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Thursday, February 22, 2007

Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance.

Originally formulated in 1973 by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, these five stages are well-known to many as the “Five Stages of Grief“. However, despite their familiarity, the five-stage theory had remained untested empirically, until Paul K. Maciejewski, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine and the Yale Bereavement Study completed several years of research, findings for which were published in the February 21 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

According to Dr. Kübler-Ross’s theory, denial is the first and most defining indicator of grief. The Yale Bereavement Study’s findings, in contrast, show acceptance to be the most common indicator, and yearning the strongest negative indicator.

The authors explain, “Disbelief decreased from an initial high at one month postloss, yearning peaked at four months postloss, anger peaked at five months postloss, and depression peaked at six months postloss. Acceptance increased steadily through the study observation period ending at 24 months postloss.”

Study author Holly Prigerson, associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute‘s Center for Psycho-Oncology and Palliative Care Research, says, “This would suggest that people who have extreme levels of depression, anger or yearning beyond six months would be those who might benefit from a better mental health evaluation and possible referral for treatment.”

The Yale Bereavement Study followed the progress of 233 participants from January 2000 through January 2003 who had lost family, most often a spouse, and was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the Center for Psycho-Oncology and Palliative Care Research, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Women’s Health Research at Yale University.

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Washington, D.C. —When you mix a shopping cart, six team members, bar hopping and bonus points for schmoozing bar hostesses and sabotaging your enemies, you get the annual Washington, D.C. Idiotarod race. On Saturday, this bizarre fund raising event, which originated in San Francisco 13 years ago, pitted teams of “sleds” together to race from bar to bar in Washington, D.C.’s fashionable Dupont Circle and Adams Morgan neighborhoods. Each “sled” consists of a “borrowed” shopping cart and six human dogs to pull the cart. Points are given for originality, the best time and best sabotage of another sled.

The race is held to benefit the Arlington Food Assistance Center and is organized by Ellen Shortill and Kristen Heatherly. Their organization, called “SMASHED” or “Society for Mature Adults Seeking to Help, Entertain and Donate”, takes the position that donating small amounts many times ultimately benefits the smaller charities. Said Shortill, “Our goal is simply to have fun and raise money for those charities that don’t really get any attention.”

The race this year consisted of 22 teams. Although team “Save NOLA” got to the last bar first, teams can win bonus points for (among other things) flirting with bar hosts and hostesses at any of the five bars along the route. The route is approximately 3 miles long, and each team is required to spend at least 20 minutes in each bar. Heatherly noted that “it doesn’t matter who got here first, ultimately its the team with the most credits and the best time that wins.”

Unique among the participants are brothers Pete and Chris Magnuson who are attempting to get on the 10th edition of Amazing Race on CBS. Their team called “Pick Pete and Chris” ran through the streets with t-shirts hawking their website and their fervent desire to be chosen for the next edition of the television show.

“Its not really about who wins, its that we get to have a blast and raise some money,” said Shortill. The charity event raised about $500 and various canned goods for the food pantry.

Monday, April 14, 2008

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V carrier rocket launched this evening from LC-41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, USA, with the ICO G1 communications satellite for ICO Satellite Management. Lift-off occurred at 20:12:00 UTC. It is the first commercial launch of an Atlas rocket since responsibility for the launches was transferred from International Launch Services to United Launch Alliance, through Lockheed Martin. Launch was completely successful, with the spacecraft separating from its carrier rocket about half an hour after launch.

The Atlas V flew in the 421 configuration, with a 4 metre wide payload fairing, twin solid rocket boosters, and a single-engined Centaur upper stage. It was the 14^th flight of the Atlas V, and successfully placed the satellite into a geosynchronous orbit. The launch was dedicated to former Atlas programme employee Lynn Deckard.

ICO G1 will provide S band mobile communications for satellite phones. Its launch had been delayed from May last year, owing to delays with US government missions which were launching on Atlas, and then in light of the failure of a previous Atlas launch in June. It was constructed by Space Systems/Loral, and is based on the LS-1300 satellite bus. It is the heaviest satellite to be launched by an Atlas rocket, and the heaviest single commercial satellite to be launched into a geosynchronous transfer orbit.

Speaking after the launch, Jim Sponnik, the Vice President of the Atlas programme told the team who had conducted the launch that they “all did extremely well and the rocket did exceptionally well”. Colonel Scott Henderson, of the 45^th Space Wing, United States Air Force, said that the launch was “a great success”, and the result of “phenomenal effort” on the part of those involved. David Malcom, the President of Lockheed Martin Commercial Space Systems described the launch as a “hole in one”. Tim Bryan, the CEO of ICO Satellite Management told the United Launch Alliance team that he “can’t express…what every person in this room has done for our business”. He also thanked Bob Day, and ICO’s space team, for their work in the build up to the launch. Michael Gass, the CEO of United Launch Alliance said that the successful launch was a “testimony to this entire team”, and told flight controllers “congratulations, you’re the best”.

The satellite’s signal was acquired by ground tracking stations in Australia at 21:17, and the launch was confirmed to be accurate to within one nautical mile of the targeted orbit. The next Atlas launch is scheduled to occur in early July, with a DMSP weather satellite, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Monday, September 2, 2019

In late August, the Canadian city of Toronto celebrated the quarter century anniversary of Fan Expo Canada, a massive annual pop culture convention. Running from August 22 to 25, the event featured extensive retail areas, panels, celebrity appearances, an artist alley, and attendees in cosplay. Wikinews attended.

At the panel “Breaking Into Comics,” speakers shared their insights into getting started as a comic artist or writer. Comic artist Jenn St-Onge (Nancy Drew, Jem and the Misfits) told of being forced to re-evaluate her life, after growing up with ample positive reinforcement about being an artist. “In my first stint, I didn’t get any work. […] to come back and get that kind of second chance, eight years ago, it feels really good to have people coming to you and being ‘I want you to work,’ and basically working seven days a week for the last eight years.”

“You have to work those seven days to earn a weekend,” quipped Valiant Entertainment editor Heather Antos, later in the panel. While all agreed that time off was rare as a freelancer, artist Leisha Riddell emphasized the need for boundaries, saying “this weekend, I’m becoming part of the couch and playing video games until my eyes go blurry.”

Actress Denise Crosby is set to appear in the final season of Suits, a Toronto-shot legal series. The actress recalled her season with Star Trek: The Next Generation, when they were the “scrappy little red headed stepchild of the [Paramount] lot.”

Underwhelmed with her role, she left the series toward the end of its first season. “This is not what I wanted to become an actor for. I didn’t want to stand on the bridge and just go ‘aye aye captain,’ you know, and not even move. I actually asked them to make up some fake legs” to place at the character Tasha Yar’s bridge station, which was on a risen platform. “You could just stick my legs, just fake legs, and I had no lines[….] You gotta know that Tasha’s on her command post, but just put the legs there, just keep the camera low.”

Actor Brendan Fraser’s appearance at the convention was directly from filming The Professionals in South Africa. He quipped “I still have dust in my shoes.”

The cast of the sitcom Kim’s Convenience had a panel in a room for 700 people. The popular series is based on a 2011 stage play about a Korean-Canadian family that operates a convenience store. Simu Liu, one of the series leads, is to play the titular character in Marvel film Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021).

Lead Paul Sun-Hyung Lee talked about how the series has been underestimated “up ’til now.” During the premiere, “I felt like Cinderella at the ball […] I’m a jobber, I’ve been working as an actor for like, close to 25 years, lots of small roles. Expositionary characters, never asked to carry anything, to be a lead, to actually have a background story. And so to finally be able to do an entire season of television as one of the lead actors was tremendous”.

Hasbro hosted a panel about their Star Wars products, which promoted their new action figures and helmets. The company’s upcoming replica helmet is of Luke Skywalker’s X-wing helmet, their “number one requested hero helmet […] This by far is the most labor-intensive helmet to date.” While previous helmets have included movie sound, this product includes lights to simulate the enemy ships going past your head.

Asked about sustainability, the company noted that recently they had switched to a bio-based PET for their packaging, “which was more plant-based plastic for greater environmental concerns. […] This week, Hasbro announced that we’re […] looking to switch away from plastic altogether, in terms of our packaging […] we’re very much aware that a lot of times times plastic is […] ripped off and discarded, so we’re constantly trying to improve on that as a company to improve our environmental footprint.”

The event played host to the Rocket League WGN North American Championship, with the winning team receiving C$10,000 and a trip to a professional circuit event.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

The government of Brazil has granted a licence allowing the controversial construction of what would be the third largest hydro-electric dam in the world, in the Amazon rainforest, which environmental groups say will threaten the survival of indigenous groups, as well as cause major devastation of a large area of rainforest.

The $17bn Belo Monte dam will, if a developer is found, be situated on the Xingu river, a tributary of the river Amazon, and has been surrounded in controversy since the 1990s, when the initial plan for the 11,000 megawatt dam was rejected amid global protests. The Brazilian government says that fears had been taken into account before approving the environmental licence. Whoever wins the bidding process will have to meet forty conditions, as well as pay $800m in order to protect the environment.

Critics state that diverting the flow of the river will damage fish stocks and part of the Amazon ecosystem, as 500 square kilometres of land would be flooded — as well as affecting forty thousand people, of which twelve thousand would be displaced. 48 of the 500 square kilometres already flood for half the year due to the rainy season.

Friday, April 1, 2011

Tonga’s largest criminal trial today ended in the conviction of four men and the state shipping firm over the sinking of MV Princess Ashika. 74 were killed when the ferry went down off Nuku’alofa in 2009.

The vast majority of bodies remain missing. Only two were recovered, including one Tongan — a 21-year-old mother called Vae Fetu’u Taufa. The Shipping Corporation of Polynesia (SCP) manager John Jonesse, acting director of the national department for ports and marine affairs Viliami Tu’ipulotu, captain Viliami Makahokovalu Tuputupu, and first mate Semisi Pomale were all convicted of her manslaughter by negligence. The men were remanded into custody over the weekend to await sentencing; they face a maximum of ten years in jail.

Justice Shuster cited the severity of the offences in denying bail, which was requested by Laki Niu and Vuna Fa’otusia, attorneys representing the accused.

Built in the early 1970s, by 1985 the ferry was found to be unseaworthy and hence not suited for use in deep water. When SCP bought it in 2009 from Fiji, it suffered from “huge” rusting holes and on August 5 that year sank in deep water during a storm. Most passengers were sleeping below deck when the ship was lost near the island of Tongatapu, where it remains on the seabed. No women or children escaped.

The six-week trial followed a royal commission of inquiry that found Jonesse, from New Zealand, bought Princess Ashika “without any proper due diligence, surveys, inspections, valuations, documentation or proper inquiry having been completed.” It also concluded Tuputupu chose to sail that day despite the ship leaking on other journeys. The inquiry branded the loss “a result of systemic and individual failures… The tragedy is that they were all easily preventable and the deaths were completely senseless.”

SCP was convicted of charges concerning the vessel’s seaworthiness by the jury, which sat in Tonga’s parliament building after the trial’s high profile saw it moved away from Nuku’alofa Supreme Court.

Jonesse and Tuputupu have both been convicted of five counts of taking an unseaworthy ship to sea under the Shipping Act, for voyages held on July 3, July 9, July 15, July 23 and August 5. Jonesse is also guilty of forgery and knowingly using a forged document.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Wikinews held an exclusive interview with Wayne Allyn Root, one of the candidates for the Libertarian Party nomination for the 2008 U.S. presidential election.

Root is the founder and chairman of Winning Edge International Inc., a sports handicapping company based in Las Vegas, Nevada. In addition, he is an author and a television producer, as well as an on-screen personality both as host and guest on several talk shows.

Root, a long-time Republican, declared his candidacy for the Libertarian Party on May 4, 2007.

He says he is concerned about the qualities of many who run for president, and fears that they do not know the needs of American citizens. He also says that they cater to big businesses instead of small ones.

He has goals of limiting the federal government and believes that the US went into Iraq for wrong reasons. A strong supporter of the War on Terror, he feels that it was mishandled. He has conservative values and came from a blue collar family in New York. He graduated from Columbia University with fellow presidential hopeful Barack Obama in 1983.

Root believes that America is in trouble and hopes to change that if elected.

Monday, November 9, 2009

Former Formula One McLaren designer Gordon Murray has unveiled a new all-electric car.

The car model, which is known as the T.27, is due to be developed over the course of the next 16 months with four prototypes. The process that will be used during the course of the manufacturing of the vehicle is called iStream. The technology iStream had been invented by Gordon Murray in 1999 and means that all the parts are designed using a computer.

The project has approximately received £9,000,000 (US$14,919,000) in investment. The electric car is designed for urban purposes, such as in cities or towns. The weight of the vehicle is just 600 kilograms. It has the ability to travel at speeds of up to 60 miles per hour and can go for a maximum of 100 miles between recharges.

The designer thinks that motorists will some day be travelling in vehicles like this. Murray believes that the new car will be ‘the most efficient electric vehicle on earth’.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

In an interview on a television show called the No Drug Show, hosted by Larry Byrnes, the Church of Scientology blamed both the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States and the attack on Pearl Harbor on psychiatrists and the drugs they prescribe their patients. Scientology considers psychiatry to be barbaric and a violation of human rights.

The video was posted on the video sharing website YouTube, but was later removed “due to a copyright claim by Axiom 10 Productions, Inc.” Mark Bunker of XenuTV questioned why Axiom 10 would utilize the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to remove the video from YouTube, as it was promoting their ideology about psychiatrists. It was later re-added to another site called Vimeo.com.

David Figueroa, a spokesperson for the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), a human rights group founded by the Church in 1969, said, “terrorism employs violence. Against not just the general public, like in 9/11, but against individuals when they are captured.” Figueroa is president of the CCHR organization in Florida.

“To take [a] person, and turn them into a killing machine, against their will or have them do things that are against their nature, you need something behind that. Psychiatrists employ drugs and conditioning techniques in order to change people from what they would normally be, into killing machines,” added Figueroa. He also says that the leader of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden got the idea to form the terrorist group from his second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri in 1988. Then 13 years later, 19 terrorists hijacked four U.S. commercial airliners, crashing two into the World Trade Center towers, one into the The Pentagon and one into a field in Pennsylvania. The attacks killed nearly 3,000 people.

“He was [bin Laden] just transformed from someone who was a supporter” of the “jihad” against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, into someone whose “whole thought patterns and his entire viewpoint was changed by Zawahiri, and by whatever types of drugs Zawahiri used to make that change in bin Laden, we don’t know”, said Figueroa, who adds that Zawahiri was acting as a “psychiatrist”. In another show hosed by Byrnes, former CCHR-International president Dennis H. Clarke claims Zawahiri to be a “psychiatrist, a therapist”; Zawahiri is referred to in this program as the “guy who runs” bin Laden. However, Zawahiri is actually a surgeon; he is not a psychiatrist or a psychologist.

Figueroa goes on to say that Japanese kamikaze pilots responsible for bombing Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in December of 1941 were “on amphetamines which is a psychiatric drug” when they attacked. However, the Japanese did not employ kamikaze tactics until later in the war. Wikinews has contacted the CCHR for a statement regarding Figueroa’s remarks, but have yet to receive a reply. Scientology-associated publications have also attributed tragedies including the Jonestown massacre and the Holocaust to psychiatry.

At the conclusion of the television program, the host promotes a brochure which he says illustrates how “notorious terrorist acts like 9/11 were basically created by psychiatrists operating behind the scenes”.

The issue of Scientology’s stance on psychiatry was brought to the forefront in the media during a 2005 appearance by Tom Cruise on NBC’s program Today with Matt Lauer. At the time Cruise told Lauer he was critical of psychiatry and the use of antidepressants. In a December 2008 appearance on the Today show on a promotional tour for his film Valkyrie, Cruise told Lauer he wanted to apologize and felt he appeared arrogant in his 2005 interview.

This is not the first time the Church made false accusations for acts of violence. In October 2008, the Church falsely accused the internet protest group Anonymous of a 2007 school shooting in Finland. They accused Anonymous of being involved in the November 2007 shooting at Jokela High School, in which a man named Pekka-Eric Auvinen shot and killed nine people, including himself. The Church accused Auvinen of being part of Anonymous, and further accused the group of plotting the attack. The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) in Finland later told Wikinews that Anonymous had nothing to do with the crime.

Sunday, May 1, 2005

Cyprus, Latvia and Malta, three states which joined the European Union in May 2004, exactly one year ago, today became members of the Exchange Rate Mechanism II (ERM II), which pegs their currencies to the euro within a 15% margin above or below a central rate. While they are in ERM II, their currencies must not fluctuate to an extent that exceeds this 15% margin, and they must also keep inflation and budget deficits in check. For countries to adopt the euro, they must stay in the ERM II for at least two years. Therefore, the earliest date that Cyprus, Latvia and Malta can adopt the common currency is in May 2007.

Cyprus, Latvia and Malta have joined four other countries already in ERM II: Denmark, Estonia, Lithuania and Slovenia. Denmark joined ERM II in 1999 but has since not wished to adopt the euro, while Estonia, Lithuania and Slovenia joined the Exchange Rate Mechanism in June 2004, and are expected to adopt the euro by late 2006 or early 2007. Other new European Union member states are also expected to join ERM II soon.

Out of the European Union of 25 member states, 12 countries currently use the euro, which they adopted in January 1, 2002. The only EU members that remain either outside the Eurozone or ERM II are the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Sweden, Poland and the United Kingdom.