Thursday, June 7, 2007

Tropical Storm Gonu headed toward Iran today, after lashing Oman for two days with high winds and torrential rains, and causing at least 23 deaths and the evacuation of more than 20,000 people to emergency shelters. Concern was high for the oil industry, as rough seas kept tankers from leaving their ports.

Such storms are rare in the Middle East. Early today, Gonu was weakening and was downgraded to a tropical storm. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center projected the storm to continue weakening as it made landfall on Iran’s southeastern coast. Offshore Iranian oil installations were expected to be spared, officials said.

In the Omani capital, Muscat yesterday, there were torrential rains and howling winds, a rarity in the quiet coastal city. Streets were flooded and emergency vehicles were useless. Flights were canceled at Oman’s Seeb International Airport.

Twenty-three deaths were reported by Omani authorities today. Electricity and phone lines were out and roads flooded. Police said a body washed ashore in Sur. There were also reports of people trapped in homes in low-lying areas of the capital.

Authorities used mobile-phone text messages to warn people away from dangerous areas. Residents were warned to stay at home, or seek shelter in buildings that could withstand the harsh weather.

Shareefa bint Khalfan, Omani minister of social development, said more than 20,000 people were evacuated to government shelters.

At Oman’s weather center, where records have been kept since 1890, metorologists said Gonu was likely the strongest storm to hit Oman since 1977. Milder tropical storms are common mid-May to late June.

In Iran, hundreds of residents of Chabahr, a port on the Gulf of Oman, were evacuated.

“University and school students were moved to higher ground in the area to avoid the cyclone effects,” Hojjat Ali Shayanfar, head of emergency services in Sistan Baluchistan province, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.

Some major roads were flooded in southeastern Iran. In the port city of Bandar Abbas, winds shattered windows and knocked down billboards & trees.

Oman has relatively small oil fields, and there was little damage to them. But oil exports were cut off, as the raging seas kept tankers battened down in port for a third day today. To the north, at the world’s third-largest shipping fuel center in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates, all refueling and supply operations were suspended, and ships were kept in their berths. At the entrance to the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, ships passed through, despite four- to six-foot swells and strong winds. About one-fifth of the world’s oil passes through this narrow chokepoint.

Iran, OPEC’s No. 2 oil exporter, said the storm would not disrupt supplies because its main terminals were inside the Gulf waterway. Analysts were mixed on how the storm will affect prices at the gas pump.

“About 17-21 million barrels a day of oil are coming out of the Persian Gulf. Even if only some of the tankers are delayed, that could reduce the supply of oil and increase prices,” Manouchehr Takin, at the Center for Global Energy Studies in London, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.

But Tim Evans, an analyst at Citigroup Global Markets, said while the storm may delay oil tankers, they will eventually get to their destinations, so prices shouldn’t be affected too drastically.

Oil prices rose US$0.25 to $65.86 a barrel in midday trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

At its peak, Tropical Cyclone Gonu, named for a bag of palm leaves in the language of the Maldives, reached sustained winds of 240 kilometers an hour (149 miles per hour) . By early today, winds were around 83 km/h, and it was expect to keep weakening.

The storm is believed to be the strongest cyclone to hit the Arabian Peninsula since record-keeping started in 1945, and was tied for the strongest tropical cyclone in the northern Indian Ocean, according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), a record number of banks for a calendar month have failed in the United States in February. A total of 10 banks failed in February, more than any other month since October of 2000. A total of 16 banks have closed this year so far, with 24 closing in 2008. If the current trend continues, the total number of failed banks will more than double in March, as compared to the total number of failed banks in 2008.

The list grew after the FDIC took over the funds from the Security Savings Bank of Henderson, Nevada and the Heritage Community Bank in Glenwood, Illinois on February 27. The FDIC issued press releases for both institutions.

The four branches of the Heritage Community Bank reopened on February 28 “as branches of MB Financial Bank,” stated the FDIC. The bank’s assets were worth nearly US$233 million and had customer deposits worth nearly $220 million. MB is expected to purchase $230 million of the bank’s assets and the FDIC will “retain the remaining assets for later disposition.”

“The two Security Savings Bank branches will reopen on Monday (March 2) as branches of Bank of Nevada,” stated the FDIC. The bank held assets worth approximately $238.3 million with customer deposits of nearly $180 million. Bank of Nevada will purchase approximately $111 million of the bank’s assets while the FDIC will retain the remaining balance, also “for later disposition.”

“The FDIC insures deposits at the nation’s 8,305 banks and savings associations and it promotes the safety and soundness of these institutions by identifying, monitoring and addressing risks to which they are exposed,” added the FDIC.

Both banks, when reopened, will immediately become members of the FDIC.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Owsley Stanley, mass-producer of LSD, the drug underlying much of the culture of the 1960s California hippie era, died Sunday in a car accident in Australia at the age of 76, his family announced on Tuesday.

According to The New York Times, “Mr. Stanley lent the ’60s a great deal of its color — like White Lightning, Monterey Purple and Blue Cheer, the varieties of his LSD that were among the most popular.”

Stanley, a talented, self-taught chemist who was known for the purity of his LSD, supplied the drug to such music groups as the Grateful Dead, the Beatles, and Jimi Hendrix, and provided the acid for Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, whose antics were recorded by Tom Wolfe in the The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. The Rolling Stones once called his acid “the best LSD in the world … the genuine Owsley.”

He was also an early sound engineer and designed the high-fidelity sound system for the live rock concerts of the Grateful Dead, known as the “wall of sound”. It was essentially a massive public address system made up of 600 speakers that enabled musicians to mix their sound from the stage and reduce distortion. His recordings of Grateful Dead live performances, some having been commercially released, are valued as a documentary of their early music.

Sam Cutler, formerly the tour manager of the Rolling Stones, said of Stanley: “He was a very sophisticated man, an amalgam of scientist and engineer, chemist and artist.”

Stanley was born in Kentucky and studied engineering briefly at the University of Virginia before dropping out and joining the Air Force. In 1958, he moved to California and worked at a wide variety of jobs, before enrolling at the UC at Berkeley in 1963, at a time when drug use was pervasive. He got his first taste of LSD in April 1964 which transformed him. “I remember the first time I took acid and walked outside, and the cars were kissing the parking meters,” he said in an interview with the Rolling Stone Magazine in 2007.

Deciding to provide his own LSD to ensure its quality, Stanley created his own lab to produce it. According to The Washington Post, “Working at first from a makeshift bathroom laboratory in Berkeley, Mr. Stanley produced at least 1 million doses of LSD between 1965 and 1967.” His LSD was widely distributed. The lab was raided and he spent two years in prison.

Stanley moved to Australia in the 1980s when he become convinced the Northern Hemisphere would be destroyed in the coming of a new ice age. He lived in the Australian bush near Cairns, Queensland.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

An HIV-positive man was sentenced to 35 years in prison Wednesday, one day after being convicted of harassment of a public servant for spitting into the eye and open mouth of a Dallas, Texas police officer in May 2006. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that no one has ever contracted HIV from saliva, and a gay-rights and AIDS advocacy group called the sentence excessive.

A Dallas County jury concluded that Willie Campbell’s act of spitting on policeman Dan Waller in 2006 constituted the use of his saliva as a deadly weapon. The incident occurred while Campbell, 42, was resisting arrest while being taken into custody for public intoxication.

“He turns and spits. He hits me in the eye and mouth. Then he told me he has AIDS. I immediately began looking for something to flush my eyes with,” said Waller to The Dallas Morning News.

Officer Waller responded after a bystander reported seeing an unconscious male lying outside a building. Dallas County prosecutors stated that Campbell attempted to fight paramedics and kicked the police officer who arrested him for public intoxication.

Prosecutors said that Campbell yelled that he was innocent during the trial, and claimed a police officer was lying. Campbell’s lawyer Russell Heinrichs said that because he had a history of convictions including similarly attacking two other police officers, biting inmates, and other offenses, he was indicted under a habitual offender statute. The statute increased his minimum sentence to 25 years in prison. Because the jury ruled that Campbell’s saliva was used as a deadly weapon, he will not be eligible for parole until completing at least half his sentence.

The organization Lambda Legal (Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund), which advocates for individuals living with HIV, says that saliva should not be considered a deadly weapon. Bebe Anderson, the HIV projects director at Lambda Legal, spoke with The Dallas Morning News about the sentence. “It’s been 25 years since the virus was identified, but there are still lots of fears,” said Anderson.

The Dallas County prosecutor who handled the trial, Jenni Morse, said that the deadly weapon finding was justified. “No matter how minuscule, there is some risk. That means there is the possibility of causing serious bodily injury or death,” said Morse. Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins stated: “If you look at the facts of this case, it was clear that the defendant intended to cause serious bodily injury.”

A page at the CDC’s website, HIV and Its Transmission, states: “HIV has been found in saliva and tears in very low quantities from some AIDS patients.” The subsection “Saliva, Tears, and Sweat” concludes that: “Contact with saliva, tears, or sweat has never been shown to result in transmission of HIV.” On Friday the Dallas County Health Department released a statement explaining that HIV is most commonly spread through sexual contact, sharing needles, or transfusion from an infected blood product.

Wednesday, July 21, 2021

Wikinews correspondent J.J. Liu spoke with Technological University Dublin (TUD) senior lecturer at the School of Surveying & Construction Management, Dr Lorcan Sirr on Friday regarding the supply of housing in the Republic of Ireland and relevant parallels across the rest of Europe, as well as recent developments by the government and private sector that are causing a rise in rents and home prices in the Irish real estate market.

Dr Sirr is a regular contributor to The Irish Times and has provided commentary to Irish radio station Newstalk, national broadcaster Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) and various other publications. In addition to being a chartered planning and development surveyor and assessor to the Society of Chartered Surveyors, Dr Sirr is a Peace Commissioner and former external examiner for the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, according to his profile on Worky.

Dr Sirr was a lecturer and former head of research for the Faculty of the Built Environment at the Dublin Institute of Technology, which entered a merger with two partner institutes to become TUD January 1, 2019. He received his bachelor’s degree in estate management at the University of Greenwich, United Kingdom, and master’s degree in urban design and PhD in town planning at the University of Manchester. He has a second master’s in literature from KU Leuven, Belgium, and speaks French.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

U.S. Prohibition Party presidential candidate Jim Hedges of Thompson Township, Pennsylvania took some time to answer a few questions about the Prohibition Party and his 2012 presidential campaign.

The Prohibition Party is the third oldest existing political party in the United States, having been established in 1869. It reached its height of popularity during the late 19th century. The party heavily supported the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which banned the sale of alcohol, and resulted in the US period known as Prohibition (1919–33). It was repealed in 1933. The party has declined since this period, but has continued to nominate candidates for the presidential election.

In 2003, the party split into two factions. Preacher Gene Amondson and perennial candidate Earl Dodge were nominated for the presidency by their respective factions. After Dodge’s death in 2007, the party reunified and named Amondson as its sole presidential nominee for 2008. During the election, Amondson was interviewed by Wikinews. He died in 2009, leaving an opening in the party for 2012.

Jim Hedges is a longtime Prohibition activist, who holds the distinction of the first individual of the 21st century (and the first since 1959) to be elected to a political office under the Prohibition Party banner. In 2001, he was elected as the Thompson Township tax assessor, and was re-elected to the post in 2005. He served until his term expired in 2010. Hedges declared his intent to run for the Prohibition Party presidential nomination on February 18, 2010. This marks his first run for the presidency.

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.