Wednesday, July 5, 2006

London — Yell, the world’s biggest yellow pages publisher, today threatened to shut down Yellowikis, the wiki-based yellow pages directory.

Yell accused Yellowikis co-founders Paul Youlten and his 15 year-old daughter Rosa Blaus of “misrepresentation”, “passing off” and suggested that using the name Yellowikis could “constitute an ‘instrument of fraud’.” Passing off is defined as misrepresenting a product and passing it off as one’s own. Passing off is a form of trademark infringement.

Yell is demanding that Paul and Rosa close down the website, transfer the domain names to Yell and agree to pay damages to Yell for loss of profits. Yell made $2.4bn in 2005, whereas Yellowikis had a loss of $500. The $500 was used to print T-shirts promoting Yellowikis at the Wikimania conference in Frankfurt.

Paul Youlten said: “This threat from Yell to shut us down looks like a sign of desperation. The whole yellow pages industry is in crisis. Use of the paper directories is collapsing as people get broadband Internet connections in their homes. Small and medium sized businesses are beginning to notice that their customers are ringing them up and saying ‘I found you on Google’ and not ‘I found you in the yellow pages’.”

Rosa Blaus said: “Maybe they are a bit jealous of Yellowikis because we allow companies to add videos, skype IDs, email addresses, instant messaging, in as many categories and languages as they like for free.” Blaus suggested to her father that they set up Yellowikis after she noticed small businesses were deleted from Wikipedia for not being “encyclopaedic”.

Yellowikis has been growing at 8.7% month-on-month and has 494 editors and about 5,000 articles listed.

The threat of legal action came after an article published in The Independent newspaper mentioned Yellowikis.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

It can be difficult to be John Reed.

Christopher Hitchens called him a “Bin Ladenist” and Cathy Young editorialized in The Boston Globe that he “blames the victims of terrorism” when he puts out a novel like Snowball’s Chance, a biting send-up of George Orwell‘s Animal Farm which he was inspired to write after the terrorist attacks on September 11. “The clear references to 9/11 in the apocalyptic ending can only bring Orwell’s name into disrepute in the U.S.,” wrote William Hamilton, the British literary executor of the Orwell estate. That process had already begun: it was revealed Orwell gave the British Foreign Office a list of people he suspected of being “crypto-Communists and fellow travelers,” labeling some of them as Jews and homosexuals. “I really wanted to explode that book,” Reed told The New York Times. “I wanted to completely undermine it.”

Is this man who wants to blow up the classic literary canon taught to children in schools a menace, or a messiah? David Shankbone went to interview him for Wikinews and found that, as often is the case, the answer lies somewhere in the middle.

Reed is electrified by the changes that surround him that channel through a lens of inspiration wrought by his children. “The kids have made me a better writer,” Reed said. In his new untitled work, which he calls a “new play by William Shakespeare,” he takes lines from The Bard‘s classics to form an original tragedy. He began it in 2003, but only with the birth of his children could he finish it. “I didn’t understand the characters who had children. I didn’t really understand them. And once I had had kids, I could approach them differently.”

Taking the old to make it new is a theme in his work and in his world view. Reed foresees new narrative forms being born, Biblical epics that will be played out across print and electronic mediums. He is pulled forward by revolutions of the past, a search for a spiritual sensibility, and a desire to locate himself in the process.

Below is David Shankbone’s conversation with novelist John Reed.

Sunday, August 26, 2007

A one-inch settlement of the roof of The Bay tunnel to the Montreal Metro caused authorities to evacuate 12 blocks of the Montreal downtown core.

Several people noticed water infiltration in the tunnel over the last few days. On Friday, August 24, at 1 p.m., while investigating another water infiltration incident, The Bay employees noticed that the ceiling of the tunnel portion of The Bay’s basement sales area had descended one inch over a 7 meter length. They subsequently called police. The police and firefighters evacuated the basement of the downtown Bay store. The police closed de Maisonneuve Boulevard from Aylmer Street to Union Street, over the area of the crack.

At 4 p.m., firefighters evacuated the Parkade Montreal Building and The Bay Department Store after finding pieces of concrete falling from the Parkade Montreal structure, a multi-story carpark with five levels of offices on top. They also evacuated the downtown portion of the Line 1 / Green Line of the Montreal Metro subway, from Lionel-Groulx to Berri-UQAM stations, and evacuated the McGill metro station, which is situated below The Bay tunnel. After consulting with city engineers, Centre 2001, the loading dock of the Bay and its Hertz car rental agency, Les Promenades Cathedrale underground shopping centre and office tower, and a neighbouring office tower to the Parkade were also evacuated. Police cordoned off an area from Bleury Street in the east to University Street in the west, and from Ste-Catherine Street in the south to President Kennedy Street to the north.

The closure of the Metro caused havoc to the Friday afternoon rush hour, as over 40,000 people regularly use the Green Line (Line 1) every day. Montreal Transit Corporation workers issued directions during the day, though some may not have been informed of a provisionary bus service to replace the lost subway service. Loudspeakers announced that commuters should use the unaffected Orange Line (Line 2), which has lines between 5 and 10 blocks south of Line 1 (Green Line), and also connects to Lionel-Groulx and Berri-UQAM stations.

The downtown area is intended to remain closed for at least the weekend, along with portions of the underground city, or RESO. The tunnel was built in 1966. For the last few days, city work crews have been working above the slab in question, digging a one meter trench to install a median and segregate a new bike path on de Maisonneuve Boulevard. The tunnel roof lies five meters below street level.

Residents of Montreal are frustrated with the crumbling infrastructure in and around the city, including the collapse of the de la Concorde Boulevard overpass over Autoroute 19 expressway last year, the shattering of a column holding up the Autoroute 720 Ville Marie elevated expressway last month, and other incidents.

Friday, August 21, 2009

Leonard Peltier, a Chippewa activist and member of the American Indian Movement who was convicted in 1977 of the murder of two FBI agents, has been denied parole. Peltier is serving two consecutive life sentences in the United States Penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Peltier had been previously denied parole in 1993.

Peltier, along with Robert Robideau and Darelle “Dino” Butler, was charged with the murders of FBI Special Agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams after a shootout during unrest on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Robideau and Butler were acquitted, the jury finding the shootings of Coler and Williams having been in self defense, but Peltier had fled the country and was tried separately on his return and found guilty.

Peltier’s attorney, Eric Seitz, stated that the announcement of Peltier’s being denied parole was made without the courtesy of informing the defense, and noted that Peltier, currently 64 years of age, is in poor health with numerous complaints. U.S. Attorney Drew Wrigley, meanwhile, called Peltier “an unrepentant, cold-blooded murderer who executed FBI special agents” who is “exactly where he belongs — federal prison”.

Peltier has consistently denied that he murdered Coler and Williams and maintains that the FBI framed him. Supporters of his release include a wide range of world figures, including Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama and Amnesty International, while not classifying Peltier as a political prisoner, asserts that “there is concern about the fairness of the proceedings leading to his conviction and it is believed that political factors may have influenced the way the case was prosecuted.”

A statement from the FBI released after the announcement that Peltier would stay in jail reads, in part, “His callous criminal acts demonstrated a complete disrespect for human life and for the law. His time served in jail for their 1975 murders has not diminished the brutality of his crimes or the pain and sorrow felt by the families of his victims or the FBI family.”

Leonard Peltier is next eligible for parole in 2024.

Tuesday, March 1, 2005

Aylesbury, England – The Arsenal F.C. midfielder Jermaine Pennant, currently on loan to Birmingham City, has today pleaded guilty to drink-driving, driving while disqualified, and driving without insurance by Aylesbury magistrates court. Pennant received a sentence of three months imprisonment. Pennant’s lawyer, Bary Warbutton, has said that the footballer will appeal against the severity of the sentence.

The incident occurred on January 23 of this year, Pennant was arrested after crashing teammate Ashley Cole’s car into a lamppost. The 22-year-old claimed that he crashed the car after attempting to operate the car’s Satellite navigation system.

Despite the claim by Warbutton that imprisonment “could completely destroy his career”, Birmingham City have said that they will stand by the player, and help to rehabilitate him. Arsenal released a statement saying that the sentence would not impact the player’s future with the club; his contract with club expires in the summer, at the same time as his loan-spell with Birmingham ends.