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Tuesday, March 29, 2005A team of Australian surgeons yesterday reattached both hands and one foot to 10-year-old Perth boy, Terry Vo, after a brick wall which collapsed during a game of basketball fell on him, severing the limbs. The wall gave way while Terry performed a slam-dunk, during a game at a friend’s birthday party.

The boy was today awake and smiling, still in some pain but in good spirits and expected to make a full recovery, according to plastic surgeon, Mr Robert Love.

“What we have is parts that are very much alive so the reattached limbs are certainly pink, well perfused and are indeed moving,” Mr Love told reporters today.

“The fact that he is moving his fingers, and of course when he wakes up he will move both fingers and toes, is not a surprise,” Mr Love had said yesterday.

“The question is more the sensory return that he will get in the hand itself and the fine movements he will have in the fingers and the toes, and that will come with time, hopefully. We will assess that over the next 18 months to two years.

“I’m sure that he’ll enjoy a game of basketball in the future.”

The weight and force of the collapse, and the sharp brick edges, resulted in the three limbs being cut through about 7cm above the wrists and ankle.

Terry’s father Tan said of his only child, the injuries were terrible, “I was scared to look at him, a horrible thing.”

The hands and foot were placed in an ice-filled Esky and rushed to hospital with the boy, where three teams of medical experts were assembled, and he was given a blood transfusion after experiencing massive blood loss. Eight hours of complex micro-surgery on Saturday night were followed by a further two hours of skin grafts yesterday.

“What he will lose because it was such a large zone of traumatised skin and muscle and so on, he will lose some of the skin so he’ll certainly require lots of further surgery regardless of whether the skin survives,” said Mr Love said today.

The boy was kept unconscious under anaesthetic between the two procedures. In an interview yesterday, Mr Love explained why:

“He could have actually been woken up the next day. Because we were intending to take him back to theatre for a second look, to look at the traumatised skin flaps, to close more of his wounds and to do split skin grafting, it was felt the best thing to do would be to keep him stable and to keep him anaesthetised.”

Professor Wayne Morrison, director of the respected Bernard O’Brien Institute of Microsurgery and head of plastic and hand surgery at Melbourne’s St Vincent’s Hospital, said he believed the operation to be a world first.

Sunday, December 11, 2005

A series of large explosions have occurred close to Hemel Hempstead Hertfordshire, UK. The source of the explosions has been confirmed as the Hertfordshire Oil Storage Terminal (HOSL), Hemel Hempstead, known locally as the Buncefield complex. Up to 150 fire fighters are reported to be at the scene with 10 fire appliances and 1 specialist foamer.

The first ‘blast’ was heard near Hemel Hempstead on Sunday 11 Dec at 6 am. Further smaller explosions followed at 6:24am , 6:26am, 6:30am. BBC News 24 reported an additional, fourth large explosion. Hertfordshire Police Constabulary are currently treating the explosion as an accident.

Reports say the explosion, which registered 2.4 on the Richter scale, was heard as far away as Oxford, and Whitehall, Central London which is 60km (38 miles) away. Eyewitness statements report that the explosion was heard from at least 160km (100 miles) away and as far away as France and The Netherlands. Pilots reported noticing the blast from the North Sea and the West Country area of the UK. The M1 motorway which runs close by has been closed in both directions near the blast which is causing travel chaos as other roads become congested.

Malcom Stewart, a BBC News24 eyewitness who is a tanker driver for the site has reported that the site supplies several oil companies and is a joint operation between Total UK and Texaco, it is also used by BP, Shell and the British Pipeline association. The complex is not a refinery but a storage facility for refined petroleum awaiting distribution to airports and filling stations. The eyewitness reports that the depot has approximately 20 tanks which can hold about 3 million gallons (11 million litres or 70,000 barrels) each. Another News24 eyewitness has just reported that he has seen at least 5 of these tanks on fire.

The depot operates on a 24 hour basis and is split into 2 parts – aviation fuel and domestic fuel. A number of eyewitnesses have reported on UK news that the aviation fuel side appears to be the part of the site that has been affected.

Local authorities were not immediately available for comment but there have been reports of casualties.

Some reports on live television state that, “Several other neighbours said they did see a plane go into the depot.” BBC News 24 were also discussing the idea a possible plane crash as the cause of the explosions. Hertfordshire police have now gone on the record to say that there is no plane involved (BBC News24).

The police have issued a contact number 0800 096 0095 and asked that people do not call the emergency services in Hertfordshire directly unless it is an emergency.

In addition to being an oil storage depot, it is a major hub on the UK oil pipeline network with pipelines to Killingholme Lindsey Oil Refinery (LOR), Humberside (10 inch), Merseyside (10 and 12 inch), Coryton on the Thames Estuary (14 inch) and Heathrow (6 and 8 inch) and Gatwick airports radiating from it.

The disaster is believed to be the worst explosion at a petrochemical plant in the UK since the Flixborough disaster of 1974.Hertfordshire’s Chief Fire Officer Roy Wilsher said: “This is possibly the largest incident of its kind in peacetime Europe.”

A firefighting press officer said that they are stock piling foam from neighboring regions for a prolonged attach which they hope will stop the spread of the fire, however, the inferno itself will have to burn out which could take between 24 hours and a few days.

Despite the authorities saying that there is no need to panic buy petrol, filling stations have had above average queues since this morning and some small garages have ran out.

Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott has visited the scene.

Saturday, August 27, 2005

Shoppers World in Brampton, Ontario, Canada asks its visitors to “look up, look way up” this October.

The Highway 10 and Steeles Avenue mall is encouraging Bramptonians to paint a ceiling tile for charity this summer, for their upcoming “Looking Up to the Arts” event. The tiles should represent either what Brampton means to you, or the arts in Brampton.

Anyone can paint a tile for the event by buying one at the customer service desk for $5. Once tiles are completed and returned for the event, participants receive a gift certificate for $5. The ceiling tiles must be finished and returned by October 7.

The tiles will be auctioned off at the end of the event, with money going to the Brampton Arts Council.

Local dance, music, theatre and visual arts group will perform and promote at the mall’s event, which will be held from October 12 to 22.

This isn’t Shoppers World’s only celebration of the arts. The mall is the permanent home of the Artway Gallery, a community exhibit space on the west side of the mall. Organized by Visual Arts Brampton, the space allows anyone in the community to exhibit publicly.

A compilation of brief news reports for Monday, May 7, 2007.

A 30 meter section of a gas pipeline in Luka (near Kiev) in Ukraine has been destroyed by an explosion. Although supplies to Europe via this pipeline have stopped, Ukrainian Energy Minister Georgi E. Boyko said that supplies to Europe would not be affected.

“There are no changes in volumes of gas being transported,” Yuri Korolchuk said. “Volumes due to pass through the damaged section are being redirected through the Soyuz pipeline.”

Normal flows are reported in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Romania.

Sources

• “Blast damages pipeline in Ukraine” — Russia Today, May 8, 2007
• Natalya Zinets, Reuters. “Blast hits Ukraine gas pipeline” — The Scotsman, May 7, 2007

Copper prices are rising. Between record copper imports from China, and a mining strike in Peru, the prices have climbed to over $8100 (United States dollars) a tonne, for a gain of $575 dollars over the last week. However the upward trend is not new, it has been climbing for quite some time. In April 2003, the price of copper was under $2000 a tonne.

The metal market has been tending up due to growth in the Chinese industrial production. This trickles down to the local level, where the buying price at scrap yards is ever climbing, making scrap metal collection a more profitable endeavour for individual people using pick up trucks or other such vehicles to collect and cash in the scrap metal at metal buying yards. It can be collected via agreements with businesses, from the garbage, or, sometimes, by theft.

Copper prices fell today on the NYMEX commodity exchange from US$3.7545 per pound to US$3.7125 based on the July futures contract.

Sources

• “Copper up but crude oil down” — Financial Express, May 6, 2007
• Millie Munshi. “Metals Bubble Poised to Burst on Increasing Supplies” — Bloomberg L.P., May 7, 2007
• “Commodity Futures” — Bloomberg L.P., accessed May 7, 2007

One man was killed and another injured by an exploding backpack in the parking lot of the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. The explosion happened at 4 a.m. PDT when the victim tried to remove a the object left on top of his car.

Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) are on the scene. Aerial images did not show any apparent damage.

“We believe the victim was the intended target of this,” Bill Cassell said, spokesperson for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. “This is being treated as a homicide in which the weapon used to cause death is a non-traditional weapon.”

Both of the victims worked at the Luxor.

Sources

• Associated Press. “1 dead, 1 hurt in Las Vegas parking lot blast” — MSNBC, May 7, 2007
• “Explosion kills man in Vegas outside Luxor hotel” — Reuters, May 7, 2007

Thursday, August 20, 2009

According to Iraqi police, at least 95 people have been killed and half a thousand wounded after six explosions in Iraq’s capital of Baghdad on Wednesday.

Eyewitness reports say that two main attacks targeted the finance and foreign ministries. Police sources say that the blasts, which were caused by vehicles filled with explosives, all took place within several minutes.

Major General Qassim Atta, spokesman for the national armed forces’ operation in the capital, said that “a truck bomb went off near the Salhiyeh intersection and it caused casualties and a number of civilian cars were destroyed. We accuse the Baathist alliance of executing these terrorist operations.”

As a result of the attacks, Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki called for a security review. “The criminal operations that happened today no doubt call for a re-evaluation of our plans and our security methods to face the terrorist challenges,” he said.

The attacks are the deadliest in Baghdad since June 24, when 62 people died after a bomb on a motorcycle detonated.

Sunday, June 12, 2005

The government of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is in a severe political crisis. The crisis began after the exposure of a series of scandals which involve the Workers’ Party, the Brazilian ruling party.

In 2002, Celso Daniel, the mayor of Santo André, 10 km (6 miles) away from the São Paulo city, was murdered. Daniel was a member of the ruling Workers’ Party. The mayor’s brother says that Daniel died because he was in disagreement to a supposed bribe conspiracy organized by some Workers’ Party members. The case remains under investigation by police.

In 2004, the former adviser to the government of President Lula, Waldomiro Diniz, was accused of negotiating with “bicheiros” (men who deal with: “Jogo do Bicho”, or illegal gambling) and extorting money for Workers’ Party (PT) electoral campaigns. A supposed victim of extortion released a tape exposing Diniz. The tape’s authenticity has been verified by experts and it was aired by the major Brazilian television stations. A Congressional special commission was proposed by non-government parties so the denunciation could be investigated. The government succeeded in stopping the creation of the commission.

On March 16, the leading Brazilian magazine Veja published a story saying that according to documents of the Brazilian Agency of intelligence (Abin) the Workers’ Party received 5 million dollars to be used by political campaigns of their candidates in 2002 from the Colombian communist armed group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC-EP). Abin said that the documents were not authentic.

Last month, some men, supposedly involved in illicit negotiations with the Brazilian Post Service recorded a video which shows former Post Office Chief, Maurício Marinho, during a supposed bribe negotiation. In the tape, Marinho receives and puts in his pocket R$3,000 (about 1,259 USD) in cash. He insinuates that the scheme is commanded by deputy Roberto Jefferson. The recording was aired by the major Brazilian television stations.

Roberto Jefferson is the president of the government-allied Brazilian Labor Party (PTB). Lula da Silva said in a earlier occasion that he “would give to Jefferson a bank check in blank”, what means that he had high confidence on Jefferson.

Still related to the Post Office case, on June 2, Lídio Duarte, the former president of IRB, a government enterprise, denied allegations that money from some Brazilian government enterprises was going to PTB, Jefferson’s party. An earlier story published by magazine Veja, said that Duarte was a victim of extortion by a representative of PTB. According to Veja, Duarte resigned from the Presidency of IRB, because he had difficulties in continuing to give more money to PTB. Lídio denied this story to the police, and furthermore he said that he never have had an interview with Veja’s journalists.

On June 8, the magazine Veja released for download in its webpage, an audio tape where it can be heard the voice of Lidio Duarte during an alleged interview to Veja. In the tape, Lidio Duarte talks about being under pressure because someone was asking him more contribution in money for PTB. The tape contradicts the Duarte’s testimony to the police and because of that, he became subject of investigation by the authorities. The name of the deputy Roberto Jefferson is cited by Duarte in the alleged recorded interview to Veja.

After the Post Office scandal been exposed, the Brazilian Congress proposed the creation of a Congress’ special commission, so it could be investigated by the Parliament. The government, however, protested against it, arguing that political adversaries were anticipating the dispute to the next election for Brazil’s Presidency. Workers’ Party senator Eduardo Suplicy protested in Senate against his party decision. Because that he was very criticized and he got subject to punishment by the Workers’ Party.

On June 6, Roberto Jefferson told the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo that the ruling Workers’ Party (PT) has payed Brazilian deputies 30 thousand Brazilian Reals (US 12 thousand) each, every month. The stock markets went down and the U.S. Dollar increased its value in relation to the Brazilian Real. A new Congress’ special commission was proposed by some Brazilian senators, so Jefferson’s allegations could be investigated. The Workers’ Party says that Jefferson’s allegations were untrue and that he had no proofs.

After Jefferson’s denunciation the focus of the scandal moved to the government and the ruling Workers’ Party. Because the government were under pressure, the Workers’ Party changed his earlier decision of stopping the creation of a Congress’ special commission for the Post Office scandal. The proposal for the creation of a Congress’ special commission for the Post Office scandal was approved.

On June 9, there was the first meeting of members of the Congress’ special commission for the Post Office scandal. Because of unsolved disputes between government’s parliamentarians and the other parties representatives, the meeting could not continue. The government’s block argued that it must choose the president and the report for the commission, since the government commission members are the majority. Other parties argue that according to Parliament tradition the government should choose one member for the presidency or report and the opposition should choose the other member.A new meeting was scheduled to the next week, on Tuesday, June 14.

Besides these scandals, the current Social Security Minister, Romero Jucá, is accused of havingoffered seven non-existent farms as guarantee for a financing from the Banco of Amazonia, among other denunciations of misuse of public loans. The current President of Brazilian Central Bank, Henrique Meirelles, is accused of financial fraud among other accusations. Also there is a denunciation of a irregular transference of founds of Central Bank to the construction of a new headquarter for the Workers’ Party.

On June 4, during the so called Curupira operation, the Brazilian Federal Police arrested members of IBAMA, a Brazilian agency for environment. Among other accusations, they are accused of selling irregular licenses for deforestation in Amazon. At least one of the suspects, a Workers’ Party affiliate, is under suspection of have used the money for the political campaign of a Worker’s Party candidate in Mato Grosso.

Besides the commission to investigate the Post Office scandal, another Congress’ special commissions were suggested by non-government members of Brazilian Senate: a commission to investigate the IRB scandal and another one to the investigation of Roberto Jefferson’s allegations. Also, it is expected that the Brazilian Courts rule against the earlier government decision of stopping the creation of a commission for the investigation of the alleged Waldomiro Diniz scandal.