A compilation of brief news reports for Wednesday, December 23, 2009.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

A team of eight transplant surgeons in Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, USA, led by reconstructive surgeon Dr. Maria Siemionow, age 58, have successfully performed the first almost total face transplant in the US, and the fourth globally, on a woman so horribly disfigured due to trauma, that cost her an eye. Two weeks ago Dr. Siemionow, in a 23-hour marathon surgery, replaced 80 percent of her face, by transplanting or grafting bone, nerve, blood vessels, muscles and skin harvested from a female donor’s cadaver.

The Clinic surgeons, in Wednesday’s news conference, described the details of the transplant but upon request, the team did not publish her name, age and cause of injury nor the donor’s identity. The patient’s family desired the reason for her transplant to remain confidential. The Los Angeles Times reported that the patient “had no upper jaw, nose, cheeks or lower eyelids and was unable to eat, talk, smile, smell or breathe on her own.” The clinic’s dermatology and plastic surgery chair, Francis Papay, described the nine hours phase of the procedure: “We transferred the skin, all the facial muscles in the upper face and mid-face, the upper lip, all of the nose, most of the sinuses around the nose, the upper jaw including the teeth, the facial nerve.” Thereafter, another team spent three hours sewing the woman’s blood vessels to that of the donor’s face to restore blood circulation, making the graft a success.

The New York Times reported that “three partial face transplants have been performed since 2005, two in France and one in China, all using facial tissue from a dead donor with permission from their families.” “Only the forehead, upper eyelids, lower lip, lower teeth and jaw are hers, the rest of her face comes from a cadaver; she could not eat on her own or breathe without a hole in her windpipe. About 77 square inches of tissue were transplanted from the donor,” it further described the details of the medical marvel. The patient, however, must take lifetime immunosuppressive drugs, also called antirejection drugs, which do not guarantee success. The transplant team said that in case of failure, it would replace the part with a skin graft taken from her own body.

Dr. Bohdan Pomahac, a Brigham and Women’s Hospital surgeon praised the recent medical development. “There are patients who can benefit tremendously from this. It’s great that it happened,” he said.

Leading bioethicist Arthur Caplan of the University of Pennsylvania withheld judgment on the Cleveland transplant amid grave concerns on the post-operation results. “The biggest ethical problem is dealing with failure — if your face rejects. It would be a living hell. If your face is falling off and you can’t eat and you can’t breathe and you’re suffering in a terrible manner that can’t be reversed, you need to put on the table assistance in dying. There are patients who can benefit tremendously from this. It’s great that it happened,” he said.

Dr Alex Clarke, of the Royal Free Hospital had praised the Clinic for its contribution to medicine. “It is a real step forward for people who have severe disfigurement and this operation has been done by a team who have really prepared and worked towards this for a number of years. These transplants have proven that the technical difficulties can be overcome and psychologically the patients are doing well. They have all have reacted positively and have begun to do things they were not able to before. All the things people thought were barriers to this kind of operations have been overcome,” she said.

The first partial face transplant surgery on a living human was performed on Isabelle Dinoire on November 27 2005, when she was 38, by Professor Bernard Devauchelle, assisted by Professor Jean-Michel Dubernard in Amiens, France. Her Labrador dog mauled her in May 2005. A triangle of face tissue including the nose and mouth was taken from a brain-dead female donor and grafted onto the patient. Scientists elsewhere have performed scalp and ear transplants. However, the claim is the first for a mouth and nose transplant. Experts say the mouth and nose are the most difficult parts of the face to transplant.

In 2004, the same Cleveland Clinic, became the first institution to approve this surgery and test it on cadavers. In October 2006, surgeon Peter Butler at London‘s Royal Free Hospital in the UK was given permission by the NHS ethics board to carry out a full face transplant. His team will select four adult patients (children cannot be selected due to concerns over consent), with operations being carried out at six month intervals. In March 2008, the treatment of 30-year-old neurofibromatosis victim Pascal Coler of France ended after having received what his doctors call the worlds first successful full face transplant.

Ethical concerns, psychological impact, problems relating to immunosuppression and consequences of technical failure have prevented teams from performing face transplant operations in the past, even though it has been technically possible to carry out such procedures for years.

Mr Iain Hutchison, of Barts and the London Hospital, warned of several problems with face transplants, such as blood vessels in the donated tissue clotting and immunosuppressants failing or increasing the patient’s risk of cancer. He also pointed out ethical issues with the fact that the procedure requires a “beating heart donor”. The transplant is carried out while the donor is brain dead, but still alive by use of a ventilator.

According to Stephen Wigmore, chair of British Transplantation Society’s ethics committee, it is unknown to what extent facial expressions will function in the long term. He said that it is not certain whether a patient could be left worse off in the case of a face transplant failing.

Mr Michael Earley, a member of the Royal College of Surgeon‘s facial transplantation working party, commented that if successful, the transplant would be “a major breakthrough in facial reconstruction” and “a major step forward for the facially disfigured.”

In Wednesday’s conference, Siemionow said “we know that there are so many patients there in their homes where they are hiding from society because they are afraid to walk to the grocery stores, they are afraid to go the the street.” “Our patient was called names and was humiliated. We very much hope that for this very special group of patients there is a hope that someday they will be able to go comfortably from their houses and enjoy the things we take for granted,” she added.

In response to the medical breakthrough, a British medical group led by Royal Free Hospital’s lead surgeon Dr Peter Butler, said they will finish the world’s first full face transplant within a year. “We hope to make an announcement about a full-face operation in the next 12 months. This latest operation shows how facial transplantation can help a particular group of the most severely facially injured people. These are people who would otherwise live a terrible twilight life, shut away from public gaze,” he said.

Friday, June 5, 2009

Data from the United States Labor Department says that the unemployment rate in the U.S. has reached its highest level in over 25 years, namely 9.4%.

The job loss rate, however, was only 345,000, which is the lowest monthly job loss rate since September of last year. Analysts had predicted that the loss could be as high as 525,000.

The news suggests that the US economy may be improving, as the job loss rate, which peaked at 741,000 jobs this January, has started to ease.

“Even as we see things start to stabilize and hopefully grow again, we do know that unemployment tends to lag, and so that the unemployment rate is going to be high and probably stay high for a while, precisely because that is sort of the normal pattern as we come out of recession,” said an economic adviser for the White House, Christina Romer.

Since the recession officially started in December 2007, the economy has shed over six million jobs, with 14.5 million residents now unemployed.

Monday, April 30, 2007

Microsoft has finally released its long awaited “Silverlight” into Alpha Testing for the general public. “It’s the biggest challenge for Microsoft right now,” said Brent Thill, an analyst from Citigroup. This is the most direct threat to date, that Microsoft has posed to Adobe (makers of the popular Flash platform).

The creators of Silverlight have been promising a single plug-in which will work across all browsers and operating systems and will offer a rich video and interactive media experience which can be embedded within Web sites.

Microsoft has also promised to make some of the Silverlight technologies open source. This has been a popular decision among the computing industry, and has been a step away from the usual protection of their products.

While at MIX07, Microsoft also discussed its new package called Expression, which is set to be released in June, and will be an alternative to Adobe Creative Suite 3 (CS3).

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

English actress Rachel Weisz thinks that Botox injections should be banned for all actors.

The 39-year-old actress, best known for her roles in the Mummy movie franchise and for her Academy Award-winning portrayal in The Constant Gardener, feels facial Botox injections leave actors less able to convey emotion and that it harms the acting industry as much as steroids harm athletes.

In an interview with UK’s Harper’s Bazaar, coming out next month, Weisz says, “It should be banned for actors, as steroids are for sportsmen,” she claims. “Acting is all about expression; why would you want to iron out a frown?”

Currently living in New York, she also mentions that English women are much less worried about their physical appearance than in the United States. “I love the way girls in London dress,” she claimed. “It’s so different to the American ‘blow-dry and immaculate grooming’ thing.”

Tuesday, December 6, 2005

A German man, Khaled al-Masri, has filed a lawsuit against the CIA for alleged torture when he was held prisoner for five months in Afghanistan last year. He was arrested in 2004 in connection with the September 11 attacks when he was stopped in Macedonia. After being arrested, he was flown to Afghanistan for questioning.

Masri said his cell in Afghanistan was cold, dirty and in a cellar, with no light and one dirty cover for warmth. The first night he said he was kicked and beaten and warned by an interrogator: “You are here in a country where no one knows about you, in a country where there is no law. If you die, we will bury you, and no one will know.”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is representing Mr. al-Masri in the lawsuit filed on Tuesday in Alexandria, Virginia seeking damages of at least $75,000. The main defendant is former CIA director George Tenet.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was in Germany and would not comment on the lawsuit but the new German Chancellor Angela Merkel said, “I’m happy to say we have discussed the one case, which the government of the United States has of course accepted as a mistake…”

A senior U.S. official accompanying Condoleezza Rice to Romania said that Rice had not admitted to any mistakes in the handling of Masri. “We are not quite sure what was in her head,” he said, referring to Merkel.

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Monday, July 17, 2006

For 30 minutes, a mob of heavily-armed gunmen tore through a Shiite populated market town in Mahmoudiya, Iraq, exploding car bombs and shooting at people.

Police Capt. Rashid al-Samaraie said the assault which killed at least 60 began at 9 a.m. when mortars were fired into the town and a group of men in cars stormed a checkpoint, killing three Iraqi soldiers.

The gunmen proceeded to attack shoppers and passers-by with automatic weapons and rocket propelled grenades. Some of the 50 strong attack force threw grenades into open restaurants and cafes. Two car bombs also were detonated leading to further casualties.

Local town official Sheik Bassem Anizi said he was an eyewitness to the events as they unfolded. “I saw the armed gunmen shooting randomly at the people. The terrorists wanted to send a message saying we can attack anywhere we want and kill civilians,” he said. Anizi escaped the massacre by hiding behind a wall in a hardware shop.

Early reports said a total of 60 people died and about 50 people were injured.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Boyzone member Stephen Gately has died suddenly at the age of 33 while on holiday on the Spanish island of Majorca.

Gately was on holiday with his partner Andrew Cowles when his body was found on Saturday. The information was confirmed on Boyzone’s official website on Sunday. The other members of Boyzone were said to be travelling to the same island on Sunday before his death was discovered. Dan Wootton, showbusiness editor for British tabloid News of the World, told BBC News that the singer had left the means of accommodation to go out for some drinks, returned, fell asleep and never woke up again. Spanish police report his body was found on a sofa in the lounge.

Louis Walsh, manager of the group and also a judge on UK television singing competition The X Factor, commented, “We’re all absolutely devastated. I’m in complete shock. I was only with him on Monday at an awards ceremony. We don’t know much about what’s happened yet. I only heard after The X Factor and we will rally around each other this week. He was a great man.”

A spokesperson for Spanish police said today in Majorca, “[a]t the moment it is not known how he died. There are no signs of suspicious circumstances. “Gately’s time of death was given as approximately 13.45 UTC. The police spokesperson added, “[d]etails remain pretty unclear. We managed to take a look at some documents, they tell us that police received the body around half past four. We think we know he was drinking in a bar, perhaps they went to a restaurant, but none of this is confirmed.”

Gately’s family hope to hold his funeral in Dublin, Gately’s home town. A representative of the family stated they are “shattered”.

Wednesday, December 19, 2018

On Sunday night in Prague, Czech Republic, 183 people on a Jet2 flight arriving from Manchester, United Kingdom were evacuated after, reportedly, discovery in the aircraft’s toilets of a picture of a bomb.

The Czech foreign ministry’s spokesperson said a painting of a bomb had been found in the plane’s toilet by a flight attendant. According to the spokesperson, a search of the plane turned up no bombs.

A passenger said they were informed of a “threatening note” in the aircraft’s bathroom, and kept for roughly four hours at the airport.

From passenger accounts, every single passenger on the plane was interviewed, and the CCTV checked. One of the passengers said that, despite all of this, they saw no arrests in connection with this incident.

A spokeswoman for Jet2 said they were sorry about any inconvenience the evacuation caused, but consider people’s safety on-board the most important thing.