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Thursday, November 2, 2006

The New Zealand government has now introduced graphic health warnings on cigarette packs. The new warnings, which replace the text warnings, will show images of gangrenous toes, rotting gums and teeth and diseased lungs and will also include the quit smoking Quitline number.

The new warnings will cover 30% of the front side and 90% of the back.

The new warnings will come into effect January 2007 but the manufacturers will not have to produce the new warnings until February 27, 2008 and retailers have till August 2008 to clear all their old stock.

Damien O’Conner, associate minister of health and ex-smoker, said: “Pictures were more effective than written warnings. Actually seeing what it does to you is probably more acute than just reading the words on a cigarette packet. The approach is designed to shock people into realising smoking kills and causes serious illness. Using powerful imagery to remind people of the real and horrific effects of smoking will act to deter smokers and discourage New Zealand’s young from starting the habit in the first place.”

Other countries which also show graphic warnings include Australia and Canada; they say that the warnings are effective. Chris Laurenson, Health Ministry team leader national drug policy, said that international evidence was strong. “That was confirmed by research in New Zealand which supported the effectiveness of pictorial labelling.”

Altogether there will be fourteen images, of which seven will be released first, with rest following.

Mr O’Connor said: “The images were horrific; but they are what happen to people who smoke in this country.”

The Cancer Society says that the new warnings are good but does say that the manufacturers will bypass the new warnings by:

• including stickers to cover the warnings,
• Peel off labels,
• provide cigarette holders which will enable smokers to bypass the use of the packet,
• slow the introduction by stockpiling old packets in storage.

However, according to Mr O’Conner, one company had used removable sticker that were later removed due to consultation.

The industries will not be reimbursed for any cost that may occur. “They’ve given a commitment to comply by the regulations. They understand what it might mean if they don’t and I’m confident that they will,” Mr O’Connor said.

“The 2008 deadline is way too excessive, […] Pictorial warnings are not a new idea. They have already been implemented in other countries and the NZ tobacco industry has the technology to print the new packets within weeks,” Becky Freeman, the Action on Smoking and Health director said.

World Heath Organization rules make New Zealand obliged to increase the warning sizes on packets.

Saturday, December 9, 2006

Taco Bell restaurants decided Wednesday to remove green onions from all 5,800 of its continental U.S. stores after a November 29 outbreak of E.coli food poisonings caused the voluntary closing of 9 mid-Atlantic states stores and led health officials to investigate the chain’s regional supplier. As many as 66 people reportedly became ill in New York City, Long Island, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.

The E.coli outbreak also caused Taco Bell Canada to recall green onions from all 182 locations across Canada. Officials with the Canadian branch said Wednesday evening that they would take precaution by removing green onions from all stores in Canada after hearing of the outbreak in the U.S.

Jon Prinsell, president of Yum! Canada, which operates Taco Bell Canada commented:

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration are currently collecting samples of all non-meat items including cilantro, cheddar cheese, blended cheese, green onions, yellow onions, tomatoes, and lettuce.

A man from Pennsylvania became sick after eating at Taco Bell and sued the owner of Taco Bell headquarters in Irvine, California. Another one includes a 11-year-old boy who ate at Taco Bell, was hospitalized in New York, and also sued the owner.

Most of the E. coli related sicknesses occurred in the northeast USA. No related sickness have occurred in Canada.

Health officials investigating the source of the tainted green onions, also known as scallions, have traced the vegetable’s food distribution chain to the Texas-based McLane Co., which in turn got them from Irwindale-based Ready Pac.

The scallions were grown by Boskovich Farms Inc. of Oxnard, California said Steve Dickstein, the marketing vice president for Ready Pac. At what point in the food distribution chain the scallions became tainted remains under investigation.

Friday, April 10, 2009

Dave Arneson, co-creator of the first roleplaying game, Dungeons and Dragons, died on Tuesday of cancer, at the age of 61.

A close friend of Arneson, Bob Meyer, reported on April 5 that he had taken a turn for the worse and was admitted to a hospital. Family later confirmed that he was in a facility “where we can focus on keeping him comfortable.” Reported at that time, the doctor indicated that he had days to live.

The Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design in 1984 inducted Arneson into their Hall of Fame. Pyramid Magazine in 1999 named him as one of The Millennium’s Most Influential Persons, “at least in the realm of adventure gaming”.

Arneson started out as a wargamer including naval games. He soon developed some for his personal use due to the major publishers’ slow release of games. With David Wesley and the other members of the Midwest Military Simulation Association, Arneson developed the basis of modern role-playing games with individual miniatures representing one person and having non-military objectives.

Arneson attended the University of Minnesota as a history student. He was a founder, along with Gary Gygax, of the Castle & Crusade Society as a medieval miniature chapter of the International Federation of Wargamers. With Gygax in 1972, he authored Don’t Give Up the Ship!, a naval wargame.

Arneson’s Blackmoor was the first role-playing game, a genre in which players describe their characters in thorough detail and can attempt almost any action the character plausibly could. Ernest Gary Gygax, then a close friend of Arneson, worked with him during 1972–73 to develop the extensive set of rules (in this case three volumes) that such a game requires. This became the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons. With his experience with David Wesley, Arneson tried it with fantasy miniatures free style calling his game, Blackmoor. He then latched on Gygax’s Chainmail miniature game and Fantasy supplement for resolution of battles. He showed Gygax what he was doing. Gygax got involved and started preparing a set of rules to supplement Chainmail. They shopped the game, Dungeons & Dragons, around to various gaming companies but got turned down. Gygax started a business partnership, Tactical Studies Rules, to publish the game in 1974. The game launched a whole new category in gaming.

Although not involved with rulebooks for later editions of D&D, Arneson did create adventure modules for later editions.

Friday, June 1, 2018

On Friday, the Sacramento, California County Superior Court in the United States, with Judge Michael Sweet presiding, publicly released approximately 123 heavily redacted pages from an 800 page document related to the trial of 72-year-old Joseph DeAngelo, in the Golden State Killer (GSK) case. The high-profile case prompted the defense to motion delaying the release on the grounds of jury tainting.

From 1974 to 1986, there were 12 murders, 45 rapes, and 120 burglaries ascribed to the GSK. Many of these crimes were initially attributed to separate suspects, and California investigators coined such nicknames as “East Area Rapist,” “Original Night-stalker,” “Visalli Ransacker,” and “Diamond Knot Killer.” All these identities were later determined to be the GSK. DeAngelo is currently being charged with first degree murder with special circumstances, and is being further investigated for the 1975 first degree murder of Claude Snelling.

GSK’s alleged victims include 18-year-old Janelle Lisa Cruz on May 4, 1986; 35-year-old Cheri Domingo on July 27, 1981; 27-year-old Greg Sanchez on July 27, 1981; 24-year-old Keith Harrington on August 21, 1975; 27-year-old Patti Harrington on August 21, 1975; 21-year-old Brian Maggiore on February 2, 1978; 20-year-old Katie Maggiore on February 2, 1978; 44-year-old Dr. Robert Offerman on December 30, 1979; 35-year-old Debra Manning on December 30, 1979; 35-year-old Lyman Smith on March 13, 1980; 33-year-old Charlene Smith on March 13, 1980; 45-year-old Claude Snelling on September 11, 1975; and 28-year-old Manuela Witthuhn on February 5, 1981.

Law enforcement used DNA and other evidence to link the twelve known murders attributed to the GSK to suspect DeAngelo. Any DNA from rape kits and burglaries that predates 1970 is only admissible in court for murder cases because of California’s statute of limitations. The DNA evidence allegedly implicating DeAngelo was not found through the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)’s Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) database, which catalogs 20 sections of DNA from local, state, federal, and some international agencies making a unique profile for 16 million individuals, but CODIS did rule out other GSK suspects, like Paul “Cornfed” Schneider and Joe Alsip.

Instead, law enforcement used a nuance investigative technique, comparing GSK’s DNA profile against the open-sourced GEDmatch’s genealogical DNA database. The GEDmatch’s database flagged a GSK blood relative and, with other evidence, DeAngelo was suspected of being involved with GSK’s crimes. The genealogical website methodology is not unique to the GSK case. GEDmatch’s database was also used to identify 51-year-old William Earl Talbott II in the 1987 rape and homicide of Jay Cook (20) and Tanya Van Cuylenborg (18) in Seattle, Washington.

The newly released documents reveal DeAngelo’s DNA was not collected via a warrant but rather from the door handle of his personal vehicle as he was shopping in a local Hobby Lobby on April 18. A secondary sample was collected from a tissue found in the garbage on April 23. The door handle and tissue DNA were compared to a semen sample from a known GSK murder that had been confirmed using the CODIS’s 20 section DNA profile standard. On April 24, DeAngelo was arrested for the twelve GSK murders. A warrant for DeAngelo’s Citrus Heights, California residence disclosed dozens of wedding rings, photographs, driver’s licenses, and other objects allegedly taken from victims as trophies.

Public defender David Lynch, tasked with defending DeAngelo, motioned for the 800 documents to be sealed until trial to prevent the jury from becoming tainted. Lynch has also questioned the validity of certain search warrants for undisclosed reasons. Prosecutors from Sacramento, Ventura, Orange, and Santa Barbara counties have not determined the best way to prosecute DeAngelo considering the complexity, age, and multiple jurisdictions of the case.

DeAngelo was, until 1979, a police officer in small California towns. After allegedly stealing a hammer and dog repellent, DeAngelo was subsequently fired from the Auburn, California police force. He later became a truck mechanic near Sacramento.

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Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego have found that a common cold virus may be linked to childhood obesity.

In the study of 124 children aged eight to eighteen, kids who had antibodies to adenovirus 36 (AD36) weighed on average 50 pounds more than children who didn’t have the antibodies. When children have AD36 antibodies, that means they had the virus at some point in their life. AD36 causes colds and eye infections.

Comparing the obese children who had the antibodies versus the obese children who didn’t have the antibodies, the kids with the antibodies were significantly more obese, at 35 pounds heavier.

“This shows that body weight regulation and the development of obesity are very complicated issues,” Dr. Jeffrey Schwimmer, the study’s lead author, said. Schwimmer also said that “[i]t’s not simply a case that some children eat too much and others don’t. There are children who eat all the wrong things in all the wrong quantities who are not obese.”

Schwimmer said that he’s not blaming the US childhood obesity epidemic on the virus, but noted that “I’ve seen children who had very brisk weight gain in a given year for reasons that were very hard to pinpoint. These may be the children who have obesity related to this infection.”

The study is backed up by past reports that show the virus boosts production of fat cells. In studies in which animals were infected with AD36, the animals gained a significant amount of weight.

There is currently no vaccine for AD36, and no routine screening for the virus. Dr. Goutham Rao, clinical director of the Weight Management and Wellness Center at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, said that “People want a magic solution. Unfortunately, we don’t have one. What people can do is focus on a child’s behaviors and eliminate the unhealthy behaviors.” Rao also said that “Instead of coming to the doctor and requesting a test for the virus, parents would do better to discuss key behaviors to combat obesity.”

Dr. James Cherry, specialist in pediatric infectious diseases at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), was also interested by the study. He said that if the link between AD36 and obesity were confirmed, developing a vaccine for the virus could be worthwhile. “More than 20 percent of the obese children in this study were positive for the antibody. If we could prevent 20 percent of all obesity, that would be pretty impressive,” Cherry said.

Sunday, August 20, 2006

The eruption of volcano Tungurahua on August 16 destroyed several small villages in the Ecuadorian Andes. At least 6 people have been killed and about 4000 residents of the affected area have been evacuated.

The 5,023 m high volcano spat lava, stones and ash for several hours on Wednesday night. A 10km high ash cloud spread over an area of 740 by 180 km. Towns like Ambato or Riobamba, 30 km away from the volcano have been covered with up to 5cm of ash. Pyroclastic flows descending on the northwestern slopes of the volcano left a path of destruction behind.

At least seven small villages and hamlets have been completely destroyed. The ash and rocks blocked the Chambo and the Peula river and the road Ambato – Baños, one of the main connections between the Ecuadorian highlands and the Amazon region. The Institute for Geophysics has lost an important part of its equipment installed on the slopes of Tungurahua, limiting their capability to monitor the volcanic activity.

The Hydroelectric power plant Agoyan near Baños has been shut down since Wednesday night. On Thursday, air traffic in the whole country was limited due to ash layers on several airports. On Thursday the provinces of Chimborazo, Tungurahua, Cotopaxi and Bolivar have been declared a disaster area. Losses in agriculture due to the ash cover are estimated at $150 Million.

On Friday, volcanic activity decreased to a calm that remained into Saturday evening, but the Ecuadorian Institute for Geophysics warns that a further eruption may be imminent.

In 1999, after a long period of rest, the volcano started an eruptive process that continues to this day. After the first eruptions in October 1999 that produced a major ash out-fall and led to the temporary evacuation of more than 25,000 inhabitants of Baños and its surroundings, the activity continued on a medium level. In May 2006 it increased dramatically culminating in violent eruptions on July 14 and August 16.