Saturday, December 11, 2004

VIENNA –Doctors from the Rudolfinerhaus clinic in Vienna say “there is no doubt” Ukrainian opposition leader Victor Yushchenko was poisoned with Dioxin.

Yushchenko’s body had about 1,000 times more than the normal concentration of the toxin. It is unknown if there were any other poisons in his system.

Although it has not yet been proven that the poisoning was deliberate, doctors suspect it was. “We suspect a cause triggered by a third party,” said Michael Zimpfer, head doctor at the Rudolfinerhaus clinic. He suggested the poison may have been administered orally, through food or drink.

Today’s announcements are a follow-up of an earlier press conference, where Dr. Korpan that there were three hypotheses under consideration, one of them involving dioxin. He did not reveal what the other two hypotheses were. Dr. Michael Zimpfer, director of the Rudolfinerhaus clinic emphasized that time there was no proof yet to specify the substance causing the illness.

Yushchenko left Kiev on Friday (2004-10-12) for further examination in Vienna. When Yushchenko fell ill on October 6th, Ukrainian doctors had initially diagnosed food poisoning, leading to speculation that he had been poisoned deliberately. The illness has disfigured Yushchenko’s body and face which doctors say could take up to two years to heal.

He fell seriously ill on the September 6th, during his presidential campaign. Yushchenko was taken to the Rudolfinerhaus clinic of Vienna, where he stayed for four days under Dr. Korpan’s care. He was diagnosed with “acute pancreatitis, accompanied by interstitial edematous changes.” These symptoms were said to be due to “a serious viral infection and chemical substances which are not normally found in food products” as his campaign officials put it. In laymans terms, he developed an infection in the pancreas and got a bad skin condition that disfigured his face with cysts and lesions. The skin condition has similarities with the chloracne associated with dioxin posioning according to a British toxicologist John Henry.

• Viktor Yushchenko (left) as he appeared in July 2004 and (right) as he appeared in November after the poisoning(Gleb Garanich/Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)

Earlier, doctor Nikolai Korpan of Rudolfinerhaus clinic confirmed today that the illness of Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko was caused by an attempt to kill him.

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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.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Over 1000 cases of illness have now been identified in a foodborne salmonellosis outbreak that began in mid-April 2008 in the United States.

As of July 8, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported 1013 confirmed infections throughout the United States, along with four cases in Canada. 203 hospitalizations have been linked to the outbreak. It has caused at least one death, and it may have been a contributing factor in another. The pathogen responsible is the rare Saintpaul strain of Salmonella enterica.

Nearly half of the reported illnesses were in Texas and New Mexico. According to unnamed sources close to the investigation, most illness clusters in the outbreak involve Mexican restaurants. Illness clusters in the hard hit state of Illinois were publicly identified by local health departments as involving three Mexican restaurants.

The CDC is in the process of investigating the outbreak and trying to identify the contamination’s point of origin. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) currently suspects that the contaminated food product is an ingredient in fresh salsa, such as fresh jalapeño pepper, fresh serrano pepper, fresh cilantro, or certain types of raw tomato.

Some produce industry insiders doubt that fresh produce is to blame for the outbreak. They point to the absence of Salmonella on all of the tested produce samples to date, as well as divergent results from produce tracebacks. They also say that the extended time frame of new sicknesses makes it unlikely that either raw tomatoes or fresh jalapeños, the government’s two main suspects, could be responsible. Will Steele, President and CEO of Frontera Produce, said that “the outbreak is probably related to processed goods and they’re looking in the wrong closets.”

Steele’s Texas based company has been forced to hold shipments of fresh jalapeño peppers after loads of produce were repeatedly flagged by the FDA for testing. Although independent testing of both loads showed no sign of Salmonella, the peppers are still on hold until the FDA finishes its own testing of the second load flagged on July 1st. “There are still no results,” Steele says. “The salability of that produce in two to three days is gone. We ceased harvesting. There is no sense in bringing in more product and having it rot.”

Steele, like others in the produce industry, believes that the FDA should be focusing on processed produce instead of fresh produce. “Methodology is backward,” he says. “FDA is reaching for answers. You can’t tie jalapeño pepper shipped on June 30 back to April 10.”

Still, the FDA and the CDC consider testing of fresh jalapeños and other fresh produce a high priority. The CDC writes that “the accumulated data from all investigations indicate that jalapeño peppers caused some illnesses.”

The FDA is cautioning that people who would be in the most danger if infected with Salmonella (infants, the elderly, and those with compromised immune systems) should avoid eating the suspected types of produce listed on their website.

Monday, October 14, 2013

Half-a-million people have fled their homes in and around the Indian state of Orissa after Cyclone Phailin made landfall.

Wikinews interviewed specialists in meteorology about the devastation the cyclone has caused.

Sunday, July 10, 2016

On Thursday, five police officers were killed and seven were injured after a sniper attacked a public protest march in downtown Dallas, Texas. Sources indicate at least three other people were taken into custody for questioning relating to the attack. The march was held to protest the shooting deaths of Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota during engagements with police officers.

Police identified 25-year-old Micah Johnson as the suspect. Johnson had previously served in the US army, and police reported he said he wanted to exact revenge upon police officers after news of Sterling and Castile’s deaths. Ammunition and weapons were found inside Johnson’s home. Dallas Police reported the policemen were shot at from a height. Officials said two civilians were also injured in the attack.

Micah Johnson served for the United States Army Reserve from 2009 until early 2015, including a tour of Afghanistan. Johnson had no criminal record. His attack was reported to be a lone mission.

After the attack earlier on Thursday, police killed Micah Johnson in El Centro College’s parking lot by a bomb explosion.

Hillary Clinton, 2016 United States presidential election candidate and favorite for the Democratic nomination this July, said, “There is too much violence, too much hate, too much senseless killing, too many people dead who shouldn’t be. No-one has all the answers. We have to find them together.”

After Johnson was killed, Mike Rawlings, Dallas’ mayor, said “We believe now the city is safe”.

Monday, May 30, 2011

FIFA has suspended two of its senior officials amid allegations that they bribed voters ahead of the organization’s presidential election, while Sepp Blatter has been cleared of ignoring these activities and is now set to be re-elected as FIFA chairman on Wednesday.

Mohamed bin Hammam, head of the Asian confederation, and Jack Warner, head of the Caribbean and North American (CONCACAF) federation, were both suspended from any involvement with association football pending an investigation into the alleged bribery.

“Both bin Hammam and Warner were provisionally banned from future activity in football while a full investigation is carried out,” announced Petrus Damaseb, chairman of the FIFA ethics committee. “There, they can confront their accusers.”

At a recent FIFA meeting in Trinidad on May 10 and 11, the committee heard that both bin Hammam and Warner were accused of offering US$40,000 in cash gifts to other national associations in return for their votes in the presidential election.

Blatter was also summoned to the ethics committee following allegations that Warner told him in advance about the payments. The committee later accepted Blatter’s testimony and cleared him of wrongdoing.

This decision clears the way for Blatter to be run unopposed for re-elections as FIFA president on Wednesday.

Monday, March 12, 2007

24 of 26 Swiss Cantons rejected the proposal for a single health insurance system, in which premiums would be based on income and wealth. The vote on Sunday was the latest in a series of attempts to cut rising costs and ease the financial burden on citizens.

Around 71% of voters rejected the reform. Turnout was at about 46%, slightly above the Swiss average.

As expected, voters in the main German-speaking part of the country turned down the planned reform, which was supported by the centre-left but opposed by the centre-right as well as the business community, parliament and the government.

Opposition in the French and Italian speaking regions was less pronounced. The cantons Jura and Neuchâtel in the French speaking regions voted in favor of the proposed reforms.

Health insurance premiums are higher in southern and western Swiss cantons than in German-speaking areas.

The Swiss Interior Minister Pascal Couchepin said an important part of the Swiss Population appeared to be opposed to “a revolution” in health insurance but he said that he wanted current reforms currently under discussion in the Swiss Parliament to go ahead. He called on all sides, especially health insurers and the cantonal authorities, to make efforts to reduce spending on health insurance and aim for a greater cost efficiency. Currently Switzerland has 87 private insurers providing mandatory basic health care coverage for Swiss residents under a 1996 law. But costs have sky-rocketed. Over 100,000 people are not covered by health insurance due to non payment.

Opponents to the initiative argued that a single insurance system would lead to complacency and create a two-tier system, in which the wealthy would be the only ones available to afford to have additional private insurance coverage.

Supporters of the initiative said a single health insurer would increase the system’s efficiency and allow for annual savings of at least 300 million Swiss Francs (about $245 million) in administrative costs. Currently, the funding system is unbalanced, since many clients on low incomes use state subsidies to pay their premiums, according to the Green Party and the Social Democrats.

The initiative to unite all the insurance companies and introduce premiums based on wealth and income was the most recent in a series of attempts over the past ten years to reduce the public spending on health care. A proposal, similar to this recent proposal, to modify the funding system of the health insurance companies was rejected by 73% of voters in 2003.

Switzerland has the most expensive health system in Europe. Switzerland’s expenditure on health care was 11.6% in 2005, in front of Germany and France but behind the United States.