Monday, November 28, 2005

Legendary musician Sir Paul McCartney has boycotted China in response to a preview of BBC news footage that was filmed undercover at a fur market in Guangzhou, China. The footage, some of which is to air during BBC’s Six O’Clock News at 18:00 GMT on November 28, 2005, shows animals (particularly dogs and cats) being thrown from the top of buses and being dropped into boiling water. McCartney’s wife, Heather, also watched the footage and alleged that some footage she had seen clearly showed that the animals were alive when they were skinned. The footage, which was filmed by an investigator connected to the animal rights group PETA, shows cats squirming in a bag before being thrown into boiling water, and then skinned in a laundrette drier-like machine.

McCartney slammed the practices, saying, “It’s like something out of the Dark Ages. And they seem to get a kick out of it. They’re just sick, sick people,” referring to the apparent smiles and laughter of the workers handling the animals as they are killed.

He and his wife called for a boycott of Chinese goods, adding that this was unacceptable behaviour from the nation to host the next Olympics.

However, the Chinese Ambassador to London’s spokesperson said that China is not to blame. “The fur trade mostly feeds markets in the US and Europe. This fur is not consumed in China. So the Americans and Europeans should accept the blame.”

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Sales of automobiles in the United States fell as much as 35% in January, compared to the same month a year ago, as manufacturers reported their January sales.

Ford Motor Company ^NYSE: F sales dropped 42% last month from the previous year. General Motors ^NYSE: GM reported a 49% decline. Chrysler was hardest hit among the domestically owned manufacturers with a plunge of 55%.

The decline in sales has not been limited to just US manufacturers. Japanese automaker Toyota ^NYSE: TM reported a 32% drop in US sales from a year earlier, Nissan Motors^{NASDAQ: NSANY} dropped 30%, and Honda ^NYSE: HMC sales dropped 28%.

Subaru and South Korean Hyundai Motor Company ^LSE: HYUD were two of the few auto firms that reported an increase in sales. They posted gains of eight and fourteen percent, respectively.

On an annual basis, sales overall have also been plummeting. Industry-wide US car sales dropped 18% last year to 13.2 million automobiles.

GM announced today that it will offer voluntary buyouts to 22,000 employees in the US, in an effort to reduce its expenditures.

Last month, GM and Chrysler were given loans worth US$17.4 billion from the government after they warned of imminent bankruptcy.

Monday, September 25, 2017

On Friday, Transport for London (TfL) announced US-based taxi booking application Uber would not get a renewed private hire operator license after their current permit expires at the end of the month. The regulatory body released an official statement on their website and stated Uber London Limited was “not fit and proper to hold a private hire operator license”.

TfL said Uber London “demonstrate[d] a lack of corporate responsibility” for reporting serious criminal offences, and for obtaining background of the drivers and medical certificates. In August, police said Uber allowed a driver despite allegations of sexually assaulting a passenger. The company has been accused of sexism and bullying. TfL in its statement also complained about possible use of “greyball” software to prevent officials from accessing the application for law enforcement duties.

According to Uber’s statistics, about 3.5 million people in London use Uber. There are some 40 thousand drivers tied with Uber within the British capital. Per the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Act 1998, Uber can appeal against TfL’s decision within three weeks. Uber received an interim renewal for four months in May, and it is set to expire at the end of the month. To this announcement, Uber London’s General Manager Tom Elvidge said, “By wanting to ban our app from the capital Transport for London and the Mayor have caved in to a small number of people who want to restrict consumer choice. If this decision stands, it will put more than 40,000 licensed drivers out of work and deprive Londoners of a convenient and affordable form of transport. To defend the livelihoods of all those drivers, and the consumer choice of millions of Londoners who use our app, we intend to immediately challenge this in the courts.” He also added, “This ban would show the world that, far from being open, London is closed to innovative companies who bring choice to consumers.”

TfL said Uber’s irresponsibility could compromise the safety and security of the public. In contrast, Uber’s response said their service enhances safety. London mayor Sadiq Khan, on Facebook, said, “[…]all companies in London must play by the rules and adhere to the high standards we expect — particularly when it comes to the safety of customers. Providing an innovative service must not be at the expense of customer safety and security. I fully support TfL’s decision — it would be wrong if TfL continued to license Uber if there is any way that this could pose a threat to Londoners’ safety and security. Any operator of private hire services in London needs to play by the rules.”

Uber has received criticism from traditional taxi drivers as well as government officials. Uber was banned from Bulgaria and Denmark, and faces regulatory issues in France, Italy, Hungary, and Spain. It also faced legal inquiry for use of greyball in the US to resist government regulation of the application. Regarding the complaint about improper use of use of Greyball, Elvidge cited an independent review and said it “found that ‘greyball’ has never been used or considered in the UK for the purposes cited by TfL”. Uber operates in over 40 cities and towns in the UK.

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Guatemala police arrested I.T. professional Jean Ramses Anleu Fernández at his Guatemala City home on Thursday on charges of having incited financial panic via messages posted to the Twitter social networking web site. Known as “Jeanfer” on Twitter, Anleu Fernández’s home was raided and his computer seized after he posted a message (known as a “tweet”) on Tuesday afternoon proposing that people “withdraw cash from Banrural, and break the bank of the corrupt,”

^{((Translated from Spanish)) Spanish: “sacar el pisto de Banrural” quebrar al banco de los corruptos} a response to high profile allegations that the Guatemalan Banrural bank is involved in corruption.

Anleu Fernández’s message was posted with the tag “#escandalogt,” identifying it as part of an ongoing discussion on the scandal that broke on Monday when a video recorded by assassinated Guatemalan attorney Rodrigo Rosenberg was distributed at Rosenberg’s funeral and posted to the Internet. In the video, recorded days before he was shot while riding his bicycle in Guatemala City, Rosenberg accuses President of Guatemala Álvaro Colom of complicity in his death. Rosenberg also accused President Colom of responsibility for the April murder of Rosenberg’s client, Khalil Musa, alleging that Musa was killed because he refused to cooperate in corrupt business deals operating within the structure of Banrural, a partly state-run bank. Musa had been appointed by President Colom to the board of Banrural.

Anleu Fernández was arrested according to a law which specifies fines of Q5,000-Q50,000 Guatemalan quetzales (about $600-$6,000 U.S. dollars) and 1-3 years of prison for those who “elaborate, divulge or reproduce in any media or communication system, false or inexact information which harms the confidence of customers, users, depositors or investors” ^{((Translated from Spanish)) Spanish: elabore, divulgue o reproduzca por cualquier medio o sistema de comunicación, información falsa o inexacta que menoscabe la confianza de los clientes, usuarios, depositantes o inversionistas} of an institution under the jurisdiction of the Superintendent of Banks. Prosecutor Genaro Pacheco told journalists that Anleu Fernández admitted to sending the message in question.

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.

Monday, May 23, 2011

A tornado touched down yesterday in Joplin, Missouri, causing widespread damage. At least 89 were killed.

The path of the tornado was reported to be from one half to three quarters of a mile wide. City spokeswoman Lynn Onstot estimated the path to be nearly four miles long; Jasper County emergency management director Keith Stammer put its length around six miles.

Witnesses described entire blocks of buildings destroyed. Steve Runnels of the National Weather Service said “We have reports of significant structural damage to strong buildings. Automobiles have been flipped, bark was stripped off trees.”

Among the properties damaged was a local hospital, St. John’s Regional Medical Center. Some patients were hurt, and all were evacuated to other regional hospitals. The local high school, Joplin High School, was also hit. Describing the damage, its principal, Kerry Sachetta, said “You see pictures of World War II, the devastation and all that with the bombing. That’s really what it looked like. I couldn’t even make out the side of the building.”

Joplin has a population of about 50,000.

President Barack Obama has ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to support state and local efforts in response and recovery. He issued a statement with condolences to the families of victims.

A compilation of brief news reports for Tuesday, April 3, 2007.

On Monday, the United States said it sent an official inquiry to Iran via Swiss diplomats about a former FBI agent who went missing while in Iran on private business. He is believed to have gone missing several weeks ago on the island of Kish. The FBI say he has not worked for them in a decade nor is he a contractor for them. A US State Department spokesperson declined to give name, age or occupation of the missing man. The spokesperson also said that they have no indication that he is being held by any Iranian entity.

Sources

• Sue Pleming. “U.S. says former FBI agent missing in Iran” — Reuters, April 2, 2007
• Matthew Lee, AP. “Former FBI agent missing in Iran” — USA Today, April 2, 2007
• “Former FBI agent reported missing in Iran” — CNN, April 2, 2007

In early action, Asian and Oceanian markets rose while the markets pondered the impact of the United States-South Korea free trade agreement. In Japanese markets, Monday’s fears that the Institute for Supply Management‘s report would say manufacturing growth slowed more than forecast in March actually came true. However, “US markets turned out more stable than people feared yesterday and that prompted buying back of large-cap stocks,” said Yoshihisa Okamoto of Fuji Investment Management Co. in Tokyo.

Sources

• “Asian markets push ahead” — Reuters, April 2,2007
• Makiko Suzuki. “Japanese Stocks Advance; Matsushita, Mitsubishi UFJ Lead Gains” — Bloomberg L.P., April 3, 2007

Gary McKinnon of Britain lost his appeal challenging an extradition order to face charges in the United States that he hacked into military and NASA computers there. “We do not find any grounds of appeal against the decision,” said one of the judges, Lord Justice Maurice Kay. In what has been called the “biggest military hack of all time,” McKinnon allegedly used the code-name Solo as he hacked into 97 computers and caused $700,000 worth of damage according to US prosecutors. In 2006, he told The Guardian that he was searching for evidence the Americans might have about UFOs.

Related news

• “UK hacker faces extradition to US” — Wikinews, May 10, 2006

Sources

• “British hacker loses U.S. extradition appeal” — Reuters, April 3, 2007
• Mark Tran. “Briton loses extradition fight over US military hacking” — Guardian Unlimited, April 3, 2007

The US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that carbon dioxide should be regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The majority opinion said that the EPA had offered “no reasoned explanation” for refusing to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from cars. Previously the EPA had argued that the 1970 Clean Air Act did not give it the powers to regulate green house gases because they were not deemed to be pollutants. Twelve states and several environmental groups jointly brought the case against the EPA, contending that it was failing in its legal duty to regulate environmental pollution by not regulating green house gas emissions.

Sources

• Robert Barnes and Juliet Eilperin. “Supreme Court: EPA Can Regulate Car Emissions” — Washington Post Online, April 2, 2007
• “US ‘must regulate car pollution’” — BBC News Online, April 2, 2007

Friday, November 2, 2007

Igor Moiseyev, who has been widely acclaimed as the greatest 20th-century choreographer of folk dance, has died today after a long illness. He was 101 years old.

Born Igor Alexandrovich Moiseyev on January 21, 1906 in Kiev, Moiseyev graduated from the Bolshoi Theatre ballet school in 1924 and danced in the theatre until 1939. His first choreography in the Bolshoi was Footballer in 1930 and the last was Spartacus in 1954.

Since the early 1930s, he staged acrobatic parades on Red Square and finally came up with the idea of establishing the Theatre of Folk Art. In 1936, Vyacheslav Molotov put him in charge of the new dance company, which has since been known as the Moiseyev Ballet. Among about 200 dances he created for his company, some humorously represented the game of football and guerrilla warfare. After visiting Belarus he choreographed a Belarusian “folk” dance Bulba (“Potato”), which over the years indeed became a Belarusian folk dance. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, Moiseyev’s work has been especially admired “for the balance that it maintained between authentic folk dance and theatrical effectiveness”.

Moiseyev was named People’s Artist of the USSR in 1953, Hero of Socialist Labor in 1976, received the Lenin Prize (1967, for the dance show A Road to the Dance), four USSR State Prizes (1942, 1947, 1952, 1985), Russian Federation State Prize (1996), was awarded numerous orders and medals of the Soviet Union, Spain, and many other countries. On the day of his centenary, Moiseyev became the first Russian to receive Order for the Merits before the Fatherland, 1st class — the highest civilian decoration of the Russian Federation.