Sunday, April 15, 2007

A1 Team New Zealand has won the feature race at the A1 Grand Prix in Shanghai, China today, followed by A1 Team Great Britain and A1 Team Germany. The third place win for Germany has secured the 2006/2007 championship.

In qualifying for the sprint race, Great Britain’s driver Robbie Kerr managed to secure the pole position with the fastest lap time recorded this weekend. New Zealand’s driver, Jonny Reid, started in second position, narrowly missing out on what would have been his third pole position of the season. Third and fourth place starters are the United States and Germany respectively.

Great Britain managed to win the sprint race, thus securing a first place start in the feature race. During the entire sprint race, Great Britain were the leaders, with a “comfortable” lead, always maintaining their position in front of New Zealand. Germany replaced America, becoming the third place sprint-race winners.

During the feature race Jonny Reid, driving New Zealand’s Black Beauty car, passed Great Britain on lap number 16 of the 50-lap race.

Thursday, December 22, 2005

By a narrow vote late in the evening on December 21st, 2005 the US Senate blocked opening the nation’s oil reserve in National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska . This vote delivers a victory to environmentalists and denies the Bush administration their top energy priority. Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) attached the drilling plan to a measure to fund ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, the Senate late last night agreed to pass the defense bill, without the drilling provision.

Two key Republicans, Lincoln D Chafee (R-R.I.) and Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), joined Democrats in opposing the drilling. Senator Lieberman (D-Conn) said yesterday that Stevens was to blame for holding up money for the military. By including the drilling measure in the defense spending bill, it was hoped to twist the senators’ arms into voting for both provisions together in the scramble to finish the important business before the Senate’s Christmas break.

Monday, June 25, 2018

On Sunday, R Praggnanandhaa became the youngest Indian chess player to earn the title of Grand Master. At the age of twelve years, ten months and thirteen days, Praggnanandhaa was the second youngest person to earn the title.

Praggnanandhaa earned his third norm on Sunday as he faced Dutch Grand Master Roeland Pruijssers with Elo rating of 2514 at the fourth Gredine Open in Italy. Having won the first norm in November and second in April, Praggnanandhaa had to face a player with at least 2482 Elo rating for the third norm. For the Grand Master title, a player requires three norms and Elo rating of at least 2500.

Praggnanandhaa with Elo rating of 2529 finished second at the competition, losing the tie-breaker for the winning spot. In 2016, at the age of ten years, ten months and nineteen days, Praggnanandhaa became the youngest player to receive the title of an International Master.

In 2002, at the age of twelve years and seven months, Ukraine’s Sergey Karjakin became the youngest recipient of the Grand Master title. Previously, India’s Parimarjan Negi was the youngest Indian to earn the Grand Master title.

Tuesday, March 29, 2005A team of Australian surgeons yesterday reattached both hands and one foot to 10-year-old Perth boy, Terry Vo, after a brick wall which collapsed during a game of basketball fell on him, severing the limbs. The wall gave way while Terry performed a slam-dunk, during a game at a friend’s birthday party.

The boy was today awake and smiling, still in some pain but in good spirits and expected to make a full recovery, according to plastic surgeon, Mr Robert Love.

“What we have is parts that are very much alive so the reattached limbs are certainly pink, well perfused and are indeed moving,” Mr Love told reporters today.

“The fact that he is moving his fingers, and of course when he wakes up he will move both fingers and toes, is not a surprise,” Mr Love had said yesterday.

“The question is more the sensory return that he will get in the hand itself and the fine movements he will have in the fingers and the toes, and that will come with time, hopefully. We will assess that over the next 18 months to two years.

“I’m sure that he’ll enjoy a game of basketball in the future.”

The weight and force of the collapse, and the sharp brick edges, resulted in the three limbs being cut through about 7cm above the wrists and ankle.

Terry’s father Tan said of his only child, the injuries were terrible, “I was scared to look at him, a horrible thing.”

The hands and foot were placed in an ice-filled Esky and rushed to hospital with the boy, where three teams of medical experts were assembled, and he was given a blood transfusion after experiencing massive blood loss. Eight hours of complex micro-surgery on Saturday night were followed by a further two hours of skin grafts yesterday.

“What he will lose because it was such a large zone of traumatised skin and muscle and so on, he will lose some of the skin so he’ll certainly require lots of further surgery regardless of whether the skin survives,” said Mr Love said today.

The boy was kept unconscious under anaesthetic between the two procedures. In an interview yesterday, Mr Love explained why:

“He could have actually been woken up the next day. Because we were intending to take him back to theatre for a second look, to look at the traumatised skin flaps, to close more of his wounds and to do split skin grafting, it was felt the best thing to do would be to keep him stable and to keep him anaesthetised.”

Professor Wayne Morrison, director of the respected Bernard O’Brien Institute of Microsurgery and head of plastic and hand surgery at Melbourne’s St Vincent’s Hospital, said he believed the operation to be a world first.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

In late May to early June of 2008, news broke that a previously undiscovered indigenous tribe had been found near the border between Brazil and Peru. Worldwide media was quick to publish the story and the accompanying photographs taken by José Carlos Meirelles. The photos showed people in full body paint aiming bows at the overhead aircraft from which the pictures were taken. Wikinews covered the story as well.

In its Sunday edition, British newspaper The Observer had a story called “Secret of the ‘lost’ tribe that wasn’t” which was about this “discovery” and revealed that the tribe had in fact been known to scientists, including Fundação Nacional do Índio (FUNAI), the Brazilian protection agency for Indian interests.

After this revelation, media newswires branded the original story a hoax. These hoax claims spread nearly as quickly as the original story. Rapidly, news sites even claimed that the photos were fake. The true story, however, is more complicated than that.

The Observer’s article featured an interview with José Carlos Meirelles, one of a handful so-called sertanistas that work for the FUNAI. These are field agents that map the areas of uncontacted indigenous peoples, so that their habitat can be protected. He admitted that his desire to protect these tribes had caused him to overstep his mission.

When given the use of an aircraft to seek out new tribes, Meirelles instead flew over an area where he knew a tribe had been observed decades ago. Ultimately, he was hoping to prove that FUNAI’s policy of not contacting the tribes they observe is better for the tribes. With this flight he hoped to find evidence that the tribe, discovered long ago, was better off for not being contacted.

“When I saw them painted red, I was satisfied, I was happy,” he said. “Because painted red means they are ready for war, which to me says they are happy and healthy defending their territory.”

The photos are of a real tribe, long known to Meirelles and other scientists within FUNAI, but protected under Brazilian law.

Meirelles says he has no regrets, because he just wanted to prove these kind of tribes exist and deserve protection. He said that Peruvian President Alan García had claimed that these tribes were imaginary and that he needed to prove they existed. In doing so, he violated FUNAI policies by flying over their area and taking pictures. Both are prohibited. Meirelles claims he will protect the exact location of the tribe’s territory, even if tortured.

Former president of FUNAI, Sydney Possuelo, agreed that the publication of the photos was necessary to quell the doubt about the very existence such uncontacted indigenous peoples.

Survival International, a human rights organisation formed in 1969 that campaigns for the rights of indigenous tribal and uncontacted peoples, admits complicity in the distribution of the original story. Survival International was instrumental in getting the original story international attention.

Nevertheless, Survival International said it did not mislead media because it never described the tribe as “lost”.

“These Indians are in a reserve expressly set aside for the protection of uncontacted tribes: they were hardly ‘unknown’,” said Stephen Corry, director of Survival International in a statement. “What is, and remains, true, is that so far as is known these Indians have no peaceful contact with outsiders.”

“Some of the media got very carried away and started talking about undiscovered tribes,” explains Fiona Watson of Survival International. “There was this interpretation that this was a completely new tribe, completely undiscovered, without bothering to check with sources … Neither the Brazilian government nor Survival has ever used that word, and ‘uncontacted’ means they don’t have any contact with outsiders.”

Saturday, March 20, 2010

According to an announcement from Gwent Police, a baby boy has died after being found abandoned behind a convenience store in Gwent, Wales. The boy, who has not yet been identified, was found behind a Spar convenience store in the town of Cwmcarn at 1815 GMT on Tuesday. The baby was found to be wrapped in a towel which was in a plastic shopping bag. Bystanders who were walking past the scene mistakenly believed that the bag had been unintentionally left there by a person who had visited the gym that is located next to the store.

A 14-year-old boy, who is the son of the man who owns the convenience store, then examinied the bag and discovered the baby. He made a phone call to the emergency services, however, when the baby was taken to Royal Gwent Hospital, it was pronounced dead on arrival. The baby was younger than one day old at the time of his death. A post-mortem examination proved to be indeterminate. Gwent Police have now launched an investigation to try and determine the identity of the baby’s mother.

Gursewak Singh, the father of the person who discovered the baby and the owner of the shop, explained: “We asked friends and colleagues what the bag was doing there, but it didn’t belong to anyone. A boy who works with us said it was just a towel in there and he didn’t open it. In the evening I went out to it and opened it, only saw a towel on top and didn’t look thoroughly. I just thought it was clothes underneath and didn’t want to root through them. I picked it up and hanged it on the gatepost so someone walking by might see it and recognise it as theirs. At about six o’clock there was a power cut and my 14-year-old son went out and picked up the bag and opened it and saw a little head in there. He called his uncle and said: ‘It’s not clothes, come and look’. They came over and saw the baby in there.” Singh commented that this incident “was shocking. We were all devastated. I wish we had checked earlier. If we had gone through the bag we could have made a difference. I’m worried what sort of condition the person who left the bag is in. We are so concerned about her. Other people saw the bag, but nobody thought about it. There could be a baby still alive. I wish we had checked straight away.”

Gwent Police member Superintendent John Burley stated about this case: “We are extremely concerned about the health and wellbeing of the mother of the baby and are appealing for her to come forward to receive any medical treatment she may require. This is a tragic incident which will sadden the local community and our priority at the moment is finding the mother of the baby. I would appeal to anyone who may have been in the vicinity of the Spar store on Thursday morning or afternoon who may be able to offer any information to assist our inquiry.”