Author: Admin

Friday, January 29, 2010

The survivors from the recent 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti are now facing increasing insecurity from human traffickers and convicts escaped from collapsed prisons, officials have cautioned, even as aid is flowing into the country. The acting head of the UN’s Haitian mission, meanwhile, says that that full reconstruction could take several decades. As many as 200,000 people were killed by the tremors, which struck on January 12, and 1.5 million people have been left without homes.

Anthony Banbury, the deputy head of the UN mission in the earthquake-ravaged country, commented to the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency that survivors queuing for aid sometimes turned violent. He commented that while the aid is vital for the country, “it can be a source of insecurity because it attracts big crowds and there can be disorder around food distribution.”

“[It is] absolutely necessary that we get enough food, enough water, enough shelter for the people, and enough security. I don’t think any of us are anywhere near being close to being satisfied, because so much more needs to be done,” he added. “[We must] do things smart, as well as fast, and that’s a big challenge for us now.”

The Haitian national police chief, Mario Andresol, remarked that electricity blackouts resulted in “bandits […] taking advantage to harass and rape women and young girls under the tents,” adding that 7,000 inmates of prisons escaped after the quake. “It took us five years to apprehend them. Today they are running wild.”

Further exacerbating the security situation was that the Haitian police force was largely crippled by the disaster, with hundreds of policemen either killed or missing.

“At night, people take things. But I don’t have a problem. I don’t have anything to steal.” said one local resident, Omen Cola, to AFP.

Child trafficking, meanwhile, is also an issue; it had been a chronic problem even before the earthquake. The Red Cross has started to register orphaned children, and temporarily sending some to orphanages for shelter, according to a senior advisor for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Bo Viktor Nylund.

UNICEF press official Roshan Khadivi told the Xinhua news agency on Wednesday that “we are taking photos and filling in forms to get the children’s full details on file. Experience has shown us that there is at least one family member left usually. UNICEF does not believe in institutionalization in orphanages. Children need to be connected with their communities.” Khadivi noted that considering adoption would only be done if the child’s parents are not found after several months.

Sixty orphaned children, meanwhile, were transported earlier by plane to Germany, where they are to be adopted; six of them were hospitalised for fatigue and dehydration.

Edmond Mulet, the acting head of the UN mission for Haiti, told the BBC that it could take decades to fully reconstruct the country, and any recent development had been negated by the quake. “I think this is going to take many more decades than only ten years, and this is an enormous backwards step in Haiti’s development. We will not have to start from zero but from below zero,” he said.

Mulet, who is also the UN’s assistant peacekeeping operations secretary-general, said that the aid logistics were a “nightmare”. However, he said he believed the capacity to provide help was improving, saying: “All this is coming together right now. Every day you can see more and more Haitian national police on the ground, working with our troops and more and more water being distributed, so it’s a matter of time and putting all these elements together,” as quoted by the BBC.

According to the head, 200,000 heavy-duty tents had been ordered, to help people cope with the rainy season, which generally starts in May. “Of course, 200,000 family-sized tents – solid ones that can withstand a hurricane season – are not available in the market just like that, so they have to be made. It’s going to take a few days and weeks before they can arrive, but all this is coming,” Mulet noted.

The Haitian president, Rene Preval, earlier this week asked for 200,000 tents and 26 million ready-to-eat meals to be airdropped.

Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Ewing, commander of Canada’s Disaster Assistance Response Team, meanwhile, was concerned whether there was enough management in relief operations. “Everyone is trying to help, but it’s not as coordinated as it should be. We’re not getting aid to where it needs to go as effectively as it should be,” he told AFP.

Earlier this week, Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, described the reconstruction process as being a “colossal work of reconstruction.”

“In 30 seconds, we lost nearly 60 percent of our gross domestic product, because all of Haiti’s resources were concentrated in a small area around our seat of government,” he said. “We have to decentralise. It’s the only way to be efficient. It’s also the only way to avoid the same problems happening in Haiti again.”

The UN, meanwhile, reports that international funding and aid pledges for the country have now surpassed US$2 billion worth.

Saturday, April 23, 2005Queensland Australia’s Sir Joh Bjelke Petersen, a controversial figure who served as the State’s Premier for 19 years and reigned over the government that later became the subject of the Fitzgerald Inquiry, has died in hospital at Kingaroy, aged 94.

“By any measurement, Sir Joh was an exceptional state builder who will be remembered for consistently placing Queensland first,” said the Australian Governor General, Major General Jeffery, in a statement.

Australian Prime Minister, John Howard: “He was certainly a strong political figure and I extend my condolences to his wife and his family.”

But not all voices were sympathetic, prominent Queensland Aboriginal activist Sam Watson for example: “Aboriginal people will always remember him as a racist, a thug and a dictator.”

Having suffered severe ill-health for some weeks, and declining health for years, Sir Joh passed away at around 6pm AEST. He was surrounded by his family, who had been summoned yesterday by Lady Flo, his wife and one-time Senator, for final goodbyes.

Phrases such as “Don’t you worry about that” and “Goodness gracious me” were like trademarks to the maverick leader.

Known simply as ‘Joh’ to many, he would famously describe press conferences as ‘feeding the chooks’. Today Kingaroy locals taunted waiting press with cries from “You’re chooks, you’re chooks, ha ha” to “Go home, ya vultures”, and some obscenities, reported the Courier-Mail of Brisbane.

His fall from power at the end of the 80s was surrounded in controversy, with the state embroiled in corruption findings going to the level of his deputies, and Bjelke Petersen’s claims of ignorance coming under challenge with charges of perjury. The case was never heard due to a controversial hung jury: the foreman of the jury, Luke Shaw, had been an office-bearer of the Young Nationals — an arm of Bjelke Petersen’s National Party — as well as a member of a group calling themselves ‘Friends of Joh’.

Having had his start in life as a peanut farmer in remote Kingaroy, the former Premier was fit up until the very end, but palsy was paralyzing his muscles and organs, to which he eventually succumbed.

“Throughout his life Sir Joh combined enormous energy, vision and an immense capacity for hard work, most especially during his 19-year term as Premier of Queensland,” the Governor General said.

“What looked to us to be huge risks at the time turned out to be nation building,” said Bob Katter, a former minister of Joh’s Government, who credited Sir Joh with starting the Queensland coal, aluminum and tourism industries.

He is also remembered for dismantling many of the State’s unions, and for a somewhat totalitarian and heavy handed style of keeping control.

Under Joh, street protests were banned and Special Branch monitored extensively those the authoritarian leader saw as subversives, measures prompting Queenslander, Australian Civil Liberties Council, Terry O’Gorman, to comment Sir Joh was “the most appalling premier Queensland has ever had in terms of civil liberties and human rights”.

Joh was also influential in the famous case of the Dismissal by the Governor General of then-Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, in 1975.

In his last years as Premier, he had taken his cause to the nation’s capital, with the “Joh for PM” campaign. But this distraction has been credited with the downfall of his government, with corruption investigations at last being conducted by his stand-in, Bill Gunn.

The body of Sir Joh, who was of Lutheran faith, is to be buried at Bethany, the family property near Kingaroy.

Unsolicited quotes from ordinary Australians, many ex-Queenslanders seeking refuge in southern states, on hearing the news:

“Outrageous bastard! Oh God! That was polite!” — “Karen”

“Guilty as Hell. And that’s where he is now.” — “Michael”

“Yay! Good riddence to bad rubbish” — “Liza”

“The dictator is gone our time 2 sing” — “John. H.”

“Yeah he took a while — about 90 f*cking years overdue!” — “Hose Man”

“The pope an joh at least somethin going right” — “Helen”

“Corrupt f*cking sh*teating Bible-bashing f*ckw*t is dead. And thank f*ck. I haven’t been so happy since September 11!” — “Greg”

“I don’t drink but I’ll be having a red whilst dancing on his grave.” — “Cellest”

“Ding dong the d*ck is dead!” — anon.

“Yeahhh!!! Fucking finally” — “Leo”

“It’s a great day today the Rednecks are silent a great victory has been won” — “Zenner”

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.

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

The following is the third 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: two individuals previously interviewed by Wikinews announce their candidacies for the Reform Party presidential nomination; a former Republican Congressman comments on the Republican National Convention; and Wikinews interviews an historic Democratic National Convention speaker.

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Representatives from the British insurance industry have said that the cost of the earthquake which hit Britain early yesterday could be over 10 million GBP. The Association of British Insurers has said in a statement that the cost for the earthquake is “likely to run into the low tens of millions of pounds.”

The Senior claims manager at the UK bank Norwich Union has described the damage by saying that at the moment most insurance claims regarding the earthquake describe “minor damage such as tiles off roofs, breakages inside the homes and brick walls collapsing.” It has also been reported that approximately 1,200 insurance claims were made in the first twelve hours after the earthquake hit Britain.

These reports come one day after the United Kingdom was hit by a 5.2 earthquake. Tremors were reported as widespread as Edinburgh, Manchester, Sheffield, Middlesbrough, Cambridge, London, Birmingham and Southampton .

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Champion Tampa Bay Rays baseball player Manny Ramirez, 38, notified the MLB on Friday that he would retire after being notified that he had tested positive for a banned perforance-enhancing drug. It was his second offense and he was facing a 100-game suspension. In 2009 as a Los Angeles Dodger, he served a 50-game suspension for violating the MLB’s drug policy.

Ending a 19-year career, the twelve-time All-Star player who is considered one of the baseball’s greatest hitters, won two World Series championships with the Boston Red Sox.

He batted a career average of .312, and for 13 seasons he produced more than 200 RBIs. He hit a career total of 555 home runs and 1,831 RBIs, exceeding the number of home runs and RBIs of Mickey Mantle. He ranks number 14 on the all time list. Now there may be an asterisk after his record numbers.

“His numbers, he was unreal,” said Red Sox infielder Omar Vizquel, who was Ramirez’s teammate with the Cleveland Indians. “He was one of the most feared guys with runners in scoring position. … If there is a guy you really want at the plate in a tough situation, it would have been Manny.”

Ramirez’s retirement coincides with the trial of another of baseball’s great hitters, Barry Bonds, charged with falsely denying to a grand jury that he used performance-enhancing drugs.

“Until the past couple of years, I thought [Ramirez] was on his way to the Hall of Fame,” said Texas Rangers manager Ron Washington. “I don’t think many guys got as many big hits in their careers as he has. There weren’t many guys who had as big an effect on a game as he had. You hate to see greatness all of a sudden just fade.”

Tuesday, August 9, 2005

The UN-appointed panel investigating the oil for food scandal has released its third report.

The report says that Benon Sevan took nearly US$150,000 in cash bribes. Chef de Cabinet for Kofi Annan, Mark Malloch Brown, said that the UN would lift Sevan’s immunity should an approach come from a law enforcement authority and that the UN had been in ‘active collaboration’ with the Southern District of New York.

At the press conference responding to the report, Malloch Brown also said that there was will “a real need for serious, deep-rooted management reform of our organization, and that does not seem to be yet fully accepted by all member states.”

Benon Sevan, who worked for the UN for nearly 40 years before resigning on Sunday, has denied the accusation. In his resignation letter to Kofi Annan, he wrote: “The charges are false and you, who have known me all these years, should know they are false… I fully understand the pressure you are under…, but sacrificing me for political expediency will never appease our critics or help you or the organisation.”

A former UN procurement officer Alexander Yakovlev has pleaded guilty to accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from UN contractors.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

A 5.8 earthquake struck 4 miles southwest of Mineral, Virginia, 80 miles south of Washington D.C., at 1:51 p.m. EDT (17:51 UTC) and lasted for 15–30 seconds. The quake had a magnitude of 5.8 with an epicenter 27 miles (43 km) east of Charlottesville, Virginia. A 2.8 aftershock was reported at 2:46 pm EDT (18:46 UTC).

According to Twitter reports, the quake was felt inland as far as Cleveland and Toronto and along the coast from Boston to Georgia. Police sergeant James Ryan, from South Brunswick, New Jersey stated that “The 911 line is flooding with calls right now. People want to know what happened. They want to know if there was an explosion.”

The United States Capitol and The Pentagon in Arlington were evacuated, as were police headquarters and city hall in New York City. Numerous minor injuries have been reported in Washington, D.C.; however, none of them are serious. There have been confirmed reports of damage at the Washington National Cathedral and the Smithsonian Castle. The Pentagon was also damaged when a burst pipe caused flooding. The North Anna Power Station lost offsite power and had to shut down, turning to four diesel generators to maintain cooling of the facility. Both the JFK and Newark airports were briefly shut down and the control towers were evacuated. A release from Amtrak stated that trains will be operating at reduced speed, but no damage has been found on any rail lines. The Washington Metro is also operating on reduced speed, with some stations closed down, while lines are evaluated.

In Boston, it was reported that the building at 111 Devonshire Street appeared to be leaning onto the adjacent building at 50 Milk Street, with fears that it could collapse. The street was blocked off while the Boston Fire Department investigated. However, it was determined that the buildings had always appeared like that. Nevertheless, the Boston Fire Department investigated the roof and the inside of 111 Devonshire St. After 30 minutes, the building was determined to be safe.

This is the second strongest earthquake to originate in Virginia since records have been kept, after the one recorded on May 31, 1897, near Giles County, which was estimated at a magnitude of 5.9.

The Dow initially dropped 50 points after the earthquake struck, but later increased over 100 points.

Sunday, September 9, 2007

At least 20 people have died and 20 more are injured after a partially constructed flyover (overpass) in Hyderabad, India collapsed onto traffic.

The disaster occurred at the Panjagutta junction, near Nagarjuna Circle. Two large concrete sections dropped onto oncoming cars and motorised rickshaws, damaging several severely.

A large emergency effort was immediately activated, but experienced severe difficulties in reaching the site due to congested traffic resulting from the collapse. Ambulances from the 108 EMRI Service and Appollo Hospitals attended the scene, and rushed the injured to a variety of nearby hospitals. All the region’s major hospitals, particularly the nearby Nizam Institute of Medical Sciences, have placed their medical staff on emergency alert. Rescuers are now using cranes and cutting equipment in an effort to reach anyone who may still be trapped. It is expected that the death toll could rise further as many vehicles remain trapped under tons of debris.

Various politicians also attended the scene, including the local district collector, Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh Dr. YS Rajasekhara Reddy, Senior Congress Leader and MLA from Khairathabad P Janardhan Reddy and several other ministers.

Police have asked both the public and the press to keep away from the area, in order to prevent further collapse of the unstable structure. Preliminary investigations suggest the flyover had been been poorly constructed. The construction project had been carried out by leading contractor Gammon India Limited. It had been delayed, the original foundations having been built in 2005. After a successful request by the company to have the deadline for the project extended, work was slated to cease in November of this year, with the flyover entering operation by December. It is believed heavy rains in the area a few hours prior to the collapse may have contributed to the disaster.

Monday, February 18, 2008

Television producer and owner of the anti-Scientology website www.xenutv.com (XenuTV), Mark Bunker, also known as Wise Beard Man, chatted online with Wikinews for nearly three hours. More than 120 people followed the interview live (many from Project Chanology), which makes this exclusive Wikinews interview our most attended IRC interview to date.

Bunker started XenuTV in 1999 and began to make videos that he provided for the Lisa McPherson Trust. Bunker has been a critic of the Church of Scientology since 1997.

In 2006, he won a Regional Emmy Award after he and KUSI-TV news reporter Lena Lewis produced a documentary news video on the issues with the United States – Mexico border with San Diego, California.