Thank you from Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales

"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge."

— Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia

Thank you from Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales

Dear Reader,

Since July 1, more than 125,000 of you have donated $4 million. In addition, we've received major gifts and foundation support totaling $2 million. This combined revenue will cover our operating expenses for the current fiscal year, ending June 30, 2009.

Your donation makes you a key supporter of the free culture movement, and pays for:

• Day-to-day operations: servers, hosting, bandwidth, our staff of just 23 people.
• Continued development & improvements of open source software that powers all Wikimedia projects.
• Outreach events like Wikipedia Academies: in-person workshops where you can learn more about how to use and edit Wikipedia.
• Volunteer support: helping our international volunteer community to grow and to continue to do amazing work.

You can still get involved:

Any donations beyond our $6 million goal are put in a reserve fund, which will help us to offset operating costs beyond the current fiscal year. Your continued support will also serve as a much-needed financial safety net if economic conditions continue to worsen globally.

You have proven that Wikipedia matters to you, and that you support our mission: to bring free knowledge to the planet, free of charge and free of advertising. You've helped make and keep Wikipedia available for the whole world.

I deeply appreciate your support.

Thank you,

Jimmy Wales

Please Donate »

Learn More

• How is the revenue spent?
• How is the Wikimedia Foundation funded?
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O Distrito de Viseu reduz mortes

O Distrito de Viseu reduz as mortes nas estradas de 107 em 1997 para 28 em 2008

'Drug bust' beauty queen stripped of title

A Mexican beauty queen arrested in the company of heavily armed, suspected drug traffickers has been stripped of her Hispanic American beauty title, pageant organizers in Bolivia told local media on Saturday

Laura Zuniga, 23, and seven men were detained at a military checkpoint in central Mexico on Monday. Police found assault rifles and $55,000 in cash in the luxury vehicles they had been driving.

Zuniga was ordered jailed on Friday for a further 40 days while investigators probe possible ties to violent smuggling gangs.

Police say they suspect the dark-haired model, who won the Miss Sinaloa and Queen of Hispanic America pageants earlier this year, was the girlfriend of one of the men arrested. Investigators say he is linked to the Juarez cartel, which operates lucrative smuggling routes into the United States.

'Promociones Gloria, the company that created and is responsible for (the pageant) has dismissed Laura Zuniga as the official Hispanic America Queen 2008,' the organization said in a statement, according to La Paz daily La Razon.

She was to compete in the Miss International pageant next year.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon is battling powerful cartels in his country with soldiers and federal police.

'Human igloo' saves woman's life

A woman managed to survive for three days buried deep in snow - by acting like a giant human igloo.

Donna Molnar, 55, was last seen on Friday when she left her home west of Toronto in a snowstorm to get baking supplies.

Her van was found abandoned by the side of a windswept rural road late the next day.

Reverse Santa lives in attic, steals stuff

Christmas is traditionally a time when a strange man descends from the roof of your house and gives you stuff. But one family in America were suprised to discover that, instead, a strange man had spent several days living in their roof and stealing things from them.

The family, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, did not realize they had an unexpected Christmas guest until the UnSanta - who had been in their attic for days - emerged wearing their clothes.

Stanley Carter surrendered Friday after police took a dog to search the home in Plains Township, a suburb of Wilkes-Barre about 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of Philadelphia. He was charged with several counts of burglary, theft, receiving stolen property and criminal trespass.

'When he came down from the attic, he was wearing my daughter's pants and my sweat shirt and sneakers,' homeowner Stacy Ferrance said. 'From what I gather, he was helping himself to my home, eating my food and stealing my clothes.'

Police said the 21-year-old Carter had been staying with his friends, who are Ferrance's neighbors in a duplex. But when they told him to leave, he apparently accessed the shared attic through a trap door in a bedroom ceiling.

We found a note labeled "Stanley's Christmas List" of all the items he had removed and donated to himself

The friends said Carter went missing on December 19 and they filed a missing person report a few days before Christmas.

Ferrance said she had heard noises but thought they were caused by her three children. She notified police on Christmas Day when cash, a laptop computer and an iPod disappeared, then called police again the next day when she found footprints in her bedroom closet, where the attic trap door is located.

In keeping with his role as a reverse Santa, Carter even kept a list of everything he took, said Plains Township police Officer Michael Smith.

'When we were going through the inventory of what he did take, we found a note labeled "Stanley's Christmas List" of all the items he had removed from the residence and donated to himself,' Smith said.

Carter was in jail Sunday at the Luzerne County Correctional Facility with a preliminary hearing set for January 5.