A compilation of brief news reports for Saturday, December 20, 2008.

The United States government has announced that it will give US$17.4 billion in loans to help three of the nation’s automobile makers – Chrysler, General Motors, and Ford – avoid bankruptcy.

The money will be taken from the $700 billion bailout package originally intended to rescue US banks. General Motors will get $9.4 billion and Chrysler $4 billion before next year. Ford stated that it wants to get by without government aid.

President George Bush said that it would not be “a responsible course of action” to allow the companies to collapse.

Sources

• “Bush unveils $17.4bn car bail-out” — BBC News, December 19, 2008
• “U.S. Throws Lifeline to Detroit” — WSJ.com, December 20, 2008

Telephone and Internet communications between Asia and Europe have been disrupted after some submarine cables were severed.

The cables FLAG FEA, SMW4 and SMW3 near Alexandria, Egypt, were damaged, and the GO cable 130 kilometres off the coast of Sicily has also been reported as broken. France Telecom will repair the damage, and the company announced that it was dispatching a ship to repair the line between Egypt and Italy.

Experts warn that it could be several days before the problems are fixed.

Sources

• “Severed cable disrupts web access” — BBC News, December 19, 2008
• “New undersea cable cuts lead to Internet outages” — ars technica, December 20, 2008

Yann Elies, a French yachtsman participating in the Vendee Globe round-the-world solo yacht race, was rescued on Saturday by the Australian navy after the former was paralysed by a wave that struck his boat in the Southern Ocean.

Elies broke his left thighbone and perhaps several ribs after the wave slammed into his boat 200 kilometres southwest of Perth.

The Australian frigate dispatched the HMAS Arunta to rescue Elies. The ship left Fremantle early on Friday morning and reached Elies by evening.

Sources

• “Injured yachtsman rescued by navy” — BBC News, December 20, 2008
• “Navy reaches stricken solo sailor Yann Elies” — news.com.au, December 20, 2008

Monday, December 18, 2006

A state of emergency was declared Sunday for the U.S. state of Washington by governor Christine Gregoire, as additional reports of storm-related casualties surfaced. The state National Guard has been deployed to aid in distributing supplies.

Thousands were still without power in the coastal and Puget Sound regions, though most urban areas were back with power as late as Sunday afternoon, and outages were mostly contained to rural and unincorporated areas. Puget Sound Energy reported that roughly 500,000 energy customers out of the 700,000 who lost power were back in service by Sunday evening. Seattle City Light, the city’s independent municipal utility, reported only 18,000 customers still without power as of Monday morning, down from a peak of 175,000.

Four additional deaths related to the post-storm power outage had been reported as of Monday, bringing the total number of casualties to eight. A man in Gig Harbor was electrocuted by a downed power line while walking his dog. Another man in Spanaway died when an unattended candle caused a house fire.

Two died from carbon monoxide poisoning in separate incidents related to use of combustion devices indoors. Roughly a hundred additional cases of non-fatal carbon monoxide poisoning were reported from people using generators or grills indoors. News radio stations and authorities warned the public to stay away from downed power lines and not to use grills indoors. Dr. Neil Hampson at Virginia Mason’s hyperbaric unit, where a number of victims were being treated, warned it could be “the worse case of carbon monoxide poisioning in the country”.

On Monday, four new carbon-monoxide deaths were reported in a family of five in Burien due to an indoor generator. In Canada, which had some damage from the week’s storms, two southern British Columbia carbon monoxide deaths were also reported. Despite continued warnings, hospitals are still seeing cases of carbon monoxide poisoning, including a family in w:Shoreline, Washington which was taken to the hospital after they reported symptoms due to their indoor grill. Neighbors of the Burien family suggested that noise concerns are leading people to place noisy generators indoors.

The massive power outage left many stores and gas stations unable to operate. Some businesses opened with the help of backup generators, conserving power by foregoing heat and refrigeration, exterior lighting, and half the interior lighting. Most stores had run out of “D” size batteries, the most common size for flashlights, as well as firelogs and other essentials. Gasoline shortages were reported throughout the area, with one man selling excess fuel for as high as $15 per gallon, over 5 times the average retail price.

The Red Cross set up shelters throughout King and other affected counties for those without power or food. Hotels reported no vacancies as whole families took shelter in powered hotels, especially in Seattle. Restaurants also reported brisk business as people sought out a hot cooked meal. Tons of perishable food were expected to have become unsafe after the prolonged outage disabled refrigerators and freezers both in homes and stores.

Many of those without power visited nearby friends and family living where power had been continued or restored, while others traveled out of the area to places that had not been affected. The widespread outage made long-distance traveling treacherous on some major routes, with roadway lighting, cellular towers, and services disabled by the outage.

Most major roadways which were closed during the storm were reopened on Friday. The 520 Floating Bridge over Lake Washington, a major conduit to the technology-rich Eastside, sustained minor damage. Amtrak, which had halted its Cascades service, resumed Saturday evening. Sea-Tac Airport resumed operations with a reduced flight load, after a transient power outage on Friday disabled the airport radar and caused all planes to be grounded until it was repaired.

Sunday, August 21, 2005

A robotic system at Stanford Medical Center was used to perform a laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery successfully with a theoretically similar rate of complications to that seen in standard operations. However, as there were only 10 people in the experimental group (and another 10 in the control group), this is not a statistically significant sample.

If this surgical procedure is as successful in large-scale studies, it may lead the way for the use of robotic surgery in even more delicate procedures, such as heart surgery. Note that this is not a fully automated system, as a human doctor controls the operation via remote control. Laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery is a treatment for obesity.

There were concerns that doctors, in the future, might only be trained in the remote control procedure. Ronald G. Latimer, M.D., of Santa Barbara, CA, warned “The fact that surgeons may have to open the patient or might actually need to revert to standard laparoscopic techniques demands that this basic training be a requirement before a robot is purchased. Robots do malfunction, so a backup system is imperative. We should not be seduced to buy this instrument to train surgeons if they are not able to do the primary operations themselves.”

There are precedents for just such a problem occurring. A previous “new technology”, the electrocardiogram (ECG), has lead to a lack of basic education on the older technology, the stethoscope. As a result, many heart conditions now go undiagnosed, especially in children and others who rarely undergo an ECG procedure.

Sunday, November 6, 2016

The following is the sixth and final edition of a monthly series chronicling the U.S. 2016 presidential election. It features original material compiled throughout the previous month after an overview of the month’s biggest stories.

In this month’s edition on the campaign trail: the Free & Equal Foundation holds a presidential debate with three little-known candidates; three additional candidates give their final pleas to voters; and past Wikinews interviewees provide their electoral predictions ahead of the November 8 election.

Sunday, August 21, 2005

A robotic system at Stanford Medical Center was used to perform a laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery successfully with a theoretically similar rate of complications to that seen in standard operations. However, as there were only 10 people in the experimental group (and another 10 in the control group), this is not a statistically significant sample.

If this surgical procedure is as successful in large-scale studies, it may lead the way for the use of robotic surgery in even more delicate procedures, such as heart surgery. Note that this is not a fully automated system, as a human doctor controls the operation via remote control. Laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery is a treatment for obesity.

There were concerns that doctors, in the future, might only be trained in the remote control procedure. Ronald G. Latimer, M.D., of Santa Barbara, CA, warned “The fact that surgeons may have to open the patient or might actually need to revert to standard laparoscopic techniques demands that this basic training be a requirement before a robot is purchased. Robots do malfunction, so a backup system is imperative. We should not be seduced to buy this instrument to train surgeons if they are not able to do the primary operations themselves.”

There are precedents for just such a problem occurring. A previous “new technology”, the electrocardiogram (ECG), has lead to a lack of basic education on the older technology, the stethoscope. As a result, many heart conditions now go undiagnosed, especially in children and others who rarely undergo an ECG procedure.

Sunday, August 21, 2005

A robotic system at Stanford Medical Center was used to perform a laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery successfully with a theoretically similar rate of complications to that seen in standard operations. However, as there were only 10 people in the experimental group (and another 10 in the control group), this is not a statistically significant sample.

If this surgical procedure is as successful in large-scale studies, it may lead the way for the use of robotic surgery in even more delicate procedures, such as heart surgery. Note that this is not a fully automated system, as a human doctor controls the operation via remote control. Laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery is a treatment for obesity.

There were concerns that doctors, in the future, might only be trained in the remote control procedure. Ronald G. Latimer, M.D., of Santa Barbara, CA, warned “The fact that surgeons may have to open the patient or might actually need to revert to standard laparoscopic techniques demands that this basic training be a requirement before a robot is purchased. Robots do malfunction, so a backup system is imperative. We should not be seduced to buy this instrument to train surgeons if they are not able to do the primary operations themselves.”

There are precedents for just such a problem occurring. A previous “new technology”, the electrocardiogram (ECG), has lead to a lack of basic education on the older technology, the stethoscope. As a result, many heart conditions now go undiagnosed, especially in children and others who rarely undergo an ECG procedure.

Friday, November 20, 2009

The Football Association of Ireland (FAI), Irish Minister for Sport, Taoiseach and Facebook social network groups are requesting a replay of the controversial FIFA World Cup play-off between Ireland and France in the interests of Fair Play. The FAI lodged an appeal with FIFA and also contacted the French Football Federation (FFF), it appears FAI hopes FFF may agree that a replay is fair play. Both captians, Thierry Henry and Robbie Keane, have called for a replay.

The Irish supporters, who in the past have won the FIFA Fair Play Award, are angry after a blatant double handball by Thierry Henry enabled France to score the extra-time goal that cost Ireland entry to next year’s FIFA World Cup finals in South Africa. Most Irish anger has been directed at FIFA, although French captain Thierry Henry has admitted handling the ball.

FAI has argued that there is a strong precedent; in 2005 where FIFA invalidated the result of a FIFA World Cup qualification match between Uzbekistan and Bahrain on the basis of a technical error by the match referee. However, Law 5 of the Laws of the Game state that: “The decisions of the referee regarding facts connected with play, including whether or not a goal is scored and the result of the match, are final.” and a source at Fifa headquarters in Switzerland said that “there is no way the game can be replayed”. The generic concept of fair play is a fundamental part of the game of football and the Fair Play Campaign was conceived largely as an indirect result of the 1986 FIFA World Cup in Mexico, when the handball goal by Diego Maradona.

The referee Martin Hansson and (referee’s assistants) Stefan Wittberg and Fredrik Nilsson were unable to see the incident but didn’t ask Thierry Henry if he handled the ball. Its hoped the mistake won’t cost the Swedish referee’s a place in South Africa. FIFA’s Fair play policy is playing by the rules, using common sense and respecting fellow players, referees, opponents and fans. The French union representing the nation’s gym teachers declared outrage at what it called “indisputable cheating.”

Minister for Sport Martin Cullen wrote to FIFA president Sepp Blatter urging him to call a rematch in the interests of fair play. Taoiseach Brian Cowen raised the issue with French president Nicolas Sarkozy on the fringes of last night’s EU summit. French Prime minister François Fillon said “neither the French government nor the Irish Government should interfere in the functioning of the international federation”.