Gas station attendants will also be certified after the training to indicate their qualification to serve at the fuel stations.

[contextly_sidebar id=”IWOhUA7sbJ9aOp5beveXBE7doPh94M2B”]According to Prince Billy Anaglate, the Deputy Public Relations Officer of the Fire Service, the move is part of major plans by the Service to guarantee optimum safety at fuel stations to avert any fire disaster.

Speaking on Eyewitness News, he noted that, the previous system of certifying companies as a whole did not enhance proper assessment of staff of their qualification to operate at the station.

“We would also move ahead to intensify our fire safety education to the gas attendants, the tanker drivers, and their mates, to give them individual fire certificates. Unlike previously when we were given just the certificate to the companies, to certify that the workers of the company have been taken through fire safety education. This system has never been able to enable us to assess people who have been trained or those who have not been trained,” he said.

“With this new introduction, when we have our snap check on the stations, we will ask any worker there to produce their certificate, if you fail to produce it then it means you are not qualified to be on the ground and that fuel station will be sanctioned,” he added.

Mr. Anaglate added that, the Fire Service will ensure that there is supervision of all gas offloading processes in the country.

“We would ensure that before any gas station offloads gas, we would be informed to make sure that we either send a tender to give fire cover or we send a fireman to be on the ground to ensure that safety measures are adhered to,” he said.

Meanwhile, a preliminary report of the GNFS on the recent Atomic junction gas explosion shows that, the gas tanker driver and his mate were negligent in the discharge of their duties hence the explosion.

At least 7 people died with more than 130 others injured as a result of the explosion which occurred last week.

–

By: Jonas Nyabor/citifmonline.com/Ghana

The post Fire Service to train and certify gas tanker drivers, mates appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

The new regulation is part of the Service’s grand plan to prevent or reduce the incidents of gas explosions especially during the process of offloading the product from tankers to onsite gas storage tanks.

[contextly_sidebar id=”JLae3I6wuXqI7FD8KxnmliNHqG9ogGO0″]The Deputy Public Relations Officer of the Fire Service, Prince Billy Anaglate, in an interview on Eyewitness News on Thursday, said the Service has noted with great concern that most of the explosions occurred at the point of offloading the product.

He decried the low level of safety adherence at some gas stations in the country, noting that having fire officers at the stations during the offloading process will ensure that the maximum fire safety measures are taken into account.

“Many of those gas explosions that we have had in previous years and even the recent one that we had, would have been prevented if the workers and people who mattered including attendants strictly adhered to safety measures… We are going to institute certain measures that will force them to strictly adhere to those things.”

“…because we have also realized in our investigations that many of those fires that occurred at the filling station, were as a result of they offloading the gas. We want to ensure that at the time any gas station wants to offload the gas, then a fire personnel should be there. If a fire personnel is there, then I believe we will ensure that the adherence to strict measures would be the situation, and that will prevent any future fire outbreak,” he said.

Mr. Anaglate further charged fuel station managers to adhere to the required safety practices to avoid endangering their lives and that of persons living around.

He said the fire service is in the process of clamping down on fuel stations that are operating in breach of the necessary safety requirements.

Meanwhile, the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Institute for Public Policy Options, Dr. Charles Wereko Brobbey, has said the plan to have fire service personnel supervise offloading of gas is unnecessary and wasteful.

He instead called for strict enforcement of already existing laws in dealing with safety issues in the downstream petroleum sector.

–
By: Jonas Nyabor/citifmonline.com/Ghana

The post Fire Service to supervise gas offloading processes appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

The offices of GN Bank, Gold Coast Securities, Amansan TV and Business Television Africa, were all affected by the fire at the hotel, which the fire service said could have been avoided if some basic fire prevention systems were in place.

Speaking to Citi News, the Deputy Public Relations Director of the Fire Service, Prince Billy Anaglatey, stressed that, “there was nothing put in place to protect the place in terms of fire safety.”

Among other things, he said the Service’s preliminary investigation into the fire suggests that “they do not even have smoke detectors on their premises. That was how they didn’t detect the fire in time… even the structure itself is supposed to have total suppression systems, sprinklers, but they did not have all that.”

But Groupe Nduom in a rebuttal statement described the comments of the Deputy PRO as lies.

Below is the full statement

The Ghana Fire Service Can Do Better Than This!

Groupe Nduom has been very measured in our public comments on last Saturday’s fire that swept through a section of Coconut Grove Regency Hotel in Accra. As a responsible corporate entity with international standing, Groupe Nduom believes that rather than taking the Ghana Fire Service (GFS) to task for shortcomings demonstrated, we should support efforts aimed at determining how to resource the GFS better to achieve optimum results.

Groupe Nduom is however compelled to react to some negative comments made by Prince Billy Anaglate, the Deputy PRO of the Ghana National Fire Service. Mr. Anaglate has in media interviews blamed our company for not putting in place basic fire prevention measures at the affected Groupe companies.

For example, he told Citi FM, an Accra based Radio station that Groupe Nduom had not put anything in place to protect the company in terms of fire safety. Groupe Nduom does not only find Mr Anaglate’s assertion unfortunate but pedestrian and reckless. We do not know who he is trying to protect with his blame game. A PRO’s job cannot be to peddle lies and paint others in a negative light.

He should not test our resolve on the issue; we have lost millions of Ghana Cedis as a result of last Saturday’s fire. We do not need the state organization whose job is to assist those facing fire accidents to rather put pepper in our wounds. There is no doubt that we lost a lot through the unprofessional handling of the fire by the GFS and we were silently albeit painfully counting our losses. But we cannot allow our reputation to be dragged in the mud by someone who obviously has not taken time to get his facts straight.

We realized through our ordeal that the GFS faces obvious logistical problems. This, we believe should form the basis of a broader discourse with the view of avoiding similar fire situations in the future. In effect, we the most affected entity have tried to avoid any form of emotional and parochial discussion of the issue.
But for Mr. Anaglate to suggest that our offices at the Coconut Grove Regency Hotel did not have fire detectors and extinguishers at the time of the incident is something we cannot allow to pass without correction. We emphasise that every facility at the Coconut Grove Regency compound has fire detectors and extinguishers. Ironically, we bought these equipment from the Ghana Fire Service itself and we have receipts to that effect.

Coconut Grove Regency Hotel has a standing relationship with the Ghana Fire Service where they (Fire Service) take our staff through periodic fire fighting measures. We want to tell Mr. Anaglate that we have a GFS certificate commending us for taking up the GFS orientations. Amansan Television (ATV), one of our offices that was gutted by the fire last Saturday has a special fire segment on its ‘Anopa Bosuo’ morning show programme that he appears on to educate people on Fire Safety measures. So what is he talking about?

Perhaps we should not be surprised at the latest spin by Mr. Anaglate. This is a man who has since day one of the incident sought alibi in many lame and ungrounded lies. First he said the Fire Service got hint of the fire incident through a commercial taxi driver when in fact the distress call to the office of the Fire Service was made by a staff of Groupe Nduom Corporate Affairs.

After falling flat to that obvious lie, he tried albeit unsuccessful to impugn that they got to the fire site just three minutes after report by the so-called faceless taxi driver. The truth however has emerged that the Fire Service personnel got to the scene well over twenty minutes after getting the distressed call from our employee.

He has also wrongfully suggested that the generator at the Coconut Grove Regency Hotel was running and that resulted in the widespread of the blazing fire. Indeed the generator at the hotel was immediately put off when the fire started.

In any case, if the Fire personnel were up to the task, why didn’t they put off the fire when it started as something small at only one of the 12 offices that the fire finally destroyed?

Unfortunately for him, many Ghanaians watched the blazing fire live as they went round their work rather amateurishly. We have many videos that show how it took almost two hours for the fire to spread while GFS people watched and did nothing to help.

We still insist that the Ghana Fire Service needs help. Some weeks ago at Teshie-Nungua in the Greater Accra Region, some four Fire Service personnel got injured in a fire combating operation. They were made to take a loan of GHC1000.00 to cater for their hospital expenses. Where is the motivation for anyone to offer his all in any fire fighting mission?

Again we want to point out that 20 officers of their National Headquarters share seven (7) fire fighting uniforms in operations similar to what was experienced at the Coconut Grove Hotel. Also, during their abortive fire combat at the Coconut Grove Regency Hotel, fire fighters had only four oxygen masks which got finished within a matter of 20 minutes.

As a result, the officers could not enter the building to put out the fire. How can we expect personnel of the Service to offer their best in any firefighting situation? The GFS needs help and their PRO will do the service well by focusing on this rather than seeking to blame victims of their inadequacies.
We suggest that Mr. Anaglate should learn the art of Public Relations better rather than resorting to propaganda that in the end only exposes the weaknesses of his employer.

Richmond Duke Keelson
Groupe Nduom Corporate Affairs
–
By: citifmonline.com/Ghana

The post Groupe Nduom blasts Billy Anaglate for ‘lying’ about Coconut Grove fire appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

The State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) questioned Microsoft Vice President David Chen and gave the company a deadline to make an explanation, the agency said in a short statement on its website.

SAIC also repeated that it suspected the company has not fully disclosed issues relating to the compatability of the software and the operating system.

“[A] special investigation team conducted an anti-monopoly investigation inquiry withMicrosoft Vice President Chen Shi (David Chen), and required that Microsoft make a written explanation within 20 days,” the SAIC said in a statement on its website.

In a statement, Microsoft said it was “serious about complying with China’s laws and committed to addressing SAIC’s questions and concerns”.

Microsoft is one of at least 30 foreign companies that have come under scrutiny by China’s anti-monopoly regulators, as the government seeks to enforce its six-year old antitrust law. Critics say the law is being used to unfairly target overseas businesses, a charge the regulators deny.

Last month, a delegation from chipmaker Qualcomm Inc (QCOM.O), led by company President Derek Aberle, met officials at the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) as part of that regulator’s investigation of the San Diego-based firm.

NDRC said earlier this year that the U.S. chipmaker is suspected of overcharging and abusing its market position in wireless communication standards.

Microsoft’s Satya Nadella is expected to make his first visit to China as chief executive later this month.

–

Source: Reuters

The post China gives Microsoft 20 days to explain anti-trust probe appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

It flagged the matter after discovering that an image involving a young girl had been allegedly saved to the man’s OneDrive cloud storage account.

According to court documents, the man was subsequently detected trying to send two illegal pictures via one of Microsoft’s live.com email accounts.

Police arrested him on 31 July.

The man, in his twenties, has since been placed in a county correctional facility and has yet to enter a plea. A preliminary court appearance is scheduled for next week.

A copy of the affidavit detailing the case against the defendant has been published online by a news site specialising in leaked law enforcement documents.

It claims that the man acknowledged acquiring the pictures through Kik Messenger, a chat app, as well as “trading and receiving images of child pornography on his mobile cellular device”.

The BBC spoke to one of the officers involved, Trooper Christopher Hill from the Pennsylvania State Police, who confirmed the affidavit was genuine and that Microsoft had instigated the investigation.

But he said he could not discuss any of the case’s specifics because it was still an “open investigation”.

He did, however, add that he was aware of other instances of “internet carriers” passing on similar details in other inquiries.

Automated image scans

The details have emerged a week after it was first reported that Google had handed over the identity of a Texas-based user after detecting suspected child abuse imagery in his Gmail account. The 41-year-old was arrested as a consequence of Google’s action.

The cases highlight the fact that commonly-used internet services are not private.

One campaign group said tech firms must be explicit about how they monitor users’ accounts.

“Microsoft must do all that it can to inform users about what proactive action it takes to monitor and analyse messages for illegal content, including details of what sorts of illegal activity may be targeted,” commented Emma Carr, acting director of the campaign group Big Brother Watch.

“It is also important that all companies who monitor messages in this way are very clear about what procedures and safeguards are in place to ensure that people are not wrongly criminalised, for instance, when potentially illegal content is shared but has been done so legitimately in the context of reporting or research.”

Microsoft’s terms and conditions for its US users explicitly state that it has the right to deploy “automated technologies to detect child pornography or abusive behaviour that might harm the system, our customers, or others”.

Disrupting photo trades

Neither Google nor Microsoft handed over the material directly to the police.

Instead both companies contacted the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s CyberTipline, which serves as the US’s centralised reporting system for suspected child sexual exploitation.

Microsoft has openly discussed its use of image-processing software to detect suspected paedophiles in the past, including an interview with the BBC in 2012.

Following the most recent case, Mark Lamb from the company’s Digital Crimes Unit released a statement.

“Child pornography violates the law as well as our terms of service, which makes clear that we use automated technologies to detect abusive behaviour that may harm our customers or others,” he wrote.

“In 2009, we helped develop PhotoDNA, a technology to disrupt the spread of exploitative images of children, which we report to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children as required by law.”

PhotoDNA creates a unique signature for each image, similar to a fingerprint, to help pictures be matched.

This is done by converting the picture into black-and-white, resizing it and breaking it into a grid. Each grid cell is then analysed to create a histogram describing how the colours change in intensity within it, and the information obtained becomes its “DNA”.

The technique means that if a copy of a flagged photo appears in one of Microsoft’s user’s accounts, the firm can be alerted to the fact without its staff having to look at the picture involved.

Because the amount of data involved in the “DNA” is small, Microsoft can process and compare images relatively quickly.

“[It] allows us to find the needle in the haystack,” says promotional material for the software.

Google also uses PhotoDNA, alongside its own in-house technologies, to detect child abuse images,

In addition, the software is used by Facebook and Twitter, among others.

Source: BBC

The post Microsoft tip leads to child porn arrest in Pennsylvania appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

The operating system, developed by Google, is usually seen as a rival to Microsoft’s own Windows Phone OS.

Microsoft said the Nokia X2 offered it a way to hook users into its cloud-based services, several of which come pre-installed as apps.

One expert said the alternative would have been leaving “money on the table”.

“I still find it astounding that Microsoft is making Android phones, but there seems to be a steely determination to take a more open approach for the greater good of the whole company rather than just the Windows Phone platform,” said Ben Wood, from the telecoms consultancy CCS Insight.

“If they don’t do this, then someone else is going to get the business.

“I also think it’s a reflection of the fact that Nokia’s budget Asha line of feature phones was unable to compete with entry-level Android mobiles.”

Microsoft completed its takeover of Nokia’s handset division on 25 April at a cost of 5.4bn euros ($7.4bn; £4.4bn).

App gap’

The X2 is the follow-up to the original X, launched in February before Nokia sold its mobile business.

The original model became the best-selling mobile in Pakistan and the third best-selling handset in India – according to market-research company GfK – as well as achieving strong sales in Russia, Kenya and Nigeria.

The new device features:

• a slightly bigger 4.3in (11cm) screen
• 1GB of RAM – double the amount of memory previously included
• a more powerful battery
• the addition of a front-facing camera for selfies

It will cost 99 euro ($135; £80) when released in July.

Microsoft’s video chat app Skype, its Outlook email service and its OneDrive internet storage apps all come pre-loaded.

The firm is also promoting some of its other apps – including Bing Search, the Yammer business-focused social network and the OneNote idea jotting service – as optional free downloads for the device.

“The whole idea of bringing more people into Microsoft Cloud through these services is the very core of the strategy,” Jussi Nevanlinna, vice-president of mobile phones product marketing at Microsoft, told the BBC.

“In fact we’re ahead of other Android devices [in this respect].

“But I want to stress that Lumia remains our primary smartphone strategy and that Nokia X is a stepping stone to it.”

Missing apps

The tile-based homescreen and ability to see apps displayed as a scrollable list on the X2 mirrors the Window Phone user interface, which might help encourage consumers to later make the leap to Microsoft’s more expensive Lumia range.

However, Mr Wood said there was a risk that the users would instead switch to other Android models since Windows Phone still lags behind its rival in terms of the amount of third-party software it offers.

“That’s the calculated risk that Microsoft is taking,” he explained.

“The firm needs to rapidly close the app gap between the experience on an Android phone and the experience on a Windows Phone.

“But by going down this route it will at least inform Microsoft as to which apps it had better urgently get if it wants to secure people on the upgrade cycle.”

Windows Phone now boasts over 250,000 apps including Instagram and Vine, which were high-profile absentees until November.

But several banking apps, games, video on-demand software, and apps used to control wearable fitness trackers – all available on Android – remain absent.

The Nokia X2 can run the bigger library of Android apps, but unless users hack the device they can only browse available software via the Nokia Store – which excludes some programs – rather than the more fully-stocked Google Play.

Source : BBC

The post Microsoft to release Android-powered Nokia X2 handset appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

The ad – featuring Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul – has the actor say “Xbox On” near its start.

The instruction appears to trigger the machine’s Kinect voice/motion sensor, activating the console.

A spokesman for the firm said it had no comment at this time, but noted that previous ads had also featured voice commands.

Many people have posted comments about the problem on social media sites.

“Aaron Paul just turned my Xbox One via the Xbox advert. (Which triggered the IR [infrared] blaster to switch my TV off..)” tweeted Qassim Farid, a UK-based tech blogger.

Chesterfield-based Tom Neal wrote: “@Xbox your new TV advert is annoying the hell outta me. Aaron Paul keeps turning my console on… #stooooop”

The effect has also been noted on news discussion site Reddit’s Xbox section, with one commentator writing: “Damn commercial keeps turning on my xbox! Lol”

The post reflects the attitude of many console owners who have posted about the matter who appear more bemused than angered by the glitch.

This is not the first time such an effect has been reported.

In November Xbox One owner Tom Kimberl posted a video to YouTubeshowing that an internet ad that featured the command “Xbox go to Dead Rising 3” launched the game on his system.

Users affected by the issue do have the ability to turn off the Kinect sensor, which prevents the console responding to voice commands.

The issue has parallels with an effect played for laughs in the TV series 30 Rock where a voice-controlled television went haywire when on-screen characters mentioned its trigger words.

Unbundled Kinect

The problem has arisen in the same week that Microsoft began selling a cheaper version of the Xbox One without the Kinect.

It said it made the move – timed to coincide with the E3 video games expo – following feedback from gamers who did not want to pay extra for the accessory.

The decision allows the machine to retail at the same price as Sony’s PlayStation 4.

Microsoft’s press event at the Los Angeles show was notable for hardly featuring the Kinect.

Only a dancing game, a Disney motion-controlled music rhythm title, and an indie game called Fru – which allows players to control a character by making body shapes – appeared to take advantage of the feature.

However, Microsoft did announce outside the show that a software update would soon allow developers access to more graphics power when the Kinect was not in use. This may help address complaints that several cross-platform games offer higher resolutions and frame rates on the PS4 than their Xbox equivalents.

However, the new ad signals that the US firm intends to keep promoting the Kinect as a feature that distinguishes its machine from its Japanese rival’s, even if the price quoted at its end is for the standalone machine.

The post E3: Xbox One ad is switching on Microsoft consoles appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

The new model features a 12in (30.5cm) touchscreen, 38% larger than before.

The firm boasted that at 9.1mm (0.36in) thick – without an optional clip-on keyboard – it becomes the “thinnest PC” to be powered by one of Intel’s higher-end Core processors.

One analyst said he believed there was pent-up demand for such a device in the corporate world.

However, the platform has previously been outsold by rivals.

“The question that needs to be asked and answered is, ‘Why hardware?'” said chief executive Satya Nadella at the launch event in New York.

“We clearly are not interested in building refrigerators or toasters. We are not building hardware for hardware’s sake.

“We are not interested in competing with our OEMs [original equipment manufacturers].

“In fact, our goal is to create new categories and spark new demand for our entire ecosystem. That’s what inspires us and motivates us with what we are doing in our devices and hardware.”

According to research firm IDC, Apple, Samsung, Asus, Lenovo and Amazon have each outsold Microsoft with their tablets.

IDC says that the Surface platform as a whole accounted for just 1.5% of global tablet shipments – representing about 640,000 units – over thefirst three months of the year, down from a 1.8% share for the same period in 2013.

However, Microsoft is marketing the machine as being a “laptop replacement” – comparing it on stage to one of Apple’s lightweight laptops rather than the iPad – and IDC research director John Delaney suggested it should be judged on those terms.

“To talk about it having a small percentage of the tablet market partly misses the point, because it’s designed to appeal to PC buyers,” he told the BBC.

“I think there’s pent-up demand for something that does the job of a PC, that’s light and thin, and that’s cheaper than something like the MacBook Air. If the Surface Pro 3 also delivers good battery life, then that’s a package that could resonate with a lot of buyers

“We’re also seeing enterprises looking to replace at least some of their PCs with a portable touchscreen product that’s compatible with their existing Microsoft applications and infrastructure software. That’s another market to which the Surface Pro 3 could appeal.”

The basic Surface Pro 3 will cost $799 (£475), compared with the low-end MacBook Air that costs $899.

Microsoft says the battery life is “up to nine hours”, 10% more than the Surface Pro 2.

RT no-show

Rumours that Microsoft would unveil a Surface Mini – powered by its Windows RT operating system – proved unfounded.

The RT side of the Surface business has previously struggled, with Microsoft having at one point to write-down the value of unsold stock by $900 (£534m) after it introduced an unplanned price cut.

Windows RT tablets run on ARM-based chips – giving them longer battery life but a smaller library of compatible software than machines using Intel or other x86 processors.

Adobe’s image editing software Photoshop – which was shown off at the launch running on the Surface Pro – is one of RT’s notable missing applications.

One industry watcher said he would not be surprised if Microsoft now decided to focus its Windows hardware efforts exclusively on its newly acquired Nokia handset business and the Surface Pro line-up.

“I think the RT experiment has now passed,” said Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner, a tech consultancy.

“Bringing ARM and RT together really hasn’t worked, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was phased out.”

Source: BBC

The post Microsoft launches larger Surface Pro 3 to rival laptops appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.