Monday, July 23, 2007

Last week, Libya lifted the death sentence for five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinean doctor in the case about the HIV infection of hundreds of Libyan children. The deal called for a US$460 million settlement for the families of the children.

However, now Libya is holding out for a better deal. According to reports, Libya is seeking more money for the treatment of the children, as well as normalized relations with the European Union. Another sticking point in making a deal has been that Bulgaria and the EU are unwilling to strike any deal that admits the guilt of the medics, whose innocence they insist upon.

Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ivailo Kalfin spoke to reporters in Brussels. “We are at the stage now where the decision is purely political,” he said. “I hope there will be enough will from the Libyans’ side today in order to finalise talks … If they show this will, then the transfer can be done very quickly.”

“Allow me not to go into any details because that would make all the efforts that are being made in Libya right now meaningless,” Kalfin was quoted to have said later in the day, according to Bulgarian national television.

Friday, April 23, 2010

The oil rig Deepwater Horizon sank yesterday after an explosion Tuesday night that left eleven people missing.

According to an officer from the US Coast Guard, the rig sank sometime in the morning. The rig had caught fire after an explosion of unknown origin occurred two days ago. 115 of the 126 workers on board the time of the explosion have been rescued after evacuating in lifeboats, either by the Coast Guard or from other ships in the area.

The remaining eleven have not been located, although Coast Guard officials have expressed optimism that they are still alive.

The environmental impacts of the explosion and subsequent sinking of the rig are unclear. While up to 13,000 gallons of crude oil per hour has been released from the rig, until now, the effects have been considered minimal, as it had been burned off in the fire. That does have the potential to change, though, according to David Rainey, vice president of the lessor of the rig, BP. The rig, built in 2001 by Hyundai Heavy Industries was owned and operated by Transocean.

The rig was located roughly 50 miles southeast of the coast of Louisiana, and was under lease to BP since 2007. It was completing the construction of a new oil well, and was constructing a layer of cement in the well to reinforce it. This is considered dangerous, as it has the potential to produce an uncontrolled release of case, called a blowout. While the cause of the explosion has yet to be determined, a blowout is considered a possibility.

One survivor of the explosion, who declined to give his name, told the The New York Times that he was lying in bed when the explosion happened. “It caught me by surprise. I’ve been in offshore 25 years, and I’ve never seen anything like that,” he recalled.

Stanley Murray, the father of another survivor named Chad, an electrician, said: “My son had just walked off the drill floor.” However, Murray said that a neighbor did not make it in time, adding that his son told him that the missing eleven workers could not have made it out alive. “The eleven that’s [sic] missing, they won’t find them,” Murray said.

Thursday, July 24, 2014

In the capital city Peshawar of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan, unidentified armed men targeted security guards at the Hayatabad Industrial Estate on Sunday. At the time, two security guards were checking vehicles entering the estate, while others were praying. Police said guard Akhtar Zaman died at the scene, while guard Imran Zaman was taken to Hayatabad Medical Complex and died shortly thereafter.

According to the police, the three perpetrators were riding motorcycles, and escaped. Police cordoned off the area while collecting evidence. Reportedly, attackers look for checkposts with incautious policemen. Superintendent of Police Faisal Kamran said targeting of police is on the rise, especially during the Iftar. The security guards may have been mistaken for policemen by the attackers. Describing alertness measures, he said, “One out of every three cops will be standing alert at some distance at a checkpost or police car”.

The security guards were private employees of the estate sanctioned by the police department. Hayatabad police station official Ihtisham explained the police department provided their uniforms. According to Malik Niaz, president of Industrialists Association Peshawar, “They belonged to a group of private guards who assist the police in safeguarding the industrial estate […] formed by industrialists about five years ago after an increase was reported in kidnapping cases from the estate in broad daylight”. He also mentioned they had assigned more guards recently following increases in extortion and attacks.

A handout issued on Sunday evening said Chief Minister Pervez Khattak condemned the incident.

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

BAGHDAD —According to Defend America, US Department of Defense News website, USsoldiers members of the 256th Brigade Combat Team, the 199th Forward Support Battalion (FSB), with several units from Camp Liberty (18th Military Police Brigade, 16th MP Brigade, 617th MP Brigade, 307th Psychological Operations Battalion, and the Iraqi Highway Patrol) provided medical assistance to Iraq children at an elementary school in Bagdah.

US Major Alan Kabakoff, with the 16th MP Brigade, says humanitarianmissions are very important in winning the war on terror, although you can’t seethe importance sometimes: “It’s like fire prevention, everyone knowsthat it works, it’s just hard to prove, unless something bad happens. Thesepeople want the same things that we do, they want safe schools,safe homes, and safe areas to raise their kids.”

Staff Sgt. Jason Escoyne, Co. C, 199th FSB, who examined the children saidthat there was nothing seriously wrong with them.

This effort is part of the US reconstruction of Iraq. Till now according to USAID, U.S. Agency for International Development, in Iraq 2,405 schools were rehabilitated including the supply of chairs, cabinets, desks, chalkboards and kits for secondary and primary schools, about 8.7 million science and math textbooks have been distributed, 33,000 secondary school teachers have been trainned, high protein biscuits have been distributed to more than 450,000 children and 200,000 nursing and pregnant women, trainning have been provided to 700 physicians and 2,500 primary health care providers, over 3 million children under five have been vaccinated and more than 1.3 million children under five suspected of malnutrition have been examined.

Friday, September 9, 2005

New Orleans, Louisiana —After Category 4 storm Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans, on the night before August 29, 2005, several flood control constructions failed. Much of the city flooded through the openings. One of these was the flood wall forming one side of the 17th Street Canal, near Lake Pontchartrain. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is the primary agency for engineering support during such emergencies. A USACE team was assessing the situation in New Orleans on the 29th, water flow was stopped September 2nd, and the breach was closed on September 5th.

Friday, February 3, 2006

Computer security experts warn that a malicious computer worm, dubbed “Kama Sutra,” is set to wreak havoc this Friday, February 3rd on Microsoft Windows computers worldwide. Kama Sutra is designed to destroy files that end in .doc, .zip and .pdf.

The Kama Sutra worm has been spreading through cyberspace since January 16, packaged in emails with subject headings such as: “give me a kiss” and “crazy illegal sex.”

When users click an email attachment, their PCs become infected with destructive, self-replicating software. The worm affects Microsoft Windows operating systems and is programmed to go to work on the third of every month, overwriting or corrupting Microsoft files and others such as Portable Document Format (PDF) files.

“This one can damage your office files, your Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and your PowerPoint presentations,” Tino Klironomos, a computer retailer, said. “(The files will be) all gone, history.”

Computer security company LURHQ reports that there may be hundreds of thousands of machines already infected with the worm, which also goes by the monikers “BlackWorm,” “CME-24,” “Blackmal,” “Mywife.E” and “Nyxem.”

To prevent the worm, Windows users should arm themselves with anti-virus software. People can also protect their PC with up-to-date anti-virus gear and firewall protection. Free anti-virus tools are available from many anti-virus organisations. These tools can detect and remove the Kama Sutra worm from an infected machine.

Experts say: “Make sure your virus definitions are up to date. Besides being careful about opening email messages and attachments, users should back up their most valuable computer files on an external device such as a CD, zip drive or DVD.”

Steve Bass at PC World says: “Stop worrying. If you update your virus program signatures regularly, and do a weekly AV scan, I don’t think you have much to worry about…”

Other advice is not to open any messages with the subject headers “crazy, illegal sex”, “give me a kiss” and “hot movie.”

The worm will not affect machines running on non-Windows operating systems such as Mac OS X or GNU/Linux.

Many security systems reported a very small amount of vandalism, even though the threats were very high.

Saturday, June 6, 2009

The Brazilian Air Force has located bodies and wreckage of Air France Flight 447 in the Atlantic Ocean. At least two bodies have been recovered so far.

Brazilian Air Force Colonel Jorge Amaral confirmed that search teams had recovered 2 male bodies and wreckage including a seat, briefcase, oxygen mask, laptop computer and a ticket stub issued to a passenger from the flight. He added that experts on human remains were traveling to the recovery site to examine the findings. The 228 people on board the aircraft are presumed dead.

Previously retrieved debris from the likely vicinity of the airplane’s disappearance was yesterday revealed to actually be trash from passing ships. A wooden cargo pallet and two buoys had been recovered, but are now believed to have been from a ship.

Air France flight 447, traveling from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport, disappeared on June 1 over the Atlantic Ocean. The Airbus A330-200 was last heard via radio at 22:30 local time (01:30 UTC) on June 1 and vanished from radar approximately 190 miles (306 km) off the Brazilian coast.

The cause of the crash is not yet known. Earlier today it was revealed by French authorities that Flight 447’s plane sent 24 error messages shortly before it disappeared. They also said that the plane’s auto-pilot was not active, although they say that from the error messages it is impossible to determine the reason for it being inactive. The crash is said to be the world’s worst aviation disaster since 2001.