Looted, possibly contaminated body parts transplanted into USA, Canadian patients

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.

Ontario Votes 2007: Interview with Freedom Party candidate David McGruer, Ottawa-Orleans

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

David McGruer is running for the Freedom Party of Ontario in the Ontario provincial election, in the Ottawa-Orleans riding. Wikinews’ Nick Moreau interviewed him regarding his values, his experience, and his campaign.

Stay tuned for further interviews; every candidate from every party is eligible, and will be contacted. Expect interviews from Liberals, Progressive Conservatives, New Democratic Party members, Ontario Greens, as well as members from the Family Coalition, Freedom, Communist, Libertarian, and Confederation of Regions parties, as well as independents.

Cheap Refacing Kitchen Cabinets

Cheap Refacing Kitchen Cabinets

by

merillmayden

An affordable option to an entire kitchen remodeling task is called as kitchen cabinet refacing. Actually this can be a process through which the outside surfaces & hardware of the outdated or worn out cabinets & drawers receive overlays, generally with a few mixtures of self-adhesive otherwise glued-on items. The end result is really a brand-new kitchen that appears much more expensive as well as time-consuming than really it was.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT4fwkPaDbU[/youtube]

Refacing is better performed on cabinets which are otherwise intact & structurally sound. Excessively broken cabinets aren’t good applicants for refacing and really should get replaced. Many methods exist for refacing cabinets, which range from the complex towards the astonishingly simple. But the technique you select will be based upon your individual skill, time limitations, and also the condition of the cabinets. This process could be carried out just a few hours, and it is good for cabinets which have virtually no flaws and need only normal updating. Refacing cabinets may be worth because of the brand that you will get from it. But what’s kitchen cabinet refacing? It’s one method to give the kitchen a brand new feel and look, a brand new style; basically it’s remodeling it whenever you cannot afford to purchase entire new kitchen furniture entirely. When you’re refacing your cabinets you’ll replace/veneer the various components from the existing cabinet which are visible to any or all. You also replace totally drawer fronts & all sorts of your cabinet doors. Getting your kitchen refaced may provide a whole change for the kitchen while saving a lot of money along the way whenever you cannot afford new things entirely. Who asserted only women could possibly get a facelift? Kitchen could possibly get one too! While you’re refacing your cabinets, you are able to coordinate brand new wall paint otherwise perhaps a new flooring model winding up having a really modern kitchen. For any kind of person, really this project is simply best for you. It requires some time to make it happen, but think of the end result and think of the adoring & thankful look in your wife’s face while she’ll finally see her fresh kitchen. That’s worthwhile all to begin with! When you are doing all of your cabinets refacing, also you may do some other jobs with the cooking. It is possible to finish a refacing job a few weeks only and also the price is smaller, a small fraction of the price of remodeling your whole kitchen.

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Workers at Swansea auto parts plant vote to strike

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Workers at the Linamar automobile parts factory in Swansea, Wales voted by a wide margin today to strike, after an dispute over the firing of one of the worker’s union organisers remained unresolved.

An 88% turnout resulted in a vote of 139 in favor of striking to 19 against.

Canada-based Linamar took over the plant from Visteon in July 2008. Shortly after the takeover, Linamar offered 208 of the plant’s 360 workers voluntary redundancy, hoping to transfer work to Mexico; 140 accepted. Linamar claims to have no long-term plans to close the plant. On April 28, however, Linamar fired political activist and union convener Rob Williams. Upon Williams’ firing, he refused to leave the Visteon plant. The police escorted him from the building as the day shift workers at the plant staged a spontaneous walkout. Williams was temporarily reinstated after emergency negotiations between Unite and Visteon management, but his dismissal was made permanent a week later.

Unite, Williams’s trade union, describe Williams’s firing as an “illegal” “attack on the union” and has brought the matter to the attention of UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Williams himself told left-wing newspaper Socialist Worker: “They have sacked me because they want to weaken the union and intimidate the shop floor.”

Workers at the plant also say Linamar is breaking a promise made to the union when the plant was taken over to keep Visteon’s terms and conditions, particularly to establish a final pension scheme for workers who were part of the company before its 2000 spin-off from Ford.

Linamar has not given comment to the press on the dispute as of this writing.

Rallies in support of Williams, who is also running for European Parliament on the No2EU ticket, and of the union have drawn sizeable crowds, with about 90 at the most recent rally include three Members of the Welsh Assembly representing the ruling coalition of the Labour Party and Plaid Cymru as well as the Liberal Democrats, on May 17 outside the Visteon plant in Swansea.

Linamar Swansea has close ties with Visteon factories in Enfield, Belfast and Basildon. Workers at those three factories recently won a victory against Visteon by occupying their plants and locking management out when redundancies were announced in April.

Computer professionals celebrate 10th birthday of A.L.I.C.E.

Wednesday, November 30, 2005File:Turing1.jpg

More than 50 programmers, scientists, students, hobbyists and fans of the A.L.I.C.E. chat robot gathered in Guildford, U.K. on Friday to celebrate the tenth birthday of the award winning A.I. On hand was the founder the Loebner Prize, an annual Turing Test, designed to pick out the world’s most human computer according to an experiment laid out by the famous British mathematician Alan Turing more then 50 years ago. Along with A.L.I.C.E.’s chief programmer Dr. Richard S. Wallace, two other Loebner prize winners, Robby Garner and this year’s winner, Rollo Carpenter, also gave presentations, as did other finalists.

The University of Surrey venue was chosen, according to Dr. Wallace, not only because it was outside the U.S. (A.L.I.C.E.’s birthday fell on the Thanksgiving Day weekend holiday there, so he expected few people would attend a conference in America), but also because of its recently erected statue of Alan Turing, who posed the famous A. I. experiment which inspired much of the work on bots like A.L.I.C.E. University of Surrey Digital World Research Centre organizers Lynn and David Hamill were pleased to host the event because it encourages multi-disciplinary interaction, and because of the Centre’s interest in interaction between humans and computers.File:ALICE Birthday Cake.jpg

Dr. Wallace gave a keynote address outlining the history of A.L.I.C.E. and AIML. Many people commented on the fact the he seemed to have moved around a lot in the last ten years, having lived in New York, Pennsylvania, San Francisco, Maine, Amsterdam and Philadelphia, while working on the Alicebot project. The A.L.I.C.E. and AIML software is popular among chat robot enthusiats primarily because of its distribution under the GNU free software license. One of Dr. Wallace’s PowerPoint slides asked the question, “How do you make money from free software?” His answer: memberships, subscriptions, books, directories, syndicated ads, consulting, teaching, and something called the Superbot.

Rollo Carpenter gave a fascinating presentation on his learning bot Jabberwacky, reading from several sample conversations wherein the bot seemed amazingly humanlike. Unlike the free A.L.I.C.E. software, Carpenter uses a proprietary learning approach so that the bot actually mimics the personality of each individual chatter. The more people who chat with Jabberwacky, the better it becomes at this kind of mimicry.

In another interesting presentation, Dr. Hamill related present-day research on chat robots to earlier work on dialog analysis in telephone conversations. Phone calls have many similarities to the one-on-one chats that bots encounter on the web and in IM. Dr. Hamill also related our social expectations of bots to social class structure and how servants were expected to behave in Victorian England. He cited the famous Microsoft paperclip as the most egregius example of a bot that violated all the rules of a good servant’s behavior.

Bots have advanced a long way since philanthropist Hugh Loebner launched his controversial contest 15 years ago. His Turing Test contest, which offers an award of $100,000 for the first program to pass an “audio-visual” version of the game, also awards a bronze medal and $2000 every year for the “most human computer” according to a panel of judges. Huma Shah of the University of Westminster presented examples of bots used by large corporations to help sell furniture, provide the latest information about automotive products, and help customers open bank accounts. Several companies in the U.S. and Europe offer customized bot personalities for corporate web sites.

Even though Turing’s Test remains controversial, this group of enthusiastic developers seems determined to carry on the tradition and try to develop more and more human like chat bots.Hugh Loebner is dedicated to carry on his contest for the rest of his life, in spite of his critics. He hopes that a large enough constituency of winners will exist to keep the competition going well beyond his own lifetime. Dr. Wallace says, “Nobody has gotten rich from chat robots yet, but that doesn’t stop people from trying. There is such a thing as ‘bot fever’. For some people who meet a bot for the first time, it can pass the Turing Test for them, and they get very excited.”

Rebels blow up oil pipelines in Assam

Saturday, June 10, 2006Normal life in the Asom continued to be disturbed for third day in a row on Saturday following the series of subversive activities engineered by the banned United Liberation Front of Asom(ULFA). In the latest incident, Police on Saturday morning sounded red alert in the Guwahati city as an explosive timer device found in front of Kamrup SP office in Panbazar.

“The recovered device was kept in a Tiffin box, which was programmed to explode at 6:15 [IST] in the evening,” said police sources adding that the hand of ULFA was suspected. The passengers of Delhi-bound Rajdhani Express had a miraculous escape as a bomb planted on the tracks near Naharkatia in the Dibrugarh district detonated just before the superfast train was to pass last night, said official sources. On Friday night, at least six persons injured in the state, following five powerful blasts that was suspected to be triggered by the banned outfit.

These blasts came barely hours after a powerful bomb explosion that killed five people and injured over 15 at a busy vegetable market in the Guwahati city on Friday evening. According to police, at least six persons injured when a bomb exploded in the house of one Milan Deori in Rupaisiding- Tapoban-Tiniali area in the Tinsukia district allegedly planted by ULFA militants. Besides this the outfit reportedly blew off four Oil pipelines belonging to Assam Gas Company Limited and Oil India Limited (OIL) successively at two places in the Dibrugarh district last night.

Police source said that two blasts occurred at 10:25 IST and 25 minutes later damaged pipeline used for electricity generation at Namrup Thermal Power plant at a place under Naharkatia police station. Later two more explosions severely damaged two crude oil pipelines belonging to OIL, nearby Bhadoipanchali. In another incident, at least three army personnel injured when militants hurled grenade at an army truck at Doomdooma in Tinsukia district at around 8 p.m. IST yesterday. On Thursday, there were four separate explosions that left 34 people injured in the districts of Dhubri, Mangaldoi and Nagaon.

L Carnitine Dramatic Results For Treating Hyperthyroidism And Overactive Thyroid}

Submitted by: Svetla Bankova

Hyperthyroidism is the result of excess thyroid hormone production, causing an overactive metabolism and increased speed of all the body’s processes.

Thyroid hormone generally controls the pace of all of the processes in the body. This pace is called your metabolism. If there is too much thyroid hormone, every function of the body tends to speed up. The thyroid gland regulates the body temperature by secreting two hormones that control how quickly the body burns calories and energy. If the thyroid produces too much hormone, the condition is called hyperthyroidism, but if too little is produced the result is hypothyroidism.

The first studies published in the modern literature on the effects of carnitine in hyperthyroidism came from post-war Germany in 1959, with the observation that carnitine had an impact on the hyper-functioning thyroid.

Three years later the same researchers reported on the use of carnitine in the treatment of hyperthyroidism; they subsequently demonstrated that carnitine affected the accumulation of iodine in thyroid tissue itself. In the 1970s, Japanese researchers found also that there was an increase in carnitine excretion in the urine of hyperthyroid patients.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvUWHNdJfe8[/youtube]

Carnitine is an essential nutrient for transporting fuel (mostly fatty acids) into the cellular “furnaces” known as mitochondria. As muscle cells burn fatty acids in a wasteful response to increased thyroid activity, carnitine turnover is dramatically increased, using up cellular stores of carnitine while potentially contributing to the increased urinary losses at the same time.

The most recent discoveries regarding L- canitine are done by the Italian endocrinologist Dr. Salvatore Benvenga and his colleagues in 2004. He conducted a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial and their subjects were 50 women who would be taking thyroid hormones to treat benign thyroid nodules (thyroid hormone suppresses the pituitary hormone called thyroid-stimulating hormone, or TSH, which causes the nodules to grow).

In such patients, mild-to-moderate hyperthyroidism is frequently an undesired side effect, and the researchers chose to study this group of patients in order to capitalize on that effect, while potentially providing welcome relief from symptoms.

The results were nothing short of dramatic. Dr. Benvenga and colleagues summarized their findings from these studies in the following fashion: “Since hyperthyroidism impoverishes the tissue deposits of carnitine, there is a rationale for using L-carnitine at least in certain clinical settings… and since carnitine has no toxicity, teratogenicity [birth defects], contraindications, and interactions with drugs, carnitine can be of clinical use.” To date, clinical trials have shown that doses of 2,000-4,000 mg/day of L-carnitine are helpful in individuals who suffer from hyperthyroidism. Future studies may uncover similar benefits of other carnitine formulations such as acetyl-L-carnitine, acetyl-L-carnitine arginate, and propionyl-L-carnitine, along with the doses needed to match the efficacy provided by 2,000-4,000 mg L-carnitine.

Until scientists reveal the most effective dosages of each carnitine formulation, the following chart may provide preliminary guidance for individuals seeking relief from the effects of hyperthyroidism:

L-carnitine:2,000-4,000 mg/day

Acetyl-L-carnitine: 800-2,000 mg/day

Acetyl-L-carnitine arginate: 600-1,000 mg/day

Propionyl-L-carnitine: 600-2,000 mg/day

So when treating Hyperthyroidism or overactive thyroid and Graves Disease in particular, do not overlook other alternative methods and treatments.

About the Author: Svetla Bankova is a former Graves Disease patient and she cured herself even though the disease is considered incurable, applying natural methods, alternative techniques and purely holistic approach to this disease. For more information:

GravesDiseaseCure.com

Source:

isnare.com

Permanent Link:

isnare.com/?aid=339495&ca=Medicines+and+Remedies}

Plane crashes into office block in Austin, Texas

Thursday, February 18, 2010

A small plane crashed into a building, which was one of the Echelon office complex, in north Austin, Texas this morning at 09:56 local time (1456 UTC).

Federal officials say the plane owner was Joseph Andrew Stack III; presumed to be the pilot who set his house on fire on the 1800 block of Dapplegrey Lane in north Austin an hour earlier. He then drove to Georgetown Municipal Airport, approximately 20 miles away, took off and then crashed his private plane into the Echelon complex.

The Federal Aviation Authority indicated the light aircraft was a Piper Cherokee PA-28, as did news reports and eye witnesses. The FAA said the plane had no flight plan and was under Visual Flight Rules.

Mr. Stack committed suicide, and a suicide note has been located. Mr. Stack’s suicide note mentions anti-government and anti-corporate ideals, as well as problems with the Internal Revenue Service and that he lost money in the Enron scandal. Although the incident was intentional, a Department of Homeland Security official said that terrorism is not suspected. The online host of the note, T35 Hosting, later removed it in its entirety after the FBI requested its censorship. However, Wikinews has preserved the full text of the letter.

Austin Fire Department reported around 1100 local time (1600 UTC) that two people were transported to local hospitals and one was unaccounted for. One man was admitted at a local hospital under serious condition for smoke inhalation. The other man suffered from second-degree burns on 25% of his back and has been transported by helicopter to Brooke Medical Center in San Antonio and is said to be in stable condition.

The seven-story Echelon Building One is located on 9430 Research Boulevard and contains Internal Revenue Service offices. The Echelon building complex houses a number of federal offices, including Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation. Research Boulevard is the service road of U.S. Route 183. The incident has caused severe backups on both Research Boulevard and Route 183.

A witness told The Austin Statesman that he saw the plane flying lower than usual, then it made a sharp turn and hit the building.

An Austin County EMS official, James Shamard, said that smoke is visible from at least a mile from the crash site. Another official for the Austin Fire Department said that two persons who were working in the building are still unaccounted for.

MSNBC reports that there was some form of domestic dispute between Mr. Stack and his wife before the incident. He then reportedly used gasoline to light his house on fire. When the fire department arrived, they rescued his wife and teenage daughter.

According to Jerry Cullen, a pilot and former flight instructor who witnessed the crash, the plane was traveling at high speed at time of impact.

Colorado College Tigers win 41st annual Great Lakes Invitational tournament

Friday, December 30, 2005

The Colorado College Tigers beat the Spartans of Michigan State University in men’s ice hockey on Friday, for the title of champions of the 41st annual Great Lakes Invitational ice hockey tournament at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit.

The Tigers, the team chosen to be invited into the tournament and appearing for the first time since 1965 in the tournament, led with a 5-0 lead during the second period, after which Michigan State switched goalies. The Spartans put freshmen Jeff Lerg into net, replacing Dominic Vicari, who was earlier given a penalty for his contact with a member of Colorado’s team in front of the net. Michigan State junior Tyler Howells scored two goals during the second period, and Colorado student Brett Sterling made the Tiger’s final goal for the night.

Colorado College took first place in the invitational, and Michigan State ended in second place, after their previous win over Michigan Tech at a score of 3-2. The Tigers previously beat the University of Michigan on Thursday, at a score of 6-1.

Meanwhile, the University of Michigan beat GLI co-sponsor Michigan Tech University with a score of 5-3 for a third place finish in the invitational earlier in the day.

With 2 minutes remaining in the third period, the University of Michigan went one up over Michigan Tech, breaking the 3-3 tie. Michigan Tech pulled their goalie with one minute remaining to gain a man advantage, but the strategy failed and allowed the University of Michigan to get another goal resulting in the final 5-3 score.

The game secured the third place position in the invitational for University of Michigan, and fourth place for Michigan Tech.

 This article features first-hand journalism by Wikinews members. See the collaboration page for more details.
This article features first-hand journalism by Wikinews members. See the collaboration page for more details.

The final standings in the tournament are:

  1. Colorado College
  2. Michigan State University
  3. University of Michigan
  4. Michigan Tech

Google’s YouTube to present its best video awards

Monday, March 19, 2007

This week Google’s on-line video sharing website YouTube launches its own awards ceremony. The site will present the best user-generated videos posted during 2006 in seven categories. The starting point is Monday and users will end voting on Friday. Winners will get their trophies on March 26.

The categories that YouTube is going to present include: most creative or inspirational video, best series, as well as music video or commentary and best comedy. The last category, number seven, is called “most adorable video ever” and it is to continue the tradition of videos starring cats and dogs while asleep.

Those that are nominated are able to promote themselves on YouTube during the following five days. These users are also able to plead for votes.

The $1.65 billion Google’s acquisition gathered a huge number of fans. According to Jamie Byrne, head of YouTube product marketing, 2006 was a pioneering year for sites that rely on user’s content.

However, companies like Viacom, believe one category is missing – “Best Professionally Produced Copyrighted Video.” Last week Viacom sued Google together with YouTube for more than $1 billion. The lawsuit states that the ever increasing popularity of YouTube is due to a massive uploads of copyrighted videos including “The Colbert Report” and “South Park“.