Tag Archives: opera

Breaking: Sydney on Lockdown As Dramatic Siege Unfolds

Mother Jones

The heart of Sydney, Australia, is currently in lockdown, as a siege unfolds at a downtown cafe. Reporting is still fuzzy and ongoing, but here’s what we know so far: Police are responding to a situation at the Lindt Cafe in Martin Place, a central plaza in the city surrounded by banks and law firms, and not far from the state parliament buildings and the Sydney Opera House.

The number of hostages taken have not been confirmed. Channel Seven, a TV station with studios and offices in Martin Place, is reporting police sources as saying there are 13 people being held. The number of hostage-takers has also not been confirmed.

Twitter users have posted images of people, apparently hostages, with their hands against the windows of the cafe and holding up a black flag with Arabic writing on it. Guardian Australia is reporting the flag reads, “There is no god but the God, Muhammad is the messenger of God.” It is not the Islamic State flag. Large parts of the area have been cordoned off.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which has unlocked its live stream for an international audience, is providing rolling coverage. Channel Seven is also providing live coverage here.

The Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, has released a statement saying his government is convening an emergency session of the National Security Committee of Cabinet:

UPDATE: Sunday, December 14, 2014, 9 p.m. EST: The Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has addressed reporters in Australia’s capital, Canberra. He didn’t provide any further factual detail about the unfolding saga in Sydney. Notably, he did not outline potential reasons for the attack. “We don’t yet know the motivation of the perpetrator,” he said, though he added that “obviously there are some indications” the attack could be political in nature. Abbott said the normal business of government would continue:

I can understand the concerns and anxieties of the Australian people at a time like this, but our thoughts and prayers must above all go out to the individuals who are caught up in this. I can think of almost nothing more distressing, more terrifying than to be caught up in such a situation and our hearts go out to these people.

UPDATE 2: Monday, December 15, 2014, 12:15 a.m. EST: It appears that at least three hostages have gotten free, though whether they escaped or were released is not yet clear.

As things unfold, we’ve compiled a list of sources on Twitter to follow. Find it here.

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Breaking: Sydney on Lockdown As Dramatic Siege Unfolds

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Halftime Report: Chrome Out, Firefox In

Mother Jones

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Well, my switch to Chrome didn’t go well after all. It turned out that the MoJo tech team had an excellent reason for not supporting it: For some reason, when you paste text into our blog software, Chrome copies over every last bit of HTML formatting from the source document. Why? Beats me. But it doesn’t really matter, because Chrome lacked so many handy features that I’ve gotten used to in Opera that I would have given up on it anyway. So I tried Firefox again, and so far it’s been great. It had most of the features Chrome didn’t, and the few it lacked could be easily added via extensions. Performance is fine, and it mostly works well with the MoJo web software.

It doesn’t have a built-in email client, which is one of the Opera features I like best, but that was eliminated in the most recent Opera update anyway. Given all this, there’s really not much reason to stick with a browser that’s supported by nobody and that merely produces shrugs (or worse) when you complain about their site not rendering properly.

But before I make the switch permanently, I have a question for the hive mind. I don’t really recall why I gave up on Firefox a couple of years ago, but my recollection is that it had gotten slow and crash-prone. Anyone have any comments on that? Has it gotten better? Or does it still tend to crash at inopportune moments?

Also: Are there any add-ons that are so fabulous I should check them out immediately?

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Halftime Report: Chrome Out, Firefox In

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