leskovarlm.com

A compilation of brief news reports for Monday, March 1, 2010.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

On Tuesday, Minnesota’s Brown County District Judge John Rodenberg ordered chemotherapy for Daniel Hauser. He also issued the felony warrant for the arrest of Colleen Hauser, Daniel’s mother. The judge said Daniel should be cared for in a foster home because the parents, Colleen and Anthony Hauser, medically neglected their son by refusing chemotherapy after only one treatment.

Sheriff Rich Hoffman said that there was a country-wide search across America for Colleen Hauser and her thirteen-year-old son Daniel who has Hodgkin’s lymphoma after the pair fled a court order for chemotherapy.

The father, Anthony Hauser, told the press on Wednesday that mother and son left their home near Sleepy Eye without telling him where they were going. He also has not heard from them.

“If he’s being cared for, and it’s going to help him, I think it’s going to be a good thing,” Anthony Hauser said.

On Monday, an x-ray showed that the tumor is growing. The mother had been treating the cancer with herbal supplements, vitamins, ionized water and other natural alternatives from an internet regime. Colleen wanted to follow the native American Indian healing practices of the Nemenhah Band.

“He had basically gotten back all the trouble he had in January,” said James Joyce, the family doctor.

The court proceedings revealed that Hodgkin’s lymphoma is 90% curable with chemotherapy and radiation.

“I know people around here who’ve had chemo twice and they’re great. And I’m not saying alternative medicine is going to cure you every time.” said Anthony Hauser who appeared Tuesday in court by himself.

“Running away when there is a court order is not the way to handle it. Go home. That’s the official position of the church. Go home Colleen,” said Chief Medicine Man Phillip “Cloudpiler” Landis of the Nemenhah Band, “it can’t be good for Daniel’s health.”

Landis claims to have previously cured his own cancer by administering himself with the Chaga Mushroom. He feels that Colleen and Daniel have taken it upon themselves without approval of the court to seek advice of an Oncologist in Mexico.

Billy Best, a man who fled chemotherapy as a teenager in 1994 and claims to have cured his cancer with natural remedies, supports the Hausers’ decision.

“I just want to help this kid. I just feel like people are ganging up on him and it’s not fair. He’s a nice kid, the family’s nice, and they love him, and they want him to live,” Best said.

The police alert sent around the country said that Colleen and Daniel Hauser might be with Billy Best.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Viktor Schreckengost, the father of industrial design and creator of the Jazz Bowl, an iconic piece of Jazz Age art designed for Eleanor Roosevelt during his association with Cowan Pottery died yesterday. He was 101.

Schreckengost was born on June 26, 1906 in Sebring, Ohio, United States.

Schreckengost’s peers included the far more famous designers Raymond Loewy and Norman Bel Geddes.

In 2000, the Cleveland Museum of Art curated the first ever retrospective of Schreckengost’s work. Stunning in scope, the exhibition included sculpture, pottery, dinnerware, drawings, and paintings.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

200,000 litres of oil leaked into waters off the coast of Brisbane from the Pacific Adventurer when their fuel tanks were damaged in rough seas on Wednesday. The figure is about ten times higher than the original estimate of twenty thousand litres of oil. The devastating diesel oil spill has spread along 60 kilometres (37 miles) of the Queensland coast. In addition, 31 containers with 620 tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertiliser flew overboard during the violent storm.

Questions are being asked why the Hong Kong cargo ship was out in seas with nine meter waves caused by Cyclone Hamish, a Category 5 tropical cyclone, as well as why the fertiliser containers were not properly secured. One of the overboard containers ruptured the hull of the Pacific Adventurer, causing between 30 to 100 tonnes of oil to spew from the severely damaged ship.

If the ammonium nitrate mixes with the heavy oil, an explosion could occur. None of the containers have been recovered. Some of these may float, but it is believed that they may have sunk which then may cause algal blooms.

Disaster zones have been declared at Bribie and Moreton Islands, and along the Sunshine coast.

The vessel’s owner, Swire Shipping, reported that a second leak began on Friday, when the ship began listing after docking at Hamilton for repairs. “As full soundings of the vessel’s tanks were being taken at the port to determine how much oil had leaked from the vessel, a small quantity of fuel oil escaped from the Pacific Adventurer,” it stated. The ship was brought upright, and a recovery vessel was used to suck up the oil from the water. The leak produced a 500m-long oil slick down the Brisbane River. Booms were placed around this oil spill so that a skimmer could clean up the second spill.

Swire Shipping could face clean up costs of AU$100,000 a day as well as fines up to AU$1.5million (US$977,000; £703,000) if found guilty of environmental breaches or negligence.

Sunshine Coast beaches are slowly starting to be reopened. The beach of Mooloolaba was still closed following reports of burning sensations from swimmers. 12 beaches remain closed; however, 13 have been reopened.

Over 300 state government and council workers are using buckets, rakes and spades in the clean up effort. Sunshine Coast Mayor Bob Abbott says the majority will be gone by Sunday afternoon. The full environmental impact on wildlife is not yet known. One turtle and seven pelicans have been found covered in oil.

There are concerns that the drinking water of Moreton Island is at risk, as the island uses water from the underground water table near the oil spill site.

“Every bucketload of contaminated sand has to be removed from the island by barge, and each bucketload from a front-end loader weighs about one tonne. It’s just an impossible task,” said Mr Trevor Hassard of the Tangalooma Dolphin Education Centre.

The commercial fishing industry has suffered from the incident. Trawlers won’t resume operations until Sunday evening, and any catches will be tested for human consumption.

Sunday, June 5, 2005

Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International, compared the United States detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to a Soviet-era gulag in that it is “entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detention in violation of international law,” she said.

The group’s Executive Director William Schulz, on Fox News Sunday, said in response to questioning that they do not “know for sure” whether or not testimonies it has published describing torture and abuse of prisoners by sections of the U.S. military are valid because the U.S. will not give access to the camp to investigate them. [1]

He also said he has no conclusive evidence that U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, ordered torture of detainees at the facility. Schulz had previously referred to “apparent high-level architects of torture,”, and included Donald Rumsfeld in that group. [2]

Director Schulz stated that comparing the installation to a gulag was perhaps not the best choice of words. “…they (detainees) are not in forced labor, they are not being denied food. But,” he continued,” there are some analogies between the gulags and our detention facilities.” Schulz alleged that U.S. officials are “running an archipelago of detention facilities,” some secret. The report also describes “ghost” detainees who “disappear” and the export of prisoners to countries that are known to practice torture.

During his appearance, Schulz argued that his and other human rights groups should be given broader access to the facility. “We don’t know for sure what all is happening at Guantanamo,” he said, “and our whole point is that the United States ought to allow independent human rights organizations to investigate.” The treatment of prisoners at the facility has been in hot dispute recently, with Amnesty International comparing the facility to a “gulag” in its annual human rights report. Bush administration officials condemned the comparison.

On Friday, the U.S. government released documents indicating that both guards and detainees at the facility had on a few occasions abused the Qur’an, the Muslim holy book.

Prisoners and ex-prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have testified that they have been tortured. David Hicks, still being held, filed an affidavit on August 5, 2004 [3] declaring that he had been tortured, abused and ill-treated during his detention by US military authorities, and that he saw and heard similar treatment inflicted on other detainees. Mamdouh Habib, now free, says about his time at Guantanamo Bay that he was told by interrogators that his family had been killed, and that he was tied to the ground while a prostitute menstruated on him. Professor Christopher Tennant of Sydney University also stated he saw an unsigned medical report from Guantanamo Bay that backed up Habib’s claim to have been beaten while in US custody;

“Well, the main feature of the medical report from Guantanamo was that he had had repeatedly blood in his urine, which is a very significant symptom and a worrying symptom, and that was consistent with his reports both to me and to the specialist physician who also examined him, and was consistent with the fact that, on examination, he had evidence of discolouration to his skin on his right loin, just over his kidney, which in turn was consistent with old bruising and possibly due to being beaten.”

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.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

On Friday evening, an explosion in Chengdu, China caused partial shutdown of a facility operated by Foxconn, one of the world’s biggest electronics manufacturers and a major supplier to companies like Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Sony, Apple, Motorola and Nokia. Initial investigations now suggest the explosion was caused by poor ventilation, which lead to high concentrations of combustible dust.

The blast happened at 7:18PM, around the time workers change shifts. A fire followed. Emergency services had control by 7:30PM. At least three people were killed, at least fifteen injured. Foxconn halted production to investigate, saying “All operations at the affected workshop remain suspended and production at all other workshops that carry out similar processing functions have also been halted pending the results of the investigation. All other production operations in our facilities in China continue operating normally.”

On Monday, city officials gave the cause as combustible dust in the air at a polishing workshop. Hong Kong-based labor rights group Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior said they reported aluminium dust problems in March when they reviewed working conditions at Foxconn. After the explosion, they commented that workers were complaining “the ventilation of the department is poor. Workers polish the iPad cases to make them shiny. In the process, there is lots of aluminum (aluminium) dust floating in the air. Workers always breathe in aluminum dust even though they put on masks. When workers take off their cotton gloves, their hands are covered with aluminum dust.”

Foxconn responded by saying the group was trying to “capitalize on the tragic accident” and misrepresented “Foxconn’s commitment to the health and safety of our employees.”

Foxconn is responsible for making iPads and iPhones for Apple. Research group IHS iSuppli said the explosion may cause loss of production of 500,000 iPads during this quarter of the year. They said there is a larger facility in Shenzhen, but it cannot cope with re-compensating the possible loss.

Monday, August 11, 2008

In November 2007, a twin-engine 30-year-old Piper aircraft lost all electrical power on board shortly after departing from Kerry airport in Ireland for a flight to Jersey. Without any electrical power, the pilot was unable to use his radio to contact air traffic control. He was briefly able to re-establish contact with the tower using his cell phone, but that was also disrupted.

The report into the incident published on August 6 revealed how a quick-thinking air traffic controller in Cork started sending directions to the pilot by text message. With this assistance, the plane, with five people on board, landed safely after the undercarriage was lowered manually and air traffic control visually confirmed that it was down. Prior to lowering the undercarriage, the first officer noticed that the nose wheel had failed to retract fully and was actually at half its travel.

“In this incident the positive and proactive initiative of the ATC controller, who, on realising that mobile audio communication from the pilot was intermittent, quickly switched to texting his instructions instead”, said John Hughes, an air accident investigator who reported on the incident. “This contributed to the safe resolution of the incident and, for such, the controller should be commended for his actions.”

The pilot, aged 39 and with 1,900 hours of flying experience, succeeded in climbing to an altitude of 6,500 feet without any problems, but needed to communicate to ensure a safe landing. He originally attempted to contact Kerry airport, and after that failed he made attempts to contact Cork.

The report found that the loss of electrical power was due to the aircraft’s alternators failing to maintain the required voltage, probably due to the battery voltage being insufficient to excite the alternator’s windings. The relay may have been in poor condition after having been subjected to a heavy load following take-off, possibly contributing to the incident.

Friday, January 20, 2006

A recently created Danish clothing company is selling on the internet T-shirts in order to support the clandestine radio station of the Colombian guerrilla group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the graphical workshop of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). In fact the money will be used by these groups to carry on their terrorist activities. FARC activities include kidnappings, masacres, bombs, extortions and the drug trade.

Fighters and Lovers is selling the T-shirts at 170 DKK (US$27.6), from which 35 DKK (US$5.7) are to be destinated to support both armed groups.

Anna Duever, Fighters and Lovers PR chief, said to Spanish news agency EFE that their objective is to “defend freedom and social justice, which is FARC and PFLP are fighting for”. Duever believes the fact the FARC has been included by the EU in its terrorist group list is a “political game”. “We pay our taxes in Denmark, and that money is used for financing the troops our government has sent to Iraq. That’s terrorism. Besides, in Colombia there’s a regime oppressing population and torturing and killing its people”, she said.

Colombian Foreign Affairs Minister, Carolina Barco, said to local media that “financing terrorist groups is unacceptable and goes against all the international norms. Yesterday [Tuesday 19] our ambassador contacted the Danish government, we sent a protest note and have demanded an explanation.”

A year ago, a Danish NGO named Oprør (“Rebelion”) stated it had donated money to the Colombian guerrilla. A new antiterrorism law in Denmark may punish it.