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Wednesday, November 11, 2009

A suicide car bomb attack in northwestern Pakistan has killed at least 30 people, including some children.

Investigators say the bomb exploded Tuesday on a busy street near a market in the city of Charsadda, 40 kilometers north of Peshawar. The blast wounded dozens of people and destroyed several buildings.

“The death toll has gone up to 32 and more than 100 people have been wounded in this suicide attack,” said Bashir Bilour, the Senior Minister of North West Frontier Province.

Hazrat Ali, a shopkeeper, was a witness to the event. He recounted his experiences to the Agence France-Presse news agency. “I was buying something before closing my shop. A car was parked on the other side of the road and all of a sudden there was a huge blast. There was smoke and darkness everywhere. I passed out.” Ali sustained shrapnel injuries to his forehead and torso.

This was the third bombing in the area in three days. On Monday, a suicide bomber in a rickshaw blew himself up at a checkpoint in Peshawar, killing three people. A suicide bomber killed thirteen people in a crowded market outside the city on Sunday.

Thursday, June 15, 2006

Helen Coonan, Australia’s communications minister announced on Wednesday that the Howard government planned on introducing legislation into parliament restricting access to inappropriate or harmful material on so-called “emerging content services”. The government considers 3G mobile communications and subscription-based Internet portals to be emerging content services.

Senator Coonan said in a statement that the government was supportive of new technology, but felt that the technology requires safeguards to ensure that children are not exposed to inappropriate content.

“The Government supports the development of innovative new communications services which provide access to the Internet, email, games, instant messaging, chat rooms, video clips and television programs,” she said.

“However, these new content services may also potentially carry offensive or harmful content and we need to ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place to protect children from exposure to content that might be harmful.”

Senator Coonan said the government intends to prohibit material rated X18+ and restrict access to other services based upon the subscriber’s age and content classification. Speaking of the proposed legislation, the minister said “It will extend the current safeguards that apply to content delivered over the Internet or television to be applied to content delivered over convergent devices,”

“This will include prohibition of content rated X18+ and above, requirements for consumer advice and age-restricting access to content suited only to adults.”

The announcement comes as the government released a report into the effectiveness of the current regulatory framework and how it applies to new delivery methods.

The report, received by the government in April, found that the differences between television, print, radio and Internet media would be blurred by devices such as 3G mobile phones and wireless Internet access. It suggested that the government regulate based on the amount of control service providers have over content instead of via the method used to access it.

It also found that much of the content available via emerging content services was based upon that of other mediums, where censorship already takes place.

The report did however express concern about mobile chat services, claiming they could be used by pedophiles to target children. The report found it would be more difficult for parents to supervise their children’s mobile chat behaviour as they would have access to the service from anywhere. The report said this could be countered by the fact that mobile users are easier to identify than users on the Internet, making pedophiles less likely to use the service.

The report also suggested that Internet access via mobile telephones be limited to customers over the age of 18, unless minors have permission from their parent or guardian. Under current Australian law, a minor is unable to sign up for an account with an Internet service provider, but is able to access WAP based Internet services without restriction.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Top broker and Wall Street adviser Bernard L. Madoff, aged 70, was arrested and charged by the FBI on Thursday with a single count of securities fraud, also known as stock fraud and investment fraud. He allegedly told senior employees of his firm on Wednesday that his $50 billion business “is all just one big lie” and that it was “basically, a giant Ponzi scheme (since at least 2005).” Mr. Madoff faces up to 20 years imprisonment and a fine of up to $5 million. FBI agent Theodore Cacioppi said Mr. Madoff’s investment advisory business had “deceived investors by operating a securities business in which he traded and lost investor money, and then paid certain investors purported returns on investment with the principal received from other, different investors, which resulted in investors’ losses of approximately $50 billion dollars.”

The former chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market is also the founder and primary owner of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, the closely-held market-making firm he launched in 1960. The firm is one of the top market maker firms on Wall Street. He founded his family firm with an initial investment of $5,000, after attending Hofstra University Law School. He saved the money earned from a job lifeguarding at Rockaway Beach in Queens and a part time job installing underground sprinkler systems.

A force in Wall Street trading for nearly 50 years, he has been active in the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), a self-regulatory organization for the U.S. securities industry. His firm was one of the five most active firms in the development of the NASDAQ, having been known for “paying for order flow,” in other word paying a broker to execute a customer’s order through Madoff. He argued that the payment to the broker did not alter the price that the customer received. He ran the investment advisory as a secretive business, however.

Dan Horwitz, counsel of Mr. Madoff, in an interview, said that “he is a longstanding leader in the financial-services industry with an unblemished record; he is a person of integrity; he intends to fight to get through this unfortunate event.” Mr. Madoff was released on his own recognizance on the same day of his arrest, after his 2 sons turned him in, and posting $10 million bail secured by his Manhattan apartment. Without entering any plea, the Court set the preliminary hearing for January 12.

Madoff’s hedge fund scheme may rank among the biggest fraud in history. When former energy trading giant Enron filed for bankruptcy in 2001, one of the largest at the time, it had $63.4 billion in assets. The scheme would dwarf past Ponzis, and it would further be nearly five times the telecommunication company WorldCom fraud and bankruptcy proceedings in 2002.

The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a separate civil suit on Thursday against Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities and its eponymous founder Mr. Madoff. It was docketed as “U.S. v. Madoff,” 08-MAG-02735, by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (Manhattan). SEC, New York associate director of enforcement, Andrew M. Calamari, asked the judge to issue seizure orders on the firm and its assets, and appoint a receiver. The SEC pleads, among others, that “it was an ongoing $50 billion swindle; our complaint alleges a stunning fraud that appears to be of epic proportions.” It further accused the defendant of “paying returns to certain investors out of the principal received from other, different investors” for years. Madoff’s hedge fund business had previously claimed to have served between 11 and 25 clients and had $17.1 billion in assets under management. But virtually all of the assets were missing.

United States District Court for the Southern District of New York Louis L. Stanton on Thursday appointed Lee Richards, a Manhattan lawyer, as the firm’s receiver. A hearing is set for Friday, for a ruling on the SEC’s petition to grant plenary powers to the receiver over the entire firm, and an absolute asset sequestration.

Doug Kass, president of hedge fund Seabreeze Partners Management said that “this is a major blow to confidence that is already shattered — anyone on the fence will probably try to take their money out.”

A compilation of brief news reports for Wednesday, June 13, 2007.

Former Philippines first lady Imelda Marcos has been acquitted, due to lack of evidence, of tax evasion charges that date back to the 1980s.

The complaint said Marcos failed to pay 33.734 million Philippine pesos for earning 192.08 million pesos in 1985 and 5.736 million pesos for the Marcos estate in 1989. Without accounting for inflation, the amount tax officials said was owed totals around US$845,000. The case was filed in 1991.

“I thank the Lord that justice for the Marcoses has prevailed,” Marcos was quoted as saying outside the courthouse in Quezon City. “You can be sure that this will be followed by justice for the Filipino people.’’

Sources

• “QC court acquits Imelda in 5 tax evasion cases filed in ’91” — GMA Network, June 13, 2007
• Associated Press. “Manila court clears Imelda Marcos” — CNN, June 13, 2007

Thailand’s embattled former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra had his assets in Thailand ordered frozen on Monday, but today banking officials are having trouble locating some of it.

The Assets Examination Committee ordered 52.8 billion baht (about US$1.5 billion) in 21 accounts seized, but only 43 billion baht has been found.

According to the Bank of Thailand, more than 8 billion baht was withdrawn between June 4 and Monday, with about 5.6 billion baht withdrawn in the name of Thaksin’s brother-in-law, Bhanapot Damapong.

Related

• “Wikinews Shorts: June 12, 2007#Thai junta says Thaksin can come home” — Wikinews, June 12, 2007
• “Ex-Thai PM Thaksin’s assets are frozen” — Wikinews, June 11, 2007

Sources

• “Central bank follows the money” — Bangkok Post, June 13, 2007
• “Bt8 bn more goes missing” — The Nation (Thailand), June 13, 2007

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

An amendment of the United States constitution banning the burning of the American flag failed by one vote in the Senate on Tuesday. The final tally was 66-34; two-thirds (67 of 100 senators) was required for the amendment to pass.

U.S. President, George W. Bush, gave a statement commending the bipartisan group of Senators for trying to pass the amendment.[1] It was sponsored by Orrin Hatch, a Republican Senator from Utah, and backed by the Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist, of Tennessee.

Even though some members of each party voted for the amendment, some on both sides strongly dissented. Daniel Inouye, a Democrat from the state of Hawaii and a World War II veteran, said — like many other Senators including Kentucky Republican Senator Mitch McConnell — the proposed amendment was against the constitutional right to free speech.

Thursday, March 17, 2005

Two dog attacks in a week puts Spotsylania County authorities in the spotlight to take action on pet owners for their dog’s behavior. In unrelated incidences, an elderly woman was killed and another woman was bitten. Three dogs have been shot dead by police.

An 82 year old woman was walking her Shih Tzu breed of dog in her front yard last week when she came under attack by three Pit Bulls. She died being transported to the hospital after police responded and shot two of the attacking dogs. They later captured the third dog and euthanized it.

More recently, a 31 year old woman was bitten on her hand during a fight that ensued between two Pit Bulls in her back yard. The responding police officer shot the aggressor dog.

Public outcry over the death of the elderly woman stirred procecutors to charge the dogs’ owner, Deeana Large, with involuntary manslaughter. This is a first for the Commonwealth of Virginia where charges that carry a maximum penalty of 10 years are leveled in a case involving a pet’s owner. In order to gain an indictment, prosecuters will have to prove the dogs’ owner was criminally negligent. In the biting incident, the attacking dog’s owner faces a misdemeanor charge of letting the dog run at large.

Deeana Large, who initially said she owned only 1 of the 3 dogs involved in the mauling case, has not yet been formally charged and awaits indictment. Investigators in the case say there were earlier reports of her dogs allegedly killing a German Shepard and a kittten in her neighborhood. Complaints by neighbors spurred an animal control officer to be looking for the dogs at the time the woman was killed.

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.

Friday, March 26, 2021

On Tuesday, higher than average amounts of precipitation have ceased in New South Wales (NSW), south of Queensland, and north-east of South Australia. Over the course of the prior five days, these heavy rains caused floods and hazards to farms and dwellings, with up to a month quantity of rainfall falling within 48 hours on Monday and Tuesday in some areas, notably 150mm of rain at the Great Dividing Range, Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) reported.

On Tuesday, BoM said the situation reportedly started to ease, with rains moving towards the east, but emphasised the water levels were continuing to rise in some areas and many flood alerts remained active. Meteorologists said the eastern areas may clear from floodwater quickly, the other regions to the west of the Great Dividing Range would be affected for much longer, potentially weeks or months before the water levels come back to normal. Thick fog was likely to occur at approximately this coming weekend as air temperatures drop below dew point at night and mist may develop, meteorologists warned, as News.com.au reported.

In Taree, NSW, ABC News reported multiple cows rescues in rivers and in the surf, and an instance of a dwelling being reportedly swept from premises on a wedding day of its owners. ABC News reported a farmer losing his animals and his house at Mid-North Coast. Of residential areas, Hawkesbury continued to experience raising levels of flood as of Monday. Ian Wright, a researcher from Western Sydney University, commented saying the floods in Hawkesbury are dangerous due to the terrain and rigorous water supply from adjacent rivers to the area, citing a related publication about it by the State Emergency Service.

On Monday, NSW Police has rescued a 80-year old woman trapped in a car at River Road, Wyong, Central Coast, with the car subsequently falling into the river shortly after the rescue was completed.

Local authorities warned people to stay away from flooded areas. Bureau of Meteorology issued Road Weather Alert for Sydney for all suburbs on Monday. Government agencies, including Disaster recovery officer Simon Oliver, from the Department of Primary Industries, said the government would offer support to people affected by the flood. Oliver said, “While it’s still early days, we are planning to provide support including emergency fodder as well as support for those who need to move or dispose of stock [animals].”

BoM reported the weather may clear on Wednesday as a warmer, drier mass of air was expected to increase, with a coastal low entering Bass Strait on Wednesday.

Since March 16, Australian BoM has issued severe weather, marine wind, hazardous surf, and numerous minor to major flood warnings for the affected areas. La Niña was nearing its end, with the effects persisting in late March and early April, Bureau of Meteorology reported last week.