Saturday, October 20, 2007

A Canadian man was arrested in Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand Friday and is facing charges of sexual abuse of a child under 15 and illegal detention. He is also suspected of posting about 200 online images of child abuse on the Internet.

According to the BBC, Thai authorities are ordering Neal to stay in custody for 12 days for questioning before the official trial starts. Under Thai law he can be held for up to 84 days before trial.

Thirty-two-year old Christopher Paul Neil, from Maple Ridge, British Columbia, could face up to 20 years in jail if convicted.

Neal was working in South Korea as an English teacher. He has been working in Vietnam, South Korea, Cambodia, and Thailand since 2000. Neal was recorded on a security camera at Bangkok airport on October 11.

Thai courts have ruled that he will be charged in Thailand. For now it is up to the Canadian and Thailand authorities to discuss.

“But if something took place here, we would want to have the person held accountable here, but that is very premature and it may even be speculative at this stage,” said Wally Oppal, attorney general of British Columbia (B.C.). Neal could be charged in Canada because of a law which allows paedophiles to be charged in Canada even if they didn’t do the crimes in Canada.

The RCMP are investigating to see if Neal has committed any crimes in B.C., which could mean charges will also be laid in Canada.

Interpol, just last week, issued a public search for Neal. A 15-year-old, who was one of Neal’s victims, alerted authorities of the man. On Thursday Thai courts issued an arrest warrant. Authorities had been able to unscramble the face of a man in the 200 online photos, which had been digitally scrambled. The unscrambled images were used to identify the suspect.

Phyakrut News Agency reported that Neil’s feet were trampled on by reporters until they bled. It was also noted that the picture of the man issued by Interpol had a very hairy chest whereas the suspect arrested had a quite hairless chest, the faces also looked remarkably different raising the question as to whether the real “Mr Swirly Lollipop” has in fact been caught. Police Major General Wimon Powintara stated however that Neil is now wanted for having sex with boys and girls and that one victim identified him as the one that lured him from an Internet cafe to play video games in his apartment where he was orally raped before being given 200 Thai Baht compensation (US$6).

Sunday, October 7, 2007

Shona Bracken is running for the Communist Party in the Ontario provincial election in Toronto—Danforth. Wikinews interviewed her regarding her values, her experience, and her campaign.

Monday, December 14, 2020

On Tuesday, US-based software company Red Hat announced their plans to shift their focus away from CentOS in favour of CentOS Stream.

In the blog post Chris Wright, the Chief Technological Officer of Red Hat said Red Hat had informed the CentOS governing board that Red Hat was “shifting our investment fully from CentOS Linux to CentOS Stream”. At least five of the nine CentOS Governing Board listed on the project are Red Hat employees.

Started in 2004, CentOS has been a free-of-cost free/libre open source software which provided binary-code compatibility with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) — Red Hat’s GNU General Public Licensed paid operating system. CentOS was absorbed into Red Hat in 2014, with Red Hat gaining the trademark rights of “CentOS”.

Red Hat also sponsors the Fedora operating system. Red Hat even gives the software engineering interns laptops with Fedora on it. Till now, software development took place on Fedora, which was later adopted in RHEL, which the Red Hat maintained and provided support for, for those customers who had RHEL subscription. CentOS would then follow RHEL to provide the same features free of cost, but without the support.

Stream was announced in September 2019, just two months after Red Hat was acquired by IBM. CentOS Stream’s development cycle had new features added to it before the features became a part of RHEL. Stream receives more frequent updates, however, it does not follow RHEL’s release cycle.

With CentOS Stream, developments from the community and the Red Hat emplyees would take place beforehand on both Fedora, and Stream as a rolling release, before those features are absorbed into RHEL. CentOS followed the release cycle of RHEL and therefore it was a stable distribution. Features available in CentOS were tried and tested by Fedora, and then RHEL maintainers. Stream, on the other hand, has features added to it before those features become a part of RHEL. That implies Stream would be ahead of RHEL’s development, containing new features which are not yet tried and tested by RHEL developers, and not be binary code-compatible with RHEL.

Writing “The future of CentOS Linux is CentOS Stream”, Wright further wrote in the announcement, CentOS Stream “provides a platform for rapid innovation at the community level but with a stable enough base to understand production dynamics.” Wright also said, “CentOS Stream isn’t a replacement for CentOS Linux; rather, it’s a natural, inevitable next step intended to fulfill the project’s goal of furthering enterprise Linux innovation.”

Since the announcement was made, many people expressed their anger on Internet Relay Chat (IRC), Reddit and CentOS project’s mailing list. CentOS 8’s End of Life (EOL) has been moved up from May 2029 to December 31, 2021, while CentOS 7 is expected to receive maintenance updates through June 2024, outliving CentOS 8.

Gregory Kurtzer, who had started the CentOS project, announced a new operating system, Rocky Linux. Rocky Linux describes itself as “a community enterprise Operating System designed to be 100% bug-for-bug compatible with Enterprise Linux”. The project said “Rocky Linux aims to function as a downstream build as CentOS had done previously, building releases after they have been added to the upstream vendor, not before.” The project maintainers have not decided a date for when the operating system will be released.

Kurtzer explained the reason to call the OS as Rocky Linux: “Thinking back to early CentOS days… My cofounder was Rocky McGaugh. He is no longer with us, so as a H/T [hat tip] to him, who never got to see the success that CentOS came to be, I introduce to you…Rocky Linux”.

Wikinews reached out to the members of the CentOS project, Pablo Greco and Rich Bowen, to discuss this move, its implications as well as the future of CentOS. Greco is a maintainer of armhfp (32-bit processors) and is a part of the CentOS’ quality assurance team. Bowen — who unlike Greco, works for Red Hat — is the community manager of the CentOS project.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Wikinews reporter Iain Macdonald has performed an interview with Dr Isabella Margara, a London-based member of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE). In the interview Margara sets out the communist response to current events in Greece as well as discussing the viability of a communist economy for the nation. She also hit back at Petros Tzomakas, a member of another Greek far-left party which criticised KKE in a previous interview.

The interview comes amid tensions in cash-strapped Greece, where the government is introducing controversial austerity measures to try to ease the nation’s debt-problem. An international rescue package has been prepared by European Union member states and the International Monetary Fund – should Greece require a bailout; protests have been held against government attempts to manage the economic situation.