Author: Admin

Friday, July 17, 2009Following similar threats by workers at New Fabris and Nortel, workers at JLG in Tonneins, France, threatened to blow up several platform cranes. The JLG factory announced in April 2009 that it will fire 53 of its 163 workers by the end of 2009, while the remaining 110 jobs will not be secure over the next 2 years.

JLG Tonneins was acquired in 2006 with its parent JLG Industries, a maker of aerial work platforms, by the U.S.-based Oshkosh Corporation. Despite being hugely profitable in the past, production has been much reduced since 2008 with the contraction of the construction industry and lower demand for its products. Despite excellent past results the new American management demanded sweeping cuts at the company.

In the view of locals, “the company’s actions are a disgrace given the expensive perks, such as official cars, for its corporate fat cats, compared to the sacrifice, silence, and dignity demanded by the company of those it has made redundant.”

The management offered severance pay of € 3,000 (US $4,200), however the workers demanded a severance package commensurate with “the wealth that their labor has generated.” Worker’s delegates requested a “supra-legal” payment of € 30,000, on Thursday 16 of July the management responded with a counter offer of € 16,000. On Thursday night the worker’s actions secured the € 30,000 settlement initially demanded.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

“Localization of ‘SEMI Safety Guideline'”, executed by Safety and Health Technology Center of Taiwan (SAHTECH) and supervised by Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI), was announced today in Hsinchu, Taiwan.

This localization included several fields on health and safety of semiconductor manufacturing, certification testing on electrical devices, evaluations on fire or natural diseases, and environmental issues on semiconductor manufacturing devices, etc.. Companies and manufacturers from the semiconductor industry also paid more attentions on this guideline because issues on carbon-savings, earthquakes, fire diseases, and environment-efficiencies were included into this guideline.

On the other side of the incoming trade show of 2008 SecuTech Expo, scheduled after 2 weeks at Taipei World Trade Center, not only main fields on security devices, information security, and fire & disease preventions, the digital monitoring will be a hot topic in security industry. For applications on fire & disease preventions, because its issues contained industrial applications and ESH (Environmental, Safety & Health) managements, if a company want to decrease the ratio of fire disease or earthquake, companies from safety and related industries should pay more attentions on disease preventions.

Thursday, December 30, 2004

Mosul — With a Friday dump truck car bombing that left a massive crater and many dead, Iraqi insurgents frontally assaulted U.S. troops in Mosul, Iraq. Initial reports showed 25 Iraqis and one U.S. soldier dead. (As of this writing, additional information on the bombing was expected.)

Friday, February 18, 2022

Findings published Monday by a team composed mostly of University of Washington Center for Forensic Science researchers in Nature Human Behaviour report using a form of DNA analysis techniques originally designed for human teeth to track ivory poached from African elephants.

The scientists, in collaboration with the United States Department of Homeland Security, identified the criminal networks that killed the endangered animals and smuggled their valuable tusks across national borders.

The scientists took DNA samples from 4,320 tusks taken from both African bush (Loxodonta africana) and African forest (Loxodonta cyclotis) elephants that were confiscated from 49 separate ivory smuggling events in twelve countries from 2002 to 2019. The scientists found that teeth from the closely related elephants, or even two tusks from the same individual, often surfaced in different shipments that transited through the same ports. The data also showed when criminal networks shifted their operations from between port cities. They inferred poachers were making kills, then separating the tusks at some point along the smuggling route.

The team had been studying DNA analysis on poached tusks for years: in 2018, they found two tusks from different shipments had come from the same animal, which indicated both shipments were from the same kill and transited by the same criminal network. This is the first report of DNA identification tusks that came from elephants in the same families.

Lead author Dr Samuel Wasser said: “Identifying close relatives indicates that poachers are likely going back to the same populations repeatedly — year after year — and tusks are then acquired and smuggled out of Africa on container ships by the same criminal network.” He added: “This criminal strategy makes it much harder for authorities to track and seize these shipments because of the immense pressure they are under to move large volumes of containers quickly through ports.”

Wasser said similar studies will provide law enforcement groups access to a greater range of evidence with which to prosecute poachers and their criminal partners by providing verifiable links between different caches of captured ivory. The researchers concluded in their paper that law enforcement could use their information to discern the ways in which poachers are collaborating.

Humans have used the ivory from elephant tusks to make art, decorations, and tools since prehistory. Many countries have since outlawed the sale of ivory, but poachers continue to kill tens of thousands of elephants each year.

The paper’s authors were from the University of Washington, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Kenyan-based organisation SeeJ-Africa, the Kenya Wildlife Service, and Singapore’s National Parks Board.

Friday, February 9, 2007

The first large-scale trial of a vaccine for HIV has been launched in South Africa. About 3,000 HIV-negative people will be administered the test vaccine MRKAd5 HIV-1 created by the pharmaceutical company Merck. The study will examine if the vaccine prevents infection or lowers HIV levels in those who do get infected.

A parallel study will also be conducted in the United States and South America, to compare the vaccine’s effectiveness on various strains of HIV. The vaccine’s functioning in a heterosexual population and its effectiveness among women will also be studied. Preliminary trials for the vaccine have been conducted in the Americas and Australia as well as in Africa.

AIDS is estimated to have killed 25 million people worldwide since 1981, and between 33 and 46 million more are estimated to be infected with HIV, more than half of them in Sub-Saharan Africa. Between three and six million people are thought to have been infected in 2005.

The trial, named the Phambili (“Going forward”) Trial, is being conducted by the International HIV Trials Network and the South African AIDS Vaccine Initiative (SAAVI).

The vaccine has been developed from an adenovirus, a type of virus that causes the common cold. The virus has been genetically engineered to prevent it from causing the flu or from passing on from person to person. Instead, three genes of the HIV virus have been introduced into the adenovirus. When the vaccine containing these genes is injected into the body, it is hoped that the body’s immune system will learn to recognise and kill cells that contain the vaccine, thereby also developing an immune response against the HIV virus, which also contains these three genes.

The three genes, called gag, pol and env contain information needed to make the structural proteins for the capsid, the “shell” of the HIV viron. The vaccine does not contain the remaining six HIV genes that cause HIV to infect cells, replicate and cause disease.

The vaccine does not contain any live HIV and therefore cannot cause any infection, SAAVI said in a press release, adding that the vaccine was found to be safe and produced an immune response against HIV in earlier trials.

SAAVI has expressed its commitment to the “highest level of preventive care” for those who take part in the trial, promising “extensive, state-of-the-art” counselling as well as some forms of medical care and for those taking part, through the duration of the trial.

The trial starts a week after a different trial, involving a microbicide gel called Ushercell was stopped after more women who used the gel were found to be infected compared to those who were given a dummy gel as placebo. Eleven previous trials of the gel had not shown any problems, the chief scientist for the trial in South Africa told Business Day.

The trial is expected to cost $35 million and SAAVI will be supported by Eskom and the South African government.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Billy Murrell, a persistent graffiti vandal from South East London, has become the first recipient of an Anti-Social Behaviour Order (Asbo) granted to Transport for London (TfL) by Greenwich Magistrates. The civil order also bans him from the top deck of buses throughout England and Wales for three years.

Murrell, a 17-year-old from Plumstead, has a history of convictions for criminal damage on public transport, including vandalising a Tube carriage in Brixton station and for damaging buses and other public property using marker pens.

This is Transport for London’s first Anti-Social Behaviour Order against a graffiti vandal — TfL was granted the power to apply for Asbos by the Home Secretary in September 2006.

The Anti-Social Behaviour Order was issued at Greenwich Magistrates Court on 12 September and also bans him from carrying any permanent marker pens or any glass cutting equipment on London Underground, railway property or any other transport provider’s property.

Metropolitan and Transport police have been made aware of Murrell’s Asbo, and have distributed his photo.

In detail, Murrell is prohibited from:

• Entering any depot, siding or other part of London Underground property or railway property or any transport providers property which is not expressly open to the public whether on payment or otherwise throughout England and Wales

• Carrying the following articles, in any area specified (above) or in any public place, namely any form of unset paint in any form of container, any form of permanent marker pen, any form of shoe dye or permanent ink in any form of container, any form of paint stripper in any form of container, any form of grinding stone, glass cutting equipment, glass etching solution or paste, throughout England and Wales

• Aiding, abetting, counselling or encourage any person who was attempting or committing any form of unlawful damage towards any property not belonging to or under the direct authorised control of the defendant throughout England and Wales

• Travelling on the top deck of the any public transport bus within England and Wales

If without reasonable excuse the defendant does anything which he is prohibited from doing by this order, he shall be liable to a detention and training order, which has a maximum term of 24 months – 12 months of which is custodial and 12 months in the community

Upon turning 18 he will be liable to imprisonment up to five years.

Friday, June 5, 2020

Nabil Hasan al-Quaety, a photo- and videojournalist from Yemen, died in the city of Aden, in southern Yemen, on Tuesday after being shot in his car. He was 34 and reported extensively on the nation’s ongoing civil war.

Al-Quaety, who contributed to Agence France-Presse among other news organizations, openly supported independence for South Yemen. The Southern Transitional Council, previously an ally of the government, is currently in conflict against it. Both sides also oppose Houthi rebels. Both the council and the government called for his death to be investigated.

Multiple assailants attacked al-Quaety shortly after he left his nearby home, then, according to security officials, fled. He is survived by three children and his pregnant wife. A freelancer, he was a 2016 Rory Peck Awards finalist for his coverage of the conflict. In 2019 he survived a drone attack that left six soldiers dead. The city’s security chief, Abdullah al-Jahafi, announced on Facebook on Tuesday there were suspects in custody.

“Nabil’s murder is unacceptable and constitutes a terrible new blow to journalism in Yemen[…] journalists are now favourite targets, regardless of the region they cover”, said Sabrina Bennoui of Reporters Without Borders. Phil Chetwynd, director of global news for AFP, called the death “the senseless killing of a courageous journalist doing his job despite threats and intimidation.” Chetwynd also praised the quality of al-Quaety’s work.

Sunday, December 13, 2015

Macomb, New York Councilman Steve Burke took some time to speak with Wikinews about his campaign for the U.S. Democratic Party’s 2016 presidential nomination.

Burke, an insurance adjuster and farmer, was elected councilman in Brookhaven, New York in 1979. He left the town after being accused and found not guilty of bribery in the 1980s. Since 1987 he has served as Macomb councilman off-and-on and currently holds the post. From 1993 to 1996 and 1999 to 2002 he worked as chairman of the Democratic Party of St. Lawrence County, New York. Among his many political campaigns, Burke unsuccessfully sought the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 1992 and recently attempted to run for U.S. Congress in 2014 but too many of his ballot petition signatures were found invalid. Burke filed with the Federal Election Commission to run for president in the 2016 election on September 18, 2015 and has qualified for the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire Primary.

With Wikinews reporter William S. Saturn?, Burke discusses his political background, his 2016 presidential campaign, and his policy proposals.