Friday, July 20, 2007

Police in Jersey City, New Jersey in the United States say that they have found a 20 year old rocket launcher tube, capable of shooting down planes, on the front yard of a home that is reported to be directly in the path of Newark Liberty International Airport. Police say that the weapon was not in operating condition.

“I was shocked. I read it and it and [there was the word missile] on it. There was little ‘missile’ writing on it. I was afraid because of what people want to do to this country,” said Niranjana Besai who was born in India and has lived in the U.S. for 25 years who discovered the weapon at about 8:00 a.m EDT (UTC-4) when she was leaving the house to go to work.

According to Modern Firearms, the weapon can only be used once, saying it “is a disposable, single shot, recoilless weapon” and can hit a target with a range of “up to 150 meters [to use] against moving targets, and about 300 meters against stationary targets.”

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives confirms that the weapon is of military issue and has been identified as a model AT-4, primarily used as an anti-tank weapon. It is manufactured by Saab Bofors Dynamics in Sweden. No explosive devices have been located at the scene. The Associated Press says that the weapon was made to be used during training missions and anti-tank artillery. The U.S. Army at Fort Monmouth in Oceanport, New Jersey is now in possession of the weapon.

“The device has been turned over to United States Army officials at Fort Monmouth,” said Jersey City police in a statement to the press which also confirmed the weapon was a U.S. military issued launcher and was “no longer operable and not considered to be a hazard to public safety.”

It is not known how the weapon ended up in Besai’s yard. The Joint Terrorism Task Force and FBI have confiscated the weapon, before turning it over to the army, and they are investigating the incident.

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Two Australian Paralympic wheelchair basketball players, Shelley Chaplin and Leanne Del Toso, are cycling around Fiji to raise money for people in Fiji with disabilities. They hope to cover the route, which is roughly 500 kilometers (300 miles) long, in just ten days. They started on June 7, 2013 and plan to finish by June 16.

Along the way, they intend to do outreach, and mentor people with disabilities. They hope to raise A$13,000. So far, they have raised over A$12,400. They are using crowdfunding to finance their sporting event.

Del Toso suffered muscle deterioration in her legs and hands due to a degenerative neurological condition when she was 19, and rides her bike with the aid of orthotics. Chaplin was born a paraplegic, and is using a handcycle.

They won silver medals at the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London with the Australia women’s national wheelchair basketball team, commonly known as the Gliders.

Both also played for Victoria in Round One of the Australia Women’s Wheelchair Basketball League (WNWBL) competition last weekend. Victoria won all four of its games. They expect to be back in action again in Round Two in Perth on June 21–23.

Monday, November 9, 2009

Former Formula One McLaren designer Gordon Murray has unveiled a new all-electric car.

The car model, which is known as the T.27, is due to be developed over the course of the next 16 months with four prototypes. The process that will be used during the course of the manufacturing of the vehicle is called iStream. The technology iStream had been invented by Gordon Murray in 1999 and means that all the parts are designed using a computer.

The project has approximately received £9,000,000 (US$14,919,000) in investment. The electric car is designed for urban purposes, such as in cities or towns. The weight of the vehicle is just 600 kilograms. It has the ability to travel at speeds of up to 60 miles per hour and can go for a maximum of 100 miles between recharges.

The designer thinks that motorists will some day be travelling in vehicles like this. Murray believes that the new car will be ‘the most efficient electric vehicle on earth’.

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.

Thursday, March 24, 2005

San Jose, California — A woman eating a bowl of chili at a Wendy’s restaurant bit into a chewy bit that turned out to be a human finger. She immediately spat it out, warned other patrons to stop eating, and upon recognizing the object as a finger, vomited.

“I’m more of a Carl’s Jr. person,” the 39-year-old Las Vegas woman, Anna Ayala, told Knight Ridder. She said this incident was her first visit to a Wendy’s restaurant. Ayala described how she found the finger, “Suddenly something crunchy was in my mouth,” she continued, “and I spit it out.”

According to Devina Cordero, 20, after Ayala found the finger, she ran up to her and Cordero’s boyfriend and said, “Don’t eat it! Look, there’s a human finger in our chili.”

“We went up to the counter and they told us it was a vegetable,” Cordero continued. “The people from Wendy’s were poking it with a spoon.”

The restaurant is located at 1405 Monterey Highway, just south of downtown San Jose.

Wikinews reporter David Vasquez drove his car up to the drive-thru menu and found that chili was still on the menu, at a price of US$1.19 for a small serving. He also witnessed workers unloading supplies from a semi-trailer truck in the restaurant’s parking lot, and carting them into the back door of the establishment.

According to Ben Gale, director of environmental health for Santa Clara County, the finger did not come from any of the employees at the restaurant. “We asked everybody to show us they have 10 fingers and everything is OK there,” he said. The found portion of the finger likely belonged to a woman because of its long and manicured fingernail, also found in the food.

Officials seized the food supply at the restaurant and are tracing it back to the manufacturer, where they believe the finger may have gotten mixed in with the raw ingredients used to prepare the chili. The restaurant’s operators were later permitted to re-open after preparing new chili prepared from fresh ingredients.

As this story was filed, there was no mention of the incident on the Wendy’s corporate web site. Wendy’s issued a statement through a spokesman.

“Food safety is of utmost importance to us,” said Wendy’s spokesman Joe Desmond. He referred to the incident as an “unsubstantiated claim.”

“We are cooperating fully with the local police and health departments with their investigation. It’s important not to jump to conclusions. Here at Wendy’s we plan to do right by our customers,” Desmond said.

According to county health officials, the unfortunate woman who bit into the finger is doing fine, despite her initial reaction. Officials also noted that the finger would have been cooked at a high enough temperature to destroy any viruses.

The Santa Clara county medical examiner reported that the finger had a solid fingerprint, although investigators did not say if a search of fingerprint databases would be performed to find the owner of the finger.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Wikinews interviewed author Amy Scobee about her book Scientology – Abuse at the Top, and asked her about her experiences working as an executive within the organization. Scobee joined the organization at age 14, and worked at Scientology’s international management headquarters for several years before leaving in 2005. She served as a Scientology executive in multiple high-ranking positions, working out of the international headquarters of Scientology known as “Gold Base”, located in Gilman Hot Springs near Hemet, California.

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

A grassroots movement known as Restore the Fourth, dedicated to the protection of the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution, are to hold protests countrywide on July 4. The planned protests come in the wake of information about NSA surveillance leaked last month, notably the PRISM surveillance program and the collection of Verizon phone records. Wikinews interviewed Jett, a national organizer from this recently created movement.

((Wikinews)) First of all, could you explain what Restore the Fourth is all about?

Jett: At its core, RestoreTheFourth is about protecting citizens’ constitutional rights. Specifically, we’re dedicated to bringing awareness and action to the expanding overreach and elimination of the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution.

((WN)) What is your role at Restore the Fourth?

Jett: My job at RestoreTheFourth could be summarized as ‘project coordinator’. Every person who wants to help can help in a tremendous way. I simply make sure that their skills get used in a way that would be most beneficial to the movement: web development, public relations, etc. I also field questions from the press and promote knowledge of our cause.

((WN)) What are your plans for direct action, outreach, etc.?

Jett: Our press release includes a list of ‘demands’ for what we want to see in order to restore our privacy rights, including reform of the PATRIOT Act and increased accountability for public officials. In the very short term, these protests and demonstrations bring awareness to the issue, something that’s really important in enacting reform. In the long term, however, we expect to create a legal organization dedicated to restoring these rights inherent to every American. By partnering with various other organizations that share our moral values, we can further these goals.

On July 4, we will have over 100 protests in all 50 states, showing that the citizens of America are truly serious about protecting their rights.

((WN)) By what means do you hope to achieve such change?

Jett: This movement started only a few weeks ago, and since then we’ve experienced exponential growth and progress. Since the movement is still very young, plans diverge in the long term on what we hope to achieve. Personally, I’d like to see a combination of legislative and litigative action (something like what the ACLU does), and others want to see further plans of action. With organizations such as the BORDC, stopwatching.us and the EFF behind us, I feel that we can achieve all of this and much more.

((WN)) Is the movement US-only or will it extend to other jurisdictions as well? Do you think it would be fair for the US to spy on non-citizens?

Jett: I believe that rights are inherent to all humans, not only United States citizens. In the long term I’d certainly like to see people of all nations protected from the slow elimination of privacy that we’re all experiencing.

((WN)) What do you think about Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing?

Jett: I think that too much attention is being given to his personality instead of what he fought for. He’s being treated as a ‘martyr’ of sorts. It seems to distract from what he truly believed in — transparency for the government and inherent privacy for all Americans.

((WN)) What do you think about his future, given the legal grey zone in which he currently is?

Jett: Hard to say. He may be captured by any number of agencies, or he may live a free man. Whatever happens, he has the eyes of millions of people on him, all of whom will yell very loudly if anything occurs.

((WN)) Thank you very much for your time.

Jett: Thanks for the opportunity.

Saturday, April 12, 2008

On the back of new restrictions being imposed on eBay users in the United Kingdom requiring that sellers offer PayPal payments for all sales, eBay Australia is mandating that only PayPal payments will be acceptable as of June 17. PayPal is a wholly-owned subsidiary of eBay, and charges a 30¢ transaction fee, plus a commission between 1.1% for high volume traders, and 2.4% for low value or low volume traders. These higher costs will be passed onto buyers.

Cash payment on pick up will be the only other payment option, and it may only be offered in conjunction with PayPal.

eBay has brought in this restriction under the guise of improving customer protection, bolstering its “Paypal Buyer Protection” insurance programme to allow claims up to A$20,000 instead of the previous maximum of $3,000, however as of June 17 many of the items which would exceed $3,000 are no longer covered by the programme, such as services, vehicles, real estate and businesses.

eBay Trust and Safety director Alastair MacGibbon said this change was not in response to the once-off fund established in March to refund eBay buyers who lost their non-existent holiday accommodation packages from the Melbourne eBay seller Robert Kobis. Mr MacGibbon said “It is part of a much larger initiative”.

In addition to these measures, Paypal will be withholding funds from some sellers for 21 days

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has held discussion with eBay, but declined to comment. The Australian Consumers Association spokesman Christopher Zinn said the unique use of PayPal could give rise to competition issues, however if the costs charged stayed as they were, they had no further concerns.