt said, "I read The Hobbit when I was, I think, a teenager. I read it again a few months ago; not sure if I ever read it between those times. It's a wonderfully written story --- by a linguist and, in fact, a conlanger. I've got the Lord of the Rings (the books, I mean), which I've read at least a couple of times over the years. And the Silmarillion, which covers the earliest part of Tolkien's legendarium. Christopher Tolkien, his son who was close to his fantasy writing, is his literary executor and has spent the past half century of his life editing and publishing various of his father's papers. I actually got for christmas... a year ago, I think, The Fall of Gondolin, which Christopher says will be the last of his father's books that he publishes."
Dr Shutt was awarded a PhD in Computer Science in 2011 from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), Massachusetts. His research interests included Abstraction theory; the Kernel programming language, a Lisp-based language which he created and was his dissertation topic; Recursive Adaptive Grammars, the core of his master's thesis as well as Self-Modifying Finite Automata which he developed with Roy Rubinstein. He had received his master's degree in 1993, five years after finishing his bachelor's degree, both from WPI. Dr John Shutt was also interested in adaptive grammar as well as category theory. He often programmed in Lisp, enjoyed xkcd comics and used Emacs as his choice of text editor.
He had spent one year at the Brown University for his post-graduate academics. Recalling the experience, Dr. Shutt said, "I spent one year at Brown, but it didn't work. And was a traumatic experience for me; it took me a couple of years to recover enough to make a second try at graduate school." Dr Shutt shared an office with Paul Howard in the 1988/89 academic year at Brown University. In July 2019, Dr Shutt said, "It saddens me that I forgot to wish Paul Howard a happy birthday this year, and he appears to have forgotten to wish me one either. First time we've failed to exchange birthday wishes, even if belatedly, since we were assigned to share an office in the 1988/89 academic year at Brown".
Andres Navarro and Oto Havle had created an implementation of Kernel programming language, called kernel, which was mentioned in a presentation at BSDCan by Michael MacInnis. Recalling that incident in November, Dr Shutt said, "Two or three years ago, this guy Michael MacInnis emailed me. He was getting ready to give a talk at BSDCan (an annual BSD conference in Canada) about a new UNIX shell he was ready to release, called Oh; and he wanted to know if it was okay if he mentioned my name in regard to fexprs, 'cause my dissertation had come out as he was putting the design together and Kernel-style fexprs fit wonderfully well with his concept so he used them. I assured him I was fine with having my name mentioned. Last night I was watching the video he provides of his talk, which iirc he felt went very well. I've been meaning to learn in more detail how the shell works; it was kind of fascinating to me how it very easily does away with most of Lisp's parentheses despite being fundamentally Lisp. (Cons cells and fexprs. Profoundly Lisp.)".
Dr Shutt lived with Asperger's syndrome. In a discussion with one of the Wikimedia volunteers, he said, "As often happens with aspies, I was a hyperlexic kid, some of which has lingered."
Dr Shutt lived in Massachusetts, US, and is survived by his mother Elsie Shutt, his sister and niece Barbara and Hannah Shutt, his cat Pickles and his brother David Shutt. Dr Shutt would have turned 57 next Friday.
Sister links[edit]
- "Seven Russians infected with H5N8 bird flu; first cases reported in humans" — Wikinews, February 23, 2021
Sources[edit]
- "English Wikinews user statistics" — WikiScan, February 26, 2021 (date of access)
- "English Wikibooks user statistics" — WikiScan, February 26, 2021 (date of access)
- "klisp source code" — git.hannabi.in, February 26, 2021 (date of access)
- "klisp" — klisp.org, February 26, 2021 (date of access)
- Dr John Shutt. "Academic Work" — Worcester Polytechnic Institute, February 26, 2021 (date of access)
- Dr John Shutt. "The Kernel Programming Language" — Worcester Polytechnic Institute, February 26, 2021 (date of access)
- Dr John Shutt. "Abstraction Theory" — Worcester Polytechnic Institute, February 26, 2021 (date of access)
- Dr John Shutt. "Self-Modifying Finite Automata" — Worcester Polytechnic Institute, February 26, 2021 (date of access)
- Dr John Shutt. "Adaptive Grammars" — Worcester Polytechnic Institute, February 26, 2021 (date of access)
- Dr John Shutt. "My Master's Thesis" — Worcester Polytechnic Institute, February 26, 2021 (date of access)
- "User contributions (Wikinews)" — Wikinews, February 26, 2021 (date of access)
- "User rights log (Wikinews)" — Wikinews, February 26, 2021 (date of access)
- "User rights log (Wikibooks)" — Wikibooks, February 26, 2021 (date of access)
- "User:Pi zero (Wikibooks)" — Wikibooks, February 26, 2021 (date of access)
- Dr John Shutt. "Structural insight" — Blogspot, February 26, 2021 (date of access)
- BSDCan. "Michael MacInnis: Oh a new Unix shell - BSDCan 2018" — YouTube, August 2, 2018
- The Boston Globe. "Phillip R. Shutt" — legacy.com, April 19, 2012
External links[edit]
- Dr John Shutt. "Web Surfing" — Worcester Polytechnic Institute, February 26, 2021 (date of access)
-
Dr John Shutt. "Structural insight" — Blogspot, February 26, 2021 (date of access)
- Ahmedabad's Sardar Patel Cricket Stadium renamed as Narendra Modi Stadium (2021/02/27 00:08)
Friday, February 26, 2021
On Wednesday, India's president, Ram Nath Kovind, inaugurated the world's largest cricket stadium, Narendra Modi Stadium, in Ahmedabad. Narendra Modi is the current Prime Minister of India.
In his opening ceremony speech, President Kovind said "This stadium was conceptualised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he was Chief Minister of Gujarat. He was president of the Gujarat Cricket Association at that time". India's Home Minister Amit Shah, Sports Minister Kiren Rijiju and members of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) also attended the inauguration ceremony.
Later that day, the stadium hosted its first international match with India taking on England in the Day-Night Test match.
The new building can accommodate about 132 thousand spectators. It was erected in place of a 49 thousand seat stadium, named after Sardar Patel, the first deputy Prime Minister of India. The stadium is part of the planned Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Sports Enclave in the city.
Sources[edit]
- PTI. "Motera stadium renamed Narendra Modi Stadium as President Ram Nath Kovind inaugurates the venue" — TOI, February 24, 2021
- "Motera's Sardar Patel Stadium renamed as Narendra Modi Stadium" — Times Now, February 24, 2021
-
Mahesh Langa. "Motera cricket stadium, world’s largest, named after Modi" — The Hindu, February 24, 2021
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Wikiversity
Wikiversity is a project dedicated to learning materials and learning communities, as well as research. Wikiversity is not limited to university (or tertiary) level materials, but is open to materials and communities of all learner levels. The way it can facilitate learning activities and communities is still being explored, but is centered around the model of 'learning by doing', or 'experiential learning'.
Wikivoyage
Wikivoyage aims to create the world's largest free, complete and up-to-date world-wide travel guide.
Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons provide a central repository for free photographs, diagrams, maps, videos, animations, music, sounds, spoken texts, and other free media. It is a multilingual project with contributors speaking dozens of languages, that serves as a central repository for all Wikimedia projects.
- Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for March 2 (2021/03/02 02:00)
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The Dinner, an 1839 lithograph that drives home the great divide between master and servant, is the work of French artist Jean-Baptiste Debret (1768-1848) who spent 15 years in Brazil capturing the daily life of a society built on slavery - Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for February 23 (2021/02/23 02:00)
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Italian locust (Calliptamus italicus) female, Nature Park of Alvão, Portugal. - Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for February 22 (2021/02/22 02:00)
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Westpolderbrêge. Bridge over Broeresleat, realized in 2020. - Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for February 21 (2021/02/21 02:00)
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The Threefold Temptation of Christ at the St. Wolfgang Altarpiece of the Catholic parish- and pilgrimage church St. Wolfgang im Salzkammergut, Upper Austria. Michael Pacher, 1471–79.
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Wikidata
Wikidata aims to create a free knowledge base about the world that can be read and edited by humans and machines alike. The data available in Wikidata is licensed under the Creative Commons CC0 License to allow third-party users to freely reuse the data available, unlike other Wikimedia projects.
MediaWiki
The MediaWiki open source community maintains several software projects.
Meta-Wiki
Meta-Wiki is a project used as a central hub for various coordination and organization tasks, such as discussions affecting multiple wikis or planning upcoming events.
Wikimedia Incubator
The Wikimedia Incubator is a wiki used for developing new wikis.
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Wikimedia Labs 2) is a project aimed to help volunteers get involved in Wikimedia operations and software development, and to make it easier for system administrators and developers to try out improvements to Wikimedia infrastructure, including MediaWiki.