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Saturday, March 28, 2009

On Friday, a dam burst in a southwestern suburb of Jakarta, Indonesia, killing at least 52 people and displacing a further 1,490. Officials, however, warn that the death toll will likely increase.

The cause of the accident appears to be due to heavy rains that night, which overfilled the Situ Gintung lake behind the broken dam. “The dam was an old dam, 16 metres deep. Last night, because of heavy rain, the dam could not hold back the water so it broke,” said the governor of the Banten province, Ratu Atut Chosiyah.

The breach occurred at approximately 02:00 local time (UTC+7), when many people were in bed, asleep. “People were still sleeping and couldn’t do anything. Many people are still trapped and the rescue is ongoing,” a local official said to Agence France-Presse.

Rescue efforts were hampered due to a deluge of mud and debris from the dam. “We’re still trying to get into the houses, but the problem is, mud is getting in our way,” social affairs spokesman Mardjito said.

The President of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, offered his condolences to the victims of the disaster. “On behalf of the government, I express my condolences to the families of the dead victims and may their souls be accepted by God almighty,” he said.

Indonesia’s Vice President Yusuf Kalla has visited the scene of the incident. “We will provide emergency help to the victims. For those whose homes were destroyed, the government will help with the repairs,” he told Metro TV.

A major concern following this flood is the risk of water-borne diseases such as malaria. These problems are made worse by the local climate being very hot and humid.

The Situ Gintung dam was built early last century, during the Dutch colonial rule. It was holding back a lake of about two million cubic metres (70 million cubic feet) of water.

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Peace activist Cindy Sheehan, who recently announced her intention to run as the Peace and Freedom Party’s nominee for governor of California in 2014, took some time to answer five questions from Wikinews reporter William S. Saturn.

Sheehan is best known for her active opposition to the War in Iraq following the loss of her son Casey there in 2004. In protest of the war, she set up camp outside President George W. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, demanding a pullout of U.S. troops and prosecution of Bush administration officials for war crimes. According to her website, Sheehan also advocates revolutionary socialism, believing it to be key to loosening the “Imperialist/Capitalist two-party stranglehold” on U.S. and world politics.

This campaign is not Sheehan’s first foray into electoral politics. In 2008, she challenged then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for Congress, finishing second in a field of seven candidates. During the campaign, she championed the reduction of U.S. troops abroad, and endorsed economic democracy, bank nationalization, single-payer health care, education subsidies, marijuana decriminalization, alternative fuels, and electoral reform. In 2012, she ran as the vice presidential nominee of the Peace and Freedom Party on a similar platform. The party promotes socialism, feminism, and environmentalism.

Other gubernatorial candidates include Governor Jerry Brown of the Democratic Party, former Lieutenant Governor Abel Maldonado of the Republican Party, and 2012 Justice Party vice presidential nominee Luis J. Rodriguez of the Green Party.

With Wikinews, Sheehan discusses third party politics and her campaign and governing strategy, and assesses past governors of California, including Brown.

A compilation of brief news reports for Wednesday, June 27, 2007.

German authorities will dedicate resources of the federal budget to improve information about renewable resources on the German version of Wikipedia. Entries on this topic will be managed by a private-sector body.

The challenge will be to motivate experts to get involved in the community lexicon. Such expert are used to publish in the normal newspapers. But Wikipedia is radically different: articles there continually grow with input from numerous authors, who often remain anonymous. The end product is constantly changing, and third parties can publish their own texts or even change them.

Sources

• Torsten Kleinz, Craig Morris. “German Wikipedia receives state funding” — heise online, June 26, 2007
• “Freies Wissen zu Nachwachsenden Rohstoffen – Bund engagiert sich für Ausbau der Wikipedia” — Wikimedia Deutschland, June 26, 2007

A one-year old girl, Georgia Brown of Hampshire, United Kingdom has become the first oldest ever member of high-IQ society Mensa International. She was tested by professor Joan Freeman, an educational psychologist from Middlesex University, using the Stanford-Binet IQ test, receiving a score of 152. At two years, nine months old, Brown is the youngest current member of the society, one of only 30 members under the age of ten, and the youngest female member ever. She is the youngest of five siblings, the daughter of Martin Brown, a carpenter, and Lucy Brown, chief executive of the charity Disability Initiative.

Sources

• “Two-year-old with IQ of 152 is youngest Mensa member” — Gulf News, June 23, 2007
• “Girl, 2, becomes member of Mensa” — BBC News Online, June 22, 2007
• “Two-year-old becomes Mensa member” — The Daily Telegraph, June 25, 2007
• Stephen McGinty. “Mensa unveils its latest genius — aged two” — The Scotsman, June 22, 2007
• Duncan Robertson. “Two-year-old ‘Matilda’ becomes youngest ever girl in Mensa” — The Daily Mail, June 22, 2007

Monday, February 21, 2005

Los Angeles, California —A simple saliva test can predict whether children will get cavities, how many cavities they will get and which teeth are most vulnerable.

Developed by researchers at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, the test quantifies the genetic component of tooth decay, spotting the risk when something can be done about it.

“When we apply this to young children, it allows us to predict what might be their future caries history—the number of cavities that they’ll get by, say, their late 20s or early 30s,” says researcher Paul Denny.

Called the Caries Assessment and Risk Evaluation (CARE) test, the test measures the relative proportions in saliva of different types of sugar chains called oligosaccharides. The same sugar chains are present on tooth surfaces.

The effect of sugar chains on teeth’s resistance to disease is analogous to the effect of “good” and “bad” cholesterol on blood vessels. “Good” sugar chains tend to repel bacteria that cause cavities while “bad” allow bacteria to bond to teeth and start the decay process. Unlike cholesterol, however, sugar chain makeup in humans is 100% genetically determined.

Denny and colleagues have found that the sugar chain makeup in saliva can predict a child’s future cavity history to plus or minus one cavity with greater than 98% confidence.

The findings suggest that in developed areas of the modern era genes play a more significant role in tooth decay than in former times or third world nations where gross malnutrition and negligent oral hygiene held the greatest impact on dental health.

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Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Toyota has been accused by a U.S. House of Representatives committee with misleading the public and investigators over its recent recalls.

The accusations, in a statement from the House Energy and Commerce Committee, claim that Toyota both relied on a flawed study in its assessment of the issue of sticking accelerator pedals at the heart of the recalls, and then made misleading statements about its response. According to the authors of the letter, Henry Waxman and Bart Stupak, Toyota dismissed, rather than investigated, the idea that the cars’ computers were at fault. In a statement, James Lentz, the president of Toyota’s American division, claimed that hardware issues were to blame, and that dealers were repairing the faulty part. Toyota also released a study commissioned from the research firm Exponent that said electronic systems were not to blame.

According to the House committee, however, the study involved only six vehicles, none of which had problems with their electrical systems, and was insufficient to produce an accurate result. “Our preliminary assessment is that Toyota resisted the possibility that electronic defects could cause safety concerns, relied on a flawed engineering report and made misleading public statements concerning the adequacy of recent recalls to address the risk of sudden unintended acceleration.”

The company is under a criminal investigation, and has received two subpoenas for documents from two House committees relating to the recalls, although whether they are directly related to the letter is unclear. The documents are related to accelerator issues in several models, as well as brake problems with the Prius hybrid car, and were served earlier in in February by a federal grand jury and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Toyota has released upwards of 75,000 pages of documents under the requests.

In a separate, though related, development, it has emerged that Toyota last year negotiated a limited recall for two models, the Toyota Camry and Lexus ES, that were affected by the accelerator recalls, saving the company an estimated $100 million. A confidential internal presentation in July 2009 made the claim, and a month later, a Lexus ES, one of the models under the limited recall crashed in California, killing four people. The claims apparently referenced a September, 2007 recall of floor mats that could trap gas pedals, the same problem that triggered a full recall of numerous Toyota cars to fix the same problem. In the same presentation, the company claimed to have avoided recalls of another model related to rust, as well as delaying new federal safety regulations.

Monday, November 27, 2006

Michael Chong, Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, Minister of Sport, and MP for the riding of Wellington—Halton Hills, has resigned over Stephen Harper’s Quebec motion. The motion asks MPs if Quebec is a nation “within a united Canada”.

Chong opposed the vote saying that it was akin to ethnic nationalism, which he opposes.

“It is nothing else but the recognition of ethnic nationalism, and that is something I cannot support. It cannot be interpreted as the recognition of a territorial nationalism, or it does not refer to the geographic entity, but to a group of people,” Chong said.

“I am resigning as minister so I can abstain from the vote tonight,” Chong said at a news conference in Ottawa, the nations capital. “While I am loyal to my party and to my leader, my first loyalty is to my country. I believe in one nation undivided called Canada.”

Chong remains a Conservative member of Parliament. Later in the day, Prime Minister Stephen Harper appointed York—Simcoe, Ontario MP Peter Van Loan to the position vacated by Chong.

Harper asked Liberal race contender Stéphane Dion for guidance with the Quebec motion instead of asking the now former Intergovernmental Affairs Minister, Michael Chong.

Michael Ignatieff, the front-runner in the Liberal leadership race, has proposed a similar motion. Liberal leadership candidate, Gerard Kennedy, said he opposes the motion and finds it divisive to national unity and could advance the separatist agenda.

The vote will be held tonight in the House of Commons.

Wednesday, December 28, 2005Black American women living in communities with high poverty rates are significantly less likely to be screened for cervical cancer, a study finds.

The Harvard School of Public Health’s Geetanjali Dabral Datta investigated the relationship between individual characteristics and larger socioeconomic factors and cervical cancer screening rates. The Febreuary 1 issue of Cancer carries the study. More than 40,000 black women from across the United States participated in the Black Women’s Health Study.

“African-American women have twice the mortality rate from cervical cancer as white women,” said Elizabeth Ward, the director of the American Cancer Society. “Researchers need to investigate how those differences are related to socioeconomic status. One of the big factors that may account for this finding is access to high-quality medical care. Often communities that have high poverty rates either lack access to good quality care, or people have to travel longer distances to obtain high-quality care.”

David L. Katz at Yale University’s School of Medicine said; “While this finding is not surprising, it is noteworthy just the same. No one should die of cervical cancer, because a simple screening test reliably finds the condition in its earliest stages when cure is almost universally achievable. Yet, several thousand deaths from this cancer occur each year in the U.S.”