Archives October 2022

Thursday, March 17, 2005

Two dog attacks in a week puts Spotsylania County authorities in the spotlight to take action on pet owners for their dog’s behavior. In unrelated incidences, an elderly woman was killed and another woman was bitten. Three dogs have been shot dead by police.

An 82 year old woman was walking her Shih Tzu breed of dog in her front yard last week when she came under attack by three Pit Bulls. She died being transported to the hospital after police responded and shot two of the attacking dogs. They later captured the third dog and euthanized it.

More recently, a 31 year old woman was bitten on her hand during a fight that ensued between two Pit Bulls in her back yard. The responding police officer shot the aggressor dog.

Public outcry over the death of the elderly woman stirred procecutors to charge the dogs’ owner, Deeana Large, with involuntary manslaughter. This is a first for the Commonwealth of Virginia where charges that carry a maximum penalty of 10 years are leveled in a case involving a pet’s owner. In order to gain an indictment, prosecuters will have to prove the dogs’ owner was criminally negligent. In the biting incident, the attacking dog’s owner faces a misdemeanor charge of letting the dog run at large.

Deeana Large, who initially said she owned only 1 of the 3 dogs involved in the mauling case, has not yet been formally charged and awaits indictment. Investigators in the case say there were earlier reports of her dogs allegedly killing a German Shepard and a kittten in her neighborhood. Complaints by neighbors spurred an animal control officer to be looking for the dogs at the time the woman was killed.

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.

Friday, March 26, 2021

On Tuesday, higher than average amounts of precipitation have ceased in New South Wales (NSW), south of Queensland, and north-east of South Australia. Over the course of the prior five days, these heavy rains caused floods and hazards to farms and dwellings, with up to a month quantity of rainfall falling within 48 hours on Monday and Tuesday in some areas, notably 150mm of rain at the Great Dividing Range, Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) reported.

On Tuesday, BoM said the situation reportedly started to ease, with rains moving towards the east, but emphasised the water levels were continuing to rise in some areas and many flood alerts remained active. Meteorologists said the eastern areas may clear from floodwater quickly, the other regions to the west of the Great Dividing Range would be affected for much longer, potentially weeks or months before the water levels come back to normal. Thick fog was likely to occur at approximately this coming weekend as air temperatures drop below dew point at night and mist may develop, meteorologists warned, as News.com.au reported.

In Taree, NSW, ABC News reported multiple cows rescues in rivers and in the surf, and an instance of a dwelling being reportedly swept from premises on a wedding day of its owners. ABC News reported a farmer losing his animals and his house at Mid-North Coast. Of residential areas, Hawkesbury continued to experience raising levels of flood as of Monday. Ian Wright, a researcher from Western Sydney University, commented saying the floods in Hawkesbury are dangerous due to the terrain and rigorous water supply from adjacent rivers to the area, citing a related publication about it by the State Emergency Service.

On Monday, NSW Police has rescued a 80-year old woman trapped in a car at River Road, Wyong, Central Coast, with the car subsequently falling into the river shortly after the rescue was completed.

Local authorities warned people to stay away from flooded areas. Bureau of Meteorology issued Road Weather Alert for Sydney for all suburbs on Monday. Government agencies, including Disaster recovery officer Simon Oliver, from the Department of Primary Industries, said the government would offer support to people affected by the flood. Oliver said, “While it’s still early days, we are planning to provide support including emergency fodder as well as support for those who need to move or dispose of stock [animals].”

BoM reported the weather may clear on Wednesday as a warmer, drier mass of air was expected to increase, with a coastal low entering Bass Strait on Wednesday.

Since March 16, Australian BoM has issued severe weather, marine wind, hazardous surf, and numerous minor to major flood warnings for the affected areas. La Niña was nearing its end, with the effects persisting in late March and early April, Bureau of Meteorology reported last week.

Monday, June 23, 2008

2008 COMPUTEX Taipei, the largest trade fair since its inception in 1982, featured several seminars and forums, expansions on show spaces to TWTC Nangang, great transformations for theme pavilions, and WiMAX Taipei Expo, mainly promoted by Taipei Computer Association (TCA). Besides of ICT industry, “design” progressively became the critical factor for the future of the other industries. To promote innovative “Made In Taiwan” products, pavilions from “Best Choice of COMPUTEX”, “Taiwan Excellence Awards”, and newly-set “Design and Innovation (d & i) Award of COMPUTEX”, demonstrated the power of Taiwan’s designs in 2008 COMPUTEX Taipei.

Saturday, August 26, 2006

Elizabeth May has been elected leader of the Green Party of Canada today, winning the position with 2,145 votes or 65.34 per cent of ballot cast. She beat her nearest rival, environmental consultant and Green deputy leader David Chernushenko by a margin of almost 2 to 1. Jim Fannon, the third candidate, finished far back with only 29 votes. The new leader will replace Jim Harris, who stepped down after holding the position since 2003.

In her acceptance speech, May called on the federal government to give notice that Canada will withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement in order to force the United States to renegotiate the treaty.

May, a long-time environmental activist and former executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada takes over the party which received 4.5 per cent of the popular vote in the last federal election, enough to secure over $1 million a year in federal funding but not enough to elect any of its candidates to the Canadian House of Commons. Chernushenko won the highest vote percentage of any Green candidate in the January election winning 10% of the vote in Ottawa Centre.

“We draw pretty much equally from across the entire political spectrum,” Jim Harris told CBC News. “If you were a Progressive Conservative, as I was, where do you go? The Green party supports Kyoto. We were opposed to the war in Iraq and yet at the same time we’re fiscally responsible. This is something that’s attractive to people.”

“What we need to do is clearly build a method and a platform so that they are not voting for ‘none of the above’ but so that they are voting for ‘all my dreams,’ ” said May after her victory.

The race has brought new people to the party with membership rising from 5,517 to 8,694 in recent months.

Saturday, July 9, 2005

After a press conference in London from the Metropolitan Police and Transport for London, more details are emerging about the attacks in London on Thursday.

Data from the Underground system’s power and control systems have revealed that all three bombs went off within 50 seconds of each other, at 8.50am, with the managing director of Transport for London, Tim O’Toole saying the bombs went “bang bang bang, very close together”.

The first bomb to detonate was on the Liverpool Street train soon after it left for Aldgate on the Circle line, seconds before the others. The blast tripped out the power system, visible in the control room. The first call the police received that morning reported “a bang” at Aldgate East, coming within a minute of the blast.

The Edgware Road train, leaving for Paddington and also on the Circle, exploded opposite a train coming from the other direction, making people think at first that it was a derailment. The first call to the Police spoke not of an explosion, but of a person falling under the wheels of the train. The confirmation of a bomb did not come until 9.17am, but by that time the emergency services were already on scene.

Transport for London’s new TrackerNet software is fully opertational on the Circle line, which allows for precise tracking of trains, but is not yet fully installed on the Piccadilly line. The first indication of the Piccadilly line bomb was when the tunnel telephone system wires were cut by the blast, an event logged by other software. The cutting of the lines then tripped out the track current. The tunnel itself suffered only slight damage and is safe, but the train – which was packed with commuters heading for Russell Square – is very badly damaged.

London Underground declared a ‘code Amber’ within minutes, moving trains to platforms and opening all doors. A ‘code Red’ – full evacuation – was set at around 9.15am. O’Toole described the decision to evacuate as being “very grave, not taken lightly”. When questioned as to whether everything possible had been done on the day to save lives, the managing director of Transport for London was “very proud” of the choices made that morning.

As investigations continue, all bodies have been removed from the sub-surface Circle line trains, but the carriages themselves are still in situ while a painstaking forensic investigation takes place.

Currently, work is on-going to retrieve bodies and forensic evidence from the carriage of the train in the deep tunnel of the Piccadilly line near King’s Cross. Teams of rescue workers looking for human remains are working alongside forensics experts in a “meticulous” search to find evidence.

Conditions are described as being very difficult, with high temperatures and lots of dust. Work was halted over Friday night when conditions became too bad, and resumed this morning. Efforts have been made to improve the ventilation.

Work will continue throughout tonight and possibly into Sunday. The exact number of bodies still in the wrecked carriage is unknown.

Access from King’s Cross is impossible, so workers are taking the longer route from Russell Square station to get to the front of the train.

Police have revealed that the bombs were ‘high explosives’ – not homemade. However they are declining to be specific about their composition as the information could be useful when they interrogate suspects.

Police will not confirm or deny if any parts of a timer have been found, but have said that “any device will now be in a million pieces”. Police believe the use of timers more likely than suicide bombings as the blasts were so closely timed, but are not ruling out anything.

Friday, May 28, 2010

A man accused of being a serial killer has appeared in Bradford magistrates court in West Yorkshire today charged with three counts of murder. 40-year-old Stephen Griffiths is accused of killing Suzanne Blamires, 36, Susan Rushworth, 43, and Shelley Armitage, 31, all prostitutes.

Griffiths, a former van driver with a degree in psychology and studying for a PhD in criminology, gave his name as “Crossbow Cannibal” when asked. He has been in police custody since Monday when police were alerted to a CCTV recording that appeared to show a murder.

A caretaker had been reviewing footage from the flats where Griffiths lives when he saw footage of a woman and a man enter a flat early on Saturday morning. Two minutes later, she ran out and was followed by the man, who beat her to the ground and shot her in the head with a crossbow. Over the course of the weekend, the man was seen several times with bin bags and a rucksack.

On Tuesday, the day after the arrest of Griffiths, Blamires’ remains were found in the River Aire in nearby Shipley. She had been cut into several pieces and her head was located in a rucksack. Police continue to search for the other two alleged victims; Rushworth has been missing since June last year and Armitage vanished in April.

Police have searched much of Bradford’s red-light district, where Griffiths’ third-floor flat is located. Forensic investigations at the flat are expected to last around three weeks. There are plans to search landfill sites for bodies, and police may yet expand the inquiry to cover three more cold cases, although at present they have not been linked to the current inquiry.

Sniffer dogs have been used throughout the city, and police have been taking away plastic evidence bags. Some alleyways remain closed off. Police charged their suspect yesterday.

Griffiths was known as “the lizard man” in his block of flats owing to his habit of walking his two pet monitor lizards in the area. One neighbour is reported to have quoted him as saying he was studying for “a PhD in murder and Jack the Ripper,” and he has spent time in a high-security psychiatric hospital. During his five-minute court appearance he did not enter a plea, kept his head bowed and fidgeted with his cuffed hands. He said “Here, I guess,” when asked for his address.

As he stood in the glass-fronted dock, guarded by three security officers, he was watched by the families of Rushworth and Armitage, who were accompanied by police family liaison officers. Blamires’ family chose not to be present, but the victim’s mother Nicky Blamires, 54, has told the press that Suzanne was a “much-loved” family member even though she “went down the wrong path and did not have the life she was meant to have.” “Nobody deserves this,” she said. “All these girls were human beings and people’s daughters.”

Griffiths’ morning court appearance was followed by a second one this afternoon, at Bradford Crown Court. This time, he confirmed his name without incident. He was remanded into custody until next month, when he will appear in court again.

British media has been quick to compare the case to Peter Sutcliffe, dubbed the “Yorkshire Ripper”. Sutcliffe was a Bradford killer responsible for thirteen murders and seven attempted murders, including several prostitutes. Since his 1981 conviction he has spent most of the last three decades in Broadmoor high-security psychiatric hospital near London.

Friday, July 28, 2006

An early medieval Christian Psalter (prayer book) was discovered in a bog in the Midland Region of Ireland on July 25, 2006, prompting some to term it the Irish version of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The psalter was found by a worker excavating peat from the bog. The worker immediately covered the book with damp soil, as exposure to dry air after so many centuries of dampness might have destroyed it. He was praised by Dr. Patrick Wallace, director of the National Museum of Ireland, for doing that. The book was found open to the page of Psalm 83.

The Psalter is currently kept under refrigeration at the National Museum while researchers determine how to open the book without damaging the book’s pages and possibly destroying it.