Thursday, March 2, 2006

Two explosions near a US consulate in Karachi, Pakistan killed five and wounded more than fifty early Thursday morning. The explosions come just prior to United States President George W. Bush’s scheduled visit to the country. According to Forbes report on the incident, Pakistani officials speculated that the attack was timed to coincide with Bush’s visit.

According to police, a suicide bomber apparently hit the vehicle of a United States diplomat, detonating one of the explosions. It is not clear whether a subsequent explosion was another bomb or a vehicle explosion triggered by the initial blast.

The Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) reports that a hospital in the region has confirmed at least five persons were killed in the attacks, and over fifty more were injured, including a young Moroccan girl. According to the Associated Press, among the dead was a United States diplomat, a Pakistani official who worked at the consulate, a security guard for the consulate, and an unidentified woman. The driver of the car bomb is also presumed dead.

During a press conference in New Delhi, India, President Bush stated he would still travel to Pakistan despite the explosions, saying that: “Terrorists and killers are not going to prevent me from going to Pakistan. My trip to Pakistan is an important trip. It’s important to talk with President Musharraf about continuing our fight against terrorists.” Bush also expressed his condolences to the individuals lost in the attack during the conference.

The Pakistani news source GEO states that the first explosion occurred at 9:05 local time (0505 UTC), with the second explosion occurring minutes afterwards. The explosions occurred at the parking lot of the Marriott Hotel in Karachi, about 60 feet (18 meters) from the consulate gate. Damage to the building as well as over ten nearby vehicles was also reported.

The Associated Press reports that the same consulate has been targeted twice in the recent past: an attack in 2002 left 14 Pakistanis dead, and in 2004 police defused a time bomb before it was set to detonate.

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

New Zealand Associate Minister of Health Damien O’Connor has proposed that warnings, both images and text, should cover 60% of the packaging of cigarettes sold in the country. New Zealand is required to do so under obligations to the World Health Organisation.

The new images would depict throat cancer, rotting teeth/gums and gangrenous feet. Ashley Bloomfield, Chief Advisor on Public Health, says written warnings aren’t as effective as pictures, and that many smokers do not know most of the diseases that smoking can cause.

If the proposal were adopted, the Ministry would dictate the size and placement of the images to the tobacco companies, but would not subsidise the cost of the changes.

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Louisiana Republican Governor Bobby Jindal signed a controversial bill hailed by intelligent design supporters, such as the Discovery Institute, and Louisiana Family Forum, a creationist group. Critics of the bill, including several major science organizations, say it allows for the teaching of “creationism” in public schools.

The law, Louisiana Science Education Act, allows teachers to use “supplemental materials” when discussing evolution, but it does not state what the materials would be.

Citing the 1987 Supreme Court ruling in Edwards v. Aguillard, “Louisiana has a long and unfortunate history of trying to substitute dogma for science in classrooms,” said Reverend Barry W. Lynn, an executive director for Americans United for Separation of Church and State. In addition, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, National Center for Science Education, and the Louisiana Coalition for Science opposed the bill arguing it would cause detriment to students’ education by letting in unapproved curriculum.

According to Reuters, Jindal’s office declined to comment on Friday.

Similar Academic Freedom bills have been promoted by the Discovery Institute in other states, but so far they have failed.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Humanitarian aid groups and Chinese military forces are beginning rescue operations in western China after a heavy 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck the region on Wednesday, that reportedly killed over 600 people and injured almost ten thousand.

The quake, which was centered around the remote town of Yushu, was largely destroyed by the heavy temblor, which occurred early in the morning as residents were waking up. The official death toll stands at 617, while 9,980 more were injured and an additional 313 reported as missing. The Chinese ministry of civil affairs reports that 15,000 houses had collapsed and 100,000 people – almost the entire population in the area – remain without homes.

The plateau where the earthquake hit is frequently visited by tremors; however, there are rarely many casualties due to its remoteness and small population. However, in May 2008 a heavy 8.0 magnitude earthquake struck near Sichuan foothills, killing 80,000 people.

Rescue efforts are underway, but impeded due to the area’s remoteness and landslides, which have blocked many roads in the area. Also a factor is the high altitude at which the area is located – about 4,000 metres above sea level (13,000 feet) – which could adversely affect rescue crews not used to being in such thin air. Sniffer dogs, for instance, who aren’t accustomed to working at high sea levels, could have a harder time detecting living people buried beneath rubble.

Power and telephone lines were also downed by the temblor, affecting communication, although the authorities commented that electricity and phone links have been repaired to tens of towns.

China’s state media reports that troops garrisoned in the Yushu county, with help from locals, have already rescued over a thousand people buried beneath debris.

Residents and troops garrisoned in the Yushu county have managed to pull out more than 1,000 people alive, according to Chinese state media. They are using shovels and bare hands.

Further exacerbating the situation is the weather: temperatures are freezing, and meteorologists predict sleet and wind to come within the next few days. Many people were forced to sleep outdoors, protecting themselves from the cold in blankets, or spending the night in vehicles.

Pierre Deve for the non-governmental organisation Snowland Service Group, was present in Yushu. He described the damage to Times Online, saying: “There are corpses everywhere on the street. They don’t have time to deal with them. There is a real need for medicine, for food, for water and for doctors. People are terrified that there will be another earthquake. They are also afraid that a dam that has been cracked will burst and flood the town.”

A local doctor, Karma Sherab, also commented on the problems the area is facing: “Most of the hospitals have collapsed and others had become dangerous. The only thing we can do is to clean the wounds in a simple way or simply amputate instead of curing.”

Chinese president Hu Jintao, meanwhile, said that he would be dispatching over 5,000 rescuers and soldiers to the scene of the disaster; the government has pledged over US$29 million worth of aid. Hu described the quake as being a “huge calamity”. He is also shortening his visit to a summit in Brazil to return to his country. “That is why I decided to bring forward my return to China,” he said from Brasilia.

Premier Wen Jiabao has visited Yushu to oversee relief work; he decided to delay a visit to southeastern Asia due to the disaster. “As long as there is the slightest hope, we will make efforts that are 100-fold. Your disaster is our disaster, your suffering is our suffering.”

The head of China’s disaster relief department, Zou Ming, says that 120,000 articles of clothing, 120,000 quilts, food, and close to 40,000 tents were to be sent to the disaster zone; he encouraged people to donate money to assist in longer-term relief work.

Meanwhile, some foreign countries have offered financial help; among them is Japan, which has pledged over one million dollars to disaster victims. The United States also said it is “ready to assist” if China requests international aid.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

In Serbia’s capital Belgrade protesters have broken into the United States embassy, and have set fire to an office, which is now extinguished. The break-in followed massive protests against Kosovo’s independence that was declared last Sunday. A couple of hundreds of thousands protested in front of the parliament building in Belgrade when masked attackers broke into the building and tried to throw office-furniture out the windows. Estimations of a number of protesters vary between 150.000 and 2 millions.

Around 18:00, after the relay, a couple hundred rioters went to Kneza Milosa Street where the US embassy is located. At 18:15 they demolished a part of the embassy and burned it. They also attacked the Croatian embassy, which is around 100 meters from the US embassy on the same street. Around 19:00 police came and clashed with the rioters using tear gas. Riots were all over downtown Belgrade. As of 22:00 the situation was under control but there are still some riots in other streets.

The tear gas polluted a couple blocks, about 350 meters up to Vra?ar hill.

The nearby Croatian embassy was also attacked. Rocks were thrown at the Canadian embassy building. This could be due to the fact that Canada has not said yet if it recognises Kosovo. Embassies of Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belgium, United Kingdom and Germany were also attacked.

One person was found dead at the ground floor of US embassy, around 150 people were injured, including 35 policemen. Around 100 rioters were arrested.

Dirk-Jan Visser, a photo-reporter for the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad was attacked by rioters. People helped him escape, and he has been taken into hospital with broken bones. He is expected to be kept in hospital until the next day. Ambulances and medical cars were called to the scene to help injured people and protesters, some cars were attacked.

Andrey Fyodorov and Andrey Pavlov, journalists of Russia Today, were also heavily attacked during the riots.

Two McDonald‘s restaurants on squares Terazije and Slavija were attacked. The restaurant on Slavija has been heavily damaged. Kiosks, stores and banks were robbed all over the centre of Belgrade. The protesters tried to attack radio/television station B92 but police had the scene under control.

“As long as we live, Kosovo is Serbia,” Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica told the crowd from a stage in front of the old Yugoslav parliament building in Belgrade, “We’re not alone in our fight. President Putin is with us”. A huge banner reading “Kosovo is Serbia” draped the front of the building.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack called out to the Serbian government to protect the U.S. Embassy. He said the U.S. ambassador was at his home and was in contact with U.S. officials.

The United States was one of the first countries, with the United Kingdom, France and Germany to recognize Kosovo as an independent state. Serbia however regards Kosovo as a province and is backed up in this by Russia, China and numerous other countries, including some European Union member states. Kosovo is 90% ethnic Albanian, with in the north a minority of ethnic Serbians. Belgrade has, however, not been in control over the Kosovo area since 1999, when United Nations took control.

High representative of the Serbian Radical Party, Aleksandar Vucic, said that “those who provoked Serbian people are equally responsible for destruction as rioters are.” President of Serbia Boris Tadic and President of the National Assembly Oliver Dulic and other ministers called on peace.

Thursday, July 3, 2014

Ian Narev, the CEO of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, this morning “unreservedly” apologised to clients who lost money in a scandal involving the bank’s financial planning services arm.

Last week, a Senate enquiry found financial advisers from the Commonwealth Bank had made high-risk investments of clients’ money without the clients’ permission, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars lost. The Senate enquiry called for a Royal Commission into the bank, and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).

Mr Narev stated the bank’s performance in providing financial advice was “unacceptable”, and the bank was launching a scheme to compensate clients who lost money due to the planners’ actions.

In a statement Mr Narev said, “Poor advice provided by some of our advisers between 2003 and 2012 caused financial loss and distress and I am truly sorry for that. […] There have been changes in management, structure and culture. We have also invested in new systems, implemented new processes, enhanced adviser supervision and improved training.”

An investigation by Fairfax Media instigated the Senate inquiry into the Commonwealth Bank’s financial planning division and ASIC.

Whistleblower Jeff Morris, who reported the misconduct of the bank to ASIC six years ago, said in an article for The Sydney Morning Herald that neither the bank nor ASIC should be in control of the compensation program.

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Sydney is today preparing for the Forbes Global CEO Conference and 30A Protest. A major police operation is occurring in the vicinity of the Sydney Opera House, where the conference is scheduled to occur. The Opera House forecourt has been closed to the public, and barricades have been set up down Maquarie St and across the Botanic Gardens.

Police checkpoints have been set up on Maquarie St and the Circular Quay walk to control access to the Opera House. Police dogs are patrolling the area.

At 8am this morning Customs Square, where the 30A protest is planning to assemble, was as normal for a Tuesday, with no indication of preparations by activists. The police have 1,000 officers attending, and have said that they are preparing for 10,000 protestors.

Sharron Burrows, leader of the ACTU, has criticised the conference, saying that it celebrates corporate greed at the expense of workers.

“As the global economy grows we should have cause for celebration for the advancement that this should deliver for workers and their families all over the world, but the reality is that corporate greed is driving profit share at the expense of wages, safe workplaces, conditions and entitlements for workers,” she said.

Saturday, June 2, 2007

Thirty-five square kilometers, or 13.5135755 square miles, or 3,500 hectares or 8,648.68835 acres.

However you figure it, it’s a sizeable chunk of land.

And it’s missing from Cambodia on the website for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, a 10-member regional body of which Cambodia is a member.

The apparent rounding down of Cambodia’s territory, 181,035 square kilometers, on the ASEAN website, has some Cambodian lawmakers up in arms.

Parliamentarian Keo Remy, a member of the opposition Sam Rainsy Party, is calling for the ASEAN website to be blocked by Cambodia’s Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications if the number is not corrected.

“We know that Cambodia has border disputes with its neighbors, and Khmer citizens are paying attention on these issues. We cannot accept such incorrect points. The most important thing is that the government should close this web site,” Keo was quoted as saying by the Khmer-language daily newspaper Kampuchea Thmey.

Though Keo acknowledged the error could be an honest, if careless, mistake, he said it could mean something more sinister – that ASEAN is trying to undermine Cambodia’s sovereignty, and that perhaps ASEAN is working for neighboring nations. It could even be treasonous, he said.

“If it was intentional and perpetrated by a Cambodian, this is treason. It is like not knowing your own parents,” Keo was quoted as saying by Deutsche Presse-Agentur.

Other lawmakers also called on the Cambodian government to take action.

“The royal government must react urgently, especially the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation,” Monh Saphan, a Funcinpec parliamentarian was quoted as saying by Kampuchea Thmey. “The website [must] be corrected, because it affects the territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Cambodia.”

And non-governmental organization leaders weighed in.

“The state’s figure is more important and appropriate than figures of other organizations. Therefore, we should urge the government to check this issue,” Seng Theary, executive director of the Center for Social Development, told Kampucha Thmey. “We also wonder where ASEAN got this figure.”

Kek Galabru, president of the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights, said that incorrect figure is most likely a mistake, but said the government should investigate it. “Otherwise a small problem might turn into a bigger issue,” she said.

Government spokesman and Information Minister Khieu Kanharith said he would investigate, and called for cooler heads in the meantime.

Border disputes are a hot-button political issue in Cambodia, which has some long-standing unresolved boundary conflicts with neighbors Thailand and Vietnam.

Cambodia joined ASEAN in 1999, the last country to gain admittance to the regional geo-political and economic body for Southeast Asia. It was founded in 1967 by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Other members are Brunei, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Software giant Microsoft’s chief lawyer Brad Smith claimed in an interview published in the magazine Fortune on Monday that open-source software products violate 235 of Microsoft’s patents. The main transgressors are claimed to be Linux (107 patents) and OpenOffice.org (45), with e-mail programs infringing 15 patents. Microsoft wants royalties to compensate for the patent breaches.

According to Microsoft’s Vice-President of intellectual property and licensing, Horacio Gutierrez, the company wants to negotiate with the open-source companies rather than sue them. “If we wanted to litigate we would have done that a long time ago. Litigation is not an effective way of going about solutions,” Gutierrez said. According to him, Microsoft has over the last years tried to work towards a “constructive” solution to the alleged problem of patent violation.

Microsoft in the past has used the strategy of cross-licensing to get royalties from companies who infringe their patents, for example in their deal with Novell. On a company blog, Novell reiterated that their deal “is in no way an acknowledgment that Linux infringes upon any Microsoft intellectual property.”

“We don’t think that customers will want to continue on without a solution to the problem,” Gutierrez said about Microsoft’s approach to guaranteeing companies that they won’t get sued because they use the allegedly patent-infringing Linux operating system.

The upcoming third version of the GPL licence, the licence under which Linux is released, will prohibit Linux distributors to agree to patent royalty deals. Microsoft called these “attempts to tear down the bridge between proprietary and open-source software that Microsoft has worked to build with the industry and customers.”

A related U.S. Supreme Court ruling from April 30th showed how software patents can be subject to court challenges; basically, if the innovations patented are “obvious”, the patent is weakened. Joe Lindsay, information officer for a mortgage company, pointed out that the Unix code that Linux is based upon preceded Microsoft Windows, which might also be a reason for some patents to be invalid.

Red Hat, the biggest Linux distributor, said in a statement on Monday:

Larry Augustin, former CEO of a company called VA Linux (now VA Software), responsible among other things for launching SourceForge.net, an open-source software development community, posted a message on his blog under the title “It’s Time for Microsoft to Put Up or Shut Up”:

According to the Fortune report, more than half of the Fortune 500 companies are estimated to use Linux in their data centers.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

A team of eight transplant surgeons in Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, USA, led by reconstructive surgeon Dr. Maria Siemionow, age 58, have successfully performed the first almost total face transplant in the US, and the fourth globally, on a woman so horribly disfigured due to trauma, that cost her an eye. Two weeks ago Dr. Siemionow, in a 23-hour marathon surgery, replaced 80 percent of her face, by transplanting or grafting bone, nerve, blood vessels, muscles and skin harvested from a female donor’s cadaver.

The Clinic surgeons, in Wednesday’s news conference, described the details of the transplant but upon request, the team did not publish her name, age and cause of injury nor the donor’s identity. The patient’s family desired the reason for her transplant to remain confidential. The Los Angeles Times reported that the patient “had no upper jaw, nose, cheeks or lower eyelids and was unable to eat, talk, smile, smell or breathe on her own.” The clinic’s dermatology and plastic surgery chair, Francis Papay, described the nine hours phase of the procedure: “We transferred the skin, all the facial muscles in the upper face and mid-face, the upper lip, all of the nose, most of the sinuses around the nose, the upper jaw including the teeth, the facial nerve.” Thereafter, another team spent three hours sewing the woman’s blood vessels to that of the donor’s face to restore blood circulation, making the graft a success.

The New York Times reported that “three partial face transplants have been performed since 2005, two in France and one in China, all using facial tissue from a dead donor with permission from their families.” “Only the forehead, upper eyelids, lower lip, lower teeth and jaw are hers, the rest of her face comes from a cadaver; she could not eat on her own or breathe without a hole in her windpipe. About 77 square inches of tissue were transplanted from the donor,” it further described the details of the medical marvel. The patient, however, must take lifetime immunosuppressive drugs, also called antirejection drugs, which do not guarantee success. The transplant team said that in case of failure, it would replace the part with a skin graft taken from her own body.

Dr. Bohdan Pomahac, a Brigham and Women’s Hospital surgeon praised the recent medical development. “There are patients who can benefit tremendously from this. It’s great that it happened,” he said.

Leading bioethicist Arthur Caplan of the University of Pennsylvania withheld judgment on the Cleveland transplant amid grave concerns on the post-operation results. “The biggest ethical problem is dealing with failure — if your face rejects. It would be a living hell. If your face is falling off and you can’t eat and you can’t breathe and you’re suffering in a terrible manner that can’t be reversed, you need to put on the table assistance in dying. There are patients who can benefit tremendously from this. It’s great that it happened,” he said.

Dr Alex Clarke, of the Royal Free Hospital had praised the Clinic for its contribution to medicine. “It is a real step forward for people who have severe disfigurement and this operation has been done by a team who have really prepared and worked towards this for a number of years. These transplants have proven that the technical difficulties can be overcome and psychologically the patients are doing well. They have all have reacted positively and have begun to do things they were not able to before. All the things people thought were barriers to this kind of operations have been overcome,” she said.

The first partial face transplant surgery on a living human was performed on Isabelle Dinoire on November 27 2005, when she was 38, by Professor Bernard Devauchelle, assisted by Professor Jean-Michel Dubernard in Amiens, France. Her Labrador dog mauled her in May 2005. A triangle of face tissue including the nose and mouth was taken from a brain-dead female donor and grafted onto the patient. Scientists elsewhere have performed scalp and ear transplants. However, the claim is the first for a mouth and nose transplant. Experts say the mouth and nose are the most difficult parts of the face to transplant.

In 2004, the same Cleveland Clinic, became the first institution to approve this surgery and test it on cadavers. In October 2006, surgeon Peter Butler at London‘s Royal Free Hospital in the UK was given permission by the NHS ethics board to carry out a full face transplant. His team will select four adult patients (children cannot be selected due to concerns over consent), with operations being carried out at six month intervals. In March 2008, the treatment of 30-year-old neurofibromatosis victim Pascal Coler of France ended after having received what his doctors call the worlds first successful full face transplant.

Ethical concerns, psychological impact, problems relating to immunosuppression and consequences of technical failure have prevented teams from performing face transplant operations in the past, even though it has been technically possible to carry out such procedures for years.

Mr Iain Hutchison, of Barts and the London Hospital, warned of several problems with face transplants, such as blood vessels in the donated tissue clotting and immunosuppressants failing or increasing the patient’s risk of cancer. He also pointed out ethical issues with the fact that the procedure requires a “beating heart donor”. The transplant is carried out while the donor is brain dead, but still alive by use of a ventilator.

According to Stephen Wigmore, chair of British Transplantation Society’s ethics committee, it is unknown to what extent facial expressions will function in the long term. He said that it is not certain whether a patient could be left worse off in the case of a face transplant failing.

Mr Michael Earley, a member of the Royal College of Surgeon‘s facial transplantation working party, commented that if successful, the transplant would be “a major breakthrough in facial reconstruction” and “a major step forward for the facially disfigured.”

In Wednesday’s conference, Siemionow said “we know that there are so many patients there in their homes where they are hiding from society because they are afraid to walk to the grocery stores, they are afraid to go the the street.” “Our patient was called names and was humiliated. We very much hope that for this very special group of patients there is a hope that someday they will be able to go comfortably from their houses and enjoy the things we take for granted,” she added.

In response to the medical breakthrough, a British medical group led by Royal Free Hospital’s lead surgeon Dr Peter Butler, said they will finish the world’s first full face transplant within a year. “We hope to make an announcement about a full-face operation in the next 12 months. This latest operation shows how facial transplantation can help a particular group of the most severely facially injured people. These are people who would otherwise live a terrible twilight life, shut away from public gaze,” he said.