Monday, December 31, 2007

What would you tell your grandchildren about 2007 if they asked you about it in, let’s say, 20 year’s time? If the answer to a quiz question was 2007, what would the question be? The year that you first signed on to Facebook? The year Britney Spears and Amy Winehouse fell apart? The year author Kurt Vonnegut or mime Marcel Marceau died, both at 84?

Let’s take a look at some of the international stories of 2007. Links to the original Wikinews articles are in bold.

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.

Monday, December 19, 2005File:Santarchy new zealand.jpg

The conduct by a group of ‘Santas’ making an unclear statement last Saturday is not appreciated in the business district of Auckland, New Zealand. The event, organized in the discussion forum of an online skateboard magazine, caused big media publicity.

Alex Dyer, spokesman for the group, stated that Santarchy in Auckland is part of a worldwide phenomenon. It is disputed if Santarchy is a protest against the commercialization of Christmas or not.

Auckland Central Police spokesperson Noreen Hegarty said to the press that the rampage began in the early part of the afternoon when men wearing ill-fitting Santa costumes threw beer bottles and urinated on cars from an overpass, then rushed through a central city park, overturning garbage bins, throwing bottles at passing cars and spraying graffiti on office buildings.

“They came in, said ‘Merry Christmas’ and then helped themselves,” said a convenience store staff member Changa Manakynda, according to local newspapers.

One writer using the pseudonym ‘Le_SigNagE’ on the Santarchy! (or also known as the Santacon) website commented, “… after all, this is what Christmas is really about… mindless vandalism and petty theft.”

Another writer who posted under the pseudonym Santy Claus said of the media coverage,”There was some major misreporting and Chinese whispers. Breaking bottles and urinating under a bridge, became throwing rocks at buses and urinating on cars from an overpass. The ‘organisers’ as they were, saw little in the way of crime other than one santa attempting to board a foreign vessel by scaling 20 metres along a rope 60 feet in the air. The difficulty and motor skills involved in this task alone should be a defense in itself of being ‘drunk’ and ‘disorderly’.”

Due to Santa’s reputation for integrity and his strict media policy, his sparse communication is mostly one-way: receiving lists from children with wishes for Christmas. It is difficult to get his comment about New Zealands skateboard interested ‘Santas’.

In 1994, the Cacophony Society staged the world’s very first SantaCon in San Francisco. Influenced by the surrealist movement Discordianism, and other subversive art currents.

Saturday, August 5, 2006

Three of Sweden’s ten nuclear reactors have been shut down due to safety concerns following an incident last week at the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant, in which the reactor cooling systems failed. The reactor has since been shut down there. After the incident, the Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate, SKI asked all the nuclear power plants to demonstrate that the same failure could not happen in them. On Wednesday, two more reactors at Oskarshamn were shut down after the operator said their safety could not be guaranteed.

Last week’s incident at the Forsmark plant was triggered by a short circuit that cut power to the reactor cooling system. Two of the four backup generators also failed to start, but the remaining two worked and were sufficient to meet the plant’s needs. Greenpeace reports that the fault in the backup power systems were traced to new equipment installed in 1993.

The spokesman of the Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate Anders Bredfell denied that there was any danger of a meltdown, adding that there was also a backup gas turbine to power the cooling system in an emergency.

However, Lars-Olov Höglund, who was responsible for the nuclear plant Forsmark for many years, said the incident was the most dangerous one since Chernobyl and Three Mile island, and that a meltdown was avoided only by pure luck. His views have however been questioned as he is involved in litigation with the Swedish nuclear industry and is known as an outspoken nuclear critic. Researchers at the Royal Institute of Technology as well as the personnel at the power plant were critical of Höglunds’ view.

Speaking to BBC News, SKI spokesman Anders Bredfell said that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was informed of the incident as required and that the incident classes as a ‘2’ in the 0-7 scale used by the IAEA to assess the severity of the incident.

Another reactor in Forsmark and a fifth at Ringhals nuclear power plant have been offline due to planned maintenance work. With five of its ten reactors down, Sweden’s power generation capacity is down by almost a fifth.

The environmental group Greenpeace called on the government to shut down all reactors and probe whether the fault was a generic one. The Green Party has called for an independent investigation of the incident. Sweden is scheduled to retire all its nuclear power plants in the next few decades, as decided by a referendum in 1980.

Friday, August 10, 2007

Global stock markets fell today, in a mass sell-off stemming from the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the United States. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rebounded late in the day after falling more than 250 points, ending the day down about 31 points. The UK’s FTSE-100 index fell 232.90 points to 6038.30, and Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 406.51 points to 16764.09.

Central banks across the world are injecting funds into their banking systems to add liquidity, fearing that many financial firms with subprime ties will be insolvent. Yesterday, the U.S. Federal Reserve transferred US$24 billion to temporary reserves, following the European Central Bank, which authorized a record €83.6 billion addition to its banks, its biggest cash infusion ever. On Friday, the Fed entered into a $38 billion repurchase agreement of mortgage-backed securities, easing stockholder worries. Also on Friday, the Bank of Japan injected ¥1 trillion into Japan’s financial system.

The Federal Reserve met this week, but decided to maintain its target rate of 5.25%, although on Friday the federal funds rate was hovering around 6%, indicating a drop in liquidity.

The volatile week began last Friday with Bear Stearns tumbling as a result from its complete loss of two major hedge funds worth more than $1.5 billion. The hedge funds had been dangerously exposed to the massive sub-prime mortgage failure, and the company announced it was unable to return any money to investors.

Washington Mutual, and Countrywide Financial, both very large U.S. home loan lenders, saw shares fall. Countrywide Financial made a statement this week, saying they will be forced to retain a greater proportion of mortgage. American Home Mortgage Investment Corp, another large lender, recently filed for bankruptcy. The U.S. housing market has been declining for more than two years after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates 17 times. Now, lenders are in a quagmire from millions of people who are unable to repay loans after taking adjustable rate mortgages, teaser rates, interest-only mortgages, or piggyback rates.

Jim Cramer, of CNBC’s Mad Money, remarked that as many as seven million people will lose their homes from bad mortgages. Last Friday, Cramer went on a tirade on CNBC’s Street Signs, saying that the “Fed was asleep” and called for them to lower rates immediately.

Asian and European markets have become increasingly entangled in the subprime mortgage crisis in the U.S. Deutsche Bank of Germany lost almost $3.5 billion in share value, forcing the government to organize a bail-out. France’s largest bank, BNP Paribas SA, halted withdrawals from three large investment funds which were crippled by sub-prime exposure.

Monday, November 12, 2007

In the final of the Konami Cup 2007, Chunichi Dragons battled SK Wyverns again, many Japanese spectators hoped for Dragons to take revenge on Wyverns and win the championship. This was really a intensive match with starting pitchers George Kenneth Rayborn from SK versus Daisuke Yamai.

Even though Byung-kyu Lee hit a 2 runs HR to expand the difference by the 5-2 leading. But Jin-young Lee also hit a 2 runs HR to tie the score with 5-5 at the bottom of 8th.

The key innings took place at the 9th inning, Hirokazu Ibata (Dragons) hit a key run back to make their team lead with 6-5. Finally, the relief pitcher Hitoki Iwase successfully shut down SK’s offense and tied the score to the end to win the champion.

With the winning hit at this game, and 4 hits with 7 RBIs in the Konami Cup Asia Series 2007, Hirokazu Ibata was finally chosen to be the MVP.

After this game, Chunichi Dragons coach Hiromitsu Ochiai remarked: “Even though we ever lose to SK Wyverns, but participants in this year proved their actual strength more than last year. In this game, after we led with 6-5, Hitoki Iwase told me he want to pitch at the bottom of 9th inning, then I accepted, he promised his wish and finally helped us win the champion. I’ll not forget the contributions by Ibata and Iwase.”

Sunday, August 21, 2005

A robotic system at Stanford Medical Center was used to perform a laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery successfully with a theoretically similar rate of complications to that seen in standard operations. However, as there were only 10 people in the experimental group (and another 10 in the control group), this is not a statistically significant sample.

If this surgical procedure is as successful in large-scale studies, it may lead the way for the use of robotic surgery in even more delicate procedures, such as heart surgery. Note that this is not a fully automated system, as a human doctor controls the operation via remote control. Laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery is a treatment for obesity.

There were concerns that doctors, in the future, might only be trained in the remote control procedure. Ronald G. Latimer, M.D., of Santa Barbara, CA, warned “The fact that surgeons may have to open the patient or might actually need to revert to standard laparoscopic techniques demands that this basic training be a requirement before a robot is purchased. Robots do malfunction, so a backup system is imperative. We should not be seduced to buy this instrument to train surgeons if they are not able to do the primary operations themselves.”

There are precedents for just such a problem occurring. A previous “new technology”, the electrocardiogram (ECG), has lead to a lack of basic education on the older technology, the stethoscope. As a result, many heart conditions now go undiagnosed, especially in children and others who rarely undergo an ECG procedure.