Sunday, April 10, 2005

The Cambridge city council adopted a resolution on April 4 to request that the US Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) “take explicit account” of the activities of local construction firm W. R. Grace, which has previously contaminated an industrial area near the Alewife train station with asbestos. The council cited Grace’s “extraordinarily extensive and well-documented history of contaminating sites and concealing the contamination” as the reason for its request.

The resolution was a reaction to a Response Action Outcome Statement and Risk Characterization (RAO) that W. R. Grace filed with the DEP. The Cambridge Chronicle recently took the filing as evidence that “the state seems poised to stop watching over” the contaminated site.

In February, W.R. Grace was indicted by a federal grand jury for contamination as a product of vermiculite mining operations in Libby, Montana, USA. The company was also charged with “concealing information about the health affects [sic] of its asbestos mining operations.”

Friday, September 15, 2006

Jesse Sullivan has two cybernetic arms, after electrical burns suffered while working as an electrical utility lineman resulted in amputation of both his arms at the shoulder. Claudia Mitchell has a similar cybernetic left arm, after a motorcycle accident resulted in amputation. Sullivan and Mitchell shook hands with these thought-controlled prosthetic arms at an event staged Thursday in Washington, D.C. by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Center for Artificial Limbs at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.

Unlike traditional prosthetic limbs, these are actuated through muscle reinnervation; nerves are grafted onto specific muscles, controlling their contraction, which are then detected by electrode sensors and control the prosthetic limb. “Basically it is connecting the dots. Finding the nerves. We have to free the nerves and see how far they reach,” says Dr. Todd Kuiken, developer of the prostheses and director of neuroengineering at the Rehabilitation Institute. By this chain of communication the prostheses utilize thought-controlled biomechanics. According to Sullivan, “When I use the new prosthesis I just do things. I don’t have to think about it … I do all the yard work. I take out the garbage.”

DARPA, as an agency of the United States Department of Defense, seeks to eventually provide such prostheses for soldiers losing their organic limbs in combat. “We’re excited about collaborating with the military,” said Kuiken. 411 U.S. troops in Iraq and 37 in Afghanistan have had wounds that cost them at least one limb according to the Army Medical Command.

Monday, February 8, 2010

Commander Ali Dizaei of London’s Metropolitan Police Service today became the most senior officer anywhere in the United Kingdom to be convicted of offences by a court. Dizaei, who was branded a “criminal in uniform” by Independent Police Complaints Commission chair Nick Hardwick, has been jailed for four years after he attempted to frame an Iraqi businessman.

It took a Southwark Crown Court jury under three hours to find Dizaei guilty of misconduct in a public office and attempting to pervert the course of justice. The charges carried a maximum of life imprisonment.

Dizaei, 47, who is head of the National Black Police Association, had gone to the Yas Persian restaurant, run by one of his friends, and taken his wife Shy with him. They then went to their car and struck up a conversation through its open window with the restaurant’s manager. During this conversation they were approached by Waad al-Baghdadi, an Iraqi website designer in his twenties. He requested that Dizaei pay £600 that he owed Baghdadi, who had constructed his website.

According to the Crown, this dispute had been ongoing for months and Dizaei had been attempting to intimidate Baghdadi. He told the Iraqi to depart when he entered the restaurant; although the businessman did, he stayed nearby and rang the 999 emergency number.

The exact content of the argument that led up to this is unclear. Dizaei and his wife testified that Baghdadi was abusive and threatening, telling the officer he would “extract the money out of your throat” while the owner of the Yas said he was “a crook basically… His history … everybody knows he’s not a good gentleman,” said owner Sohrab Eshragi. Eshragi said that the request Baghdadi leave the premises was due to concerns of trouble, claiming Baghdadi had been in a previous fight. Baghdadi denied the allegations and the court rejected Dizaei’s version of events.

While Baghdadi was making his emergency call, Dizaei arrested him and made a 999 call of his own. He requested assistence from other officers, and said that Baghdadi had assaulted him by stabbing his stomach with a shisha pipe. He maintained this account when police arrived and kept it up in written statements, but although Baghdadi was found to be carrying such a pipe examination of Dizaei’s wounds by a police doctor concluded he had inflicted them upon himself.

A Home Office pathologist questioned this finding for the defence. Dr. Nat Cary said it was based on a “fundamentally flawed approach,” and that the injuries were consistent with Dizaei’s version of events. He has helped investigate the assassination of former Pakistani PM Benazir Bhutto, and the death newspaper seller Ian Thomlinson, the latter of whom died during a G20 protest.

The Crown further alleged that Dizaei told Baghdadi “I’ll fuck your life… You think I don’t know what you do in London… I’ll find every single detail of your life in London.” The prosecution case was presented by Peter Wright QC, who has prosecuted in trials over serial murders of Suffolk sex workers and a plot to bomb transatlantic airliners. He said that Dizaei’s actions were a “wholesale abuse of power by a senior police officer for entirely personal and oblique motives.”

Judge Justice Simon said that Dizaei had committed a “grave breach of public trust” and told him “This sentence needs to send a clear message that police officers of whatever rank are not above the law.” A Crown Prosecution Service spokesman said outside the court that “He abused his power and ignored his responsibility,” and that while corruption was unacceptable in any police officer it was particularly so in a senior member of the forces. “The public should have confidence that we will prosecute anyone, regardless of their position, if they commit serious offences. We believe justice has been served for the victim and the public.”

“[I]f he [Dizaei] had been successful, Mr al-Baghdadi may have been sent to prison,” noted Hardwick. “Mr al-Baghdadi has shown tremendous strength of character throughout this case ? from the moment he was confronted by Ali Dizaei, throughout our investigation, and finally when giving evidence at court. We are grateful for the confidence he placed in the IPCC and, as a result of that, justice has been done today.”

Dizaei has been a policeman for 24 years, and at one stage was rumoured to be destined to take control of the Metropolitan Police, although the Metropolitan Police Authority may now choose to end this career. His trial, which began this month, is his second this decade. He was prosecuted in 2003 but cleared of any wrongdoing. The incident with Baghdadi was in June 2008 and Dizaei has been suspended on full pay since September of that year. Hardwick said that “The greatest threat to the reputation of the police service is criminals in uniform like Dizaei.”

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania — Local caterers get ready for big business, as almost three thousand fans converge on the David L. Lawrence Convention Center over the Independence Day weekend for the world’s largest ever furry convention, Anthrocon 2007.

Many hope to renew acquaintances, or meet new friends. Others look to buy from dealers and artists, or show off new artwork or costumes. Some attend to make money, or even learn a thing or two. But one thing unites them: They’re all there to have fun.

Monday, January 10, 2005

Around seventy new species of microbes have been discovered in a highly concentrated salt basin of the Mediterranean Sea, so salty that almost half of the liquid is magnesium chloride. Researchers, led by Paul van der Wielen at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, found abundant colonies of halophile microbes in ancient salty pockets that are devoid of oxygen.

It has been suggested that pools of a similar liquid might be able to exist on Mars, providing a possible niche for simple life to exist there.

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.

Tuesday, May 3, 2005

The animated series Family Guy returned to the FOX television network with a new episode Sunday for the first time since it was taken off the schedule three years ago. Although the show kept most of its audience that lead-in The Simpsons gave, FOX was still fourth out of five major broadcast networks in the half-hour, losing most notably to ABC‘s hit Desperate Housewives (UPN, the other major American broadcast network, does not air original programming on Sundays).

However, the season premiere of Family Guy and the series debut of American Dad (which helped usher in what the network termed “The New FOX Sunday”) helped bring FOX to the #2 spot out of five networks in the crucial 18 to 49 demographic, one of the most important to advertisers in the key May sweeps period. “Sweeps” occurs four times a year and helps networks and independent affiliates determine how much a fixed amount of time for commercial advertisement will cost (the higher the ratings, the more revenue for the networks selling the time to advertisers).

On the whole, Family Guy averaged a 6.3 rating in the overnights as posted by Zap2It. While the overnight ratings are fairly accurate, the numbers are preliminary and are subject to minor change. One ratings point is equal to 1,096,000 households, as there are now 109,600,000 households in the United States with at least one television. This translates into a little more than 6.9 million households whose sets were tuned into Family Guy, as recorded by the sample of “Nielsen families,” who record their viewing habits and contribute to the ratings process the US uses. The use of the word “share” in the article means that it is the rough percentage of viewers with their sets on at that hour tuning into a certain program. For example, nine percent of viewers in the United States with their televisions on at 9 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time were tuned to Family Guy.

This only added up to a 9 household share for the hour, compared to an 11 share for Law & Order: Criminal Intent on NBC, a 14 share for a CBS Hallmark Hall of Fame movie of the week (traditionally only aired during the key sweeps periods), and a 23 share for the aforementioned Desperate Housewives. Averaged with the performance of American Dad, a cartoon produced by Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, FOX earned a mere 5.8 rating/9 share for the hour.

The episode revolved around a big scheme Peter Griffin, the main character of the series, conjured. To give his wife Lois (who no longer finds him sexually attractive) a second honeymoon in order to “spice up” their love life, he pretends to be actor Mel Gibson so they can stay in a new luxury hotel for free. Peter stumbles upon a sequel to the film The Passion of the Christ, and vows to keep the movie from ever seeing the light of day. To get the movie back, Gibson kidnaps Lois and keeps her captive on top of Mount Rushmore, which leads to a scene in which the three battle on top of the monument, in a homage to the film North by Northwest.