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Thursday, August 4, 2011

The small African nation of Swaziland will receive a financial bailout from neighbouring South Africa. The South African government agreed to a loan of 2.4 billion rand ($350 million) after several organisations including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) rejected King Mswati III’s request for a bailout.

King Mswati III released a statement about the bailout saying, “We are thankful and also appreciate the assistance we have received from South Africa. This shows that they are good neighbours.” He added “But it must be stressed that this is not a gift but a loan, which naturally should be repaid. This is why every Swazi must play his or her role by working hard wherever he is to ensure that the country gets back to its feet the soonest.”

The King has been criticized for living with 13 wives in luxury while the majority of his country lives in poverty.

Despite the South African government’s agreement, the bailout has been met with some concern. The opposition in South Africa said that the government should reject the loan as Swaziland is an “undemocratic state”. However, the government has said that the bailout would bring stability to the state and surrounding region.

The loan is expected to help Swaziland, which is going through a financial crisis. The nation has reportedly been unable to pay some of its civil servants and could not afford antiretroviral drugs to treat HIV. Swaziland has the highest rate of HIV infection in the world.

Earlier this year, the country saw a wave of protests and demonstrations related to the economic situation.

Thursday, July 3, 2014

Ian Narev, the CEO of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, this morning “unreservedly” apologised to clients who lost money in a scandal involving the bank’s financial planning services arm.

Last week, a Senate enquiry found financial advisers from the Commonwealth Bank had made high-risk investments of clients’ money without the clients’ permission, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars lost. The Senate enquiry called for a Royal Commission into the bank, and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).

Mr Narev stated the bank’s performance in providing financial advice was “unacceptable”, and the bank was launching a scheme to compensate clients who lost money due to the planners’ actions.

In a statement Mr Narev said, “Poor advice provided by some of our advisers between 2003 and 2012 caused financial loss and distress and I am truly sorry for that. […] There have been changes in management, structure and culture. We have also invested in new systems, implemented new processes, enhanced adviser supervision and improved training.”

An investigation by Fairfax Media instigated the Senate inquiry into the Commonwealth Bank’s financial planning division and ASIC.

Whistleblower Jeff Morris, who reported the misconduct of the bank to ASIC six years ago, said in an article for The Sydney Morning Herald that neither the bank nor ASIC should be in control of the compensation program.

Thursday, April 7, 2005

Sony’s recently introduced Playstation Portable has proved popular with curious geeks who discovered various talents hidden within the new handheld video console.

The biggest ‘hack’ so far has been the manipulation of a web browser embedded within the PSP game ‘Wipeout Pure’, which can be easily coaxed into accessing the majority of Internet via a suitable portal. Jonathan Terleski was able to monitor the digital conversation held between his PSP and Sony’s website when the browser in his game ‘Wipeout Pure’ would try to download new software from Sony via the Internet. Using a suitably set up DNS server, Terleski configured his handheld console to access his own custom PSP portal, instead of Sony’s website, and then invited other owners to use his gateway to the web. [1]

From this discovery, Robert Balousek later created a web based IRC interface that allows people to talk to each other and hold conversations in real time via the Internet on their PSP consoles. According to Reuters, his IRC website has to date been used by as many as 100,000 visitors and Balousek now plans to introduce a web based interface to the AOL instant messaging network for PSP users.

Other notable recent ‘hacks’ include reading ebooks and comics and watching pre-recorded television shows, taken from a TiVo, on the Sony PSP.

None of the ‘hacks’ have yet employed writing custom software for the device. So far, most are spin-offs of Jonathon Terleski’s web browser hack. Other hacks, like the ebook reader and television show viewer, are made possible through use of the PSP’s built in tools for viewing video and images. Sony has not yet released an SDK which would allow end-users to write ‘homebrew’ software, therefore hackers are tied to manipulating software included with the PSP or available through the games purchased separately.

Speaking to Wikinews, Jacob Metcalf, who documented the web comic’s hack on his website, explained his motivation: “Web comics are already designed for on-screen reading and they have some of the same audience as people who play games – lots of the most popular web comics are about gamers, like PVP and Penny Arcade.”

He added: “I do wish that [Sony] would come out with an actual web browser like the Dreamcast had. South Korea is going to get a real web browser and I have a feeling in my gut that there is going to be Internet software for the PSP like a web browser and email announced at E3 this year.”

Saturday, February 3, 2018

On Wednesday, following the rape in India’s capital, New Delhi, of an eight-month-old girl, Swati Maliwal, head of the Delhi Commission for Women, announced she was beginning a 30-day Satyagrah Aandolan —a form of non-violent civil protest— to persuade the Government of India to impose the death penalty promptly when offenders rape children. She asked for others to join in her protest action.

As reported in the Indian press on Monday, the baby girl was initially in critical condition after she was raped on Sunday at her home in Subhash Nagar in western New Delhi while her parents were at work. According to the police and a statement by the baby’s father to the agency Asian News International, when the mother returned, the baby was crying and was covered in blood. A police spokesman said the baby’s 28-year-old cousin was arrested under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses Act and Section 376 of the Indian Penal Code.

After Ms Maliwal visited the baby’s hospital, she tweeted: “How can Delhi sleep today when 8 month baby has been brutally raped in Capital? Have we become so insensitive or we have simply accepted this as our fate?”, and addressed Prime Minister Narendra Modi demanding “stricter laws and more police resources” to combat rape. She said the baby’s internal injuries were “horrific” and “inhuman” and had required three hours on the operating table to repair, and she could “still hear her screams and cries”. Others responded with tweets calling the rape “monstrous” and “disgusting and disturbing”.

In a tweeted statement on Wednesday announcing her protest action, Ms Maliwal demanded offenders who rape children should be executed within six months. “I will not go home for 30 days. I will work in the office throughout the day and at night I will inspect different places of Delhi. I will do double work. I will sleep in the office only. I give 30 days’ time to accept my demands.” She also demanded a 14,000-person expansion of the Delhi Police and improvements to police software and forensics resources and reform of the prosecution department. She asked “people who understand the severity of such crimes and who really care for their kids” to join her in going house to house throughout Delhi to get the government to meet her demands.

Since the 2012 gang rape and murder of a student on a Delhi bus, there have been widespread protests in India against rape culture and calls for heavier penalties for rape. In response the government has made the law stricter and introduced dedicated ‘fast-track’ courts. Problems persist. There have been other press reports of child rape in the country in recent years, including the kidnapping and rape of a three-month-old in Hyderabad in 2015 and the kidnapping and rape of an eleven-month-old in Delhi in 2016. National Crime Records Bureau 2016 statistics list 19,765 child rapes, an 82 per cent increase over the previous year.