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Friday, September 14, 2007

At least four people in Peru have contracted HIV, the virus that causes AIDS after receiving blood transfusions that were infected with the deadly virus.

As a result, all of Peru’s 240 blood banks have been closed pending further investigation and an emergency has been declared by the government.

“This situation cannot continue. All of Peru’s blood banks are being reviewed. We do not want people to panic, what we have to do is be more careful, strengthen our care,” said Carlos Vallejos, the Health Minister of Peru.

The country’s government made its decision when Judith Rivera, 44 and mother of four children, went public with claims that during an operation, she was infected with HIV when doctors gave her a transfusion.

Soon after the government admitted that at least three other individuals, one being an infant child only 11 months old, another a 17 year-old boy, contracted the virus through blood transfusions and all received care from the same hospitals.

Vallejos also stated that all of the individuals infected will receive whatever care is necessary to treat their conditions.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

After an explosion Tuesday at a ConAgra Food plant in Garner, North Carolina in the United States, three employees were unaccounted for as search teams carefully worked through the rubble. The search was hampered by stormy weather, darkness of night, and the instability of the partially collapsed building. The bodies of all three have now been recovered. They were Rachel Mae Poston Pulley, Lewis Watson, and Barbara Spears.

The latest estimate is that 41 people were transported to area hospitals, including seven to the North Carolina Jaycee Burn Center in Chapel Hill. Of those seven, four remain in critical condition, two are in fair condition, and one is in good condition. A prayer vigil is scheduled for Friday night at an area church for the dead and injured.

The cause of the explosion is still unknown, though investigators from several agencies have already begun examining the remains of the building for clues. The U.S. Chemical Safety Board is already on scene investigating, and the National Response Team of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives will arrive Thursday to conduct their own investigation.

KYTX-TV News is reporting that police are investigating a suspicious phone call to the plant over the weekend, but will not comment if that call is related to the accident.

ConAgra CEO Gary Rodkin has already taken steps to compensate the injured employees. They will continue to receive their regular paychecks for the foreseeable future. In addition, the company itself has started a United Way fund to support the families of those involved in the accident. It has seeded the fund with US$100,000 of its own money, and is encouraging ConAgra employees from other internationally located plants to donate to the fund as well.

Tuesday, September 6, 2005

Sgt. Paul Accardo was found dead last Saturday, in an unmarked police car. The officer, who served as a chief spokesperson for the New Orleans Police Department, committed suicide sometime last week.

“Paul was a stellar guy. A perfectionist. Everything had to be just right,” said Sgt. Joe Narcisse, who worked with Sgt. Accardo. Working 20-hour days after Hurricane Katrina rolled through, seeing the dead and injured, hearing the cries of helpless families, and being unable to help them got to Accardo, said Capt. Marlon Defillo.

The New Orleans Police Department has suffered heavy losses in personnel. As many as 400 to 500 officers were unaccounted for, likely to be searching for their families, or attempting to return to what is left of their homes. But Accardo is the second suicide death to hit the force since the storm. Officials say that officers were being cycled off-duty, and received vacations, as well as counseling, to help reduce the grief and anguish that many officers are experiencing.

Funeral services are planned for Wednesday. Accardo is survived by his wife, Anne, his mother, a brother and a sister, and eight nieces and nephews.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

A search-and-rescue mission was underway after a helicopter with 16 people on board crashed off the northeastern coast of Scotland in the North Sea on Wednesday, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency stated.

Police say they have recovered eight bodies, while the other eight persons aboard are still unaccounted for. The chopper was returning from an oil platform shortly before 2:00 p.m. local time when it crashed into the waters about 35 miles (56 km) from the coast of Aberdeen, Scotland.

The aircraft involved in the accident is believed to be a Eurocopter AF332 L2 Super Puma.

“A supply vessel called Normand Aurora, which was quite close by, has put their fast response boat into the water and is looking for survivors,” said a spokesman for the agency. “Two helicopters from the RAF have been scrambled to the scene and a Nimrod marine patrol aircraft has been diverted to the area. Aberdeen coastguard have begun broadcasting a mayday signal into the area and RNLI lifeboats from Peterhead and Fraserburgh are heading for the scene now.”

This February, another helicopter went down in fog in the North Sea. All eighteen people on board survived. In March, a Sikorsky S-92A helicopter carrying oil workers also crashed off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, killing seventeen people.

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

The World Health Organization (WHO) is a program of the United Nations and a global authority on human health. In an interview with Wikinews, the WHO tells about the current H1N1 pandemic.

The organization’s 93rd update as of March 26, 2010 states 213 countries, territories, and other communities have laboratory-confirmed cases and there have been at least 16,931 confirmed deaths, including 4,653 deaths in Europe and 7,673 in the Americas.

Wikinews reporter Mike Morales talks with Karen Mah, a media relations representative for the WHO, and asks her several questions.

Saturday, April 30, 2005

Two activists who helped identify a vagrant Genetically Modified (GM) crop of papaya, which was later confirmed and destroyed by Thai officials, now face prison over their actions, says Greenpeace.

“In July of 2004, [Journalist] Pat and [Ecology PhD] Jay took this story public when they acted as spokespersons for Greenpeace activists who sealed off GE papaya in experimental fields at the Khon Kaen research station — the source of GE papaya contamination in the region,” says a statement from the environmental awareness organisation.

“They were charged with theft, trespassing and destruction of property.”

“Instead of getting to the bottom of who precisely was responsible for the contamination, the very department that was responsible for the contamination decided to take legal action against Pat and Jay.”

Monday, February 28, 2005

Cambridge, Massachusetts —The planning board of Cambridge, Massachusetts voted in unanimous approval of Harvard University‘s plan to build a 410,000 ft² (38 090 m²) science center at 24 Oxford Street, according to the local newspapers, the Harvard Crimson and the Cambridge Chronicle. More than half of the space in the building will be constructed underground.

The Northwest Science Building, as it will be called, will house the laboratories of roughly 30 Harvard science faculty members, as well as a chilled water plant and an electrical substation. The building was designed by Craig Hartman, an architect in the San Francisco office of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, who also completed Harvard University Master Plan in 2002, according to the firm’s website. Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill also designed such notable buildings as Chicago‘s Sears Tower and the recently completed international terminal at the San Francisco airport.

The vote to approve the plan occurred at the February 15, 2005, meeting of the Cambridge Planning Board at the City Hall Annex, 344 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge. In what the Harvard Crimson called a “departure from the norm,” there were no comments from residents at the hearing. The Crimson reported that the Harvard officials at the meeting took this as “a signal that the community was well-informed about the project prior to the presentation.” The sign advertising the hearing can be seen at right.

In related news, the Director of Urban Design for Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill’s New York office, Vishaan Chakrabarti, will be speaking at the Harvard Graduate School of Design on March 1, 2005.