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Saturday, July 17, 2010

A car bomb that exploded at about 20:00 MDT Thursday (01:00 Friday UTC) in a violent area of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico killed several people and injured more.

Police spokesman Jacinto Seguro said Friday that Mexican federal police received a call that an officer was dead. Seguro went on to say, “When they went to check the car, there was a dead body in there, dressed up like a police officer, but it wasn’t one of ours. They put him in a civilian car but dressed him up in a municipal police uniform. That’s when the bomb went off. It’s like an act of terrorism.”

Federal police spokesman Ramon Salinas said the blast killed two officers, a paramedic, and one civilian, although Mayor Jose Reyes said that only three died. At least six others were injured, although reports have said the total injured may be as high as sixteen. Four remain in the hospital, including three paramedics and one civilian.

Mexican authorities say it was a car bomb, but counter-terrorism experts are still unsure as to what caused the vehicle to explode. Intelligence expert Fred Burton said, “For this to be an improvised grenade attack, in some capacity, it doesn’t surprise me.”

The Juárez Cartel, one of the two drug-traffickers in the area, claimed responsibility for the bombing in a graffiti message. “We have more car bombs,” the graffiti said.

Ciudad Juárez has a history for trafficking drugs to the United States, especially into Texas.

Before the explosion, the police arrested a suspected leader of the Juarez cartel, Jesus Armando Acosta Guerrero.

This year more than 7,000 people have died as a result of drug-related violence in Mexico since this year began. Attorney General Arturo Chavez on Friday said nearly 25,000 people have died in the last three and a half year period.

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.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

A four-year-old boy has been killed by a dog in the city of Liverpool in Merseyside, England. The child has been identified as John Paul Massey. The animal belonged to his uncle. The boy’s 63-year-old grandmother Helen Foulkes tried to protect the boy but ended up getting bitten by the dog in the process. She had to receive hospital treatment for the injury.

The dog itself was shot dead in the front garden of the house where the attack had taken place. The police had said that they did not take further action after receiving a report about dog breeding earlier this year.

Chief Superintendent Steve Ashley from the police force said about the incident: “In February this year a housing officer rang Merseyside Police to say they had received complaints of dog breeding at the address. At that time the police said it wasn’t a police matter and no action was taken by Merseyside Police.

That is contrary to our policies and an investigation is now launched into exactly what happened in February.”

Friday, August 24, 2007

Part of the M5 in England, United Kingdom has been closed after shots were fired at a police car in the early hours of this morning.

A blue, L-registered BMW 3 Series car was parked in a lay-by just off the motorway on the B4008 near Junction 12. As the police car approached the vehicle it drove off and at least two shots were fired at the police car from the back of the BMW.

Kate Nelmes from Gloucestershire Police said, “As the vehicle drove onto the carriageway, someone believed to be in the back of the vehicle then fired two shots in the direction of the police vehicle.”

The motorway between Junction 12 and 13 was closed causing major traffic problems however since then the northbound carriageway has been reopened. The southbound carriageway is expected to be open around 13:00 BST.

Sunday, August 21, 2005

A robotic system at Stanford Medical Center was used to perform a laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery successfully with a theoretically similar rate of complications to that seen in standard operations. However, as there were only 10 people in the experimental group (and another 10 in the control group), this is not a statistically significant sample.

If this surgical procedure is as successful in large-scale studies, it may lead the way for the use of robotic surgery in even more delicate procedures, such as heart surgery. Note that this is not a fully automated system, as a human doctor controls the operation via remote control. Laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery is a treatment for obesity.

There were concerns that doctors, in the future, might only be trained in the remote control procedure. Ronald G. Latimer, M.D., of Santa Barbara, CA, warned “The fact that surgeons may have to open the patient or might actually need to revert to standard laparoscopic techniques demands that this basic training be a requirement before a robot is purchased. Robots do malfunction, so a backup system is imperative. We should not be seduced to buy this instrument to train surgeons if they are not able to do the primary operations themselves.”

There are precedents for just such a problem occurring. A previous “new technology”, the electrocardiogram (ECG), has lead to a lack of basic education on the older technology, the stethoscope. As a result, many heart conditions now go undiagnosed, especially in children and others who rarely undergo an ECG procedure.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Students at Benet Academy in Lisle, Illinois, United States raised record amounts of money this year during their Christmas Drive fundraiser.

The annual two-week event is aimed at promoting the Christmas spirit in helping the poor and needy. Coordination of the fundraiser is a joint effort by the faculty and three students organizations—Student Government, National Honor Society (NHS), and Outreach. Donations from previous years have allowed Outreach to provide food and Christmas gifts to dozens of families during the holiday season. NHS in the past has provided blankets, winter gear, and toys to local families as well.

A semi-formal dance held on Dec. 5 kicked off the Christmas Drive this year. Two weeks of in-school fundraising efforts ensued, including several no-uniform days and Benet’s traditional Penny Wars. In that four-day activity, the four grade levels competed against each other to see who can collect the most pennies. Nickels, dimes, and quarters were allowed but had negative value in the class total. The seniors won this contest, allowing them to have a no-uniform day on Dec. 11. Other activities such as bake sales and a beard-growing contest raised money as well.

During an all-school assembly on Friday, the last day of the drive, Student Government President Kyle Marinko announced that preliminary calculations put the amount of donations at US$53,392.82, a record for the school. Last year’s drive collected approximately US$42,000. A final total has not been officially announced, since Student Government officials continue to count additional donations that have been received.

Tuesday, March 28, 2006Petrol prices across the UK rose to an average of 91.1p per litre (U.S. $6.02 per U.S. gallon) of premium unleaded on Tuesday, which is the highest they have been for five months. Prices have been rising ever since December 2005, when they reached a trough in the current cycle of 87.6p a litre ($5.79/gal.), and have gained about 1.5p a litre (2.6 cents) in the last 10 days.

Across the UK, petrol prices ranged from 86.9p to 100.9p ($5.74 to $6.67) for unleaded and 89.9p to 105.9p ($5.94 to $7.00) for diesel.

These figures coincide with the results of a motorists survey from AA Personal Loans, which showed that most drivers are ignorant of petrol prices. Just 14% of those surveyed were able to correctly give the current price of petrol. Out of 1700 people surveyed, the lowest estimate was 69p a litre ($4.56/gal.) and the highest was £3 a litre ($19.83/gal.).