Author: Admin

Friday, November 20, 2009

Health officials in both the United States and Norway have confirmed the presence of a mutated strain of the H1N1, swine flu virus in several patients in the countries. The mutation is resistant to current treatments for H1N1 such as tamiflu, oseltamivir and zanamivir.

At least three patients in Norway were confirmed to have the mutated strain of H1N1, with two of the cases being fatal. Health officials say the three cases are not related and isolated from one another.

At least four new cases of the mutation were detected in patients at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina. Three of the four cases were fatal, but the same patients also had severe underlying illnesses before they caught influenza. Two prior cases of the mutation in the same state, were reported in the Summer of 2008. Health officials say none of the cases are related.

Director of the Center for Disease Control‘s Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, Anne Schuchat says the cases are appearing in the U.S. “sporadically.”

“It’s just too soon for us to say what this is going to mean long term. It’s an important finding for the influenza virologists, and they’re looking into it. [The mutation] has no implications for how good the match of the vaccine is and no implications for treatment with antiviral medicine,” said Schuchat during a press conference.

Health officials in other countries such as Mexico, China, Japan, Ukraine and Brazil, also report cases of the mutation.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

The niece of the Church of Scientology‘s top leader David Miscavige has come forward publicly with criticism of the organization and of Scientology practices. Jenna Miscavige Hill, daughter of David Miscavige’s older brother Ron Miscavige, described Scientology policies which broke apart her family and continue to keep members of her family from talking to each other. Hill criticized Scientology practices in a letter to a public relations spokeswoman for the Church of Scientology and in a broadcast of the television program Inside Edition which aired Tuesday, and was interviewed by an investigative journalist for the New York Post.

Hill wrote an open letter addressed to Karin Pouw, Public Affairs Director of the Church of Scientology International, in response to a 15-page statement issued by Pouw on January 14 which was highly critical of Andrew Morton‘s new book on prominent Scientologist Tom Cruise, Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography. Hill’s letter was posted to the Internet newsgroup alt.religion.scientology on January 25, and has since been widely posted on other Internet message boards.

In Pouw’s statement on Morton’s book, she called it a “bigoted defamatory assault replete with lies”. In her letter to Pouw, Hill responded “I am absolutely shocked at how vehemently you insist upon not only denying the truths that have been stated about the church in that biography, but then take it a step further and tell outright lies.” Specifically, Hill rebuked the Church of Scientology’s denial of a practice called “disconnection“, where members are instructed to sever all ties with friends and family who are critical of Scientology and deemed a “Suppressive Person“, or SP.

Hill wrote that it was this particular policy which broke up her family when she was 16, going on to detail how the Church of Scientology restricted her communications with her parents: “Not only was I not allowed to speak to them, I was not allowed to answer a phone for well over a year, in case it was them calling me.”

When contacted for a comment on Hill’s letter, Karin Pouw told the Agence France-Presse: “The church stands by its statement of 14 January. The church does not respond to newsgroup postings.” Hill explained her motivation for writing the letter to the Agence France-Presse: “My intention is to put it on a public forum so they are pressured into changing their ways — even if it is just to cover for themselves.”

In a broadcast of the television program Inside Edition which aired Tuesday, Hill spoke with reporter Les Trent about Scientology’s disconnection policy. Hill described a pregnant friend whose parents are still members of the Church of Scientology; but will not speak with her: “She lives in L.A. – her parents live right around the hill from her, you know she tried to call them when she was having her first child, and they were like: ‘No, sorry, I can’t speak to you.'” The Church of Scientology told Inside Edition that the allegation made by Hill is “the opposite of what the church believes and practices.” Hill last spoke to her uncle David Miscavige four years ago, around the same time that she viewed a promotional video featuring Tom Cruise, at an awards ceremony. This video was recently leaked to the Internet and appeared on the video sharing site YouTube. YouTube took the video down due to a legal complaint from the Church of Scientology, but though the website Gawker.com received a similar legal complaint, Gawker has stated that the video is newsworthy and will not be removed.

Prominent free speech activist and critic of Scientology David S. Touretzky commented on these recent developments, in an interview Wednesday with Wikinews reporter Nicholas Turnbull: “She has nothing to do with Chanology [the recent anti-Scientology movement that has gathered on Internet message boards], but what we’re seeing here is a “perfect storm” of entheta [material considered negative by Scientology]. It’s all coming together in a chain reaction: The Tom Cruise video, Andrew Morton’s bio, Kirstie Alley’s craziness, Kimora Lee Simmons, Jenna Miscavige, and there’s more to come!” Another critic of Scientology, Mark Bunker of the website XenuTV.com, compared the recent revelations to troubles in Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard‘s family: “Just as L. Ron Hubbard’s family was rocked with turmoil, so it seems is Miscavige’s.” Bunker commented on the Inside Edition piece: “This is a jaw-dropping TV segment — although Inside Edition clearly didn’t understand just how important a story they had.”

In an interview published Wednesday in the New York Post, Hill stated that she has been harassed by the Church of Scientology for speaking out against the organization: “The church has contacted several of my friends, telling them that I am smearing the church and I am going to be declared a suppressive person and asking my friends if they would disconnect from me and, in at least one case, insisting that they do.” The New York Post attempted to contact Karin Pouw for a comment, but she did not respond in time for their publication.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

French fishing vessels have blockaded the English Channel ports of Calais, Bolougne, and Dunkirk.

The protest is an industrial action over tighter fishing quotas imposed by the European Union, with French fishing unions asking for their government to provide financial assistance or take a tougher line. CFTC Fishermans Union spokesman Bruno Dachicourt told Agence France Presse: “There are easily twenty boats blocking the port of Boulogne-sur-Mer in organized ranks. Not a boat will go in nor out.”

The fishermen are protesting the lowering of European Union quotas on fishing, which place a ceiling on the amount of fish that the fishermen of each member country are allowed to catch and sell. The EU has lowered quotas in response to concerns about the sustainability of fisheries, but each drop in quota reduces the amount of work each fishing vessel can do. “The feeble amount of the quota obliges us to close the fishing zones three months after the beginning of the catch”, said Stéphane Pinto, spokesman for the CFDT trade union group representing fishermen in Boulogne.

Ferry sailings between Dover in the United Kingdom and Calais were suspended, with UK authorities implementing the Operation Stack management plan in response. Under the plan sections of the M20 motorway are closed to traffic and used as a managed lorry park. Motorists have been advised to seek alternative routes if possible. Most cars and passengers from the P&O Calais-Dover sailings at 16.10 (apparently the first sailing affected), 17.40 and 18.25 left on the “Pride of Dover” at 11.47 arriving Dover at 12.30. Two SeaFrance ferries, Renoir and another, left slightly earlier.

Fishermen have also used fires and roadblocks to interfere with access to the ports by road.

The blockades come eight days after a similar incident in the Mediterranean, when French fishermen in Marseille, Ajaccio, Toulon and other port cities interfered with oil tanker movements and blockaded ports throughout the south of the country.

Wikinews is unaware of any official statement from the British or French Governments in response to the blockade.

Saturday, December 6, 2008

The Non-Disclosure agreement for companies working with the UK Government on the National identity card has been leaked on WikiLeaks. The document states, among other things, what rights the Government has to search the properties of companies involved and the obligations on the companies to keep information secret.

Section five of the document states that if a company fails to comply with the agreement, or in other cases at the “sole discretion” of the Home Office, the government may search the property, records and computers of the company. The anonymous individual who leaked the documents has stated that “no search warrant or judicial oversight would be required,” to carry out the search.

The leaker also states that individuals working for the company may have their computers searched “without any suspicion of a crime having been committed,” although the document does require that these searches may only take place “for the purposes of ensuring that all National Identity Scheme information and associated copies are secure in accordance with this agreement or have been destroyed permanently or removed from their possession.

Section two of the document requires that the document is secured in accordance with policy set out by the government, and requires that the information is only disclosed to those who need to have access as part of the identity card programme.

Section four of the document states that it shall be liable to the government for any breach of the agreement, and that, except for obligations required by the Official Secrets Act, the requirements shall no longer apply 25 years after the signing of the agreement, which took place in 2007.

The individual leaking the document has stated that he did so “to bring attention to the manner of construction of the ID scheme and the highly secretive approach being adopted by the UK government.”

Despite the criticism of the scheme, the Home Office has stated that the cards are required to “help protect people from identity fraud and theft,” and “disrupt the use of false and multiple identities by criminals and those involved in terrorist activity.”

Friday, September 22, 2006

A complaint made against Internet service provider (ISP) iHug by M. McNatty has been upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). McNatty complained that he was not told of the special conditions of banner adverts he saw on the iHug website.

McNatty said: “I signed up [to iHug] but discovered I had shot over my limit and iHUG had reduced my download speed from 100 to 64kps. I rang iHUG and they explained that I had gone over my 1 GB traffic allotment by 230%. I explained I was on the 3 GB plan and they went on to tell me that 2 of the 3GB can only be used between the hours of 2 a.m. and 10 a.m.” He then went on to talk to the manager of iHug but was told there was nothing he could do so he asked to be upgraded to the more expensive option of the 15 GB plan.

iHug replied to the complaint by saying: “It appears that M. McNatty has briefly looked at the front page of our broadband section without either reading down the page to the what you get section or clicking on the info or join now links on our website. If he had, he would have found information about the peak and off-peak split of data allowances. He has then rung the iHug call centre, where our call centre personnel have been instructed to inform customers of the details of data allowances because many customers don’t understand how much data they will need. If the customer service representative has failed to explain how the data allowances work then that is a mistake on our part, for which I am sincerely apologetic. iHug has taken steps to resolve this by stressing to Customer Service Managers that they must remind their teams to fully explain data allowances during the sign up call.”

iHug then went on to apologize to McNatty if felt he had been misled but said: “I think it is unreasonable for M. McNatty to expect all information pertaining to a broadband application to be contained in detail on a small banner advert which is clearly design to capture interest only and lead the customer to further information.”

The ASA complaint board then reviewed the advertisement and noted that the advertisement clearly identified that information related to the offer was available on other pages and that a customer would most likely know that plans varied and would ask for clarification before subscribing.

But then said, referring to the 3 GB plan advertisement; “However, nowhere in the main offer or the immediate conditions headed, “ihug broadband – what you get”, did it inform the consumer that 2 of the 3 GB could only be used between the hours of 2 a.m. and 10 a.m., one third being peak user time, two thirds being off-peak user time. This, in the Complaints Board’s view, significantly diminished the offer of ‘3 GB data’, to the extent that the offer could be considered to be ‘exaggerated’. As such the Complaints Board said that it would be likely to mislead the consumer.”

They also noted that the wording “generous peak download allowance” was a hyperbole and overstated the product offered, which amounted to misleading the customer.

The Complaints Board said: “A website advertisement was not limited by a time constraint such as a television advertisement, or restricted by space available, and thereby there was no apparent reason why this paramount condition could not be more obvious in relation to the offer.”

The complaints board then said that if special condition reduced the offer in value then those conditions need to be obvious. They noted that the ad does say conditions do apply. “However, as the condition in this instance diminished the offer in a major way, the Complaints Board was unanimously of the view, that it should have been disclosed in an obvious manner, as part of the initial offer or in close proximity to it,” said the complaints board.

The board then noted that the advertisement was in violation of the second rule in the Code of Ethics which states “Truthful Presentation – Advertisements should not contain any statement or visual presentation or create an overall impression which directly or by implication, omission, ambiguity or exaggerated claim is misleading or deceptive, is likely to deceive or mislead the consumer, makes false and misleading representation, abuses the trust of the consumer or exploits his/her lack of experience or knowledge. (Obvious hyperbole, identifiable as such, is not considered to be misleading).” The board did uphold the complaint.

December 25, 2004

Officials in Mumbai, India, demolished over 6,000 shanties today in a push to eradicate the capital city’s slums. In total, 39,000 shanties have been flattened, displacing over 200,000 people, in the city’s biggest-ever demolition drive, which began in early December.

When complete, over 2 million people are expected to be displaced. After wiping out the least desirable shanties, next in line for demolition are the illegal ‘well-off’ shanties and neighborhoods, according to the legal and bureaucratic motions that have been executed toward cleaning up Mumbai’s appearance by lowering the dominance of shanties, which make up 62 percent of Mumbai’s housing.

“As far as eye can see, there are mounds of wood, tin and tarpaulin, the remains of 6,200 illegal homes, flattened by a heavy excavator running on tank-like tracks and giant motorised claws,” the Indian Express reported about today’s destruction. [1]

Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh said that citizens would see a change within six months. “Every chief minister likes to be remembered, and I’m no exception,” said Deshmukh, who despite having an empty exchequer, also announced that Rs 31,000 crore will be spent on new roads, sea links and rail lines. [2]

Saturday, November 10, 2007

The U.S Consumer Product Safety Commission has recalled more products over the last few days, though not all because of excessive lead.

While American toy companies have been rocked in the last few months by numerous unsafe Chinese-made products, mostly due to excessive amounts of lead in paint, a few of the latest recalls were actually due to design flaws.

Also recently recalled are sunglasses and toy cars from the Dollar General chain of price-point retailers.