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Friday, January 4, 2008

A new study amongst doctors in the United States on the use of placebos—pills with no medical effect—shows that almost half of the questioned practitioners prescribe placebos, most of them within the last year.

The majority of 466 faculty physicians at Chicago-area medical schools interviewed by a research group of the University of Chicago stated that placebos are useful to calm a patient down or to respond to demands for medication that the doctor disagrees with, i.e. “to get the patient to stop complaining”.

96 percent of the physicians surveyed believe that placebos can have therapeutic effects. Close to 40 percent stated that placebos could benefit patents physiologically as well as mentally.

Twelve percent of surveyed physicians think that placebos should be banned from clinical practice. Among the doctors who prescribed them, one in five said they outright lied to patients by claiming a placebo was medication. But more often the physicians came up with ways to explain like that “this may help you but I’m not sure how it works.”

The American Medical Association (AMA), the largest association of U.S. doctors and medical students, tells its members that “[p]hysicians may use placebos for diagnosis or treatment only if the patient is informed of and agrees to its use.” The research, published in Journal of General Internal Medicine this week, is the first major U.S. study of doctors on the use of placebos since 1979.

Tuesday, May 2, 2006

An Armavia Airbus 320 passenger plane flying from Armenia‘s capital, Yerevan, to the city of Sochi in southern Russia has crashed into the Black Sea. The jet was found 6 km from the coast and carried a total of 113 people. Among the passengers were 8 crew and 6 children. Controllers lost contact with the plane at 0215 local time (Tuesday 2215 UTC).

Rescuers have found the corpses of a woman and a girl and another 12 body parts at the site of Wednesday’s crash of Armenia’s Airbus A-320 plane off Russia’s Black Sea coast, a spokesman for the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office told Interfax. Other reports say that at least 25 bodies have been found.

There were 77 Armenian citizens, 26 Russian citizens, 1 Ukrainian and 1 Georgian citizen on board of the Armenian air liner, Armenian Civil Aviation Department head Artyom Movsisian told on a news conference.

“Most of the Russian citizens are of Armenian origin,” Movsisian said.

“Rescue efforts are being hampered by deteriorating weather conditions, heavy rain and rough seas,” a spokesman for the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry said.

“The fragments were found six km (3.7 miles) from the shore near the airport of Adler. The search operation continues,” said Beltsov. The location of the crash site has been ascertained by a numerous fragments and life vests, and a large oil slick.

“The only thing [we] know is that when the crew asked for permission to land, the air controller in Sochi responded that bad weather meant this was not yet possible,” Gayane Davtyan, head of Armenia’s civilian aviation authority said. “Contact with the crew was lost at 600 meters, when the plane went to circle for a second time.”

The cause of the tragedy remains unclear, but the investigators are pursuing two main versions: bad weather conditions and poor maintenance.

The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office believes terrorism can be ruled out as a factor in the A-320 plane crash near the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi on Wednesday morning.

“We don’t have any information that could indicate a possible terrorist attack on board the plane,” Russian Deputy Prosecutor General Nikolai Shepel told Interfax on Wednesday.

An official from the regional department of the Emergency Situations Ministry in southern Russia said “apparently there were malfunctions on board, as the pilots were making another attempt to land at the Adler airport.”

“The plane was in an ideal technical condition, the crew was well qualified,” said the airline’s deputy commercial director, Andrei Aghajanov. The cause of the crash is under investigation.

In the area where the plane crashed, more rain is expected in the next hours and the water temperature is currently between 8 to 10 degrees celsius.

The Russian and Armenian presidents have announced on Wednesday that Friday, May 5th, would be a day of mourning in remembrance of the 113 people that died in the crash.

The worst crash involving an two-engine A-320, which was first built in 1984 and remains the most popular Airbus on the market, occurred in August 2000, when a Gulf Air plane crashed off Bahrain on a flight from Cairo, killing all 143 people on board. The Airbus A320 is a short-to-medium range commercial passenger aircraft and a total of 328 people have been killed in earlier A320 accidents.

About 20 boats and a Be-200 amphibious aircraft are involved in the recovery operation, emergency services said, adding that two more Be-200s would fly to the scene if necessary. A group of rescuers from the Russian emergency ministry is expected to fly to the crash site in the next few hours.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Italian goalkeeper Carlo Cudicini has been seriously injured in a motorcycle accident in London. The player, who plays for Tottenham Hotspurs, was involved in a collision with a car at 10:30 GMT. The football club reported that he has fractured his wrists and injured his pelvis.

A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police released a statement saying “A 36-year-old male suffered injuries described by the London Ambulance Service as possibly life-changing and was taken to Whipps Cross Hospital for further assessment and treatment”. No arrests have been made.

Cudicini crashed his motorcycle into a Ford Fiesta with a female driver and a child passenger. Neither the driver or passenger were injured in the accident.

Cudicini is the son of former AC Milan goalkeeper Fabio Cudicini. During his career he has played for Lazio, AC Milan and Chelsea. He played for Chelsea for 10 years until he was transferred to Tottenham in January. He made one appearance for the Italian national team.

Sunday, October 7, 2007

Shona Bracken is running for the Communist Party in the Ontario provincial election in Toronto—Danforth. Wikinews interviewed her regarding her values, her experience, and her campaign.

Thursday, December 31, 2009

The Icelandic Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir and her coalition government narrowly escaped a commitment to resign as a €3.8 billion bill to repay British and Dutch savers following the collapse of Icesave online banking passed. The vote margin was only three votes.

Only a matter of hours before the anticipated final vote, Wikileaks announced the disclosure of one of 23 documents suppressed by the Icelandic Minister of Finance: an apparent legal summary of meetings between Icelandic and EU representatives held in Brussels in November 2008. The leaked document discusses the then-assessed liabilities of Iceland at 60% of GDP, considerably higher than the reported 40% which repaying Icesave deposit holders entails.

Amongst the other details in the report is emphasis of the deep-seated anger of the Icelandic people at the situation around the financial collapse, particularly the UK’s use of anti-terrorism legislation in its approach to the country’s banks. Iceland’s interpretation of the situation, and its financial treaty obligations with the EU, considered foreign deposits lost through force majeure. All 27 EU members disagreed with Iceland’s interpretation and Peter Mandelson, although he resigned from the Barroso Commission in October, presented the legal position that Iceland could not pass legislation that did not ensure treaty-mandated minimum balance returns from failed Icelandic banks.

Leaked private communication from Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir, Iceland’s then-foreign minister, compared the potential liabilities the country faced with the reparations imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles in the wake of World War I.

Three banks failed in the financial crisis: Kaupthing, Glitnir, and Landsbanki. As the list of creditors emerged it was found that, among others, UK councils had around £900 million with the banks. Landsbanki agreed to repay the majority of funds held, giving council depositors priority status. Approximately £200 million on deposit with Glitnir is at-risk; the bank has stated the councils will be treated equally with all other creditors seeing them likely to only recover 30% of the amount Glitnir held.

Kaupthing faces other difficulties. The UK’s Serious Fraud Office began an investigation earlier this month into the bank’s UK activities. At issue are allegations savers were misled into selecting one particular account type, plus suspicious financial activity suggesting substantial amounts were moved out of the bank in the days prior to its collapse.

At present, UK councils have received little more than ten percent of their over £900 million deposits. They are among over 8,500 creditors claiming a staggering total of £20 billion. The largest single claimant is the British Depositors’ and Investors’ Guarantee Fund seeking €5 billion, and, of some note, Formula One racing team Williams claiming around £10 million in unpaid sponsorship from Glitnir who took on the liability from the Icelandic buyers of Hamleys.

Debt to 84% government-owned Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) by Glitnir stands at around £500 million; much of the actual debt written off in 2008 as RBS posted £24 billion losses. Further write-offs by the bank are expected to total less than £50 million.

Icelanders resented the discovery that fifteen senior ex-employees of Landsbanki claim €14 million between them, including a single claim of €2.7 million. Suspicion exists that the banks arranged substantial interest-free loans for various of their shareholders and executives.

Today’s announcement of the Icelandic government’s agreement to pay out €3.8 billion keeps their application for EU membership on-track, although each one of the country’s 320,000 citizens effectively faces a €12,000 debt.

Monday, December 2, 2013

Police in the West Midlands in England today said nearly 200 kilograms worth of drugs with value possibly as great as £30 million (about US$49 million or €36 million) has been seized from a unit in the town of Brownhills. In what an officer described as “one of the largest [seizures] in the force’s 39 year history”, West Midlands Police reported recovering six big cellophane-wrapped cardboard boxes containing cannabis, cocaine, and MDMA (“ecstasy”) in a police raid operation on the Maybrook Industrial Estate in the town on Wednesday.

The seized boxes, which had been loaded onto five freight pallets, contained 120 one-kilogram bags of cannabis, 50 one-kilogram bags of MDMA, and five one-kilogram bricks of cocaine. In a press release, West Midlands Police described what happened after officers found the drugs as they were being unloaded in the operation. “When officers opened the boxes they discovered a deep layer of protective foam chips beneath which the drugs were carefully layered”, the force said. “All the drugs were wrapped in thick plastic bags taped closed with the cannabis vacuum packed to prevent its distinctive pungent aroma from drawing unwanted attention.” Police moved the drugs via forklift truck to a flatbed lorry to remove them.

Detective Sergeant Carl Russell of West Midlands Police’s Force CID said the seizure was the largest he had ever made in the 24 years he has been in West Midlands Police and one of the biggest seizures the force has made since its formation in 1974. “The impact this seizure will have on drug dealing in the region and the UK as a whole cannot be underestimated”, he said. “The drugs had almost certainly been packed to order ready for shipping within Britain but possibly even further afield. Our operation will have a national effect and we are working closely with a range of law enforcement agencies to identify those involved in this crime at whatever level.”

Expert testing on the drugs is ongoing. Estimates described as “conservative” suggest the value of the drugs amounts to £10 million (about US$16.4 million or €12 million), although they could be worth as much as £30 million, subject to purity tests, police said.

Police arrested three men at the unit on suspicion of supplying a controlled drug. The men, a 50-year-old from Brownhills, a 51-year-old from the Norton area of Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, and one aged 53 from Brownhills, have been released on bail as police investigations to “hunt those responsible” continue. West Midlands Police told Wikinews no person has yet been charged in connection with the seizure. Supplying a controlled drug is an imprisonable offence in England, although length of jail sentences vary according to the class and quantity of drugs and the significance of offenders’ roles in committing the crime.

Monday, November 12, 2007

In a recent interview with the Dalai Lama’s Representative to the Americas, Tashi Wangdi, David Shankbone remarked to him that Americans have trouble relating to centuries-long conflicts that exist between peoples around the world, including those in Asia. Many Asian countries dislike each other tremendously, and the conflict over Tibet is just one enduring multi-national battle.

According to Vanity Fair contributing editor Craig Unger, it is not that Americans do not have these deep-seeded conflicts; it is that they do not remember them and thus have no context in which to see them as they resurface in our political culture.

On the same day he spoke to the Dalai Lama’s representative, Shankbone sat down with Unger, author of The New York Times best-seller House of Bush, House of Saud. In his new book, The Fall of the House of Bush, Unger attempts to fill in some of the blanks of an epochal narrative in American politics. Using a mix of painstaking research, interviews with cultural and political leaders and delving into previously classified records to come up with some overview of how America has arrived at this particular political moment.

To make sense of such complicated history, Unger draws upon three themes: He illustrates the conflict within the modern Republican Party via the oedipal conflict between George W. Bush and his father, George H.W. Bush. Things are not well within the House of Bush. Bush Jr. has not only shut out his father and his allies from his administration—something Bob Woodward discovered in his interviews with the President—but he also appointed many of his father’s bitterest enemies to key cabinet positions.

Unger’s second theme draws upon this Bush family feud: many of Bush Sr.’s foes happen to be leaders of the neoconservative movement, who had been working against the President’s father since the 1970’s. Back then the neoconservatives did not have a base of political support within the Republican Party, which brings Unger to his third theme: the marriage between the neoconservatives and the Christian right to create a formidable ideological block.

Unger is a Fellow at the Center for Law and Security at NYU’s School of Law. In addition to his work at Vanity Fair, he is a former editor-in-chief of Boston Magazine, and former Deputy Editor of the New York Observer. A journalist of the old school who believes in verifying his sources’ veracity, Unger illuminates the Republican Party’s ideological struggle between the old and the new and traces its history for those who do know it.

Unger disputes the recent assertion by The New York Times that these forces are dead; they are thriving. Below is David Shankbone’s interview with Craig Unger about his book, The Fall of the House of Bush.

Monday, May 16, 2005

In France, workers by the millions stayed at home during the Whit Monday holiday despite the government’s cancellation of the traditional Pentecost public holiday. Some acted in defiance of the government’s decision, while some took leave or were put on forced leave by their employers due to uncertainties of public transportation.

Following the 2003 heat wave, which caused the deaths of an estimated 13,000 elderly people in France, the administration of prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has proposed the suppression of one day of public holiday in order to use the supplemental generated tax for a fund for the caring of the elderly.

Whit Monday was selected because, in normal years, France has several public holidays in May. Furthermore, attendance of religious celebrations is low, so holidays of a religious origin are nowadays generally mere family reunions.

However, the reception of this new working day was mixed. The administration says it promotes solidarity with the elderly. Trade unions and opposition groups argue that the measure is an ill-conceived stunt aimed at hiding the government’s bad handling of the problems of the elderly.

For instance, many remember that in 1956, the government created a tax (the vignette) on motor vehicles, allegedly for funding measures for the elderly. But in 1973, the products of this tax came, as any other tax, into the government’s general fund.

With this measure, the French government intends to raise 2 billion € to be donated to a new public establishment, the “national fund for solidarity for autonomy.” The new fund would be chartered to deal with losses of self-sufficiency of elderly or handicapped people. 1.2 billion € are earmarked for elderly people, 0.8 for the handicapped.

Trade unions had called for strikes in urban public transportation and paralyzed traffic in 27 cities, including Clermont-Ferrand, Lille, Montpellier ou Strasbourg. However, SNCF (the national railway operator) did not strike and RATP (the Paris transportation authority) suffered only minor disturbances, though both are normally known for their frequent and disturbing strikes.

SNCF considered the day as a holiday for payroll purposes and instead increased the work day by 1’52”, a measure that majority leader Nicolas Sarkozy considered shocking and contrary to the objectives of the government.

The protests are also widely considered to be motivated by the unpopularity of the administration of president Jacques Chirac and prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin. Recent statistics show a five year-high for unemployment at 10.2%.

This discontent may result in a majority of “no” in the vote for the ratification of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe.