Saturday, November 4, 2006

On November 13, Torontonians will be heading to the polls to vote for their ward’s councillor and for mayor. Among Toronto’s ridings is Don Valley East (Ward 33). One candidates responded to Wikinews’ requests for an interview. This ward’s candidates include Zane Caplan, Shelley Carroll (incumbent), Jim Conlon, Sarah Tsang-Fahey, and Anderson Tung.

For more information on the election, read Toronto municipal election, 2006.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill backed by both United States President George W. Bush and Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy failed to receive enough cloture votes to overcome a possible filibuster and move on to a final vote in the United States Senate. The cloture vote was 53 votes against and 46 votes in favor; 60 votes are needed to invoke cloture in the Senate.

The large, complex bill was a compromise referred to as the “grand bargain” that would have made many changes to American immigration laws, including an expanded “guest worker” plan and a “path to citizenship” for immigrants currently residing illegally in America. The bill was largely drafted behind closed doors in negotiations between the White House and Senate leaders of both parties.

Proponents argued that the bill would have fixed enforcement problems with current immigration policy and that it was a reasonable compromise, while opponents charged that it amounted to an “illegal alien amnesty”. Public opinion polls showed that the bill was unpopular among Americans surveyed, many of whom believed it would make things worse. According to Rasmussen Reports, only 22% of Americans favored the bill as of June 25.

“Bush wanted to do something good, but the Senate wouldn’t let him. It’s disappointing,” Miguel Gonzalez told Reuters. Gonzales has been in the United States for five years.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

A warship built with steel from the World Trade Center is set to enter New York and travel up the Hudson River to the site of Ground Zero. 7.5 tons of steel from the buildings have been used in the construction of the USS New York. When the ship reaches Ground Zero it will fire a 21-gun salute. The ceremony will be viewed by relatives of those who lost their life during the September 11 attacks as well as rescuers and the public.

The official commissioning ceremony takes place on Saturday.

The crest of the ship features the images of the Twin Towers and the colours of the departments that first responded to the attacks.

The ship has 361 sailors serving aboard of which around 1 in 7 is from New York. A spokeswoman for the U.S Navy said that there had been many requests to serve on the ship.

The USS New York departed from Mississippi on October 14. This is the sixth ship to be named after the State of New York.

Sunday, July 8, 2007

The U.S. Army installation at Fort Lee in Virginia will begin using a program called RAPIDGate that will replace passes issued to non-military persons who regularly require access to the facility. The program will take effect July 10, when the practice of issuing 90-day passes to people who present a valid driver’s license, vehicle registration, and proof of insurance for the vehicle used for access ends. Those passes will be grandfathered out as they expire.

The RAPIDGate program for fast entry into Fort Lee replaces what was once access privileges performed by the installation itself, which came free of cost. The new outsourced program administered by Portland, Oregon-based Eid Passport, Inc. enhances security to the installation by performing background checks. Their service comes at a price. The screening process makes a ten-year felony background check, performs a check against terrorist and sexual offender watch lists, and does a social security cross reference to validate a person’s identity.

Qualified applicants are issued a pass that enables them to bypass inspection pits and use any of the facility’s seven gates for access. Businesses whose employees would benefit by this are required to contact the program provider and have “point of contact” persons who can validate an applicant’s employment. Enrollment in the program costs the business US$199. A pass for each employee of the business costs $159 annually. The pass for employees expires after a year, when a new background check is required by the program.

The program is a voluntary alternative for civilians to conform with new access policies mandated by the Department of Defense and the U.S. Army, according to an information pamphlet distributed by the base. A kiosk will be set up at Fort Lee to accept applications that process a photograph, social security number, and fingerprint.

Those without a RAPIDGate pass will need to enter the fort at locations where their vehicle can be inspected. A rigorous inspection involves armed guards asking the driver to place keys on the dash board, pop the hood and the trunk, open the glove box, and have all occupants exit the vehicle and open all doors, including the hood and trunk. While the vehicle is inspected inside, another guard uses a mirror attached to a wand to inspect under the chassis of the vehicle’s undercarriage.

Eid Passport, Inc. specializes in identity authentication and background screening. Fort Lee will be the 12th military installation out of an estimated 250 military installations on U.S soil to implement identity screening as part of new policies mandated by the Department of Defense (DoD).

“The pass contains no personal information,” said David Smith, the director of marketing for Eid Passport. It does contain a barcode which is scanned at entry. The RAPIDGate program database includes a biometric fingerprint that might be checked by the scanning device against the presenter of the pass in times of elevated security. The pass is also embedded with an active RFID transmitter. The pass is scanned on entry to the fort at the gate check point, but not upon exit. If the RFID transmitter works properly, movement into and out of the base will be recorded.

The Fort Lee pamphlet mentions a “a new mandate” by the DoD. That mention appears to be in reference to portion of the language found in an Instruction issued in October last year by the DoD that states, “Implement a verification process, whether through background checks or other similar processes, that enables the U.S. Government to attest to the trustworthiness of DoD contractors and sub-contractors.”

The Instruction stems from a Directive signed by President Bush in August of 2004. That Directive, from the Department of Homeland Security, says in part, “Wide variations in the quality and security of forms of identification used to gain access to secure Federal and other facilities where there is potential for terrorist attacks need to be eliminated.”

Fort Lewis in Washington state was the first U.S. military installation to adopt the RAPIDGate program as a test in 2004. Since then, Fort Sam Houston, Fort Carson, and Fort Bragg, among other installations have adopted the program.

“What happened at Fort Dix, [New Jersey], as we look at it, is a Fort Dix issue,” Laura Arenschield reported spokesman for the 18th Airborne, Tom McCollum, as saying in June. “That should not be taken as an invitation for someone to try it here at Fort Bragg, but (security) is a living, breathing entity. You have to constantly change it just to keep those who are trying to penetrate it on their toes.” The new security measures will go into effect at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, which is among the largest of domestic military bases, starting July 8.

Thursday, July 7, 2005

A Florida man is being charged with 3rd degree felony for logging into a private Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity) Internet access point without permission. Benjamin Smith III, 41, is set for a pre-trial hearing this month in the first case of its kind in the United States.

This kind of activity occurs frequently, but often goes undetected by the owners of these wireless access points (WAPs). Unauthorized users range from casual Web browsers, to users sending e-mails, to users involved in pornography or even illegal endeavours.

According to Richard Dinon, owner of the WAP Smith allegedly broke into, Smith was using a laptop in an automobile while parked outside Dinon’s residence.

There are many steps an owner of one of these access points can take to secure them from outside users. Dinon reportedly knew how to take these steps, but had not bothered because his “neighbors are older.”

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has admitted sixteen instances of sensitive information being leaked on social networking websites in the past eighteen months. Ten employees have been disciplined for misuse of the sites. The revelations follow a Freedom of Information request by Lewis PR and computer security company F-Secure.

The MoD would not comment on what disciplinary action was taken, or whether the leaks involved operational information. The ministry’s guidelines state that staff must obtain clearance to release any information that is related to sensitive, controversial or political matters, or military operations.

“It’s worrying that employees in sensitive positions have been sharing confidential information via Twitter and other means,” said Mikko Hypponen, of F-Secure. “Loose Tweets can cost lives.”

According to Lewis PR, computers on the main MoD networks are blocked from visiting social networking sites. However there are a small number within the department which have unrestricted Internet access. Some personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq also have access through internet cafés on military bases.

The ministry’s “online engagement guidelines”, released in August last year, recognise the importance of social media such as Facebook for personnel keeping in touch with friends and family. According to the document: “Service and MOD civilian personnel are encouraged to talk about what they do, but within certain limits to protect security, reputation and privacy.”

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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.