Capital flight out of Venezuela established a record during 2007, the Central Bank of Venezuela has reported, despite strict currency controls adopted in 2004 by President Hugo Chávez's government to limit the outflow of money.
Much of the money landed in the United States and especially Florida, a former Central Bank official and a Miami academic said.
According to recent Central Bank statistics, nearly $19 billion in private Venezuelan capital was transferred offshore during 2007 -- a record since Chávez was first elected president in 1998.
Financial analysts said the capital flight was primarily stimulated by the issue of Venezuelan dollar bonds -- designed to help countries such as Argentina and Ecuador lessen the burden of their foreign debts -- that created a loophole through which Venezuelans could dodge the currency controls.
Experts said there's also a sum of capital that could have left the country illegally but is impossible to trace.
''This is only the official figure,'' said José Guerra, the Central Bank's former chief economist. ``There is an escape of capital investments that the Central Bank cannot account for.''
Guerra said the capital flight indicates that ''there is a strong mistrust of the national currency'' and ''a great uncertainty'' on the future of Venezuela under the leftist Chávez.
A significant percentage of the money went to the United States, and especially Florida, through various means such as bank accounts, financial investments and asset purchases, said Guerra and Antonio Jorge, an economics professor at Florida International University.
''Miami is a natural destination for the escape of Venezuelan capital,'' said Jorge. He estimated that at least 60 percent of the $19 billion ended up in the United States, given that nearly 70 percent of Venezuela's international commercial exchange is with the United States.
According to the Central Bank statistics, the most active months of offshore transfers in 2007 were April, May, and June, which coincided with five issuances of bonds destined to cover public debts and part of which were offered directly in dollars for international markets.
Another period of intense outflow occurred between July and September, due to the insecurity generated by the radical constitutional reforms proposed by Chávez. They were defeated in a Dec. 2 vote.
Source: Miami Herald
The Venezuelans with money do not seem enamored of the Hugo Chavez economic plans, particularly if they suspect that he will get around to nationalizing all profitable companies in Venezuela in time.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Bird Flu Kills 11-Year-Old Vietnamese Boy
HANOI, March 17 (Reuters) - Bird flu has killed a 11-year-old boy in northern Vietnam, the fifth casualty from the H5N1 virus this year, a health official said on Monday.
The boy died last Friday at a Hanoi hospital, more than a week after he had fallen sick, and tests confirmed he was infected by the H5N1 virus, said Nguyen Lap Quyet, Health Department Director in Ha Nam province.
"Controlling bird flu has been difficult because poultry raising is not on a large scale but still on a family basis," Quyet said by telephone from Ha Nam, about 60 km (37 miles) south of Hanoi.
He said animal health workers have slaughtered all the poultry in the boy's neighbourhood to prevent the virus from spreading.
"Even after vaccination has been completed locally, farmers buy poultry to add to their stocks and that could help spread the virus if the new birds are not vaccinated," he said.
Chickens raised at the boy's house in Liem Tiet commune in Ha Nam died in late February and he got sick on March 5.
The Animal Health Department said on Monday that Ha Nam was on the government's bird flu watch list of 10 provinces and the capital, Hanoi.
In June 2007 bird flu infected and killed a 28-year-old woman in the same commune of Liem Tiet in Ha Nam province.
Five people have died of bird flu in Vietnam so far this year out of six reported H5N1 infections.
Source: Reuters
The boy died last Friday at a Hanoi hospital, more than a week after he had fallen sick, and tests confirmed he was infected by the H5N1 virus, said Nguyen Lap Quyet, Health Department Director in Ha Nam province.
"Controlling bird flu has been difficult because poultry raising is not on a large scale but still on a family basis," Quyet said by telephone from Ha Nam, about 60 km (37 miles) south of Hanoi.
He said animal health workers have slaughtered all the poultry in the boy's neighbourhood to prevent the virus from spreading.
"Even after vaccination has been completed locally, farmers buy poultry to add to their stocks and that could help spread the virus if the new birds are not vaccinated," he said.
Chickens raised at the boy's house in Liem Tiet commune in Ha Nam died in late February and he got sick on March 5.
The Animal Health Department said on Monday that Ha Nam was on the government's bird flu watch list of 10 provinces and the capital, Hanoi.
In June 2007 bird flu infected and killed a 28-year-old woman in the same commune of Liem Tiet in Ha Nam province.
Five people have died of bird flu in Vietnam so far this year out of six reported H5N1 infections.
Source: Reuters
Florida Democrats Abandon Plans for Second Primary
TALLAHASSEE, FL (AP) -- Facing strong opposition, Florida Democrats on Monday abandoned plans to hold a do-over presidential primary with a mail-in vote and threw the delegate dispute into the lap of the national party.
While the decision by Florida Democrats left the state's 210 delegates in limbo, Democrats in Michigan moved closer to holding another contest on June 3. Legislative leaders reviewed a measure Monday that would set up a privately funded, state-administered do-over primary, The Associated Press learned.
Florida Democratic Party chairwoman Karen L. Thurman sent a letter announcing the decision.
"A party-run primary or caucus has been ruled out, and it's simply not possible for the state to hold another election, even if the party were to pay for it," Thurman said. "... This doesn't mean that Democrats are giving up on Florida voters. It means that a solution will have to come from the DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee, which is scheduled to meet again in April."
Members of Florida's congressional delegation unanimously opposed the plan, and Barack Obama expressed concern about the security of a mail-in vote organized so quickly.
The national party punished Michigan and Florida for moving up their primaries before Feb. 5, stripping them of all their delegates to the party's national convention this summer in Denver. All the Democratic candidates agreed not to campaign in the two states, and Obama was not even on the Michigan ballot.
Hillary Rodham Clinton won both primaries. As her race with Obama has tightened, she has argued the delegates should be seated or new primaries held.
Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, who backs Clinton, has suggested one option -- seating all Florida delegates already chosen but only giving them half a vote each. Nelson discussed this idea with Clinton and Obama on the Senate floor last week.
Based on the Jan. 29 results, Clinton would have won 105, Obama 67 and John Edwards 13. Instead they would get half those delegate votes.
Republicans stripped Florida and Michigan of half their delegates as a penalty for early primaries.
The draft Michigan legislation included language that would approve spending privately raised funds for the election, according to a Democratic leader who spoke on condition of anonymity because lawmakers and the campaigns are still considering the proposal.
The campaigns of the Democratic presidential contenders also received copies of the bill Monday.
"A re-vote is the only way Michigan can be assured its delegation will be seated, and vote in Denver at the party's national convention this summer, Clinton campaign aide Harold Ickes said Monday. "If the Obama campaign thwarts a fair election process for the people of Michigan, it will jeopardize the Democratic nominee's ability to carry the state in the general election."
Obama campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor said, "It's pretty apparent that the Clinton campaign's views on voting are dependent on their own political interest. Hillary Clinton herself said in January that the Michigan primary 'didn't count for anything.' Now, she is cynically trying to change the rules at the eleventh hour for her own benefit. We received a very complex proposal for Michigan re-vote legislation today and are reviewing it to make sure that any solution for Michigan is fair and practical. We continue to believe a fair seating of the delegation deserves strong consideration."
The Democrat-led House is scheduled to leave for a two-week vacation Thursday, so any bills to set up the do-over primary need to be brought up quickly. The measure also would have to be approved by the Republican-controlled state Senate. To be given immediate effect, the measure would require a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate.
To go forward, any plan also would require the approval of the two campaigns, the Democratic National Committee, state party leaders and Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who is backing Clinton.
The contest must be held by June 10 for the results to count under DNC rules. The draft measure would set up the a fund within the state Treasury to receive up to $12 million in cash and other assets from private donors to cover the cost of the election.
On Monday in Atlanta, federal appeals judges skeptically questioned a lawyer who argued that the national party's decision to strip Florida of its 210 convention delegates was unconstitutional.
Michael Steinberg, a lawyer for Victor DiMaio, a Democratic Party activist from Tampa, said Florida's Democratic voters are being disenfranchised by not being permitted to have their say in the selection of their party's nominee. The action violates DiMaio's constitutional right to equal protection, he argued.
"The citizens of the state of Florida are not being treated equally," Steinberg told the judges.
But Joe Sandler, a lawyer for the Democratic National Committee, said the party has the right to set its own the rules and not seat delegates who refuse to follow them.
"It goes to the heart of the constitutional right of the DNC to determine the best means of selecting delegates to the convention," Sandler said.
Sounding skeptical of Steinberg's equal protection argument, the judges noted in their questions that states select their presidential picks in different ways -- some use caucuses and others primaries -- and on different days. Judge Stanley Marcus suggested at one point that the only way to treat all the states equally, under Steinberg's theory, was for them to all hold their primaries on the same day.
Not so, Steinberg said. He said one solution might be to rotate the states so that each gets a shot at being in the first round.
Source: First Coast News
Exactly right. We already had the primary.
While the decision by Florida Democrats left the state's 210 delegates in limbo, Democrats in Michigan moved closer to holding another contest on June 3. Legislative leaders reviewed a measure Monday that would set up a privately funded, state-administered do-over primary, The Associated Press learned.
Florida Democratic Party chairwoman Karen L. Thurman sent a letter announcing the decision.
"A party-run primary or caucus has been ruled out, and it's simply not possible for the state to hold another election, even if the party were to pay for it," Thurman said. "... This doesn't mean that Democrats are giving up on Florida voters. It means that a solution will have to come from the DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee, which is scheduled to meet again in April."
Members of Florida's congressional delegation unanimously opposed the plan, and Barack Obama expressed concern about the security of a mail-in vote organized so quickly.
The national party punished Michigan and Florida for moving up their primaries before Feb. 5, stripping them of all their delegates to the party's national convention this summer in Denver. All the Democratic candidates agreed not to campaign in the two states, and Obama was not even on the Michigan ballot.
Hillary Rodham Clinton won both primaries. As her race with Obama has tightened, she has argued the delegates should be seated or new primaries held.
Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, who backs Clinton, has suggested one option -- seating all Florida delegates already chosen but only giving them half a vote each. Nelson discussed this idea with Clinton and Obama on the Senate floor last week.
Based on the Jan. 29 results, Clinton would have won 105, Obama 67 and John Edwards 13. Instead they would get half those delegate votes.
Republicans stripped Florida and Michigan of half their delegates as a penalty for early primaries.
The draft Michigan legislation included language that would approve spending privately raised funds for the election, according to a Democratic leader who spoke on condition of anonymity because lawmakers and the campaigns are still considering the proposal.
The campaigns of the Democratic presidential contenders also received copies of the bill Monday.
"A re-vote is the only way Michigan can be assured its delegation will be seated, and vote in Denver at the party's national convention this summer, Clinton campaign aide Harold Ickes said Monday. "If the Obama campaign thwarts a fair election process for the people of Michigan, it will jeopardize the Democratic nominee's ability to carry the state in the general election."
Obama campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor said, "It's pretty apparent that the Clinton campaign's views on voting are dependent on their own political interest. Hillary Clinton herself said in January that the Michigan primary 'didn't count for anything.' Now, she is cynically trying to change the rules at the eleventh hour for her own benefit. We received a very complex proposal for Michigan re-vote legislation today and are reviewing it to make sure that any solution for Michigan is fair and practical. We continue to believe a fair seating of the delegation deserves strong consideration."
The Democrat-led House is scheduled to leave for a two-week vacation Thursday, so any bills to set up the do-over primary need to be brought up quickly. The measure also would have to be approved by the Republican-controlled state Senate. To be given immediate effect, the measure would require a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate.
To go forward, any plan also would require the approval of the two campaigns, the Democratic National Committee, state party leaders and Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who is backing Clinton.
The contest must be held by June 10 for the results to count under DNC rules. The draft measure would set up the a fund within the state Treasury to receive up to $12 million in cash and other assets from private donors to cover the cost of the election.
On Monday in Atlanta, federal appeals judges skeptically questioned a lawyer who argued that the national party's decision to strip Florida of its 210 convention delegates was unconstitutional.
Michael Steinberg, a lawyer for Victor DiMaio, a Democratic Party activist from Tampa, said Florida's Democratic voters are being disenfranchised by not being permitted to have their say in the selection of their party's nominee. The action violates DiMaio's constitutional right to equal protection, he argued.
"The citizens of the state of Florida are not being treated equally," Steinberg told the judges.
But Joe Sandler, a lawyer for the Democratic National Committee, said the party has the right to set its own the rules and not seat delegates who refuse to follow them.
"It goes to the heart of the constitutional right of the DNC to determine the best means of selecting delegates to the convention," Sandler said.
Sounding skeptical of Steinberg's equal protection argument, the judges noted in their questions that states select their presidential picks in different ways -- some use caucuses and others primaries -- and on different days. Judge Stanley Marcus suggested at one point that the only way to treat all the states equally, under Steinberg's theory, was for them to all hold their primaries on the same day.
Not so, Steinberg said. He said one solution might be to rotate the states so that each gets a shot at being in the first round.
Source: First Coast News
Exactly right. We already had the primary.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Jacksonville Port Authority Tries to Lock Up Korean Terminal Deal
JACKSONVILLE -- The Jacksonville Port Authority's No. 2 executive will be in South Korea the week of March 17 working to finish a development and lease contract to build the port's biggest container terminal.
The authority and Hanjin Shipping Company Ltd. have been negotiating since signing a memorandum of understanding Oct. 18, 2007, at Hanjin's headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, regarding a proposed 170-acre terminal.
Negotiations have been tough, said Ron Baker, the authority's chief financial officer and deputy executive director, with both sides looking out for their stakeholders' interests. But despite the memorandum of understanding's expiration date looming in mid-April, he's confident his trip will close or nearly close the deal.
The memorandum of understanding calls for the port authority to finance $230 million to develop the terminal and $120 million to pay for equipment and other operational resources. It also calls for Hanjin to pay the principal and interest on such financing.
"We've been crystal clear from the outset that the financial responsibility for the terminal will be theirs," Baker said. "If someone wants to come here, they have to have skin in the game."
The time between the initial announcement and signing a lease contract has been longer than what was seen with Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Ltd., which will open a $230 million, 158-acre container terminal in January 2009.
Read the rest in Jacksonville Business Journal.
It's for the good of Jacksonville, I suppose, but the expansion of the port meant that a lovely, quiet neighborhood on the river with lots of old oak trees was razed to make way for it. I doubt that the payment that the families received for their block and brick houses could buy them a similar-sized lot on the river anywhere in Jacksonville.
The authority and Hanjin Shipping Company Ltd. have been negotiating since signing a memorandum of understanding Oct. 18, 2007, at Hanjin's headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, regarding a proposed 170-acre terminal.
Negotiations have been tough, said Ron Baker, the authority's chief financial officer and deputy executive director, with both sides looking out for their stakeholders' interests. But despite the memorandum of understanding's expiration date looming in mid-April, he's confident his trip will close or nearly close the deal.
The memorandum of understanding calls for the port authority to finance $230 million to develop the terminal and $120 million to pay for equipment and other operational resources. It also calls for Hanjin to pay the principal and interest on such financing.
"We've been crystal clear from the outset that the financial responsibility for the terminal will be theirs," Baker said. "If someone wants to come here, they have to have skin in the game."
The time between the initial announcement and signing a lease contract has been longer than what was seen with Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Ltd., which will open a $230 million, 158-acre container terminal in January 2009.
Read the rest in Jacksonville Business Journal.
It's for the good of Jacksonville, I suppose, but the expansion of the port meant that a lovely, quiet neighborhood on the river with lots of old oak trees was razed to make way for it. I doubt that the payment that the families received for their block and brick houses could buy them a similar-sized lot on the river anywhere in Jacksonville.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Compound Removes Radioactive Material from Power Plant Waste
ARGONNE, Ill. (March 13, 2008) — Strontium 90 is a common radioactive by-product of fission in nuclear power plants. When extracted from the reactor along with other isotopes, a mixture is created made up of the radioactive material and inert ions like sodium and calcium.
Scientists at U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory and Northwestern University have developed a compound that captures the radioactive ions so they can be siphoned off and separated from inert material.
"The layered sulfides used work quite well," scientist Mercouri Kanatzidis said. “We even surprised ourselves.”
This mixture is often incredibly acidic or alkaline, making it difficult to find a compound that can survive long enough to extract the strontium and not react with the sodium, which is harmless.
Kanatzidis and colleague Manolis Manos created a synthetic compound made up of sulfides that can survive in the harsh acidic or alkaline climate of the mixture and strip away 99 percent of the strontium 90.
“The material is remarkably simple and can be created in large quantities at a relatively low cost,” Kanatzidis said.
The synthetic compound trades its own potassium ions for strontium and can almost completely replace the radioactive element within a few hours.
The next step is to experiment with the compound's ability to siphon away other common radioactive elements like cesium and uranium.
Funding for the project was through Northwestern University and the National Science Foundation.
The research has been published in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Source: Argonne National Laboratory
That should certainly help with reducing the volume of radioactive waste to be sequestered for the next several thousand years, although I remain optimistic that a way will be found to neutralize that, as well.
Scientists at U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory and Northwestern University have developed a compound that captures the radioactive ions so they can be siphoned off and separated from inert material.
"The layered sulfides used work quite well," scientist Mercouri Kanatzidis said. “We even surprised ourselves.”
This mixture is often incredibly acidic or alkaline, making it difficult to find a compound that can survive long enough to extract the strontium and not react with the sodium, which is harmless.
Kanatzidis and colleague Manolis Manos created a synthetic compound made up of sulfides that can survive in the harsh acidic or alkaline climate of the mixture and strip away 99 percent of the strontium 90.
“The material is remarkably simple and can be created in large quantities at a relatively low cost,” Kanatzidis said.
The synthetic compound trades its own potassium ions for strontium and can almost completely replace the radioactive element within a few hours.
The next step is to experiment with the compound's ability to siphon away other common radioactive elements like cesium and uranium.
Funding for the project was through Northwestern University and the National Science Foundation.
The research has been published in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Source: Argonne National Laboratory
That should certainly help with reducing the volume of radioactive waste to be sequestered for the next several thousand years, although I remain optimistic that a way will be found to neutralize that, as well.
Democrats Say Mail-In Re-Vote in Florida Unlikely
TALLAHASSEE - Looking for a do-over vote to resolve Florida's disputed Democratic presidential primary? Don't count on it.
Florida's Democratic leaders Thursday all but pulled the plug on the day-old idea of a mail-in mulligan election to ensure the state gets a say in the historic battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. State party officials said they have just a few days to get fighting factions to embrace a new round of voting that would end on June 3.
"I know that it won't happen," said U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, a Boca Raton Democrat and Obama supporter. All nine of Florida's Democrats in the U.S. House reiterated their strong opposition to the re-vote plan on Thursday.
TALLAHASSEE - Looking for a do-over vote to resolve Florida's disputed Democratic presidential primary? Don't count on it.
Florida's Democratic leaders Thursday all but pulled the plug on the day-old idea of a mail-in mulligan election to ensure the state gets a say in the historic battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. State party officials said they have just a few days to get fighting factions to embrace a new round of voting that would end on June 3.
"I know that it won't happen," said U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, a Boca Raton Democrat and Obama supporter. All nine of Florida's Democrats in the U.S. House reiterated their strong opposition to the re-vote plan on Thursday.
Read the rest HERE:
The candidates are worried about possibly "disenfranchising" voters who are back up north for the summer; i.e., people that are registered in their home states as well.
Florida's Democratic leaders Thursday all but pulled the plug on the day-old idea of a mail-in mulligan election to ensure the state gets a say in the historic battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. State party officials said they have just a few days to get fighting factions to embrace a new round of voting that would end on June 3.
"I know that it won't happen," said U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, a Boca Raton Democrat and Obama supporter. All nine of Florida's Democrats in the U.S. House reiterated their strong opposition to the re-vote plan on Thursday.
TALLAHASSEE - Looking for a do-over vote to resolve Florida's disputed Democratic presidential primary? Don't count on it.
Florida's Democratic leaders Thursday all but pulled the plug on the day-old idea of a mail-in mulligan election to ensure the state gets a say in the historic battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. State party officials said they have just a few days to get fighting factions to embrace a new round of voting that would end on June 3.
"I know that it won't happen," said U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, a Boca Raton Democrat and Obama supporter. All nine of Florida's Democrats in the U.S. House reiterated their strong opposition to the re-vote plan on Thursday.
Read the rest HERE:
The candidates are worried about possibly "disenfranchising" voters who are back up north for the summer; i.e., people that are registered in their home states as well.
A Month After Explosion at Sugar Refinery, 13th Victim Dies
AUGUSTA, Ga. — Officials said another burn patient has died of injuries suffered in an explosion and fire at a sugar refinery, bringing the death toll to 13. A little more than a month after the Feb. 7 blast at the Imperial Sugar plant in Port Wentworth, six other patients remained Friday in critical condition at the Joseph M. Still Burn Center at Doctors Hospital in Augusta.Four are in serious condition.
Source: News4Jax
How heartbreaking for the family members to have their loved ones go through so much fighting to survive and then, after all that they have been through, to die. My deepest sympathies to you all.
Source: News4Jax
How heartbreaking for the family members to have their loved ones go through so much fighting to survive and then, after all that they have been through, to die. My deepest sympathies to you all.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
How Alligators Rock and Roll
March 13, 2008 - Without a ripple in the water, alligators dive, surface or roll sideways, even though they lack flippers or fins. University of Utah biologists discovered gators maneuver silently by using their diaphragm, pelvic, abdominal and rib muscles to shift their lungs like internal floatation devices: toward the tail when they dive, toward the head when they surface and sideways when they roll.
"It allows them to navigate a watery environment without creating a lot of disturbance," says doctoral student T.J. Uriona. "This is probably really important while they are trying to sneak up on an animal but don't want to create ripples."
The discovery in American alligators suggests "special muscles that manipulate the position of the lungs - and thus the center of buoyancy - may be an underappreciated but important means for other aquatic animals to maneuver in water without actively swimming," says C.G. Farmer, an assistant professor of biology.
Those animals include crocodiles, African clawed frogs, some salamanders, turtles and manatees, she adds, noting that the use of muscles to move the lungs may be "incredibly important or you would not see it evolve repeatedly.
The study by Uriona and Farmer will be published in the April 2008 issue of The Journal of Experimental Biology, which is set for online publication Friday, March 14.
The researchers found that alligators are somewhat like pilots using controls to adjust an aircraft's pitch and roll, except the reptiles' controls are muscles that help them shift their lungs backward to dive, forward to surface or sideways to roll.
Farmer says the new study asked how gators "manage to maneuver so gracefully without the fins and flippers used by fish, seals and other adept swimmers."
"The secret to their aquatic agility lies in the use of several muscles, such as the diaphragmatic muscle, to shift the position of their lungs. The gases in the lungs buoy up the animal, but if shifted forward and backward cause the animal to pivot in a seesaw motion. When the animals displace gases to the right or left side of the body, they roll."
Uriona says that during the Triassic Period, which began 250 million years ago, the crocodilian ancestors of alligators were cat-sized animals that lived only on land.
"Until now, it was believed the diaphragmatic muscle evolved to help them breathe and run at the same time," he says. "Showing they are actually using it to move around in water gives an alternative explanation for why the muscle evolved."
It also suggests the muscle didn't evolve until after crocodilians took to the water during the Cretaceous Period, which began 145 million years ago. During that time alligators' ancestors also evolved a flattened skull, shorter limbs and a big tail.
Source: University of Utah
Fascinating article. If you are interested in how alligators can shift their lungs to help them swim, click the link and read the rest!
"It allows them to navigate a watery environment without creating a lot of disturbance," says doctoral student T.J. Uriona. "This is probably really important while they are trying to sneak up on an animal but don't want to create ripples."
The discovery in American alligators suggests "special muscles that manipulate the position of the lungs - and thus the center of buoyancy - may be an underappreciated but important means for other aquatic animals to maneuver in water without actively swimming," says C.G. Farmer, an assistant professor of biology.
Those animals include crocodiles, African clawed frogs, some salamanders, turtles and manatees, she adds, noting that the use of muscles to move the lungs may be "incredibly important or you would not see it evolve repeatedly.
The study by Uriona and Farmer will be published in the April 2008 issue of The Journal of Experimental Biology, which is set for online publication Friday, March 14.
The researchers found that alligators are somewhat like pilots using controls to adjust an aircraft's pitch and roll, except the reptiles' controls are muscles that help them shift their lungs backward to dive, forward to surface or sideways to roll.
Farmer says the new study asked how gators "manage to maneuver so gracefully without the fins and flippers used by fish, seals and other adept swimmers."
"The secret to their aquatic agility lies in the use of several muscles, such as the diaphragmatic muscle, to shift the position of their lungs. The gases in the lungs buoy up the animal, but if shifted forward and backward cause the animal to pivot in a seesaw motion. When the animals displace gases to the right or left side of the body, they roll."
Uriona says that during the Triassic Period, which began 250 million years ago, the crocodilian ancestors of alligators were cat-sized animals that lived only on land.
"Until now, it was believed the diaphragmatic muscle evolved to help them breathe and run at the same time," he says. "Showing they are actually using it to move around in water gives an alternative explanation for why the muscle evolved."
It also suggests the muscle didn't evolve until after crocodilians took to the water during the Cretaceous Period, which began 145 million years ago. During that time alligators' ancestors also evolved a flattened skull, shorter limbs and a big tail.
Source: University of Utah
Fascinating article. If you are interested in how alligators can shift their lungs to help them swim, click the link and read the rest!
Bird Flu Kills 4 Endangered Vietnamese Civets
HANOI, March 11 (Reuters) - Bird flu killed four civets in a Vietnamese national park, the second time the rare type of mammal was reported to have died there of the H5N1 virus since 2005, a park official said on Tuesday.
Four endangered Owston's palm civets died early last month at Cuc Phuong park and tests of their samples found they had the H5N1 virus, the official said.
"Visitors are not allowed to come near the civet's area now," the official said by telephone from the park about 90 km (55 miles) south of Hanoi in Ninh Binh province.
In June 2005 three civets, born in captivity and raised in the same cage, died at the park and tests later confirmed they had been infected by bird flu, park officials said. The park has eight of the rare cat-like civets left.
Civets eat pork, worms and fruit, but not poultry.
However, Ninh Binh is one of nine locations where outbreaks have been detected among poultry in the past month, including a farm outside Hanoi, the Animal Health Department said.
It is not the first time that bird flu has killed exotic animals. The H5N1 virus has infected ostriches in South Africa, a clouded leopard and tigers in Thailand.
One of China's top doctors has said that the H5N1 virus has shown signs of mutation and can kill humans more easily if treatment is not given early enough, newspapers reported on Tuesday [ID:nHKG228879].
The H5N1 virus has infected 368 people around the world since 2003, killing 234 of them, including 51 in Vietnam.
Experts fear it could trigger a pandemic killing millions if it ever transmits efficiently among people. (Reporting by Ho Binh Minh; editing by Grant McCool and Sanjeev Miglani)
Source: Reuters
Cats have also been shown to become infected by H5N1. Perhaps that explains this:
Source: Daily Mail
Meanwhile, rats will be overrunning Chinese cities.
Four endangered Owston's palm civets died early last month at Cuc Phuong park and tests of their samples found they had the H5N1 virus, the official said.
"Visitors are not allowed to come near the civet's area now," the official said by telephone from the park about 90 km (55 miles) south of Hanoi in Ninh Binh province.
In June 2005 three civets, born in captivity and raised in the same cage, died at the park and tests later confirmed they had been infected by bird flu, park officials said. The park has eight of the rare cat-like civets left.
Civets eat pork, worms and fruit, but not poultry.
However, Ninh Binh is one of nine locations where outbreaks have been detected among poultry in the past month, including a farm outside Hanoi, the Animal Health Department said.
It is not the first time that bird flu has killed exotic animals. The H5N1 virus has infected ostriches in South Africa, a clouded leopard and tigers in Thailand.
One of China's top doctors has said that the H5N1 virus has shown signs of mutation and can kill humans more easily if treatment is not given early enough, newspapers reported on Tuesday [ID:nHKG228879].
The H5N1 virus has infected 368 people around the world since 2003, killing 234 of them, including 51 in Vietnam.
Experts fear it could trigger a pandemic killing millions if it ever transmits efficiently among people. (Reporting by Ho Binh Minh; editing by Grant McCool and Sanjeev Miglani)
Source: Reuters
Cats have also been shown to become infected by H5N1. Perhaps that explains this:
Thousands of pet cats in Beijing are being abandoned by their owners and sent to die in secretive government pounds as China mounts an aggressive drive to clean up the capital in preparation for the Olympic Games.
Hundreds of cats a day are being rounded and crammed into cages so small they cannot even turn around.
Then they are trucked to what animal welfare groups describe as death camps on the edges of the city.
The cull comes in the wake of a government campaign warning of the diseases cats carry and ordering residents to help clear the streets of them.
Cat owners, terrified by the disease warning, are dumping their pets in the streets to be picked up by special collection teams.
Paranoia is so intense that six stray cats -including two pregnant females - were beaten to death with sticks by teachers at a Beijing kindergarten, who feared they might pass illnesses to the children.
China's leaders are convinced that animals pose a serious urban health risk and may have contributed to the outbreak of SARS - a deadly respiratory virus - in 2003
Source: Daily Mail
Meanwhile, rats will be overrunning Chinese cities.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Nuke Plant Price Triples
Progress Energy tripled its estimate for its new nuclear power plant in Levy County, saying Monday that the new price is $17-billion.
Customers could start paying for it next year, with the average residential customer facing an increase of about $9 a month.
"You can't avoid the notion that nuclear has an upfront cost for the customer," said Jeff Lyash, president and chief executive of Progress Energy Florida. "It does."
Gov. Charlie Crist said he'll continue to support nuclear power. It will make a critical contribution to the state's fuel diversity and energy independence, he said. It's worth the rising cost.
"I think this is an investment in Florida's future that is important to make," he said Monday. "It will ultimately result in lower costs for customers because of the rising costs of oil and natural gas."
New nuclear will pay off, Lyash argued. Without it, customers would end up paying an additional $1-billion a year for fuels like natural gas. Fossil fuels would end up providing 85 percent of the utility's electricity within a decade. Greenhouse gas emissions would continue to rise.
With nuclear, fuel will be cheaper, reliance on fossil fuel will wane, and greenhouse gases will decline, Lyash said.
The St. Petersburg utility plans to give more details to state regulators today, including how the plant will impact monthly bills. Under Florida law, Progress Energy can start to bill customers for financing and preconstruction costs years before a new plant goes into service.
Lyash estimated that the customers' monthly bills will increase an average 3 percent to 4 percent a year over the next decade but are expected to spike as construction intensifies.
Despite Lyash's assurances, the new price could leave some with sticker shock. The number will reverberate throughout the Southeast, where at least five similar projects have been announced. Utilities have said that surging prices for commodities like steel and concrete have driven up the cost of new nuclear, but Progress Energy is the first to offer a firm estimate.
In recent weeks, the much vaunted "nuclear renaissance" has shown signs of weakening, as the rising price erodes support. South Carolina Electric & Gas, along with two subsidiaries of Southern Co., have already delayed their plans. In January, a utility pulled the plug on a planned nuclear plant in Idaho.
"We're seeing some of the utilities backing off," said Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
Lyash emphasized that Progress Energy has not yet decided to build a new nuclear plant in Florida. The utility decided to go ahead with its application to state regulators today because it still believes that nuclear is the best option in terms of cost and environmental impact, Lyash said.
The utility paid more than $80-million for 5,200 acres in Levy County, about 10 miles north of its Crystal River power plant. It plans to build two Westinghouse AP1000 reactors, with a capacity of 1,100 megawatts each.
Smith says that costs could continue to balloon, even as lower cost options like energy efficiency get passed by, and that politicians need to reassess their support before customers start paying for it.
"Until the state of Florida has really squeezed every last drop that it can out of energy efficiency, the state of Florida needs to think about giving utilities access to customers' pocketbooks to pay for these massive construction costs," Smith said.
The nuclear industry disagrees.
"I think no matter what technology you select, there's going to be sticker shock," said Adrian Heymer, senior director of new plant deployment with the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry trade group. "The customer needs to look at the long term: If you don't choose nuclear, what are you going to choose?"
Times researcher John Martin contributed to this report. Asjylyn Loder can be reached at aloder@sptimes.com or 813 225-3117.
New nuclear prospects in Florida:
What happened?
Progress Energy asked state regulators for permission to build two new nuclear reactors in Levy County. The utility also announced a new price of $17-billion, tripling the estimate offered a little more than a year ago.
Why did prices go up?
The cost of commodities like steel and cement have increased substantially, pushing up the cost of any power plant. Progress Energy's new estimate also includes a $2-billion to $3-billion transmission project, as well as the cost of land, financing, labor, fees and fuel. Early estimates didn't include those costs, the utility said.
What are the other options?
Worries over greenhouse gases have killed new coal projects in Florida. The backup plan is natural gas, which is very expensive and subject to wide price swings. New greenhouse gas regulations could also add to the cost of burning fossil fuels. Nuclear power emits no greenhouse gases, and the fuel is relatively inexpensive.
What's next?
The Florida Public Service Commission has scheduled three days of hearings starting May 21. Progress Energy will also have to file a site certification application with the Department of Environmental Protection and a license application with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The utility plans to file both of those applications this year. The federal licensing application could take two to three years. Progress Energy wants to have the first reactor on line in 2016, and the second completed the following year.
Source: Progress Energy Florida
Source: St. Petersburg Times
Maybe it's just me, but I can't see charging consumers for construction costs YEARS before a new plant even gets built.
Customers could start paying for it next year, with the average residential customer facing an increase of about $9 a month.
"You can't avoid the notion that nuclear has an upfront cost for the customer," said Jeff Lyash, president and chief executive of Progress Energy Florida. "It does."
Gov. Charlie Crist said he'll continue to support nuclear power. It will make a critical contribution to the state's fuel diversity and energy independence, he said. It's worth the rising cost.
"I think this is an investment in Florida's future that is important to make," he said Monday. "It will ultimately result in lower costs for customers because of the rising costs of oil and natural gas."
New nuclear will pay off, Lyash argued. Without it, customers would end up paying an additional $1-billion a year for fuels like natural gas. Fossil fuels would end up providing 85 percent of the utility's electricity within a decade. Greenhouse gas emissions would continue to rise.
With nuclear, fuel will be cheaper, reliance on fossil fuel will wane, and greenhouse gases will decline, Lyash said.
The St. Petersburg utility plans to give more details to state regulators today, including how the plant will impact monthly bills. Under Florida law, Progress Energy can start to bill customers for financing and preconstruction costs years before a new plant goes into service.
Lyash estimated that the customers' monthly bills will increase an average 3 percent to 4 percent a year over the next decade but are expected to spike as construction intensifies.
Despite Lyash's assurances, the new price could leave some with sticker shock. The number will reverberate throughout the Southeast, where at least five similar projects have been announced. Utilities have said that surging prices for commodities like steel and concrete have driven up the cost of new nuclear, but Progress Energy is the first to offer a firm estimate.
In recent weeks, the much vaunted "nuclear renaissance" has shown signs of weakening, as the rising price erodes support. South Carolina Electric & Gas, along with two subsidiaries of Southern Co., have already delayed their plans. In January, a utility pulled the plug on a planned nuclear plant in Idaho.
"We're seeing some of the utilities backing off," said Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
Lyash emphasized that Progress Energy has not yet decided to build a new nuclear plant in Florida. The utility decided to go ahead with its application to state regulators today because it still believes that nuclear is the best option in terms of cost and environmental impact, Lyash said.
The utility paid more than $80-million for 5,200 acres in Levy County, about 10 miles north of its Crystal River power plant. It plans to build two Westinghouse AP1000 reactors, with a capacity of 1,100 megawatts each.
Smith says that costs could continue to balloon, even as lower cost options like energy efficiency get passed by, and that politicians need to reassess their support before customers start paying for it.
"Until the state of Florida has really squeezed every last drop that it can out of energy efficiency, the state of Florida needs to think about giving utilities access to customers' pocketbooks to pay for these massive construction costs," Smith said.
The nuclear industry disagrees.
"I think no matter what technology you select, there's going to be sticker shock," said Adrian Heymer, senior director of new plant deployment with the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry trade group. "The customer needs to look at the long term: If you don't choose nuclear, what are you going to choose?"
Times researcher John Martin contributed to this report. Asjylyn Loder can be reached at aloder@sptimes.com or 813 225-3117.
New nuclear prospects in Florida:
What happened?
Progress Energy asked state regulators for permission to build two new nuclear reactors in Levy County. The utility also announced a new price of $17-billion, tripling the estimate offered a little more than a year ago.
Why did prices go up?
The cost of commodities like steel and cement have increased substantially, pushing up the cost of any power plant. Progress Energy's new estimate also includes a $2-billion to $3-billion transmission project, as well as the cost of land, financing, labor, fees and fuel. Early estimates didn't include those costs, the utility said.
What are the other options?
Worries over greenhouse gases have killed new coal projects in Florida. The backup plan is natural gas, which is very expensive and subject to wide price swings. New greenhouse gas regulations could also add to the cost of burning fossil fuels. Nuclear power emits no greenhouse gases, and the fuel is relatively inexpensive.
What's next?
The Florida Public Service Commission has scheduled three days of hearings starting May 21. Progress Energy will also have to file a site certification application with the Department of Environmental Protection and a license application with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The utility plans to file both of those applications this year. The federal licensing application could take two to three years. Progress Energy wants to have the first reactor on line in 2016, and the second completed the following year.
Source: Progress Energy Florida
Source: St. Petersburg Times
Maybe it's just me, but I can't see charging consumers for construction costs YEARS before a new plant even gets built.
Florida Faces Even Larger Budget Shortfall
TALLAHASSEE -- Florida's sagging economy has slowed down more dramatically than even the most pessimistic state forecasters had predicted, leaving lawmakers Tuesday with $2.9 billion less than they expected and guaranteeing painful cuts will affect everything from classrooms to hospitals and prisons.
State economists said Tuesday that all state revenues -- from sales taxes to documentary stamp taxes to corporate income taxes -- have fallen sharply behind forecasts. Many warned that the outlook will not likely improve until at least 2009.
''We're in a recession,'' said Don Langston, the House of Representatives' chief economist and a member of the Revenue Estimating Conference, which prepared Tuesday's report. ``Not all economists would agree, but probably a lot of the stuff that's been happening in Florida has not shown up yet nationally.''
Lawmakers, dealing with money woes even before Tuesday's forecast, have begun pushing bills this session to reduce prison populations, including decriminalizing driving with a suspended license and looking at whether to reduce criminal penalties and mandatory-minimum sentences.
SIGNS WERE THERE
Economists said that many of the signs of the ''bleak'' revenue picture -- a slumping housing market, higher gas prices, a decline in tourism, lower consumer spending and a drop in corporate profits -- have been mounting for several months, but none of the forecasters realized it would be this bad.
The news is dour for both the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, and the new one that begins July 1. For the current year, lawmakers had already cut $1.1 billion in October from the $70 billion budget they approved in May, and will now have another $1 billion less.
The grim budget news came on the eve of a legislative vote Wednesday on a $512 million budget-cutting package for the current year. House leaders said lawmakers will tap unspent reserve money to cover the rest of the $1 billion shortfall.
For the coming fiscal year, lawmakers already expected to have $2.5 billion less than forecast last year. On Tuesday, they were told that number will be $4.4 billion.
MAKE PRIORITIES
Gov. Charlie Crist remained upbeat, although he quipped that the professional economists' predictions were as reliable as a weather forecast.
''It's going to be hard, there's no question about it,'' he told a gathering of Orlando businessmen and women. ``We'll determine what the most important things are to fund first -- from my perspective, it's education and public safety -- and we're not going to raise taxes.''
The refusal by the governor and Republican legislative leaders to consider any ideas to increase state revenues has many Democrats fuming. Many say they probably won't vote for budget cuts for this year or the next, not only because they can bash the financial stewardship of Republicans in an election year, but because they believe that the failure to avoid cuts in crucial government programs is irresponsible.
House Speaker Marco Rubio, a West Miami Republican, said House economists ''saw this coming'' because Florida was being ''disproportionately'' hit by the economic downturns.
But he said that the dire forecast is not about the state budget or state stewardship.
''We're not in a budget crisis,'' he said. ``These budgetary numbers that you are seeing here are the reflection of an economy that is suffering, not of a government that is suffering.''
Rubio said that it's not the government's job to stimulate the economy, but to create the conditions that stimulate it by encouraging spending and entrepreneurship.
THE CONSEQUENCES
In the meantime, legislators will have to address the effects of the economy -- such as increasing crime rates and prison population. A Senate committee heard Tuesday that Florida needs 11,300 more beds and two new prisons annually for the next five years to keep pace.
The budget cuts are also prompting cries from hospitals, especially the 14 ''safety net'' hospitals that provide the bulk of care to the uninsured and poor. They say their reimbursement rates through Medicaid are already too low, and a plan by legislators to freeze rates by more than $100 million next year will cripple them.
Miami Children's Hospital, for example, would face about $7.3 million in cuts, which is equivalent to 462 average hospital stays for children or 26,000 emergency-room visits.
''We'll still provide the care, but it makes it tougher to fulfill our core mission: to provide care for children who are sick,'' said Nancy Humbert, a hospital vice president.
As for the current year budget, lawmakers are expected to pass it Wednesday, and Crist said he will sign it. He said he was satisfied that lawmakers have ''done a very good job'' and avoided some of the worst cuts.
Source: Miami Herald
With gas prices up this winter, tourism was down a bit; however, I expect the record snowfalls up north probably helped us there. With the dollar being low, we're still well-positioned as a great tourist value for the foreign travelers, although I expect our tourism from within the country will drop precipitiously unless the oil bubble bursts between now and the end of summer.
As for the increasing crime rates....well, until such time as it becomes "cool" for our young to continue their educations instead of dropping out with burglary, armed robbery and dealing drugs becoming their career options, I expect it will continue to increase. Uneducated kids that were good with their hands used to be able to work construction and landscaping; however, they've been replaced on the job by illegal aliens. Whether they've been replaced because the illegal aliens are here to work and actually show up on Monday morning or whether it is because they are cheaper to hire is up to you to decide.
State economists said Tuesday that all state revenues -- from sales taxes to documentary stamp taxes to corporate income taxes -- have fallen sharply behind forecasts. Many warned that the outlook will not likely improve until at least 2009.
''We're in a recession,'' said Don Langston, the House of Representatives' chief economist and a member of the Revenue Estimating Conference, which prepared Tuesday's report. ``Not all economists would agree, but probably a lot of the stuff that's been happening in Florida has not shown up yet nationally.''
Lawmakers, dealing with money woes even before Tuesday's forecast, have begun pushing bills this session to reduce prison populations, including decriminalizing driving with a suspended license and looking at whether to reduce criminal penalties and mandatory-minimum sentences.
SIGNS WERE THERE
Economists said that many of the signs of the ''bleak'' revenue picture -- a slumping housing market, higher gas prices, a decline in tourism, lower consumer spending and a drop in corporate profits -- have been mounting for several months, but none of the forecasters realized it would be this bad.
The news is dour for both the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, and the new one that begins July 1. For the current year, lawmakers had already cut $1.1 billion in October from the $70 billion budget they approved in May, and will now have another $1 billion less.
The grim budget news came on the eve of a legislative vote Wednesday on a $512 million budget-cutting package for the current year. House leaders said lawmakers will tap unspent reserve money to cover the rest of the $1 billion shortfall.
For the coming fiscal year, lawmakers already expected to have $2.5 billion less than forecast last year. On Tuesday, they were told that number will be $4.4 billion.
MAKE PRIORITIES
Gov. Charlie Crist remained upbeat, although he quipped that the professional economists' predictions were as reliable as a weather forecast.
''It's going to be hard, there's no question about it,'' he told a gathering of Orlando businessmen and women. ``We'll determine what the most important things are to fund first -- from my perspective, it's education and public safety -- and we're not going to raise taxes.''
The refusal by the governor and Republican legislative leaders to consider any ideas to increase state revenues has many Democrats fuming. Many say they probably won't vote for budget cuts for this year or the next, not only because they can bash the financial stewardship of Republicans in an election year, but because they believe that the failure to avoid cuts in crucial government programs is irresponsible.
House Speaker Marco Rubio, a West Miami Republican, said House economists ''saw this coming'' because Florida was being ''disproportionately'' hit by the economic downturns.
But he said that the dire forecast is not about the state budget or state stewardship.
''We're not in a budget crisis,'' he said. ``These budgetary numbers that you are seeing here are the reflection of an economy that is suffering, not of a government that is suffering.''
Rubio said that it's not the government's job to stimulate the economy, but to create the conditions that stimulate it by encouraging spending and entrepreneurship.
THE CONSEQUENCES
In the meantime, legislators will have to address the effects of the economy -- such as increasing crime rates and prison population. A Senate committee heard Tuesday that Florida needs 11,300 more beds and two new prisons annually for the next five years to keep pace.
The budget cuts are also prompting cries from hospitals, especially the 14 ''safety net'' hospitals that provide the bulk of care to the uninsured and poor. They say their reimbursement rates through Medicaid are already too low, and a plan by legislators to freeze rates by more than $100 million next year will cripple them.
Miami Children's Hospital, for example, would face about $7.3 million in cuts, which is equivalent to 462 average hospital stays for children or 26,000 emergency-room visits.
''We'll still provide the care, but it makes it tougher to fulfill our core mission: to provide care for children who are sick,'' said Nancy Humbert, a hospital vice president.
As for the current year budget, lawmakers are expected to pass it Wednesday, and Crist said he will sign it. He said he was satisfied that lawmakers have ''done a very good job'' and avoided some of the worst cuts.
Source: Miami Herald
With gas prices up this winter, tourism was down a bit; however, I expect the record snowfalls up north probably helped us there. With the dollar being low, we're still well-positioned as a great tourist value for the foreign travelers, although I expect our tourism from within the country will drop precipitiously unless the oil bubble bursts between now and the end of summer.
As for the increasing crime rates....well, until such time as it becomes "cool" for our young to continue their educations instead of dropping out with burglary, armed robbery and dealing drugs becoming their career options, I expect it will continue to increase. Uneducated kids that were good with their hands used to be able to work construction and landscaping; however, they've been replaced on the job by illegal aliens. Whether they've been replaced because the illegal aliens are here to work and actually show up on Monday morning or whether it is because they are cheaper to hire is up to you to decide.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Shoplifting Moms use Kids as Accomplices
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Two women face felony theft charges, but police said the woman forced their children -- one as young as 6 -- to do the dirty work.
Police said Jessica Diaz, 30, and Luz Gimenez, 29, and their five children were caught in the act of stealing $1,100 worth of clothing and jewelry from the JC Penney store at Regency Square Mall.
"Absolutely deplorable," Jacksonville Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Melissa Bujeda said. "There's no other words that can state why a parent would do this and would put their own children in this type of position."
According to the arrest report, Diaz and Gimenez had each of their children carry empty purses into the department store on Sunday. While the women were shopping, they were handing off jewelry and clothes for their children to take into a dressing room.
Store employees got suspicious when they saw the children go in and out of the dressing room about 10 times, each time bringing items in, but never taking anything out.
"Employees actually heard these women telling the children to conceal the items in the bags and purses," Bujeda said.
The children apparently resisted participating in the scheme. The report said that employees heard Diaz yelling and cursing at the children, demanding that they conceal the items.
"They were definitely facilitating this crime," Bujeda said. "It's sad. These parents are supposed to be raising them as good kids."
The two women were arrested and charged with grand theft and contributing to the delinquency of a child. They were released on bond.
Police said the Department of Children and Families was notified of the incident and the children were released to other family members.
Source: News4Jax, FirstCoastNews.
Like they're actually going to show up for trial.
Police said Jessica Diaz, 30, and Luz Gimenez, 29, and their five children were caught in the act of stealing $1,100 worth of clothing and jewelry from the JC Penney store at Regency Square Mall.
"Absolutely deplorable," Jacksonville Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Melissa Bujeda said. "There's no other words that can state why a parent would do this and would put their own children in this type of position."
According to the arrest report, Diaz and Gimenez had each of their children carry empty purses into the department store on Sunday. While the women were shopping, they were handing off jewelry and clothes for their children to take into a dressing room.
Store employees got suspicious when they saw the children go in and out of the dressing room about 10 times, each time bringing items in, but never taking anything out.
"Employees actually heard these women telling the children to conceal the items in the bags and purses," Bujeda said.
The children apparently resisted participating in the scheme. The report said that employees heard Diaz yelling and cursing at the children, demanding that they conceal the items.
"They were definitely facilitating this crime," Bujeda said. "It's sad. These parents are supposed to be raising them as good kids."
The two women were arrested and charged with grand theft and contributing to the delinquency of a child. They were released on bond.
Police said the Department of Children and Families was notified of the incident and the children were released to other family members.
Source: News4Jax, FirstCoastNews.
Like they're actually going to show up for trial.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Sugar Refinery Victims Face Long Recovery
AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) -- Three weeks after the explosion, Paul Seckinger opened his eyes for the first time in his hospital bed, looked up and smiled weakly at his mother.
Two days later, his mother says, doctors had to halt surgery as they worked to repair the second- and third-degree burns over 80 percent of Seckinger's body because his lungs had filled with fluid and his blood pressure plummeted. When his mother got back in to see him, she saw terror in the eyes that held so much hope the days before.
"His eyes were open real big and he was just looking at me like, `Mom, help me.' It was very scary," says Karen Seckinger, still shaken by her son's sudden turn.
Nearly a month after a blast that killed 12 workers from the Imperial Sugar refinery in Port Wentworth, Ga., 11 others remain hospitalized at the nation's largest burn center - eight of them in critical condition. They face a long, painful roller-coaster ride to recovery, with peaks of progress followed by terrifying drops.
As of earlier this week, the refinery workers at the Joseph M. Still Burn Center in Augusta occupied nearly half of the intensive care unit's 25 rooms, each with large windows that let nurses keep an eye on every patient at all times.
In general, the prognosis for victims of severe burns is poor. And most of the Imperial Sugar workers are in grave condition.
Family members must scrub their hands and put on gowns and masks before entering the hospital rooms; with much of their skin burned away, the victims run a high risk of infection.
They have tubes in their throats to help them breathe. Feeding tubes constantly pump nutrients into them, even during surgery, as their bodies ravenously consume energy to heal. As many as 13 bags of intravenous fluids at a time drip vitamins, electrolytes, painkillers and anti-anxiety medicines into each patient's veins. Dialysis machines filter wastes from their blood to keep their kidneys from overworking. The pain would be excruciating if they weren't heavily medicated.
"It's going to be a day-by-day thing to see if they make it through it," says Dr. Jeff Mullins, the burn center's medical director.
Changing a single patient's bandages, something done at least once a day, can take two hours. Each one's vital signs must be checked hourly, so the burn center assigns one nurse per patient, day and night. The 11 will probably be at the burn center for several more months.
Eight of the dead were found in the wreckage of the plant, which was flattened by an explosion that investigators blamed on combustible sugar dust igniting. Four more victims died at the burn center in the weeks that followed; the most recent death was Feb. 26.
According to the American Burn Association, the U.S. mortality rate is 57 percent or higher among patients who suffered severe burns over 70 percent of the body or more.
Still, the deaths of the refinery workers at the Augusta burn center have hit its nursing staff hard. Clinical nurse manager Lynn Dowling sheds tears when asked about them.
"That's when we realize it's out of our control," Dowling says. "You're caring for a patient day after day and you're pouring your whole heart into everything you do to save a life, because you know he's the father of a small child or a newlywed."
The refinery victims have entered a critical stage of their recovery. This week, doctors began covering their burns with permanent skin grafts from a Boston laboratory that uses small skin samples from patients to grow new skin in test tubes. The procedure, developed in the 1970s, is used mostly for burn victims who do not have enough healthy skin left on their bodies to use for grafts.
Because the laboratory skin is grown from patients' own cells, it is not rejected by their immune systems like the skin from cadavers and pigs that is used to cover their burns temporarily.
On Tuesday, Mullins used a staple gun to attach 56 pieces of the lab-grown skin - each the size of a playing card - to the left leg of 19-year-old refinery worker Lawrence Manker Jr., who had raw burns from his ankle to his hip. Manker will need two or three more operations for his other leg and arms.
The new skin restores a protective barrier against infection and helps restore the body's ability to regulate its temperature, the reason Mullins' operating room is kept at a toasty 85 degrees. Still, it will take a year for the skin grafts to thicken and become more durable.
"It's very, very fragile," Mullins says. "It's only four to six cell layers thick, so it's thinner than onion paper. A good breeze could blow it off until it becomes attached."
Seckinger's lungs were seared in the accident. But his face wasn't disfigured; the 33-year-old machine maintenance worker and single father of an 8-year-old girl apparently shielded himself with his hands and arms, which were badly burned.
In the waiting rooms, the wives, parents, brothers and sisters of the refinery victims spend their days swapping stories and updates on their loved ones in the long stretches between visiting hours - or visiting half-hours, mostly. Most of the visitors are 140 miles from home.
Every morning, noon and afternoon, they gather outside the ICU for 30-minute visits. They get one full hour every evening. They stand at the patient's bedside offering words of encouragement and prayers and looking for any sign of response.
Jenny Purnell got more than she expected from her husband, 23-year-old Justin Purnell, when he looked up at her and moved his mouth this week. With a breathing tube in his throat, he couldn't speak, but she managed to read his lips.
"He opened his eyes and said, `Good morning,' and then he said, `I love you,'" Jenny says. "Just the littlest things through all this make you feel so much better."
She last heard her husband's voice the night of Feb. 7, when he called her on his cell phone from inside the refinery. Something had blown up, he told her, and she needed to call 911. He phoned back a few minutes later to tell her he had made it outside OK before the phone went dead.
The families have received an outpouring of donations. They are getting ready to move from hotels into apartments - another reminder of the long recovery ahead - paid for by Imperial Sugar. Church groups deliver hot meals such as fried chicken and lasagna twice a day. The burn center's foundation gives them $50 gas cards for trips home.
Hattie Frazier's son, refinery floor manager Malcolm Frazier, worked in the packing department that took the brunt of the Feb. 7 explosion. A co-worker, his mother says, found him on the floor of the burning building and dragged him to safety. He suffered second- and third-degree burns on 85 percent of his body.
Malcolm had planned to take a week off this month to take a trip with his parents to celebrate their 57th wedding anniversary March 14. Now they will be spending it at the burn center, where visiting four times a day is too much for Malcolm's mother.
"I go in once a day and pray for him, but it's real hard," she says. "To see him open his eyes, but he can't say anything, it's too much to go through. But I let him know I'll be here as long as he's here.
Source: FirstCoastNews
My prayers and best wishes go out to the burn victims and their families in this tense time of waiting while the patients remain in grave danger and great pain.
Two days later, his mother says, doctors had to halt surgery as they worked to repair the second- and third-degree burns over 80 percent of Seckinger's body because his lungs had filled with fluid and his blood pressure plummeted. When his mother got back in to see him, she saw terror in the eyes that held so much hope the days before.
"His eyes were open real big and he was just looking at me like, `Mom, help me.' It was very scary," says Karen Seckinger, still shaken by her son's sudden turn.
Nearly a month after a blast that killed 12 workers from the Imperial Sugar refinery in Port Wentworth, Ga., 11 others remain hospitalized at the nation's largest burn center - eight of them in critical condition. They face a long, painful roller-coaster ride to recovery, with peaks of progress followed by terrifying drops.
As of earlier this week, the refinery workers at the Joseph M. Still Burn Center in Augusta occupied nearly half of the intensive care unit's 25 rooms, each with large windows that let nurses keep an eye on every patient at all times.
In general, the prognosis for victims of severe burns is poor. And most of the Imperial Sugar workers are in grave condition.
Family members must scrub their hands and put on gowns and masks before entering the hospital rooms; with much of their skin burned away, the victims run a high risk of infection.
They have tubes in their throats to help them breathe. Feeding tubes constantly pump nutrients into them, even during surgery, as their bodies ravenously consume energy to heal. As many as 13 bags of intravenous fluids at a time drip vitamins, electrolytes, painkillers and anti-anxiety medicines into each patient's veins. Dialysis machines filter wastes from their blood to keep their kidneys from overworking. The pain would be excruciating if they weren't heavily medicated.
"It's going to be a day-by-day thing to see if they make it through it," says Dr. Jeff Mullins, the burn center's medical director.
Changing a single patient's bandages, something done at least once a day, can take two hours. Each one's vital signs must be checked hourly, so the burn center assigns one nurse per patient, day and night. The 11 will probably be at the burn center for several more months.
Eight of the dead were found in the wreckage of the plant, which was flattened by an explosion that investigators blamed on combustible sugar dust igniting. Four more victims died at the burn center in the weeks that followed; the most recent death was Feb. 26.
According to the American Burn Association, the U.S. mortality rate is 57 percent or higher among patients who suffered severe burns over 70 percent of the body or more.
Still, the deaths of the refinery workers at the Augusta burn center have hit its nursing staff hard. Clinical nurse manager Lynn Dowling sheds tears when asked about them.
"That's when we realize it's out of our control," Dowling says. "You're caring for a patient day after day and you're pouring your whole heart into everything you do to save a life, because you know he's the father of a small child or a newlywed."
The refinery victims have entered a critical stage of their recovery. This week, doctors began covering their burns with permanent skin grafts from a Boston laboratory that uses small skin samples from patients to grow new skin in test tubes. The procedure, developed in the 1970s, is used mostly for burn victims who do not have enough healthy skin left on their bodies to use for grafts.
Because the laboratory skin is grown from patients' own cells, it is not rejected by their immune systems like the skin from cadavers and pigs that is used to cover their burns temporarily.
On Tuesday, Mullins used a staple gun to attach 56 pieces of the lab-grown skin - each the size of a playing card - to the left leg of 19-year-old refinery worker Lawrence Manker Jr., who had raw burns from his ankle to his hip. Manker will need two or three more operations for his other leg and arms.
The new skin restores a protective barrier against infection and helps restore the body's ability to regulate its temperature, the reason Mullins' operating room is kept at a toasty 85 degrees. Still, it will take a year for the skin grafts to thicken and become more durable.
"It's very, very fragile," Mullins says. "It's only four to six cell layers thick, so it's thinner than onion paper. A good breeze could blow it off until it becomes attached."
Seckinger's lungs were seared in the accident. But his face wasn't disfigured; the 33-year-old machine maintenance worker and single father of an 8-year-old girl apparently shielded himself with his hands and arms, which were badly burned.
In the waiting rooms, the wives, parents, brothers and sisters of the refinery victims spend their days swapping stories and updates on their loved ones in the long stretches between visiting hours - or visiting half-hours, mostly. Most of the visitors are 140 miles from home.
Every morning, noon and afternoon, they gather outside the ICU for 30-minute visits. They get one full hour every evening. They stand at the patient's bedside offering words of encouragement and prayers and looking for any sign of response.
Jenny Purnell got more than she expected from her husband, 23-year-old Justin Purnell, when he looked up at her and moved his mouth this week. With a breathing tube in his throat, he couldn't speak, but she managed to read his lips.
"He opened his eyes and said, `Good morning,' and then he said, `I love you,'" Jenny says. "Just the littlest things through all this make you feel so much better."
She last heard her husband's voice the night of Feb. 7, when he called her on his cell phone from inside the refinery. Something had blown up, he told her, and she needed to call 911. He phoned back a few minutes later to tell her he had made it outside OK before the phone went dead.
The families have received an outpouring of donations. They are getting ready to move from hotels into apartments - another reminder of the long recovery ahead - paid for by Imperial Sugar. Church groups deliver hot meals such as fried chicken and lasagna twice a day. The burn center's foundation gives them $50 gas cards for trips home.
Hattie Frazier's son, refinery floor manager Malcolm Frazier, worked in the packing department that took the brunt of the Feb. 7 explosion. A co-worker, his mother says, found him on the floor of the burning building and dragged him to safety. He suffered second- and third-degree burns on 85 percent of his body.
Malcolm had planned to take a week off this month to take a trip with his parents to celebrate their 57th wedding anniversary March 14. Now they will be spending it at the burn center, where visiting four times a day is too much for Malcolm's mother.
"I go in once a day and pray for him, but it's real hard," she says. "To see him open his eyes, but he can't say anything, it's too much to go through. But I let him know I'll be here as long as he's here.
Source: FirstCoastNews
My prayers and best wishes go out to the burn victims and their families in this tense time of waiting while the patients remain in grave danger and great pain.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
GT: Low-cost Reusable Material Could Facilitate Carbon Dioxide Capture
Atlanta (March 6, 2008) —Researchers have developed a new, low-cost material for capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the smokestacks of coal-fired power plants and other generators of the greenhouse gas. Produced with a simple one-step chemical process, the new material has a high capacity for absorbing carbon dioxide – and can be reused many times.
Combined with improved heat management techniques, the new material could provide a cost-effective way to capture large quantities of carbon dioxide from coal-burning facilities. Existing CO2 capture techniques involve the use of solid materials that lack sufficient stability for repeated use – or liquid adsorbents that are expensive and require significant amounts of energy.
“This is something that you could imagine scaling up for commercial use,” said Christopher Jones, a professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “Our material has the combination of high capacity, easy synthesis, low cost and a robust ability to be recycled – all the key criteria for an adsorbent that would be used on an industrial scale.”
Details of the new material, known as hyperbranched aluminosilica (HAS), are scheduled to appear in the March 19th issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. The research was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory.
Growing concern over increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide has prompted new interest in techniques for removing the gas from the smokestacks of such large-scale sources as coal-fired electric power plants. But to minimize the economic impact, the cost of adding such controls must be minimized so it doesn’t raise the price of electricity significantly.
Once removed from the stack gases, the CO2 might be sequestered in the deep ocean, in mined-out coal seams or in depleted petroleum reservoirs. If the CO2 capture and sequestration process can be made practical, America’s large resources of coal could be used with less impact on global climate change.
Working with Department of Energy scientists Daniel Fauth and McMahan Gray, Jones and graduate students Jason Hicks and Jeffrey Drese developed a way to add CO2-adsorbing amine polymer groups to a solid silica substrate using covalent bonding. The strong chemical bonds make the material robust enough to be reused many times.
“Given the volumes involved, you must be able to recycle the adsorbent material for the process to be cost-effective,” said Jones. “Otherwise, you would be creating large and expensive waste streams of adsorbent.”
Production of the HAS material is relatively simple, and requires only the mixing of the silica substrate with a precursor of the amine polymer in solution. The amine polymer is initiated on the silica surface, producing a solid material that can be filtered out and dried.
To test the effectiveness of their new material, the Georgia Tech researchers passed simulated flue gases through tubes containing a mixture of sand and HAS. The CO2 was adsorbed at temperatures ranging from 50 to 75 degrees Celsius. Then the HAS was heated to between 100 and 120 degrees Celsius to drive off the gas so the adsorbent could be used again.
The researchers tested the material across 12 cycles of adsorption and desorption, and did not measure a significant loss of capacity. The HAS material can adsorb up to 5 times as much carbon dioxide as some of the best existing reusable materials.
The HAS material works in the presence of moisture, an unavoidable by-product of the combustion process.
Adsorption of the CO2 generates considerable amounts of heat, which must be managed and thermally recycled. Removal of the carbon dioxide requires heating the adsorbent.
“How to manage this heat is one of the most critical issues controlling the economics of a potential large scale process,” Jones added. “You must control the production of heat by the adsorption step, and you don’t want to put any more energy into the desorption process than necessary.”
Because of their chemical structure, the amine groups provide three different classes of binding sites for carbon dioxide, each with a different binding energy. Optimizing the production of binding sites is a goal for future research, Jones said.
Beyond the material, other components of the separation and sequestration process must also be improved and optimized before it can become a practical technique for removing CO2 from flue gases. The best way to expose the flue gases to the adsorbent material is also key issue.
“There are many pieces that must fit together to make the overall economics of carbon dioxide capture and sequestration work,” Jones added. “The biggest challenge for this whole field of research right now is to do this as inexpensively as possible. We think that our class of materials – a hyperbranched amine polymer bound to a solid support – is potentially ideal because it is simple to make, reusable and has a high capacity.”
Source: Georgia Tech
Research News & Publications Office
Georgia Institute of Technology
75 Fifth Street, N.W., Suite 100
Atlanta, Georgia 30308 USA
Media Relations Contacts: John Toon (404-894-6986); E-mail: (jtoon@gatech.edu) or Abby Vogel (404-385-3364); E-mail: (avogel@gatech.edu).
Technical Contact: Christopher Jones (404-385-1683); E-mail: (christopher.jones@chbe.gatech.edu).
Well, this may allay the fears of those that think carbon dioxide is a killer pollutant.
Combined with improved heat management techniques, the new material could provide a cost-effective way to capture large quantities of carbon dioxide from coal-burning facilities. Existing CO2 capture techniques involve the use of solid materials that lack sufficient stability for repeated use – or liquid adsorbents that are expensive and require significant amounts of energy.
“This is something that you could imagine scaling up for commercial use,” said Christopher Jones, a professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “Our material has the combination of high capacity, easy synthesis, low cost and a robust ability to be recycled – all the key criteria for an adsorbent that would be used on an industrial scale.”
Details of the new material, known as hyperbranched aluminosilica (HAS), are scheduled to appear in the March 19th issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. The research was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory.
Growing concern over increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide has prompted new interest in techniques for removing the gas from the smokestacks of such large-scale sources as coal-fired electric power plants. But to minimize the economic impact, the cost of adding such controls must be minimized so it doesn’t raise the price of electricity significantly.
Once removed from the stack gases, the CO2 might be sequestered in the deep ocean, in mined-out coal seams or in depleted petroleum reservoirs. If the CO2 capture and sequestration process can be made practical, America’s large resources of coal could be used with less impact on global climate change.
Working with Department of Energy scientists Daniel Fauth and McMahan Gray, Jones and graduate students Jason Hicks and Jeffrey Drese developed a way to add CO2-adsorbing amine polymer groups to a solid silica substrate using covalent bonding. The strong chemical bonds make the material robust enough to be reused many times.
“Given the volumes involved, you must be able to recycle the adsorbent material for the process to be cost-effective,” said Jones. “Otherwise, you would be creating large and expensive waste streams of adsorbent.”
Production of the HAS material is relatively simple, and requires only the mixing of the silica substrate with a precursor of the amine polymer in solution. The amine polymer is initiated on the silica surface, producing a solid material that can be filtered out and dried.
To test the effectiveness of their new material, the Georgia Tech researchers passed simulated flue gases through tubes containing a mixture of sand and HAS. The CO2 was adsorbed at temperatures ranging from 50 to 75 degrees Celsius. Then the HAS was heated to between 100 and 120 degrees Celsius to drive off the gas so the adsorbent could be used again.
The researchers tested the material across 12 cycles of adsorption and desorption, and did not measure a significant loss of capacity. The HAS material can adsorb up to 5 times as much carbon dioxide as some of the best existing reusable materials.
The HAS material works in the presence of moisture, an unavoidable by-product of the combustion process.
Adsorption of the CO2 generates considerable amounts of heat, which must be managed and thermally recycled. Removal of the carbon dioxide requires heating the adsorbent.
“How to manage this heat is one of the most critical issues controlling the economics of a potential large scale process,” Jones added. “You must control the production of heat by the adsorption step, and you don’t want to put any more energy into the desorption process than necessary.”
Because of their chemical structure, the amine groups provide three different classes of binding sites for carbon dioxide, each with a different binding energy. Optimizing the production of binding sites is a goal for future research, Jones said.
Beyond the material, other components of the separation and sequestration process must also be improved and optimized before it can become a practical technique for removing CO2 from flue gases. The best way to expose the flue gases to the adsorbent material is also key issue.
“There are many pieces that must fit together to make the overall economics of carbon dioxide capture and sequestration work,” Jones added. “The biggest challenge for this whole field of research right now is to do this as inexpensively as possible. We think that our class of materials – a hyperbranched amine polymer bound to a solid support – is potentially ideal because it is simple to make, reusable and has a high capacity.”
Source: Georgia Tech
Research News & Publications Office
Georgia Institute of Technology
75 Fifth Street, N.W., Suite 100
Atlanta, Georgia 30308 USA
Media Relations Contacts: John Toon (404-894-6986); E-mail: (jtoon@gatech.edu) or Abby Vogel (404-385-3364); E-mail: (avogel@gatech.edu).
Technical Contact: Christopher Jones (404-385-1683); E-mail: (christopher.jones@chbe.gatech.edu).
Well, this may allay the fears of those that think carbon dioxide is a killer pollutant.
"But I Don't WANT to Get Married"
Jacob told his mommy he wanted to talk to MeeMaw. “MeeMaw’s not home”, she told him. He wanted to know where his MeeMaw was. (MeeMaws are not supposed to leave the house to do mundane things like go to work with the only exception being when they are on the way to pick up grandchildren or buy presents. Everybody knows that.)
“MeeMaw is out buying a present!” mommy told him.
“A present? Why MeeMaw buying a present?” asked Jake. The only possible answer would be that MeeMaw is out buying a present for him.
“Because we’re going to a party tomorrow, and we have to bring presents!” answered mommy.
Jacob was still puzzled. “MeeMaw going to party too? She bring presents for me?”
Mommy explained that we were going to bring presents for the people that were getting married tomorrow, at which point Jacob started crying inconsolably.
“Jacob, what is wrong with you?”
“But I don’t WANT to get married!” wailed Jacob.
Jacob called later and told me that he wanted new shoes with lights that flash.
“So you want me to get you flashing shoes, is that right?”
“Yes! And MeeMaw, I going to stay with Poppa, and we eat ice cream and cookies, okay? We not go to party, okay?”
Three years old, and ready to be a committed bachelor just like his Poppa.
“MeeMaw is out buying a present!” mommy told him.
“A present? Why MeeMaw buying a present?” asked Jake. The only possible answer would be that MeeMaw is out buying a present for him.
“Because we’re going to a party tomorrow, and we have to bring presents!” answered mommy.
Jacob was still puzzled. “MeeMaw going to party too? She bring presents for me?”
Mommy explained that we were going to bring presents for the people that were getting married tomorrow, at which point Jacob started crying inconsolably.
“Jacob, what is wrong with you?”
“But I don’t WANT to get married!” wailed Jacob.
Jacob called later and told me that he wanted new shoes with lights that flash.
“So you want me to get you flashing shoes, is that right?”
“Yes! And MeeMaw, I going to stay with Poppa, and we eat ice cream and cookies, okay? We not go to party, okay?”
Three years old, and ready to be a committed bachelor just like his Poppa.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Remodeled Grocery Store Blues
After squishing through the mud and standing water to feed the livestock, it was finally time to feed me and the SwampMan and way, way past time to go to the grocery store. I was soaking wet with hay stuck all over my jacket, hair dripping under the feed store cap, and boots with that eau de barnyard aroma. What the heck, it’s Friday night and everybody I know should be eating out anyway.
The store is a mess. They’re gutting the place for remodeling but remaining open during the process. I thought that they were maybe getting a few new fixtures, perhaps replacing the floor tiles for something that matched, but….walking through the produce section heralds the changes to come. Everything is “organic”. And expensive. There were baby organically grown squash for $6.00 a pound in tasteful fixtures under dramatic lighting, apparently so that I wouldn’t stop to think “why the hell would I be paying $6.00 a pound for damn squash?” There were lots of Asian veggies and noodles and tofu by the pound. I furtively glanced around at my fellow shoppers to see if any o’ them were rushing in to pick up the tofu or the meatless soy “hamburger”. They were gazing at the new produce displays like they would look at fragile objects with a “you break, you buy” sign next to them; i.e., from a safe distance. I didn’t see any $6.00 a lb. baby squash being taken home to dinner.
Apparently slicing watermelon in half or ordinary slices is not good enough; the watermelon were cut into isosceles trapezoids and displayed. Now I’m going to feel all inadequate if I just hack the melon in two with a cleaver.
I decided to pass on the $4.00 per pound green beans as well. Wait until I tell mom that the green beans that she gives away to the neighbors are far superior to the supermarket’s $4.00 a pound varieties. She might go ahead and put in a couple acres worth and sell hers for $3 a pound to supplement her retirement check.
I ended up with a loaf of fresh-baked Italian bread, cheese, various varieties of genoa salami and pepperoni from the deli, artichoke hearts, hearts of palm, and Greek salad peppers to make open-faced sandwiches under the broiler so the cheese would be all nice and melty, and then layer the marinated artichoke hearts, hearts of palm, and Greek salad peppers to taste. It wasn’t trendy, organic, nor low fat, but it was quick and tasty comfort food on a rainy evening.
The store is a mess. They’re gutting the place for remodeling but remaining open during the process. I thought that they were maybe getting a few new fixtures, perhaps replacing the floor tiles for something that matched, but….walking through the produce section heralds the changes to come. Everything is “organic”. And expensive. There were baby organically grown squash for $6.00 a pound in tasteful fixtures under dramatic lighting, apparently so that I wouldn’t stop to think “why the hell would I be paying $6.00 a pound for damn squash?” There were lots of Asian veggies and noodles and tofu by the pound. I furtively glanced around at my fellow shoppers to see if any o’ them were rushing in to pick up the tofu or the meatless soy “hamburger”. They were gazing at the new produce displays like they would look at fragile objects with a “you break, you buy” sign next to them; i.e., from a safe distance. I didn’t see any $6.00 a lb. baby squash being taken home to dinner.
Apparently slicing watermelon in half or ordinary slices is not good enough; the watermelon were cut into isosceles trapezoids and displayed. Now I’m going to feel all inadequate if I just hack the melon in two with a cleaver.
I decided to pass on the $4.00 per pound green beans as well. Wait until I tell mom that the green beans that she gives away to the neighbors are far superior to the supermarket’s $4.00 a pound varieties. She might go ahead and put in a couple acres worth and sell hers for $3 a pound to supplement her retirement check.
I ended up with a loaf of fresh-baked Italian bread, cheese, various varieties of genoa salami and pepperoni from the deli, artichoke hearts, hearts of palm, and Greek salad peppers to make open-faced sandwiches under the broiler so the cheese would be all nice and melty, and then layer the marinated artichoke hearts, hearts of palm, and Greek salad peppers to taste. It wasn’t trendy, organic, nor low fat, but it was quick and tasty comfort food on a rainy evening.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Increasing Food Quality Risks are Affecting Global Food Supply Chain
Clemson, N.C. – March 6, 2008 – A new study from the Journal of Supply Chain Management illustrates the real potential for contamination of globally sourced foods and proposes a conceptual framework of supply chain quality management.
Led by Aleda V. Roth of Clemson University with co-authors Andy Tsay of Santa Clara University, Madeleine Pullman of Portland State University, and John Gray of Ohio State University, the study utilized information from trends of U.S. food imports from China, subsequent recall events, and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) data to highlight the inherent difficulties and risks posed by global food supply chains.
Various quality problems have been associated with foods and ingredients imported from China. There exists limited capacity of current regulatory bodies to police product flows, including lack of enforcement by the FDA. Problems often arise when pursuit of profit is not held in check by regulatory forces, resulting in noncompliance with laws and standards, and even corruption. These problems have led to a contamination of Chinese-made products.
How should these challenges be handled? Roth says that “adding on inspections and stricter regulations alone may be neither sustainable nor effective in the long run.” US regulations requiring tracing of ingredients one step forward and one step backward in the supply chain is inadequate in 12,000 mile, complex supply chains. In China, for example, inputs to food ingredients are combined from millions of small farms. And there are often many intermediaries involved in the various stages of getting food from the farm to table. Moreover, longer distances affect food freshness and quality and often necessitate the addition chemical preservatives and dyes.
The authors have posed a different path—one that offers a deeper understanding of the root causes and robust solutions. Their path follows from a conceptual framework called the “6Ts” of supply chain quality management. Each of the “6Ts”--traceability, transparency, testability, time, trust, and training--are critical to the preservation of the public welfare through a safe food supply. The “6Ts” represent the key necessary inputs and outputs to ensure that high-quality food is delivered to consumers.
“A major contribution of this paper is to bring to the forefront the critical challenges posed by the global sourcing of food and to provide an agenda for further discussion and research regarding global food supply chains,” the authors conclude.
_________________________________________________________________
This study is published in the January 2008 issue of the Journal of Supply Chain Management. Media wishing to receive a PDF of this article may contact journalnews@bos.blackwellpublishing.net.
Source: Blackwell Publishing
Outsourcing food supplies to a country not known to be overly concerned about environmental controls and quality standards strikes me at best as bordering on criminally negligent.
Led by Aleda V. Roth of Clemson University with co-authors Andy Tsay of Santa Clara University, Madeleine Pullman of Portland State University, and John Gray of Ohio State University, the study utilized information from trends of U.S. food imports from China, subsequent recall events, and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) data to highlight the inherent difficulties and risks posed by global food supply chains.
Various quality problems have been associated with foods and ingredients imported from China. There exists limited capacity of current regulatory bodies to police product flows, including lack of enforcement by the FDA. Problems often arise when pursuit of profit is not held in check by regulatory forces, resulting in noncompliance with laws and standards, and even corruption. These problems have led to a contamination of Chinese-made products.
How should these challenges be handled? Roth says that “adding on inspections and stricter regulations alone may be neither sustainable nor effective in the long run.” US regulations requiring tracing of ingredients one step forward and one step backward in the supply chain is inadequate in 12,000 mile, complex supply chains. In China, for example, inputs to food ingredients are combined from millions of small farms. And there are often many intermediaries involved in the various stages of getting food from the farm to table. Moreover, longer distances affect food freshness and quality and often necessitate the addition chemical preservatives and dyes.
The authors have posed a different path—one that offers a deeper understanding of the root causes and robust solutions. Their path follows from a conceptual framework called the “6Ts” of supply chain quality management. Each of the “6Ts”--traceability, transparency, testability, time, trust, and training--are critical to the preservation of the public welfare through a safe food supply. The “6Ts” represent the key necessary inputs and outputs to ensure that high-quality food is delivered to consumers.
“A major contribution of this paper is to bring to the forefront the critical challenges posed by the global sourcing of food and to provide an agenda for further discussion and research regarding global food supply chains,” the authors conclude.
_________________________________________________________________
This study is published in the January 2008 issue of the Journal of Supply Chain Management. Media wishing to receive a PDF of this article may contact journalnews@bos.blackwellpublishing.net.
Source: Blackwell Publishing
Outsourcing food supplies to a country not known to be overly concerned about environmental controls and quality standards strikes me at best as bordering on criminally negligent.
WHO says Egypt Reports 46th Case of Bird Flu
Egypt has reported its 46th case of bird flu in a human being after an 11-year-old boy tested positive for the H5N1 strain, the UN health agency said Wednesday.
The boy from Menofia governorate was hospitalized with symptoms on February 26, the World Health Organization said on its Web site.
Egypt is one of the countries most affected by the H5N1 strain outside Asia, where the outbreak began in 2003. The country lies on a main route for migratory birds, which are believed to have brought the disease. Experts also link outbreaks in countries such as Egypt to a lack of financial resources and public awareness about the disease.
Source: Jerusalem Post
The boy from Menofia governorate was hospitalized with symptoms on February 26, the World Health Organization said on its Web site.
Egypt is one of the countries most affected by the H5N1 strain outside Asia, where the outbreak began in 2003. The country lies on a main route for migratory birds, which are believed to have brought the disease. Experts also link outbreaks in countries such as Egypt to a lack of financial resources and public awareness about the disease.
Source: Jerusalem Post
WHO: No Sign of Deadly Mutation in Indonesian Bird Flu Samples
JAKARTA (AFP) — Bird flu samples sent by the Indonesian government to the World Health Organisation show no sign the virus has mutated into a deadly form transmissible between humans, a WHO official said Thursday.
Indonesia, the nation hardest hit by bird flu, sent 15 virus samples from two people who died of bird flu to WHO last month, the first such transfer since August 2007.
WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl confirmed in an email to AFP from the body's Geneva headquarters that the samples had not shown any signs of mutation.
Scientists fear a human-to-human mutation of the virus would kick off a worldwide pandemic that could kill millions.
Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said the samples had been sent out of "goodwill."
WHO had warned last year that Indonesia's reluctance to share flu samples put its own population at risk because any vaccines developed would not be designed to combat Indonesian strains of the H5N1 virus.
Indonesia had halted sharing samples in December 2006, saying it feared multinational drug companies could use them to develop vaccines that were not affordable for poor countries.
In August last year, a sample of the bird flu virus that killed a woman on Bali was sent to a World Health Organisation laboratory to allay fears that there had been a human-to-human transfer.
H5N1 is endemic across nearly all of Indonesia, where humans and poultry live in close contact. Of the 105 overall deaths reported since the disease emerged here, 11 have occurred this year.
Source: AFP
Well, I believe that even we nonmedical people are able to figure that out for ourselves due to the lack of people suddenly dying with flu symptoms worldwide. I do not believe that we will know about it before it has been unwittingly spread around the world courtesy of airline travel.
Indonesia, the nation hardest hit by bird flu, sent 15 virus samples from two people who died of bird flu to WHO last month, the first such transfer since August 2007.
WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl confirmed in an email to AFP from the body's Geneva headquarters that the samples had not shown any signs of mutation.
Scientists fear a human-to-human mutation of the virus would kick off a worldwide pandemic that could kill millions.
Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said the samples had been sent out of "goodwill."
WHO had warned last year that Indonesia's reluctance to share flu samples put its own population at risk because any vaccines developed would not be designed to combat Indonesian strains of the H5N1 virus.
Indonesia had halted sharing samples in December 2006, saying it feared multinational drug companies could use them to develop vaccines that were not affordable for poor countries.
In August last year, a sample of the bird flu virus that killed a woman on Bali was sent to a World Health Organisation laboratory to allay fears that there had been a human-to-human transfer.
H5N1 is endemic across nearly all of Indonesia, where humans and poultry live in close contact. Of the 105 overall deaths reported since the disease emerged here, 11 have occurred this year.
Source: AFP
Well, I believe that even we nonmedical people are able to figure that out for ourselves due to the lack of people suddenly dying with flu symptoms worldwide. I do not believe that we will know about it before it has been unwittingly spread around the world courtesy of airline travel.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
BIO5 Researcher Identifies Cities at Risk for Bioterrorism
A University of Arizona researcher has created a new system to dramatically show American cities their relative level of vulnerability to bioterrorism.
Walter W. Piegorsch, an expert on environmental risk, has placed 132 major cities – from Albany, N.Y., to Youngstown, Ohio – on a color-coded map that identifies their level of risk based on factors including critical industries, ports, railroads, population, natural environment and other factors.
Piegorsch is the director of a new UA graduate program in interdisciplinary statistics and a professor of mathematics in the College of Science, as well as a member of the UA’s BIO5 Institute.
The map marks high-risk areas as red (for example, Houston and, surprisingly, Boise, ID), midrange risk as yellow (San Francisco) and lower risk as green (Tucson). The map shows a wide swath of highest-risk urban areas running from New York down through the Southeast and into Texas. Boise is the only high-risk urban area that lies outside the swath.
The model employs what risk experts call a benchmark vulnerability metric, which shows risk managers each city’s level of risk for urban terrorism.
Piegorsch says terrorism vulnerability involves three dimensions of risk – social aspects, natural hazards and construction of the city and its infrastructure.
He concludes that the allocation of funds for preparedness and response to terrorism should take into account these factors of vulnerability.
“Our capacity to adequately prepare for and respond to these vulnerabilities varies widely across the country, especially in urban areas,” he wrote in an article about the research. Piegorsch argues that “any one-size-fits-all strategy” of resource allocation and training ignores the reality of the geographic differences identified in his study. Such failures, he says, would “limit urban areas’ abilities to prepare for and respond to terrorist events.”
The research, funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, was published in a recent issue of Risk Analysis, a journal published by the Society for Risk Analysis.
Piegorsch was the lead author, in collaboration with Susan L. Cutter, director of the Hazards & Vulnerability Research Institute and Carolina Distinguished Professor of Geography at the University of South Carolina; and Frank Hardisty, research faculty at the GeoVISTA Center at Pennsylvania State University
Source: University of Arizona News
Looks like I'm in a mid-range area for terror activity.
Walter W. Piegorsch, an expert on environmental risk, has placed 132 major cities – from Albany, N.Y., to Youngstown, Ohio – on a color-coded map that identifies their level of risk based on factors including critical industries, ports, railroads, population, natural environment and other factors.
Piegorsch is the director of a new UA graduate program in interdisciplinary statistics and a professor of mathematics in the College of Science, as well as a member of the UA’s BIO5 Institute.
The map marks high-risk areas as red (for example, Houston and, surprisingly, Boise, ID), midrange risk as yellow (San Francisco) and lower risk as green (Tucson). The map shows a wide swath of highest-risk urban areas running from New York down through the Southeast and into Texas. Boise is the only high-risk urban area that lies outside the swath.
The model employs what risk experts call a benchmark vulnerability metric, which shows risk managers each city’s level of risk for urban terrorism.
Piegorsch says terrorism vulnerability involves three dimensions of risk – social aspects, natural hazards and construction of the city and its infrastructure.
He concludes that the allocation of funds for preparedness and response to terrorism should take into account these factors of vulnerability.
“Our capacity to adequately prepare for and respond to these vulnerabilities varies widely across the country, especially in urban areas,” he wrote in an article about the research. Piegorsch argues that “any one-size-fits-all strategy” of resource allocation and training ignores the reality of the geographic differences identified in his study. Such failures, he says, would “limit urban areas’ abilities to prepare for and respond to terrorist events.”
The research, funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, was published in a recent issue of Risk Analysis, a journal published by the Society for Risk Analysis.
Piegorsch was the lead author, in collaboration with Susan L. Cutter, director of the Hazards & Vulnerability Research Institute and Carolina Distinguished Professor of Geography at the University of South Carolina; and Frank Hardisty, research faculty at the GeoVISTA Center at Pennsylvania State University
Source: University of Arizona News
Looks like I'm in a mid-range area for terror activity.
Egyptian Woman Dies from Bird Flu
CAIRO, March 4 (Reuters) - An Egyptian woman aged 25 has died of bird flu, the 20th death in Egypt from the disease since the deadly virus arrived in the country in early 2006, the Ministry of Health said on Tuesday.
The woman, Suzanne Ali Salah Zaki, was from Fayoum province southwest of Cairo, and entered hospital on Feb. 27, it said in a statement.
In a separate statement, the ministry said an 11-year-old boy from the Nile Delta province of Menoufia had tested positive for the virus after entering a local hospital on Feb. 26.
Including the two latest cases, 46 Egyptians have tested positive for bird flu over the past two years. More than half of them recovered.
The woman and the boy, named as Mohamed Rabie Mohamed Abdel Halim, are thought to have come into contact with sick birds, the ministry added.
Four Egyptian women died from bird flu in December. Their deaths ended a 5-month pause in human cases in Egypt and brought to 19 the number of Egyptians who have died of the H5N1 virus.
It is the third winter the virus has struck after lying low during Egypt's hot summers.
Around 5 million households in Egypt depend on poultry as a main source of food and income, and the government has said this makes it unlikely the disease can be eradicated despite a large-scale poultry vaccination programme.
Source: Reuters
Additional Reporting: AFP, VoA.
I wonder if the new flu guidelines recommending flu shots for children and young adults may be a way to prepare us as much as possible just in case a pandemic ever does develop.
The woman, Suzanne Ali Salah Zaki, was from Fayoum province southwest of Cairo, and entered hospital on Feb. 27, it said in a statement.
In a separate statement, the ministry said an 11-year-old boy from the Nile Delta province of Menoufia had tested positive for the virus after entering a local hospital on Feb. 26.
Including the two latest cases, 46 Egyptians have tested positive for bird flu over the past two years. More than half of them recovered.
The woman and the boy, named as Mohamed Rabie Mohamed Abdel Halim, are thought to have come into contact with sick birds, the ministry added.
Four Egyptian women died from bird flu in December. Their deaths ended a 5-month pause in human cases in Egypt and brought to 19 the number of Egyptians who have died of the H5N1 virus.
It is the third winter the virus has struck after lying low during Egypt's hot summers.
Around 5 million households in Egypt depend on poultry as a main source of food and income, and the government has said this makes it unlikely the disease can be eradicated despite a large-scale poultry vaccination programme.
Source: Reuters
Additional Reporting: AFP, VoA.
I wonder if the new flu guidelines recommending flu shots for children and young adults may be a way to prepare us as much as possible just in case a pandemic ever does develop.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Ortega Whines About FARC Commander Killing
MANAGUA, March 2 (Reuters) - Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega condemned Colombia's killing of a top rebel commander and said it could hurt the chances of a peace accord.
Ortega, a former Marxist revolutionary and U.S. Cold War foe who was voted back to power in late 2006, called on Colombian President Alvaro Uribe to seek a peace process with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
Colombia's military said on Saturday its troops had killed Raul Reyes, one of seven members of the FARC secretariat, in a severe blow to Latin America's oldest guerrilla insurgency.
"They are killing the possibility of a peace process in an act of total provocation, because the doors opened a few days ago," Ortega said in a speech late Saturday, referring to the FARC's liberation of four hostages earlier this week.
Reyes, considered by analysts to be the No. 2 FARC commander, was killed in Ecuador in an operation that included air strikes and fighting with rebels across the border, Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said. In total, 17 rebels were killed.
Reyes is the most senior member of the FARC to be killed in Uribe's U.S.-backed campaign against the guerrillas fighting a more than four-decade-old conflict.
Violence from Colombia's conflict has ebbed under Uribe, who has sent troops to drive back the rebels. But the FARC is still potent in remote areas, where it holds scores of hostages, including three Americans and French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt.
Ortega is a close ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, whose role in negotiating the release of FARC hostages has fueled tensions with Colombia. Chavez on Saturday accused Uribe of violating Ecuadorean territory with the attack and warned a similar operation in Venezuela would be a declaration of war.
In December, Colombia complained to Nicaragua after Ortega referred to FARC chief Manuel Marulanda as a "dear brother".
Nicaragua and Colombia are also at odds over sovereignty of small islands in the Caribbean. (Reporting by Ivan Castro, editing by Jackie Frank)
Source:
Well, if the FARC chief was a "dear brother" of Ortega's, guess the dead guy was at least a cousin. I'd say ol' Ortega needs a few more family funerals.
Ortega, a former Marxist revolutionary and U.S. Cold War foe who was voted back to power in late 2006, called on Colombian President Alvaro Uribe to seek a peace process with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
Colombia's military said on Saturday its troops had killed Raul Reyes, one of seven members of the FARC secretariat, in a severe blow to Latin America's oldest guerrilla insurgency.
"They are killing the possibility of a peace process in an act of total provocation, because the doors opened a few days ago," Ortega said in a speech late Saturday, referring to the FARC's liberation of four hostages earlier this week.
Reyes, considered by analysts to be the No. 2 FARC commander, was killed in Ecuador in an operation that included air strikes and fighting with rebels across the border, Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said. In total, 17 rebels were killed.
Reyes is the most senior member of the FARC to be killed in Uribe's U.S.-backed campaign against the guerrillas fighting a more than four-decade-old conflict.
Violence from Colombia's conflict has ebbed under Uribe, who has sent troops to drive back the rebels. But the FARC is still potent in remote areas, where it holds scores of hostages, including three Americans and French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt.
Ortega is a close ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, whose role in negotiating the release of FARC hostages has fueled tensions with Colombia. Chavez on Saturday accused Uribe of violating Ecuadorean territory with the attack and warned a similar operation in Venezuela would be a declaration of war.
In December, Colombia complained to Nicaragua after Ortega referred to FARC chief Manuel Marulanda as a "dear brother".
Nicaragua and Colombia are also at odds over sovereignty of small islands in the Caribbean. (Reporting by Ivan Castro, editing by Jackie Frank)
Source:
Well, if the FARC chief was a "dear brother" of Ortega's, guess the dead guy was at least a cousin. I'd say ol' Ortega needs a few more family funerals.
Feds Cite Miami Link to FARC
BY GERARDO REYES
El Nuevo Herald
Colombia's largest leftist guerrilla group purchased satellite phones and other communications equipment at shops in Miami and later used it to coordinate kidnappings, cocaine and armed deals, according to charges revealed last week in Washington.
Calls made with the equipment -- used by the rebels over a five-year period -- were intercepted by U.S. and Colombian law enforcement authorities, according to the indictment. The surveillance allowed authorities to strike the hardest blow so far against the rebels' logistical network: 39 arrested last week in Colombia, nine of them requested in extradition to the U.S.
The Federal indictment charges 11 commanders and collaborators of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, with supporting a terrorist group. It does not identify the contact that cooperated from Miami with the purchase of satellite phones and SIM cards.
The businesses that sold these items have not been named in the injunction.
There was enough trust between the FARC and their Miami contact that some of the orders were placed directly by the logistics coordinator for the Frente Uno division of the FARC, Nancy Conde Rubio. Conde, who was arrested on Feb. 2 in Colombia, even made calls to the Miami contact requesting technical support for some of the equipment.
The FARC's Frente Uno is in charge of a group of high-profile hostages, among them the three American contractors that were kidnapped in February 2003, Thomas Howes, Keith Stansell and Marc Gonsalves.
Satellite phones seem to be the Achilles heel of the FARC. In 2001, a DEA informant managed to sell four such devices to members of the FARC. The devices were previously rigged by the DEA, before being delivered in Panama, allowing federal agents to listen in on conversations and compile evidence to back up charges of drug trafficking brought against seven high-ranking FARC officials and 43 FARC commanders.
The first transaction between the FARC and Miami, according to the indictment, took place in March of 2005, when Conde Rubio bought two broadband radios.
A month later, Conde Rubio purchased a satellite phone and several SIM cards (a device used to store information in cellphones). In May the FARC received another satellite phone purchased in Miami. The FARC also bought GPS locators, compasses, transmitters and antennas.
Almost all the deals were made through a clandestine telephone hub in Colombia that was run by two women identified as Ana Isabel Peña Arévalo and Luz Mery Gutiérrez. Both have been charged in the indictment.
The busy clandestine communications hub was located in Villavicencio, Colombia's gateway to the eastern Amazon jungles and the capital of the province of Meta, which borders Venezuela.
The indictment cites conversations obtained through wiretappings of satellite phones, leading to the assumption that the devices may have been manipulated by law enforcement authorities before being sold to the FARC.
Source:
There's always a Miami link to anything that happens in Latin America.
El Nuevo Herald
Colombia's largest leftist guerrilla group purchased satellite phones and other communications equipment at shops in Miami and later used it to coordinate kidnappings, cocaine and armed deals, according to charges revealed last week in Washington.
Calls made with the equipment -- used by the rebels over a five-year period -- were intercepted by U.S. and Colombian law enforcement authorities, according to the indictment. The surveillance allowed authorities to strike the hardest blow so far against the rebels' logistical network: 39 arrested last week in Colombia, nine of them requested in extradition to the U.S.
The Federal indictment charges 11 commanders and collaborators of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, with supporting a terrorist group. It does not identify the contact that cooperated from Miami with the purchase of satellite phones and SIM cards.
The businesses that sold these items have not been named in the injunction.
There was enough trust between the FARC and their Miami contact that some of the orders were placed directly by the logistics coordinator for the Frente Uno division of the FARC, Nancy Conde Rubio. Conde, who was arrested on Feb. 2 in Colombia, even made calls to the Miami contact requesting technical support for some of the equipment.
The FARC's Frente Uno is in charge of a group of high-profile hostages, among them the three American contractors that were kidnapped in February 2003, Thomas Howes, Keith Stansell and Marc Gonsalves.
Satellite phones seem to be the Achilles heel of the FARC. In 2001, a DEA informant managed to sell four such devices to members of the FARC. The devices were previously rigged by the DEA, before being delivered in Panama, allowing federal agents to listen in on conversations and compile evidence to back up charges of drug trafficking brought against seven high-ranking FARC officials and 43 FARC commanders.
The first transaction between the FARC and Miami, according to the indictment, took place in March of 2005, when Conde Rubio bought two broadband radios.
A month later, Conde Rubio purchased a satellite phone and several SIM cards (a device used to store information in cellphones). In May the FARC received another satellite phone purchased in Miami. The FARC also bought GPS locators, compasses, transmitters and antennas.
Almost all the deals were made through a clandestine telephone hub in Colombia that was run by two women identified as Ana Isabel Peña Arévalo and Luz Mery Gutiérrez. Both have been charged in the indictment.
The busy clandestine communications hub was located in Villavicencio, Colombia's gateway to the eastern Amazon jungles and the capital of the province of Meta, which borders Venezuela.
The indictment cites conversations obtained through wiretappings of satellite phones, leading to the assumption that the devices may have been manipulated by law enforcement authorities before being sold to the FARC.
Source:
There's always a Miami link to anything that happens in Latin America.
Utah Home Search Planned in Ricin Case
LAS VEGAS -- A motel patron hospitalized after the potent poison ricin was mysteriously found in his room "barely got by in life," according to a woman who knew him when he lived at a Utah home that agents hoped to search Saturday.
A down-on-his-luck Roger Von Bergendorff lived at his cousin's home for more than a year before moving to Las Vegas about a year ago, said Tammy Ewell, who lives across the street from Thomas Tholen in Riverton, Utah, and described him and his wife, Ellen, as close friends.
"He was very much a loner. I would say more or less socially regressive. He just barely got by in life. He'd just barely make it," Ewell said. "Tom was the last resort."
In a brief phone interview earlier Saturday, Thomas Tholen told The Associated Press that Von Bergerdorff was "holding his own" in the hospital.
Tholen, 53, wouldn't say much more about Von Bergendorff or the discovery Thursday of several vials of ricin - which is deadly in minuscule amounts - at the man's extended-stay motel room on the Las Vegas Strip.
Officials have secured Tholen's home, where Von Bergendorff reportedly stayed, but they have not searched it because they are awaiting court approval for a warrant, FBI spokesman Juan Becerra said later Saturday.
Authorities have not said how much ricin was involved but expressed confidence they have it all.
Dr. Lawrence Sands, chief health officer of the Southern Nevada Health District in Las Vegas, said health officials are still trying to confirm whether Von Bergendorff's respiratory ailment stemmed from ricin exposure.
Police and health officials have tried to assure Las Vegas residents there is no public health threat. There was no apparent link to terrorist activity and no indication of any spread of the deadly substance, they said.
In Salt Lake City, which is about 20 miles from Riverton, FBI agent Timothy J. Fuhrman said: "At this time, there is no indication of any threat to the public or individuals residing in the area."
Adding to the mystery, police said late Friday that firearms, an "anarchist-type textbook" and castor beans, from which ricin is made, were found in the room where the poison was discovered.
The firearms and the book, which was tabbed at a spot containing information about ricin, were seized Tuesday after a manager at the Extended Stay America motel found the weapons and called police, police Capt. Joseph Lombardo said. He did not elaborate.
Ewell, Von Bergendorff's former neighbor, said she often saw him walking his German shepherd on the street. It wasn't clear what he did for a living or how he spent his time.
Toward the end of his stay, he started attending the local Mormon church and briefly moved out of the Tholen home into a neighbor's camper, she said.
Tholen is a former high school art teacher who now sells insurance with his wife, she said.
"The Tholens were the last ones we'd expect anything to happen to," Ewell said.
Tholen went to Von Bergendorff's Las Vegas motel room and took the vials to the motel office in a plastic bag while retrieving his cousin's belongings, authorities said.
Police previously said tests did not detect the material in the motel office, the room where Von Bergendorff, 57, stayed, or a room at the Excalibur hotel-casino where Tholen stayed Wednesday night.
As little as 500 micrograms of ricin, about the size of the head of a pin, can kill a human, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The only legal use for ricin is cancer research.
Las Vegas police, who have refused to identify Von Bergendorff or Tholen by name, said Friday that the hospitalized man was unconscious and that investigators had been unable to speak with him.
They have said Tholen arrived in Las Vegas after Von Bergendorff summoned an ambulance and was hospitalized Feb. 14 in critical condition.
Tholen contacted motel management Feb. 22 to inform them about pets in the room, and Las Vegas Humane Society officials took custody of a dog and two cats. The dog, which officials said was mortally ill after going at least a week without food or water, was euthanized.
After the vials were taken to the motel office, Tholen and six other people, including the motel manager, two motel employees and three police officers, were decontaminated at the scene and taken to hospitals for examination. None have shown any signs of being affected by ricin, officials said.
Associated Press writers Ken Ritter in Las Vegas, Martin Griffith in Reno and Paul Foy in Salt Lake City contributed to this report.
Source:
This gets stranger by the minute. People like that are giving people that areloners self-contained a bad name. Home-grown terrorism gone wrong? A man that decides to commit suicide and then decides against it? If he dies, we may never know.
A down-on-his-luck Roger Von Bergendorff lived at his cousin's home for more than a year before moving to Las Vegas about a year ago, said Tammy Ewell, who lives across the street from Thomas Tholen in Riverton, Utah, and described him and his wife, Ellen, as close friends.
"He was very much a loner. I would say more or less socially regressive. He just barely got by in life. He'd just barely make it," Ewell said. "Tom was the last resort."
In a brief phone interview earlier Saturday, Thomas Tholen told The Associated Press that Von Bergerdorff was "holding his own" in the hospital.
Tholen, 53, wouldn't say much more about Von Bergendorff or the discovery Thursday of several vials of ricin - which is deadly in minuscule amounts - at the man's extended-stay motel room on the Las Vegas Strip.
Officials have secured Tholen's home, where Von Bergendorff reportedly stayed, but they have not searched it because they are awaiting court approval for a warrant, FBI spokesman Juan Becerra said later Saturday.
Authorities have not said how much ricin was involved but expressed confidence they have it all.
Dr. Lawrence Sands, chief health officer of the Southern Nevada Health District in Las Vegas, said health officials are still trying to confirm whether Von Bergendorff's respiratory ailment stemmed from ricin exposure.
Police and health officials have tried to assure Las Vegas residents there is no public health threat. There was no apparent link to terrorist activity and no indication of any spread of the deadly substance, they said.
In Salt Lake City, which is about 20 miles from Riverton, FBI agent Timothy J. Fuhrman said: "At this time, there is no indication of any threat to the public or individuals residing in the area."
Adding to the mystery, police said late Friday that firearms, an "anarchist-type textbook" and castor beans, from which ricin is made, were found in the room where the poison was discovered.
The firearms and the book, which was tabbed at a spot containing information about ricin, were seized Tuesday after a manager at the Extended Stay America motel found the weapons and called police, police Capt. Joseph Lombardo said. He did not elaborate.
Ewell, Von Bergendorff's former neighbor, said she often saw him walking his German shepherd on the street. It wasn't clear what he did for a living or how he spent his time.
Toward the end of his stay, he started attending the local Mormon church and briefly moved out of the Tholen home into a neighbor's camper, she said.
Tholen is a former high school art teacher who now sells insurance with his wife, she said.
"The Tholens were the last ones we'd expect anything to happen to," Ewell said.
Tholen went to Von Bergendorff's Las Vegas motel room and took the vials to the motel office in a plastic bag while retrieving his cousin's belongings, authorities said.
Police previously said tests did not detect the material in the motel office, the room where Von Bergendorff, 57, stayed, or a room at the Excalibur hotel-casino where Tholen stayed Wednesday night.
As little as 500 micrograms of ricin, about the size of the head of a pin, can kill a human, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The only legal use for ricin is cancer research.
Las Vegas police, who have refused to identify Von Bergendorff or Tholen by name, said Friday that the hospitalized man was unconscious and that investigators had been unable to speak with him.
They have said Tholen arrived in Las Vegas after Von Bergendorff summoned an ambulance and was hospitalized Feb. 14 in critical condition.
Tholen contacted motel management Feb. 22 to inform them about pets in the room, and Las Vegas Humane Society officials took custody of a dog and two cats. The dog, which officials said was mortally ill after going at least a week without food or water, was euthanized.
After the vials were taken to the motel office, Tholen and six other people, including the motel manager, two motel employees and three police officers, were decontaminated at the scene and taken to hospitals for examination. None have shown any signs of being affected by ricin, officials said.
Associated Press writers Ken Ritter in Las Vegas, Martin Griffith in Reno and Paul Foy in Salt Lake City contributed to this report.
Source:
This gets stranger by the minute. People like that are giving people that are
GSK Bird Flu Vaccine Shows Broad Cross Protection
HONG KONG, March 2 (Reuters) - A vaccine designed by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK.L: Quote, Profile, Research) to protect people against the H5N1 bird flu may be effective in warding off a few different sub-types of the virus, the company said on Sunday.
In an Asian clinical trial involving 1,206 adults in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand, the vaccine produced antibodies that not only neutralised the H5N1 virus found in Vietnam, but also the variant now dogging Indonesia.
"The vaccine was made using the Vietnam strain. In principle, there is a very broad antibody reactivity that's being induced. These are neutralising antibodies and they do correlate with protection," Albert Osterhaus, head of virology at the Erasmus Medical Centre in the Netherlands, told Reuters when asked for comments about the study.
Osterhaus was not involved in the study, but is familiar with the results and methodology.
An earlier GSK study in Europe showed the vaccine to be effective in protecting against two other H5N1 subtypes, in China's central eastern province of Anhui and Turkey.
For years now, experts have warned a flu pandemic was long overdue and many have held up the H5N1 virus as a prime candidate because people have no immunity against this bird virus, and because of the high mortality rate associated with it so far.
The virus has infected 368 people in 14 countries since 2003 and killed 234 of them, or 64 percent.
An eventual vaccine to protect people against a flu pandemic can only be made 4-6 months after the start of such a disaster, when the culprit virus strain has been identified.
But human populations still need some form of protection in those initial months of a pandemic and drug companies are in a race to design what are known as "prepandemic" vaccines.
GSK's prepandemic vaccine uses a very low dose, 3.8 micrograms, of antigen. Antigens are substances like toxins, viruses and bacteria that stimulate the production of antibodies when introduced into the body.
But they can be difficult to culture and scientists have been trying to fix that by using boosters, or adjuvants.
Volunteers in the GSK trial received two shots of the adjuvanted vaccine 21 days apart, and blood tests done three weeks after the second shot showed the presence of antibodies which neutralised the Vietnam and Indonesian H5N1 strains.
Osterhaus, however, voiced a note of caution -- that the pandemic may be triggered by a completely different virus.
"We are all scared of H5, but we should realise that other (viruses) are also a threat and the thing with flu is we have to expect the unexpected," he said.
"Separate stockpiling of antigen and adjuvant, that is quite an interesting option," he added.
With such a plan, adjuvants will then be mixed with the antigen of whatever virus emerges as the pandemic strain.
Source:
This is very good news about both a possible vaccine for bird flu and a new process that may make vaccine development a bit quicker because millions could die in the 4 to 6 months it takes to develop the proper strain of vaccine.
In an Asian clinical trial involving 1,206 adults in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand, the vaccine produced antibodies that not only neutralised the H5N1 virus found in Vietnam, but also the variant now dogging Indonesia.
"The vaccine was made using the Vietnam strain. In principle, there is a very broad antibody reactivity that's being induced. These are neutralising antibodies and they do correlate with protection," Albert Osterhaus, head of virology at the Erasmus Medical Centre in the Netherlands, told Reuters when asked for comments about the study.
Osterhaus was not involved in the study, but is familiar with the results and methodology.
An earlier GSK study in Europe showed the vaccine to be effective in protecting against two other H5N1 subtypes, in China's central eastern province of Anhui and Turkey.
For years now, experts have warned a flu pandemic was long overdue and many have held up the H5N1 virus as a prime candidate because people have no immunity against this bird virus, and because of the high mortality rate associated with it so far.
The virus has infected 368 people in 14 countries since 2003 and killed 234 of them, or 64 percent.
An eventual vaccine to protect people against a flu pandemic can only be made 4-6 months after the start of such a disaster, when the culprit virus strain has been identified.
But human populations still need some form of protection in those initial months of a pandemic and drug companies are in a race to design what are known as "prepandemic" vaccines.
GSK's prepandemic vaccine uses a very low dose, 3.8 micrograms, of antigen. Antigens are substances like toxins, viruses and bacteria that stimulate the production of antibodies when introduced into the body.
But they can be difficult to culture and scientists have been trying to fix that by using boosters, or adjuvants.
Volunteers in the GSK trial received two shots of the adjuvanted vaccine 21 days apart, and blood tests done three weeks after the second shot showed the presence of antibodies which neutralised the Vietnam and Indonesian H5N1 strains.
Osterhaus, however, voiced a note of caution -- that the pandemic may be triggered by a completely different virus.
"We are all scared of H5, but we should realise that other (viruses) are also a threat and the thing with flu is we have to expect the unexpected," he said.
"Separate stockpiling of antigen and adjuvant, that is quite an interesting option," he added.
With such a plan, adjuvants will then be mixed with the antigen of whatever virus emerges as the pandemic strain.
Source:
This is very good news about both a possible vaccine for bird flu and a new process that may make vaccine development a bit quicker because millions could die in the 4 to 6 months it takes to develop the proper strain of vaccine.
Indonesian Father and Son with Suspected Bird Flu Infection
Jakarta (ANTARA News) - A nine-year-old boy and his father have been admitted to a hospital in Indonesia, suspected of having bird flu, a medic said Sunday.
Both were admitted to the Dr. Muwardi general hospital in the Central Java city of Solo on Saturday showing all the symptoms of infection, Reviono, who heads the hospital's bird flu unit, told AFP.
He said the pair had buried chickens that had died after being infected with H5N1, while several chickens in their neighbourhood had also tested positive for the disease.
Both have been put in the hospital's isolation ward and blood and tissue samples will be sent to the health ministry laboratory in Jakarta on Monday, he added.
Two positive results are needed before Indonesian authorities confirm a human bird flu infection.
Indonesia has the highest number of human bird flu casualties in the world, with 105 killed by the disease.
The father and son were referred from a hospital in nearby Klaten district where they live, Reviono said.
Experts fear the virus, which is usually spread directly from birds to humans, could mutate into a form easily transmissible between people, sparking a deadly global pandemic.
Eleven people have died of bird flu in Indonesia this year, 10 of them from Jakarta and its surrounding areas. (*)
Source: Antara
Both were admitted to the Dr. Muwardi general hospital in the Central Java city of Solo on Saturday showing all the symptoms of infection, Reviono, who heads the hospital's bird flu unit, told AFP.
He said the pair had buried chickens that had died after being infected with H5N1, while several chickens in their neighbourhood had also tested positive for the disease.
Both have been put in the hospital's isolation ward and blood and tissue samples will be sent to the health ministry laboratory in Jakarta on Monday, he added.
Two positive results are needed before Indonesian authorities confirm a human bird flu infection.
Indonesia has the highest number of human bird flu casualties in the world, with 105 killed by the disease.
The father and son were referred from a hospital in nearby Klaten district where they live, Reviono said.
Experts fear the virus, which is usually spread directly from birds to humans, could mutate into a form easily transmissible between people, sparking a deadly global pandemic.
Eleven people have died of bird flu in Indonesia this year, 10 of them from Jakarta and its surrounding areas. (*)
Source: Antara
New Bird Flu Case in Egypt
CAIRO, March 1 (Xinhua) -- Egypt on Saturday confirmed that a 25-year-old woman was infected with bird flu virus, which was the 45th human infection case in the populous Arab country, the official MENA news agency reported.
The woman had been transferred from a local hospital in Fayyum,85 km south to Cairo, to a hospital in the capital after having developed the symptom of high fever and been treated with the antiviral drug Tamiflu, Health Ministry spokesman Abdel Rahman Shaheen was quoted as saying.
This is the second human bird flu case detected in a week in Egypt after a four-year-old girl on Monday was confirmed being infected with bird flu virus in El Minya governorate, Upper Egypt, some 220 km south of Cairo.
The girl is now still under treatment at Manshiat al-Bakri hospital in Cairo with her condition in stable, according to MENA.
The Egyptian government has exerted more efforts to prevent further spread of bird flu since the fatal virus caused four human deaths in less than a week in late December, 2007.
Among a total of 45 human cases in Egypt, 19 deaths have been reported since the country detected the first H5N1 virus in dead poultry in February 2006 and the first human case in March of the same year.
Source:
The woman had been transferred from a local hospital in Fayyum,85 km south to Cairo, to a hospital in the capital after having developed the symptom of high fever and been treated with the antiviral drug Tamiflu, Health Ministry spokesman Abdel Rahman Shaheen was quoted as saying.
This is the second human bird flu case detected in a week in Egypt after a four-year-old girl on Monday was confirmed being infected with bird flu virus in El Minya governorate, Upper Egypt, some 220 km south of Cairo.
The girl is now still under treatment at Manshiat al-Bakri hospital in Cairo with her condition in stable, according to MENA.
The Egyptian government has exerted more efforts to prevent further spread of bird flu since the fatal virus caused four human deaths in less than a week in late December, 2007.
Among a total of 45 human cases in Egypt, 19 deaths have been reported since the country detected the first H5N1 virus in dead poultry in February 2006 and the first human case in March of the same year.
Source:
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