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Thursday, September 13, 2007

A resident of Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound his whole life, Correctional Services officer Paul Johnstone is running for the Ontario New Democratic Party in the Ontario provincial election. 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.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Thursday was the second day of play in the third test between Australia and India at the WACA, Perth, Australia.

India resumed their first innings at 6/297. Australia took the remaining four wickets before the lunch break. Mahendra Singh Dhoni (19) and Irfan Pathan (28) both fell lbw in successive overs. India reached 330 all out with the loss of Anil Kumble for one run and R. P. Singh for a duck.

Australia struggled early on as Irfan Pathan dismissed both Australian openers for less than ten runs each and Michael Hussey was caught behind without scoring. At lunch, Australia were 3/22. The next session, Australia played well, despite losing Ricky Ponting (20) and Michael Clarke (23), coming to the tea break with a score of 5/148. However, in the last session of the day India took five wickets, sending Australia all out with a score of 212 after fifty overs. Andrew Symonds was Australia’s top scorer with 66 runs, while Adam Gilchrist made 55. R. P. Singh took four wickets for India.

In reply, India are 1/52 at stumps having lost Wasim Jaffer for 11 runs just before the close of play.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

The sole United States manufacturer of a key component of lethal injections announced Friday that it will cease production of the drug, contributing to shortages and delaying executions.

Sodium thiopental, the first of a three drug cocktail used in 34 states to render the prisoner to be executed unconscious, was manufactured in Italy until Italian authorities stated that they would only license the manufacture if it was used for medical purposes and not, crucially, for executions.

In a statement, the company, Hospira, said that they have never condoned the use of their drug, marketed as ‘Pentothal’, in executions, and that they could not “prevent the drug from being diverted to departments of corrections for use in capital punishment procedures”.

The move means that the United States is without a viable supplier for sodium thiopental. Although many European countries manufacture the drug, which is primarily used in Europe as an anæsthetic, no manufacturer has been found that is willing to supply it for use in conjunction with the death penalty, the abolition of which has been lobbied by the EU since 2008.

The shortage means that executions in California and Oklahoma have been delayed, with Texas’ last remaining stocks of the drug due to expire in March, weeks before two scheduled executions. These delays are likely to be prolonged as the legal process of drawing up new drugs to be used for injections is lengthy. Pentobarbital, an alternative which used at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland, is used for lethal injections in Oregon, and has started to be used by Oklahoma.

Hospira’s decision caused mixed reactions throughout the medical community, with the American Society of Anesthesiologists stating Monday that sodium thiopental is an “important and medically necessary anesthetic agent” that is a “first-line anesthetic in many cases”, citing geriatric and cardiovascular conditions, among others. It said that, although they disagree with the death penalty, “we also do not condone using the issue as the basis to place undue burdens on the distribution of this critical drug to the United States. It is an unfortunate irony that many more lives will be lost or put in jeopardy as a result of not having the drug available for its legitimate medical use.”

Friday, January 27, 2006The humble beginnings of many popular Web services, such as Google, LiveJournal, and Yahoo!, are well-documented and available on their websites, and frequently recounted in news stories about the firms. These websites are also scrutinized for any perceived violations of users’ privacy or other basic rights.

However, until recently, no investigation had been done into MySpace and Facebook, two new “social networking” sites of explosive popularity among teenagers and college students. American bloggers, using Google and financial records, have begun investigations into the origins and policies of these sites, making some claims that the site owners explicitly deny.

June 28, 2005

The Democratic Party held a public committee, aired on C-SPAN 3, at which former civilian employees based in or administering operations in Iraq, testified to specific instances of waste, fraud, and other abuses and irregularities by Halliburton and its subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR).

Allegations of fraud by Halliburton, specifically with regard to its operations in Iraq, have persisted since before the Iraq War. The associations between U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and Halliburton, have been the basis for repeated speculation over possible political improprieties and business profiteering from the war.

Among the senators and representatives present at the hearing were Byron Dorgan (presiding), Henry Waxman, Frank Lautenberg, and Mark Dayton.

Among those testifying were Bunny Greenhouse, former Chief Contracting Officer of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Rory Mayberry, former Food Program Manager for Halliburton subsidiary, and Allan Waller, of the Lloyd-Owen International security and operations firm.

Greenhouse, who provided the bulk of testimony, spoke for several minutes about her involvement in the evaluation and crafting of government Army contracts, and how explaining how superiors undermined and dismissed her concerns of illegal business practices. “Ultimately my main concern was the repeated insistence that the Rio contract be awarded to KBR without competitive bidding,” Greenhouse said. She testified to have been given misinformation in answer to her complaints, and being “overtly misled” by KBR managers.

Mayberry, still in Iraq, testified by video from questions prepared by the committee. He said that KBR routinely sold expired food rations to the Army. The interviewer asked, “Are you saying that Halliburton deliberately falsified the number of meals they prepared and then submitted false claims for reimbursement and that they did this to make up for past amounts auditors had disallowed?” Mayberry firmly answered “Yes.” He said that serving expired food ration was “an everyday occurrence, sometimes every meal.” He explained that Halliburton systematically overcharged for the number of meals as well, saying, “they were charging for 20,000 meals and they were only serving 10,000 meals.” Dorgan later commented, “obviously there’s no honor here, by a company that would serve outdated food to our troops in Iraq.”

Mayberry also claimed would-be whistleblowers were threatened “to be sent to Falluja” and other “places under fire” if they talked to media or governmental oversight officials. In 2003 and 2004, Falluja had been well known as dangerous for foreign troops and civilians. “I personally was sent to Falluja for three weeks. The manager told me that I was being sent away until the auditors were gone, because I had talked to the auditors,” Mayberry said.

“The threat of being sent to a camp under fire was their way of keeping us quiet. The employees who talked to auditors were sent to camps under more fire than other camps, and Anaconda.” This report led Dorgan and others to voice considerable outrage that U.S. citizens would be personally threatened with harm for talking to oversight officials or media.

Allan Waller testified to specific examples of how KBR officials had conspired in blocking Lloyd-Owen fuel transports, and using other coercive means against its competitor. The British Lloyd-Owen has a direct contract with the Iraq government to provide fuel to various parts of the country.

In his introductory remarks, Dorgan explained that Senate Republicans had blocked or ignored any requests by Democrats to have a formal bipartisan hearing, resulting in the need for an independent committee.

Sunday, October 7, 2007

Aaron Parent is running for the Libertarian in the Ontario provincial election, in the Essex 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.

Tuesday, March 29, 2005A team of Australian surgeons yesterday reattached both hands and one foot to 10-year-old Perth boy, Terry Vo, after a brick wall which collapsed during a game of basketball fell on him, severing the limbs. The wall gave way while Terry performed a slam-dunk, during a game at a friend’s birthday party.

The boy was today awake and smiling, still in some pain but in good spirits and expected to make a full recovery, according to plastic surgeon, Mr Robert Love.

“What we have is parts that are very much alive so the reattached limbs are certainly pink, well perfused and are indeed moving,” Mr Love told reporters today.

“The fact that he is moving his fingers, and of course when he wakes up he will move both fingers and toes, is not a surprise,” Mr Love had said yesterday.

“The question is more the sensory return that he will get in the hand itself and the fine movements he will have in the fingers and the toes, and that will come with time, hopefully. We will assess that over the next 18 months to two years.

“I’m sure that he’ll enjoy a game of basketball in the future.”

The weight and force of the collapse, and the sharp brick edges, resulted in the three limbs being cut through about 7cm above the wrists and ankle.

Terry’s father Tan said of his only child, the injuries were terrible, “I was scared to look at him, a horrible thing.”

The hands and foot were placed in an ice-filled Esky and rushed to hospital with the boy, where three teams of medical experts were assembled, and he was given a blood transfusion after experiencing massive blood loss. Eight hours of complex micro-surgery on Saturday night were followed by a further two hours of skin grafts yesterday.

“What he will lose because it was such a large zone of traumatised skin and muscle and so on, he will lose some of the skin so he’ll certainly require lots of further surgery regardless of whether the skin survives,” said Mr Love said today.

The boy was kept unconscious under anaesthetic between the two procedures. In an interview yesterday, Mr Love explained why:

“He could have actually been woken up the next day. Because we were intending to take him back to theatre for a second look, to look at the traumatised skin flaps, to close more of his wounds and to do split skin grafting, it was felt the best thing to do would be to keep him stable and to keep him anaesthetised.”

Professor Wayne Morrison, director of the respected Bernard O’Brien Institute of Microsurgery and head of plastic and hand surgery at Melbourne’s St Vincent’s Hospital, said he believed the operation to be a world first.

Friday, November 11, 2011

In London last weekend, journalists, software developers, filmmakers, designers and many others spent time discussing ideas and building tools at the 2011 Mozilla Festival at Ravensbourne College. Following the theme of “Media, Freedom and the Web”, many attendees developed prototypes around the idea of the future of media including tablet interface prototypes for the Boston Globe, designs for open source software for DJs, and hacks to enable journalists to combine video and original source text together to tell stories in more interactive ways.

One important announcement made at the event was details of five new fellowship places sponsored by the Knight Foundation and the Mozilla Foundation that attempt to bring together journalists and open source-minded software geeks. Wikinews spoke to Laurian Gridinoc, who currently works at Talis building software for higher education but will move for a year to the BBC to work in the newsroom. Other fellows will be working for The Guardian, Al-Jazeera, the Boston Globe and Zeit Online.

Gridinoc says the Fellowship intends to “introduce innovation in the newsroom by embedding some developers as fellows”. The fellows will collaborate with people within the news organization. They hope to be open about how they are changing the newsroom. Gridinoc says he and the others will “blog about making the news, on how things can be done, and how [open source] tools can be used”, and he specifically will work on trying to increase the use of linked data, a practice already embraced by the BBC. “Adaptive documents” were another area of interest for Laurian: having stories where illustrations and examples dynamically adapt to the particular reader.

According to the fellows speaking as part of a panel discussion, many newsrooms reject the use of open source tools even for producing maps, graphs and infographics.

How journalists adapt to the web was a theme throughout the weekend, with sessions teaching journalists to write HTML and write basic scripts in Ruby to scrape websites, discussions on Creative Commons and what “hacker journalism” entails. One group worked on collaboratively produced handbook on “data journalism” while others tested and refined Ushahidi, a crowdsourced news tool that was used during the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile in 2010 and in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2011.