Monday, September 24, 2007

Marion Schaffer is running for the Green Party of Ontario in the Ontario provincial election, in the Oakville riding. Wikinews’ Nick Moreau interviewed her regarding her values, her experience, and her campaign.

Stay tuned for further interviews; every candidate from every party is eligible, and will be contacted. Expect interviews from Liberals, Progressive Conservatives, New Democratic Party members, Ontario Greens, as well as members from the Family Coalition, Freedom, Communist, Libertarian, and Confederation of Regions parties, as well as independents.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Penske Automotive Group, Inc., an Ohio-based investment group and Telesto Ventures have indicated separately that they are interested in purchasing the Saturn auto brand from General Motors (GM).

According to The Wall Street Journal, Nissan-Renault is interested in purchasing Saturn. Bloomberg, however, indicated that Nissan-Renault may be a partner of Penske’s potential bid. If Penske acquired the brand, they would distribute Saturn vehicles and outsource the assembly.

GM revealed that the Saturn brand along with Saab and Hummer were up for sale when unveiling their restructuring plans to Congress for governmental loans. While the Pontiac brand was originally to be a niche brand, GM had changed their plans recently and decided to eliminate the brand.

Telesto Ventures is an investment group that includes private equity firm Black Oak Partners LLC of Oklahoma City and several Saturn dealerships. Initially, Telesto will purchase Saturn branded cars from GM then act as a general retailer for foreign brands. Telesto is in talks with several foreign manufacturers.

The Ohio group includes many former senior auto company managers plus private financial backers, chemists and engineers who live in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Florida. This group plans to initially purchase cars from GM then purchase existing but closed plants due to automaker restructuring. Additionally, one of the partners indicated a willingness to accept some “legacy” cost in relation to the United Auto Workers. The Ohio group is also pursuing possible loans or other support from national and state governments.

GM is reviewing several offers for Saturn. GM has contracted with S.J. Girsky & Co. to advise them on the sale.

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Hurricane Bill, the first hurricane of the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season, is currently threatening parts of New England and eastern Canada.

Bill weakened somewhat on Friday, although it remains a formidable Category 2 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. As of 11 p.m. AST August 21 (0300 UTC August 22), Hurricane Bill was located within 10 nautical miles of 31.0°N 67.5°W, or about 545 mi (880 km) east-southeast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Maximum sustained winds were near 90 knots (105 mph, 165 km/h), with stronger gusts. Forecasters estimate the storm’s minimum barometric pressure to be around 957 millibars.

The storm is currently moving towards the north-northwest at about 20 mph. This path should lead to an eventual turn towards the north and later northeast, bringing the storm between Bermuda and the east coast of the United States on Saturday.

Though the brunt of the storm should remain offshore, residents in New England are monitoring Bill’s progress. The National Weather Service expects seas to turn dangerous this weekend, with some waves potentially reaching 35 feet (11 meters) in height offshore. According to Steve Kass of the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency, “If you own a boat and you like to go out any distance, this is not the weekend to do it”.

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick advised pleasure boaters and swimmers to avoid waters around Cape Cod: “Boaters should not, I repeat not, stay on their boats to ride out this storm. Swimmers should stay out of the water throughout this weekend. There will be life-threatening rip currents along the entire coast”. Beaches were being closed in some areas, including on Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard.

Patrick said emergency workers were moving supplies to certain shelters, just in case conditions worsen. On its predicted path, Bill will likely disrupt the Obama family‘s vacation to Martha’s Vineyard.

While the U.S. will most likely be spared from significant damage, the Canadian Maritimes might not be so lucky. Peter Bowyer, a program supervisor of the Canadian Hurricane Centre said “it will definitely be a hurricane when it reaches our Maritime waters Sunday. At this point, it is still not possible to give all the specifics everyone wants.” The eastern shore of Nova Scotia and southeastern portions of Newfoundland appear to be at greatest risk.

Oil companies have been vacating workers from offshore platforms within the Sable Offshore Energy Project in advance of Hurricane Bill.

Saturday, August 27, 2005

Accused of EPO doping by the French cycling daily L’Équipe in a four page story on Aug. 23, cyclist Lance Armstrong appeared on CNN’s Larry King Live TV show Aug. 25, saying he did not trust the French testers or the French testing system, and that his urine was manipulated to falsely accuse him of doping.

Dr. Christiane Ayotte, director of a Montreal doping detection laboratory said that ethically critical and important scientific questions were raised by the EPO doping allegation against seven-time Tour de France winner Armstrong.

USA Cycling official Gerard Bisceglia said these L’Équipe charges were unfair and lacked credibility. Bisceglia is chief executive of USA Cycling, principal authority over Armstrong for cycling sports in the United States.

L’Équipe released Paris lab data allegedly finding banned EPO in five year old samples of Armstrong’s urine, originally taken after he won the 1999 Tour de France. No official source would confirm medical identification of Armstrong as provider of the anonymously tested urine, and to do so would be a violation of World Anti-doping Agency (WADA) regulations.

Armstrong suggested motivation for such manipulation is a French national hatred of all non-French sport winners, and specifically because a French rider has not won the Tour de France for a quarter century. As evidence of malice toward him, Armstrong cited a French newspaper poll in which he was named the third most hated sportsman in France.

Dr. Ayotte is Doping Control director at Canada’s Institut National de la Recherché Scientifique in Montreal, which is a WADA certified lab nearest to WADA’s Montreal headquarters. Ayotte is also a world class scientific authority and instructor on sports doping detection. Dr. Ayotte’s expert opinion has significant influence on the outcome of WADA regulatory decisions.

L’Équipe reported that the EPO detection method used was experimental, which raises a scientific question. All experimentally based forensic evidence is subject to the close scrutiny of scientific opinions before it can be used in a disciplinary or legal proceeding.

Ayotte expressed surprise that chemical testing of 1999 urine could have been done in 2004 at the French national anti-doping laboratory at Châtenay-Malabry. She said that she routinely instructs all doping laboratory organizations, that previously detectable EPO protein deteriorates and disappears after two or three months, even if the urine is frozen.

Ayotte thinks that a new statistical mathematics model was used to reanalyze numerical data resulting from earlier chemical testing. “My interpretation is that retesting itself must have been conducted in 2000 or in 2001, but the results were reviewed using the new mathematical model that is now being developed in Paris.”

Ayotte does not question whether the new type of analysis is correct; rather she questions the ethics of long-delayed test results.

The first ethical problem is that this adverse finding cannot be confirmed with second samples. There are normally available two urine samples, “A” and “B”. The Châtenay-Malabry EPO findings were based on Armstrong’s “B” samples. Armstrong’s “A” samples were depleted in 1999 for tests that did not include EPO, because no EPO test was available that year.

Without addressing the ethics problem, Dick Pound, the head of WADA, said. “You can count on the fingers of one hand the times a “B” sample has not confirmed the result of the “A” sample”.

Both France and USA officials observed that L’Équipe’s unofficial adverse finding was not consistent with WADA regulations. French Sports Minister Jean-François Lamour said that without the “A” samples, no disciplinary action could be taken against Armstrong. USA official Bisceglia confirmed that WADA regulations require a confirming “A” test to prove guilt.

The second ethical problem, according to Ayotte, is that an athlete charged with doping long after the athletic event, has no way to submit to additional testing to disprove an adverse finding. This same ethical problem was also stated by USA official Bisceglia.

The third ethical problem for Ayotte is that L’Équipe disclosed Armstrong’s medical identity. “It seems to me,” Ayotte continued, “that this whole thing is breach of the WADA code. We are supposed to work confidentially until such time that we can confirm a result. By no means does this mean that we sweep a result under the carpet, but it has to meet a certain set of requirements.”

In a further ethical complication, the medical identification of Armstrong is completely unofficial and is made only by L’Équipe. Ayotte characterized the disclosure as “leaked”.

Châtenay-Malabry’s lab refused to confirm L’Équipe’s claim that the urine samples belonged to Armstrong. Nor is it likely that Châtenay-Malabry will ever identify Armstrong, because WADA regulations require that all single “B” samples used for experimental testing must remain permanently anonymous. Ayotte said, “I’m worried, because I have a great deal of respect for my colleagues in Paris. I am concerned that they did not cover their backs before being dragged into a very public issue of this kind.”

Lance Armstrong has responded on his LanceArmstrong.com website, branding L’Équipe’s reporting as being “nothing short of tabloid journalism.” Armstrong says: “I will simply restate what I have said many times: I have never taken performance enhancing drugs.”

Further confusing public understanding of the EPO doping claim is Armstrong’s statement in his autobiography, It’s Not About the Bike: he said he received EPO during his cancer chemotherapy treatment. “It was the only thing that kept me alive,” he wrote.

Armstrong last received chemotherapy EPO in late 1996. Apparently speaking from his knowledge of conventional EPO testing, Armstrong agrees that traces of 1996 synthetic EPO should not have been present in his 1999 urine. There are now tests to distinguish natural from synthetic EPO. But it remains an unresearched scientific question whether the sensitivity of the experimental new method could detect use of synthetic EPO from three years previously. By scientific analogy, the polymerase chain reaction process can detect as little as a single molecule of DNA.

Jean-Marie Leblanc, the director of the Tour de France, said that Armstrong owes cycling fans an explanation. Armstrong subsequently provided an explanation claiming urine test manipulation.

Leblanc also said; “For the first time—and these are no longer rumors, or insinuations, these are proven scientific facts—someone has shown me that in 1999, Armstrong had a banned substance called EPO in his body.”

“When people start using comments like, ‘irrefutable scientific evidence,’ that’s a pretty strong statement to make,” said Bisceglia, “when the person you’re making it about has never been given the opportunity to refute the statement. You’re making claims about something that took place in 1999. Based on what I’ve read, it’s pretty clear that any opportunity to have a black-and-white resolution to this case has been destroyed.”

Bisceglia said that USA Cycling, the governing body in the United States, lacks the officially required evidence, and therefore will not investigate the L’Équipe report.

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Saturday, March 5, 2005Simply massaging low birth weight babies with sunflower seed oil can protect them from potentially fatal infections.

Infections and complications from preterm birth cause more than half of all neonatal deaths, and very low birth weight babies are particularly vulnerable.

Preterm babies have immature skin that lacks a protective film called vernix that has antimicrobial properties.

In some countries, such as India, newborns are routinely massaged with mustard oil.

But mustard oil, says Gary Darmstadt of John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, can delay recovery of the skin barrier and have a toxic effect on skin.

Seeking an alternative low-cost product, Darmstadt and colleagues experimented with sunflower oil and an ointment called Aquaphor that comprises petrolatum, mineral oil, mineral wax and lanolin.

The researchers tested the treatments on 497 newborns (72 hours old or less) and preterm babies (less than 33 weeks gestation) between 1998 and 2003 in Bangladesh.

They applied the treatments to the entire body besides the scalp and face three times daily for the first 14 days and then twice daily until discharge.

Babies treated with sunflower oil were found 41% less likely to develop infections than controls.

“Evidence is emerging that the skin is much more important as a barrier to infection than previously recognized, particularly in preterm infants whose skin is underdeveloped,” says Darmstadt. “The good news is that treatment is available to strengthen the function of the skin as a barrier in these vulnerable newborns.”

Thursday, October 8, 2020

The enormous measure of released persistent records taken and presented available to be purchased on the dark web as of late has made costs for the majority of those records drop, as indicated by new exploration gave to and directed by the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology and cybersecurity firms Flashpoint and Intel Security.

Despite surpassing gracefully, stale interest, “The volume of clinical information available to be purchased in the criminal underground is expanding, prompting low costs for singular records,” Vitali Kremez, a senior examiner concentrated on digital knowledge at Flashpoint.

A lion’s share of taken social insurance quiet records sold on the dark web originate from U.S.- based organizations that have been penetrated, as indicated by Intel Security.

The normal cost for a solitary complete electronic wellbeing record — depicted as a “full general terms, an electronic social insurance record is seldom worth a whole lot except if it is changed over into a “total ID unit,” which joins long-structure medicinal services records, extra reports and are approved through a penetrated government enlistment information base, clarified Scott.

All things considered, in light of the fact that human services records contain huge individual data, these reports offer tricksters a venturing stone to more exhaustive misrepresentation plans.

Dixon disclosed to Healthcare IT News that diminishing costs are an overall finish of simpler admittance to touchy individual records. One part of this facilitated admittance, in light of information assembled by ICIT and Intel Security, is the developing offer of hacking-as-an administration on the dark web — which empowers those without specialized foundations to hack into frameworks by depending on paid soldiers of fortune.

Laying the foundation for a further dissonant dark web economy in some part, as per Kremez and Intel Security VP Raj Samani, is additionally the uncertain ascent of conspicuous, committed social insurance programmers. Two of these puzzling entertainers, known essentially by their seller usernames “earthbound11” and “the dark overlord,” have been flooding the market with clinical full as of late, in this manner directing the cost for other littler affiliates.

A programmer’s underground notoriety is regularly one of the main components prompting the valuation and possible offer of any records bundle they post, research shows.

” in black business sectors — ordinarily labeled with budgetary data and supporting records like service bills or protection receipts, presently floats around $50, World Privacy Forum originator Pam Dixon as of late assessed.

furthermore, expanded law requirement consideration, it’s getting progressively hard for hoodlums to get by selling halfway medicinal services records, as indicated by James Scott, a senior individual at ICIT.

While the quality, amount, and some of the time birthplace of such electronic records will help direct the cost of a particular bundle available to be purchased, normal costs are to a great extent drifting downwards for individual, non-money related documents, new exploration shows. The estimation of comparable human services records that sold a year ago for generally $75 to $100 dollars would now be able to be found for around $20 to $50 dollars.

“The bigger pattern in the exchange of bargained individual human services data is toward bigger penetrates influencing more information,” said Kremez, “cybercriminals themselves have understood that the estimation of their taken clinical information is a lot of lower than once anticipated.”

In spite of the fact that it stays muddled how an ongoing fall in Dark Web costs have and now keeps on affecting programmers’ assault conduct towards the social insurance industry, a few specialists who talked with trust it will eventually prompt a spike in the general system interruptions at clinics — the nonsensical speculation here being that bigger information dumps will assist dark with webbing sellers recover late benefit misfortunes.

“After the 2015 break of 100 million clinical records from Anthem, Premera Blue Cross, and Excellus Health Plan, not to mention the various littler systems bargained in 2015 and 2016, the yearly pace of clinical fraud could undoubtedly increment to be ten or multiple times more prominent than the 2014 rate,” a broad, late Dark Web report from ICIT peruses.

Dissimilar to taken Mastercard subtleties and other installment data sold on the web, in any case, a haze of vulnerability lingers over spilled medicinal services records since circumstances and logical results are hard to translate, said Samani. As indicated by an April 2014 FBI notice, electronic social insurance record burglary is likewise more hard to recognize, taking twice as long to spot as ordinary fraud.

By and large, the information important to draw an indisputable association between a released tolerant record and the significant instance of personality misrepresentation, for instance, is neither promptly accessible nor obvious The outcome is a domain where focused information breaks happen yet security scientists can’t state how a few, if not most, of the spilled data, is being utilized, clarified Samani.

“The effect of taken installment cards are felt very quickly though different types of information the effect could be longer-term,” said Samani, “in reality, we can decide an immediate relationship between’s a break, and the agony felt when cards are declined.[But] it isn’t so natural to decide the starting point of extortion with different types of information.”

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