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Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Nine firefighters were killed on Monday while battling a massive fire at a furniture warehouse in Charleston, South Carolina.

Firefighters were called to the scene of a massive blaze at the Sofa Super Store in Charleston, S.C. at around 6:30 p.m. EST. At around 7 p.m., nine firefighters were sent inside the inferno to rescue people who were trapped inside the building. They rescued two before the ceiling collapsed on top of them. All nine firefighters who were inside the warehouse died. They are:

• Capt. William Hutchinson, 48
• Capt. Mike Benke, 49
• Capt. Louis Mulkey, 34
• FF Mark Kelsey, 40
• FF Bradford Baity, 37
• FF Michael French, 27
• FF James “Earl” Drayton, 56
• FF Brandon Thompson, 27
• FF Melven Champaign, 46

The disaster recalls Worcester Cold Storage Warehouse fire that killed six firefighters on Dec. 3, 1999, in Worcester, Massachusetts. The chief of the Worcester Fire Department flew down to South Carolina for the memorial service.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Last night HBO premiered I Am An Animal: The Story of Ingrid Newkirk and PETA. Since its inception, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has made headlines and raised eyebrows. They are almost single-handedly responsible for the movement against animal testing and their efforts have raised the suffering animals experience in a broad spectrum of consumer goods production and food processing into a cause célèbre.

PETA first made headlines in the Silver Spring monkeys case, when Alex Pacheco, then a student at George Washington University, volunteered at a lab run by Edward Taub, who was testing neuroplasticity on live monkeys. Taub had cut sensory ganglia that supplied nerves to the monkeys’ fingers, hands, arms, legs; with some of the monkeys, he had severed the entire spinal column. He then tried to force the monkeys to use their limbs by exposing them to persistent electric shock, prolonged physical restraint of an intact arm or leg, and by withholding food. With footage obtained by Pacheco, Taub was convicted of six counts of animal cruelty—largely as a result of the monkeys’ reported living conditions—making them “the most famous lab animals in history,” according to psychiatrist Norman Doidge. Taub’s conviction was later overturned on appeal and the monkeys were eventually euthanized.

PETA was born.

In the subsequent decades they ran the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty against Europe’s largest animal-testing facility (footage showed staff punching beagle puppies in the face, shouting at them, and simulating sex acts while taking blood samples); against Covance, the United State’s largest importer of primates for laboratory research (evidence was found that they were dissecting monkeys at its Vienna, Virginia laboratory while the animals were still alive); against General Motors for using live animals in crash tests; against L’Oreal for testing cosmetics on animals; against the use of fur for fashion and fur farms; against Smithfield Foods for torturing Butterball turkeys; and against fast food chains, most recently against KFC through the launch of their website kentuckyfriedcruelty.com.

They have launched campaigns and engaged in stunts that are designed for media attention. In 1996, PETA activists famously threw a dead raccoon onto the table of Anna Wintour, the fur supporting editor-in-chief of Vogue, while she was dining at the Four Seasons in New York, and left bloody paw prints and the words “Fur Hag” on the steps of her home. They ran a campaign entitled Holocaust on your Plate that consisted of eight 60-square-foot panels, each juxtaposing images of the Holocaust with images of factory farming. Photographs of concentration camp inmates in wooden bunks were shown next to photographs of caged chickens, and piled bodies of Holocaust victims next to a pile of pig carcasses. In 2003 in Jerusalem, after a donkey was loaded with explosives and blown up in a terrorist attack, Newkirk sent a letter to then-PLO leader Yasser Arafat to keep animals out of the conflict. As the film shows, they also took over Jean-Paul Gaultier‘s Paris boutique and smeared blood on the windows to protest his use of fur in his clothing.

The group’s tactics have been criticized. Co-founder Pacheco, who is no longer with PETA, called them “stupid human tricks.” Some feminists criticize their campaigns featuring the Lettuce Ladies and “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur” ads as objectifying women. Of their Holocaust on a Plate campaign, Anti-Defamation League Chairman Abraham Foxman said “The effort by PETA to compare the deliberate systematic murder of millions of Jews to the issue of animal rights is abhorrent.” (Newkirk later issued an apology for any hurt it caused). Perhaps most controversial amongst politicians, the public and even other animal rights organizations is PETA’s refusal to condemn the actions of the Animal Liberation Front, which in January 2005 was named as a terrorist threat by the United States Department of Homeland Security.

David Shankbone attended the pre-release screening of I Am An Animal at HBO’s offices in New York City on November 12, and the following day he sat down with Ingrid Newkirk to discuss her perspectives on PETA, animal rights, her responses to criticism lodged against her and to discuss her on-going life’s work to raise human awareness of animal suffering. Below is her interview.

Sunday, July 2, 2006

A suicide bomber exploded a truck bomb in the crowded Al-Ula market in Sadr City in Baghdad on Saturday, killing 66 people and injuring over a 100.

‘At the beginning of this market, the criminal blew up his dynamite-packed truck after trying to go over the pavement,’ said Iraq’s Deputy Health Minister Sabah al-Hussein.

The explosion happened when a police patrol was passing by and caused heavy casualties in the morning market rush. Some shoppers were sent flying on top of nearby two-storey buildings.

The force of the blast left a large crater and wreckage of blown-out cars and windowless buildings. Rescuers were left to pick through a sickening scene of human remains mixed in with exploded vegetable matter and dead animals.

Sadr City, a Shiite city of two million in which religious leader Moqtada Sadr has found popular support, had many times before been targeted by Sunni terrorists who were blamed by some residents for this attack.

It was the deadliest bombing of civilians since Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki‘s government assumed responsibility for domestic security in May 2006.

Experts said the truck bomb was a lethal concoction of explosives, shells and shrapnel hidden under a consignment of fruit. The driver of the truck blew himself up in the explosion.

Friday, January 25, 2008

B2B Trade Area of Taipei Game Show, criticized by trade buyers last year, but accompanied with 2008 Taiwan Digital Content Forum, moved to the second floor at Taipei World Trade Center for world-wide participants with a better exchange atmosphere this year.

Not only local OBMs (Softstar Entertainment, Soft-World International Corp., International Games System Corp., …, etc.) but also companies from New Zealand, Canada, Japan, Hong Kong, and South Korea showcased different specialists with multiple styles. Especially on South Korea, participated members from G? Trade Show (Game Show & Trade, All-Round, aka Gstar) showcased gaming industry of South Korea and the G? upcoming at this November with brochures.

In the 2-days Digital Content Forum, world-class experts not only shared industry experiences, members from Taiwan Gaming Industry Association also discussed and forecasted marketing models for gaming industry. With participations from governmental, industrial, and academical executives world-wide, this forum helps them gained precious experiences of digital content industry from several countries.

According to the Taipei Computer Association, the show and forum organizer, the digital content industry in Taiwan was apparently grown up recent years as Minister of Economic Affairs of the Republic of China Steve Ruey-long Chen said at Opening Ceremony yesterday. Without R&Ds from cyber-gaming, and basic conceptions from policies and copyright issues, this (digital content) industry will be fallen down in Taiwan. If this industry wanted to be grown up in sustainability, gaming OBMs in Taiwan should independently produce different and unique games and change market style to market brands and games to the world.

Thursday, May 11, 2006

The Australian House of Representatives heard the traditional right-of-reply to the Budget released May 9, from the Australian Labor Party, led by Kim Beazley (Labor, Brand), plus Budget replies from minor parties in the Australian Senate.

While the Budget is politically popular, having as one of its main features significant tax reform, Beazley focused on the omissions in the Budget, such as the failure to address a skills shortage.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

The President of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, announced on Tuesday that “We will freeze relations with Colombia.” He attributed the decision to “new aggression by the government of Colombia.” Further, he said, “I’ve ordered to withdraw our ambassador from Bogota, to withdraw our diplomatic personnel.”

This diplomatic move follows claims by Colombia that amongst weapons its military has captured from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) are AT4 anti-tank rockets manufactured by Saab Bofors Dynamics of Sweden. Colombia further alleges that the weapons were first sold to Venezuela before being given to the FARC.

“This is not the first time that this happens,” Colombian Vice-President Francisco Santos said. “In several operations in which we have recovered weapons from the FARC, we have found powerful munitions and powerful equipment, including anti-tank weapons, from a European country that sold them to Venezuela and that turned up in the hands of the FARC.”

“It is correct that they have found these weapons to be Swedish-made,” said Jens Eriksson, adviser at the Swedish foreign ministry. “We are working together with Colombian authorities to investigate the matter further and we have contacted Venezuelan authorities to clear up how these arms ended up in Colombia.”

Venezuela denies the allegations. “To me it seems that this is a new attack against our government based on lies,” Venezuelan interior minister Tarek El Aissami said on Monday. “We absolutely deny that our government or our institutions are providing assistance to criminal and terrorist organizations. It’s laughable, it sounds like a cheap film made by the American government.”

Foreign minister Nicolás Maduro said that the whole thing is a campaign “to justify the presence of US bases” in Colombia.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Fiona Donnison, a mother of two, has been found guilty of killing her own children. The 45-year-old, from Surrey, England, had been accused of murdering her son Harry and daughter Elise, aged three and two years respectively.

The murders occurred in January 2010, with the bodies of Harry and Elise Donnison found in bags in their mother’s car, close to the family’s former residence in East Sussex. Fiona Donnison is thought to have then awaited the arrival of Paul Donnison, her former partner, with two knives to injure him. Mr Donnison failed to appear at the scene; he was residing with a new girlfriend at the time.

On January 27 of this year, Fiona Donnison entered a police station in the town of Heathfield and confessed to murdering the children but did not inform police of the location of their bodies. When the Nissan vehicle was searched, the bodies of Elise and Harry were discovered in two separate holdalls.

In Lewes Crown Court, where the trial was held, the prosecution described Donnison suffocating the children to death and placing their bodies inside a vehicle. Donnison herself did not give evidence at trial.

The defence for Donnison claimed that she had been suffering from severe depression and was not in the correct state of mind at the time of the incident, saying that the offences should be downgraded to manslaughter. The defence claimed she was unable to recall the incident and was not able to bring herself to identify the two children by name.

A clinical psychologist contested that statement, deeming such mental health difficulties impossible in this case. It was “100% likely [she was] feigning” them, they said. The prosecution attributed their claims to the preparation involved in the committing of the crime. This, it said, was justification for the murder charge.

The jury at Lewes Crown Court unanimously found Fiona Donnison guilty of the two murders. As the verdict was delivered, the accused opted to remain in her cell. She was sentenced to life in prison, with a minimum period in custody of 32 years. The judge, Mr Justice Nicol, believed that their deaths were “no accident”. He remarked: “You killed them, you who were their mother. Why you did this defies logical explanation. It seems it can only have something to do with your feelings for Paul Donnison, the children’s father and your former partner.”

Outside the court, Paul Donnison commented that his family had suffered an “almost unbearable” experience. Paul also claimed that the system for bringing criminals to justice was “biased” towards the accused, commenting on how Fiona had been handled “with kid gloves“.

With the sentence having been given out, it has emerged that prosecutors were intending to have Ms. Donnison tried for a third murder charge. This would have been for Mia, the first child Fiona had with Paul. Mia died at the age of nine months in April 2004, originally thought to be down to sudden infant death syndrome. In a hearing before the trial, the prosecuting side claimed they had “taken together” enough evidence for a murder charge to be taken in contemplation in Mia’s case. Mr Justice Cooke decided against this charge being brought on as part of the court trial, citing the absence of direct evidence about the death of Mia.