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Friday, June 24, 2005

240,000 U2] fans are preparing for Ireland’s most successful band ever to return for a hometown gig in Dublin. The supergroup is playing Friday, Saturday and Monday in front of 80,000 people a night at Croke Park. Gardaí have put in place a massive traffic management plan to cope with the influx of people. Fans have been queing since Thursday morning when a group of fans from Holland, Italy and Canada started queuing outside the stadium.

The concert forms part of U2’s current “Vertigo” world tour. The support acts include emerging Irish bands Snow Patrol and The Thrills along with already very popular Paddy Casey. Ash and The Bravery will cap it off as warm up acts on Monday.

The gates for the gig will open at 4pm with the actual band not expected until around 8.30pm. Irish media has entered a frenzied anticipation of the concert all this week, with constant coverage on radio stations. The national broadcaster, RTÉ, is set to dedicated almost 3hr 30min to the band with an exclusive interview by Dave Fanning forming the centerpiece of the stations coverage of the “U2 weekend”. Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, who played in front of a sell out crowd in Dublin earlier this week told fans that U2 were “still the best band in the world”.

Croke Park is the fourth largest stadium in Europe, with an official capacity of 82,000 – bigger than both Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium and Paris’ Stade de France. Croke Park is used to host GAA matches in sports such as hurling and Gaelic football and regularly attracts audiences of 60,000 or more in the summer months.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

The 2010 Susan G. Komen St. Louis Race for the Cure, held earlier today in St. Louis, Missouri, became the world’s largest Race for the Cure, with over 71,000 participants.

2010 marks the twelfth year for the race in St. Louis, which raises money for breast cancer research nationwide. Originally brought to the city in 1999, it has raised over US$19 million. It was sponsored by Wells Fargo Advisors, a locally-headquartered brokerage firm of the financial services provider Wells Fargo. Nationally, the Race for the Cure is hosted by Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a non-profit organization supporting breast cancer research.

In 1999, there were only about 10,000 participants in the St. Louis Race for the Cure. In recent years, the number has grown to over 60,000, and today’s 5K race saw over 71,000 runners, walkers, and wheelchair racers. Despite the heat and humidity, 1,090 teams signed up, and over 4,500 breast cancer survivors participated. Overall, the race raised more than US$3.3 million. A phone bank set up by Wells Fargo and local television station KSDK contributed over US$28,000 of that amount in four hours.

Prior to the race, there was a parade of all the breast cancer survivors who had signed up for the race. The actual competition began at 8:30 a.m. CDT (1330 UTC) with the wheelchair race. Following them were the timed runners, the untimed runners, the walkers, and lastly, the “fun walk” participants, who had only opted to walk one mile (1.6 kilometres).

The Komen St. Louis Race for the Cure is only one of many Races for the Cure, which is the largest group of 5K runs and walks in the world. The first Komen race was held in 1983 in Dallas, Texas, but has since spread to over 140 cities throughout the world. Proceeds from today’s St. Louis race will benefit both local institutions and the rest of the United States. At least 25 percent of the money raised will go toward funding national research on breast cancer, while the rest will be given to organizations in St. Louis for breast cancer awareness programs.

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.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

David McGruer is running for the Freedom Party of Ontario in the Ontario provincial election, in the Ottawa-Orleans riding. Wikinews’ Nick Moreau interviewed him regarding his values, his experience, and his campaign.

Stay tuned for further interviews; every candidate from every party is eligible, and will be contacted. Expect interviews from Liberals, Progressive Conservatives, New Democratic Party members, Ontario Greens, as well as members from the Family Coalition, Freedom, Communist, Libertarian, and Confederation of Regions parties, as well as independents.

Friday, November 3, 2017

In findings reported on Tuesday, an international team of astronomers discovered an exoplanet, called NGTS-1b, revolving around M-dwarf star NGTS-1, that the team said does not fit existing notions of how stars and planets form. NGTS-1b is a gas giant, similar to Jupiter and of comparable volume and mass, but its parent star is about half the diameter and mass of the Sun, making this the most massive planet orbiting an M-dwarf ever discovered.

NGTS-1b, about 600 light years from the Earth, is so extremely close to its star that a revolution around its star takes only about 2.6 Earth days — 2.647298 ± 0.000020 — and its surface temperature is about 800 K. The planet was discovered by observing periodic fluctuations in the star’s apparent brightness as NGTS-1b passed in front of it. NGTS-1b’s mass is less than Jupiter, about 0.812 MJ (mass of Jupiter), but it has greater volume, with radius about 1.33 RJ (radius of Jupiter). Its density was reported to be 0.42 g cm^-3 (with error: +0.59 to -0.28), meaning Jupiter, whose density is 1.326 g cm^-3, is likely around thrice as dense as the exoplanet.

“The discovery of NGTS-1b was a complete surprise to us,” said lead author Doctor Daniel Bayliss of the University of Warwick, in England. “[S]uch massive planets were not thought to exist around such small stars. This is the first exoplanet we have found with our new NGTS facility and we are already challenging the received wisdom of how planets form.”

The existing understanding of planetary formation, the team explained, says small stars can produce rocky planets but cannot pull in enough mass for larger, gaseous ones like NGTS-1b. Based on the observations, NGTS-1’s radius is 0.573±0.077 R? (solar radius) and using that value, astronomers calculated its weight to be about 0.598 M? (solar mass). The star’s density is almost ten times of the gas giant, 4.4 (with error: +2.4 to -1.4) g cm^-3. In comparison, the Sun’s density is 1.409 g cm^-3.

The research team discovered NGTS-1b using the Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS), an array of telescopes physically located in Chile, which was designed to search for planets around bright stars. NGTS-1 is a relatively dim red M-dwarf, which are very common in the universe, of apparent magnitude 15.52 ± 0.08. University of Warwick professor Peter Wheatley, who runs the NGTS, said, “NGTS-1b was difficult to find, despite being a monster of a planet, because its parent star is small and faint. Small stars are actually the most common in the universe, so it is possible there are many of these giant planets waiting to be found.”

To date, scientists have discovered only three gas giants which revolves around M-dwarf stars. The other two are Kepler-45b and HATS-6b which have masses 0.505 M_J and 0.32 M_J respectively.

Monday, March 19, 2007

A 34 year old obstetrician from Forestville on Sydney’s Northern Beaches has escaped after he was robbed, car-jacked and locked in the boot (trunk) of his BMW, which was set alight. Police say the doctor was locked in the boot while his car was set alight, but was allowed to escape before flames engulfed the vehicle.

The Doctor was believed to have been heading to The Mater Hospital in North Sydney when he was waiting at the intersection of West and Falcon Streets in Chatswood around 3:15AM AEDT when a small red sedan with two men claiming to be police officers signalled him to stop. After crossing the intersection, the doctor stopped his car at the side of the road.

The doctor was then approached by the two men and when he asked to see identification, one man grabbed the keys from his car’s ignition before they both pulled the doctor out of his vehicle, hit him in the stomach with a hammer and stole his mobile phone and wallet. The robbers also demanded his key and credit cards along with their access codes before locking him in the boot.

Police allege that the men drove to several locations to withdraw cash and buy things before driving to Carisbook Street in Linley Point at around 4 a.m. local time where they set the car alight with the doctor still in the boot.

Crime Manager of the Harbourside Local Area Command, Detective Inspector Houlahan said that the doctor then “heard a click in the boot area and he heard someone call out: ‘Get out of the car'”

“When he pushed the boot up he found his car engulfed in flames.”

Det. Insp. Houlahan said the doctor told police he did not unlock the boot himself, and it appeared the man’s captors unlocked it before fleeing.

Det Insp Houlahan said that the doctor appeared to be “very distraught” and tired after the ordeal, and wanted to get home and see his wife and two young daughters.

He could only provide police with a vague description of his captors, but said the men were both Caucasian males aged in their 20s, and that one of them was about six feet tall (183cm) with short blond hair and medium build said Det. Insp. Houlahan.

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

January’s second Interview of the Month was with Danny O’Brien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on 23 January in IRC.

The EFF is coming off a series of high-profile successes in their campaigns to educate the public, press, and policy makers regarding online rights in a digital world, and defending those rights in the legislature and the courtroom. Their settlement with Sony/BMG, the amazingly confused MGM v Grokster decision by the Supreme Court of the United States, and the disturbing cases surrounding Diebold have earned the advocacy organization considerable attention.

When asked if the EFF would be interested in a live interview in IRC by Wikinews, the answer was a nearly immediate yes, but just a little after Ricardo Lobo. With two such interesting interview candidates agreeing so quickly, it was hard to say no to either so schedules were juggled to have both. By chance, the timing worked out to have the EFF interview the day before the U.S. Senate schedule hearings concerning the Broadcast flag rule of the FCC, a form of digital rights management which the recording and movie industries have been lobbying hard for – and the EFF has been lobbying hard to prevent.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Indonesian state-owned flag carrier Garuda Indonesia has been expanding, with the airline set to add nine new jets to its fleet and double its flights between Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur. Garuda is also considering a bid for defunct rival Linus Airways.

Garuda is expecting the imminent arrival of four new Airbus jets and five new Boeings. The Airbuses, A330-200s, are earmarked to fly international routes to Seoul and Shanghai starting in July. All four have Internet and telephone access for passengers. The Boeings, B737-800 Next Generation aircraft, are due to be in service by the 2010.

Also planned before the year’s end is the increase in flights on the Jakarta-Kuala Lumpur route from one to two per week. “We saw our current load factor[s] have reached 75 percent and even more during school breaks like June and July,” Said the company’s Vice President for Network Oversight, Risnandi. “This is very promising.”

Garuda is now reported to be considering a bid for Linus, who stopped operating on April 27 and have recently been stripped of the rights to fly their former routes as legally required for airlines that do not operate for more than thrity days. Linus still holds some documents of worth to Garuda for transfer to their subisidiary Citilink.

“I heard that Garuda intends to buy Linus who already hold an aviation business license (SIUP) and an air operators certificate (AOC) for the scheduled air services,” said Indonesian Director General of Civil aviation Herry Bakti S. Gumay to reporters for Bisnis Indonesia. He said that his office was in favour of a takeover by Garuda because foreign bids are limited to holding a maximum total of 49% of the shares in Linus.

Linus Airways’ President Directer Indra said that “we are flexible to acquisition, depending on the investor. If someone wants to buy 100% of the shares we can release our shares, but if someone wants take only a majority shareholding with us as a partner – we are also open.” Indra commented that he has had an informal meeting with Garuda CEO Emirsyah Satar but says that they never discussed acquisition by Garuda and that Linus is already in talks with another ‘strategic investor’ with a view to resuming operations.

Two airlines, Riau Airlines and Kartika Airlines, have both launched bids for the ten routes formally operated by Linus, which include four from Jakarta and three from Batam.

Garuda Indonesia’s Financial Direcotr Eddy Purwanto has anounced that US$650 million worth of loans from Bank Mandiri have been restructured. Garuda, who has apointed Rothschild’s as their international financial advisors, will now pay US$450 million by 2015.

Saturday, May 20, 2006

Inmates at Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba have attacked guards with fan blades and other makeshift weapons. Rear Admiral Harry Harris, the commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo says some detainees were injured in “the most violent outbreak” at the facility since it was opened in 2002.

Officers fired rubber bullets at the detainees after the guards were attacked with “broken light fixtures, fan blades” and other improvised weapons. Rear Admiral Harris says, “minimum force was used to quell the disturbance”.

The New York Times reports that a riot-control unit with batons and shields quelled Thursday’s disturbance. Another episode involved two other groups of inmates who tore apart their quarters and attacked guards.

Military officials said the detainees’ actions were designed to draw attention to the plight of the terror suspects detained indefinitely in “Gitmo”. Rear Admiral Harris, said that a prisoner was pretending to hang himself to lure the guards into the room. “The detainees had slickened the floor of their block with faeces, urine and soapy water in an attempt to trick the guards,” he said. “They then assaulted the guards with broken light fixtures, fan blades and bits of metal.”

The guards used pepper spray and blasted the detainees with several shots from a shotgun, firing rubber balls during the five-minute fight. No guards were hurt, but six inmates were treated for “minor injuries,” he said.

Colonel Mike Bumgarner said guards shot five rounds of “nonlethal” pellets from a 12-gauge shotgun, and a rubber grenade from an M-203 launcher. He said rioting then broke out in two other blocks of Camp Four when around 50 detainees damaged their quarters and made weapons to attack the guards. Colonel Bumgarner said it took an hour to bring the disturbances under control. He says the six detainees received minor injuries.

A military spokesman said 60 of the detainees were later transferred to more secure areas of the camp. Colonel Bumgarner says “detainees were jumping out of the beds on top of the guards” and some guards were knocked to the floor. “Frankly we were losing the fight at that point,” he said. “This illustrates to me the dangerous nature of the men we have detained here,” Rear Admiral Harris told reporters in a teleconference.

Earlier in the day, two other detainees attempted suicide by overdosing on hoarded prescription drugs. Guantanamo officials said there have been 41 suicide attempts by 25 detainees and no deaths since the camp opened in January 2002. Defense lawyers contend the figure is higher.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Committee Against Torture has called on the United States to shut down Guantanamo and close any other “secret prisons” it operates. The UN declared the indefinite detention of suspects without charge a “violation of the UN Convention Against Torture.”

“The State party should cease to detain any person at Guantanamo Bay and close this detention facility, permit access by the detainees to judicial process or release them as soon as possible,” the committee said. They called on the US to “ensure that no one is detained in any secret detention facility under its de facto effective control”.

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

British actor Tony Booth died on Monday at age 85, according to his family. He is best known for his role in the TV comedy Till Death Us Do Part. He is also known for his daughter Cherie Blair, wife of former British prime minister Tony Blair.

Booth had a long acting career. He was star of Till Death Us Do Part in the 1960s, where he played the part of Mike Rawlings. He also played in Coronation Street, EastEnders, Emmerdale, and The Bill on TV, as well as playing in numerous films. In 1998 he became president of Equity, the British trade union for actors.

As well as Cherie Blair, Booth also fathered seven other daughters, some out of wedlock, and had four marriages. He had a reputation as a womanizer, a heavy drinker, and a charmer.

Booth lived with Alzheimer’s disease for a long time. He was diagnosed in 2004. He also suffered heart problems.