Monday, March 20, 2006

Fears of contaminated bone and skin grafts are being felt by unsuspecting patients following the revelation that funeral homes may have been looting corpses.

Janet Evans of Marion Ohio was told by her surgeon, “The bone grafts you got might have been contaminated”. She reacted with shock, “I was flabbergasted because I didn’t even know what he was talking about. I didn’t know I got a bone graft until I got this call. I just thought they put in screws and rods.”

The body of Alistair Cooke, the former host of “Masterpiece Theatre,” was supposedly looted along with more than 1,000 others, according to two law enforcement officials close to the case. The tissue taken was typically skin, bone and tendon, which was then sold for use in procedures such as dental implants and hip replacements. According to authorities, millions of dollars were made by selling the body parts to companies for use in operations done at hospitals and clinics in the United States and Canada.

A New Jersey company, Biomedical Tissue Services, has reportedly been taking body parts from funeral homes across Brooklyn, New York. According to ABC News, they set up rooms like a “surgical suite.” After they took the bones, they replaced them with PVC pipe. This was purportedly done by stealth, without approval of the deceased person or the next of kin. 1,077 bodies were involved, say prosecuters.

Investagators say a former dentist, Michael Mastromarino, is behind the operation. Biomedical was considered one of the “hottest procurement companies in the country,” raking in close to $5 million. Eventually, people became worried: “Can the donors be trusted?” A tissue processing company called LifeCell answered no, and issued a recall on all their tissue.

Cooke’s daughter, Susan Cooke Kittredge, said, “To know his bones were sold was one thing, but to see him standing truncated before me is another entirely.” Now thousands of people around the country are receiving letters warning that they should be tested for infectious diseases like HIV or hepatitis. On February 23, the Brooklyn District Attorney indicted Mastromarino and three others. They are charged with 122 felony counts, including forgery and bodysnatching.

Friday, April 25, 2008

On Wednesday, long-time White House correspondent Helen Thomas questioned White House Press Secretary Dana Perino bluntly and repeatedly about United States President George W. Bush’s recent confirmation that he had approved CIA interrogation policies that included waterboarding.

“Where is everybody?” asked Thomas, apparently frustrated with lack of attention her colleagues had given the issue. The community at the social news site reddit answered “Here we are”; a message they plan to deliver along with several thousand dollars in flowers and other gifts.

Thomas’s questions became front-page news on reddit this morning, via a Think Progress blog post that includes a C-SPAN 2 video clip of Thomas during yesterday’s press briefing. Noting the president’s repeated assertion that the U.S. does not torture, Thomas characterized the authorized interrogation techniques as torture.

“Now he has admitted that he did sign off on torture, he did know about it,” said Thomas, “so how do you reconcile this credibility gap?”

Perino reiterated that the “United States has not, is not torturing any detainees in the global war on terror.”

Whether waterboarding, among other techniques, should be categorized as torture has been a subject of political contention in recent months. Thomas was unequivocal, responding to Perino: “That’s not my question. My question is, why did he say publicly ‘we do not torture’, when he really did know that we do?”

In appreciation of the reporter asking “A REAL QUESTION” (as the headline put it), reddit users (known as “redditors”) have collected over $3,000 for the purchase of flowers, edible arrangements and other gifts. Several ‘redditors’ also claimed to have ordered flowers for Thomas independently.

The bulk of the money was collected through Chipin.com, on a donation page created Micah Fitch, a musician and graphic designer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. As of publication, the site registered 400 contributors for a total of $3,125. Fitch also created a wiki, FlowersWiki, for organizing the gift purchases and selecting messages to go with them. A large delivery to the Washington D.C. offices of Thomas’s employer Hearst Newspapers is being scheduled for Friday morning.

One redditor claims that a friend who works for The Daily Show is pitching the story to the show’s staff.

This is not the first time Thomas has received a high-volume flower gift. In 2006, an e-mail campaign that began on the political website Democratic Underground collected over $2000 and resulted in delivery of 108 dozen roses.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced today that an Order in Council will be made tomorrow empowering the British Treasury to prevent the funding of those suspected of planning terror. Use will be made of forensic accounting and of methods similar to those employed by the code breakers at Bletchley Park. With the help of computing power to discover relations between bits of information, they cracked the German Enigma code during WWII. Gordon Brown ranks the impact of forensic accounting at the present time with the use of fingerprinting in the 19th century and of DNA in the late 20th Century.

Speaking to Chatham House, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, Brown defined the most dangerous sources of finance for terrorists as being charities, money service businesses and financial transactions such as bureaux de change, cheque cashers and money remitters. There will be a new licensing system requiring firms to keep more detailed records of transactions. Tougher action against non-compliance is promised. New proposals about money laundering are being prepared.

The new Order will empower the Treasury, for the first time, to use closed source evidence from classified intelligence to freeze the assets of suspects. A special advocate procedure will be put in place to ensure “fair and consistent hearing of cases”. If evidence shows it to be necessary, it is Brown’s opinion that suspects should be held, without a charge being brought, for more than the present 28 days.

The Government has been defeated once already in Parliament in an attempt, in the Terrorism Act 2006, to increase the present 28 days of detention without charge to 90 days. Public opinion was very divided on that proposal and feelings in Parliament ran high with talk of a police state and of the Government pandering to public opinion.

A compilation of brief news reports forSunday, October 22, 2006

October 20, 2006

The UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has urged the Lebanese government to speed up the process of disarming the Hezbollah. Annan said that transforming Hezbollah into a solely political party with no armed branch should bring the country a step closer to full sovereignty.

October 19, 2006

Early this morning at approximately 5 a.m. local time, the weapons warehouse in Para?in, Serbia caught on fire. Most of the weapons in the warehouse were the explosives so there were explosions in the warehouse for more than 1 hour. Approximately 8 people were wounded in the accident; among them were a few policemen.

October 18, 2006

On Tuesday morning, United States President George Bush signed into law the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

October 18, 2006

The government of Iran has banned service providers from offering high-speed internet access, of speeds above 128kbps. The telecom regulator declined to explain the reasons for the ban, which is seen by a pro-reformist newspaper, Etemad as part of an effort to counter western “cultural invasion”.

October 17, 2006

A subway train in Rome collided with another in Vittorio station. At least one woman has died and 60 people are injured.

Friday, July 1, 2005

Today, Romania introduces its new redenominated currency, the new leu (code: RON), which is valued at 10,000 old lei (code: ROL). The process, which is known as redenomination, started in March 2005 when Romania started dual-currency display and all prices had to be displayed in both the old leu and the new leu. Starting from today, the first notes and coins of the new leu will become legal tender, and the new leu will become the official currency of Romania.

The redenomination (or conversion from the old to the new leu) is simple — 10,000 old lei are replaced by 1 new leu. One US dollar will buy 2.98 new lei, while one euro will buy 3.6 new lei. After the similar redenomination by Turkey the old leu had been the world’s least valued currency unit, with the US dollar buying 29,891 lei and the euro buying 36,050 lei (on 30 June 2005). With the introduction of the new leu, Romania’s currency will be among the most highly-valued in the region.

The new leu notes and coins, introduced into circulation today, will circulate alongside the old lei until 31 December 2006, when the dual-currency period ends and all of the old lei are expected to be withdrawn. However, old lei can be exchanged at banks indefinitely.

The new notes come into denominations of 1, 5, 10, 50, 100 and 500 new lei. The largest note of the old leu was 1,000,000 lei, or 100 new lei. The largest note of the new leu is worth 500 new lei, or approximately US$167 and €139. New leu notes will also have the same dimensions as euro notes of similar value. Additionally, they will use the same colours and design as their corresponding old leu equivalent (for example, the 100 lei note will look similar to the 1,000,000 old lei note).

All notes will be printed on polymer materials. Romania was the first country in Europe to introduce polymer notes, in 1999.

Friday, April 12, 2013

On Wednesday, the Internet hacking collective Anonymous vowed to publish the names of the four suspects involved in the alleged rape of Canadian Rehtaeh Parsons, who committed suicide last week.

A message sent to Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) by the hacktivist group called “for immediate legal action” in the case, citing that “If we [Anonymous] were able to locate these boys within 2 hours, it will not be long before someone else finds them.”

This latest operation by the group, dubbed “Operation Justice For Rehtaeh”, led to expression of concern among the members of the RCMP. In an interview with the National Post, Nova Scotia Justice Minister Ross Landry spoke of the dangers of releasing this crucial information in this ongoing investigation, “We don’t want another child taking their life because some vigilante group think it’s OK … maybe it’s a wrong name — then what would they do to someone?”

The 17-year-old Parsons was taken off life support on Sunday following an attempt to take her own life days before. Her mother erected a Facebook page celebrating the life of her daughter as well as acknowledging the true reasons for her daughters tragic passing, “Rehtaeh is gone today because of the four boys that thought that raping a 15-year-old girl was okay, and to distribute a photo to ruin her spirit and reputation would be fun.”