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After three days of presentations, discussion and general community interactions, the fifth annual Wikimedia conference, Wikimania, has completed, and attendeess are returning home. Wikimania 2009 — held in Buenos Aires, Argentina — was the first Wikimania held in the southern hemisphere as well as the first in a Spanish-speaking country. Over 80 presentations, panels and workshops were held over the three day conference. Among the many topics presented were presentations on the Wikimedia Communities, how Wikimedia and related projects operate

The South Pacific island nation of Fiji has been fully suspended by the Commonwealth of Nations after it refused to call elections by next year. Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma said the country failed to show progress towards democracy. Fiji has been suspended before. After two coup d'états in 1987, the nation was suspended for 10 years. In 2000, Fiji was again suspended for eighteen months. The only other nation which has been suspended fully by the Commonwealth is Nigeria, which was suspended in 1995, but later re-instated. Fiji failed t

Hurricane Jimena, a powerful Category 3 hurricane, is currently closing in on Mexico's Baja California peninsula. Some areas of the region are already beginning to experience the storm's effects. The storm has weakened over the past 24 hours from Category 4 status, but is still what forecasters describe as "extremely dangerous". It currently has winds of 125 miles per hour, with higher gusts, and is moving north-northwest at 10 knots. Jimena is situated about 110 mi (175 km) southwest of Cabo San Lucas. Officials in Mexico are working to prep

Wildfires in California continued to spread on Tuesday, having burned more than 140,000 acres of land throughout the state and caused an estimated US$13 million worth of damage. The blaze started burning last Wednesday north of Los Angeles. Emergency crews said they were hopeful that they would be able to control the fire. 3,600 personnel are involved in containing the wildfire. Currently, twenty-two percent of the blaze is contained, rising from only five percent as little as a day ago. Changing weather conditions also helped firefighting e

Two Internet bloggers from Azerbaijan could be getting up to five years in prison after posting a video of a donkey giving a press conference on YouTube, a free video sharing website. Adnan Hajizade, 26 and Emin Milli, 29, posted the video on YouTube as a joke. It was in the country's native language, with English subtitles. The video depicts a man dressed in a donkey costume praising the benefits of living in Azerbaijan. It was also praising the positive attitude the country's government has towards its donkeys. Azerbaijan's government was

An appeal for information on a 25-year-old murder case has been broadcast on national television on the BBC One show Crimewatch. Seventeen-year-old Melanie Road was murdered in the early hours of June 9, 1984 in Bath. The team responsible for investigating the murder is the Avon and Somerset Major Crime Review Team. Road's brother Adrian took part in the appeal saying "Over the last 25 years it's been a living nightmare to know someone out there killed my sister. This person took Melanie from me". Detective Chief Inspector Mike Carter said "I

Ferrari driver Kimi Räikkönen won the FIA Formula One 2009 ING Belgian Grand Prix at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, Spa, Belgium. Kimi qualified 6th, but jumped to second after a multiple crash in the first corner involving Jenson Button (Brawn) and Lewis Hamilton (McLaren) collided with the rookies Romain Grosjean and Jaime Alguersuari and all four drivers were out of the race. When the pace car turned off the lights and the race restarted Kimi overtook the pole-sitter Giancarlo Fisichella in Eau Rouge, who drove his Force India to the sec

Social networking website Twitter picked up 1 in every 400 UK Internet visits last week and had more viewer visits than rival site MySpace. Hitwise, an Internet research company, provided the information. They said: "For the week ending August 29th 2009, Twitter.com picked up 1 in every 400 UK Internet visits and ranked as the 27th most visited website in the UK, one position above MySpace." Robin Goad, researching director of Hitwise, said: "Twitter is probably even more popular than the figures suggest as many Twitter users access the site

The West Gippsland Latrobe Football League Qualifying and Elimination Finals were played over the weekend in Australia. On Saturday Maffra played Moe in the Qualifying Final at Traralgon. On Sunday Drouin played Leongatha in the Elimination Final at Leongatha. Qualifying Final Moe defeated Maffra by 38 points 14-9 (93) to 8-8 (56). Seven goals from Matt Forys and two each from Luke Thompson and Daniel Risol were enough to see off a determined Maffra side. Moe will now play Traralgon, who finished on top of the ladder, in the second semi final

Hurricane Jimena has quickly intensified into a powerful Category 4 hurricane off the coast of Mexico in the Pacific Ocean. Dave Roberts, a forecaster for the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said "There's a good chance this system could be a Category 5 in the next 24 hours". The storm is expected to move northwestward, threatening the Baja California peninsula over coming days. "There's no watches or warnings in effect, but we would like residents and tourists in the area to monitor the progress of the storm", said Robbie Berg, another hurric

Japan's Transportation Safety Board has blamed a combination of poor design and a maintenance error for a fire and explosions that destroyed a passenger jet. The China Airlines Boeing 737-800 had landed at Naha Airport in 2007 and had just parked and shut its engines down when a fire broke out on the right hand engine, quickly moving to the wing and the tarmac beneath. Ground staff alerted the crew and an evacuation commenced. In just three minutes and 27 seconds all the 157 passengers had evacuated, but the flight crew remained. The first of

Former terrorist Verena Becker has been arrested after new evidence surfaced linking her to the murder of German Federal Prosecutor General Siegfried Buback and two bodyguards in 1977. The 57-year-old was a member of the Red Army Faction, a communist terror group that hoped to trigger a workers' revolution. Most of the organisation's other members were sentenced to lengthy jail sentences for this and other killings, but the case against Becker in Buback's slaying was dropped for lack of evidence, and she was later pardoned from her convictions