lwsimmons.org

Saturday, November 27, 2010

A judge in the High Court in Aberdeen, Scotland has criticised the care doctors gave to baby Alexis Matheson. Lord Uist made the comments while sentencing Mark Simpson, who was yesterday convicted of murdering the six-week-old girl.

Simpson, 29, will serve at least twenty years of his life sentence after he attacked Alexis — the child of his then-girlfriend Ilona Sheach, who he blamed for Alexis’s wounds — over the course of a month. The child suffered broken ribs and brain damage. Lord Uist said staff at Woodside Medical Group might have been able to prevent the death but failed to realise the baby was being hurt deliberately.

Sheach had initially been unable to get an appointment at Aberdeen-based Woodside for her daughter; instead, Dr Mohammed Athar spoke on the phone with Sheach and prescribed three drugs without seeing the infant. When she did see a doctor the following week despite being, said Lord Uist, “seriously concerned” for Alexis’s health, the doctor she saw — Linda Mackay — believed Sheach’s explanation the baby was constipated. She felt Alexis’s blood-red eyes were due to straining; a consultant neurosurgeon testified at trial that this did not explain the subconjunctival haemorrhages in the eyes.

That consultant felt a referral to a paediatrician would have been approrpiate. A consultant paediatrician told the court if Dr Mckay had phoned one Alexis would have been urgently hospitalised. These circumstances have led to calls for legislative changes, according to The Scotsman, which compared the death to the recent Baby P case in neighbouring England. Lord Uist also made this comparison, saying “Scottish health authorities have to treat this case with a similar degree of importance and urgency” to “[t]he Baby P case down south”.

Lord Uist was “very disturbed” that “nothing was done” following Dr Mackay’s assessment. He also criticised the delay in seeing a doctor, saying “[i]t is my opinion the appointments system operated at this surgery may require urgent review so as to ensure children requiring urgent attention receive it by being seen by a doctor.”

He continued “[w]hether the death of baby Alexis could have been prevented had she been so referred is a matter which, in my opinion, merits a very full inquiry. The training of GPs, and also health visitors, to detect signs of non-accidental injury may be a matter that requires further consideration.”

The same day as these comments, Crown Office announced that a fatal accident inquiry will occur. “These are very serious criticisms by Lord Uist of the way the health services operated,” said Scottish Conservatives health spokesman Murdo Fraser. “Clearly, there were serious failings in relation to this baby’s treatment and lessons have to be learned from this case.”

The health board stated “NHS Grampian and the Woodside Medical Practice would like to extend their condolences to Alexis’s family. We understand that Lord Uist has issued a statement that it is critical of perceived failings in the care given to Alexis. We will consider these comments very carefully.”

The Scottish Government has also taken note. “We extend our deepest condolences to the family of Alexis Matheson,” according to a spokeswoman. “We continue to monitor the situation very closely, and will await the findings of the fatal accident inquiry. Following this we will work with the health board to determine any necessary changes and ensure that any lessons are learned.”

Monday, January 25, 2010

Sales of previously owned homes in the US fell at the fastest rate ever recorded last December, according to data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR).

According to the association, existing home sales fell 16.7% last month, to an annual rate of 5.45 million, the largest crash since 1968. The figure was less than the 5.90 million units, or an eleven percent drop, predicted by most analysts.

Sales of homes went up for the entire of 2009 to 5.156 million units, or 4.9% for the year, and prices dropped from 2008 by 12.4%.

NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun described the figures as being “probably the largest annual drop since the Great Depression”. He said that “the market is going through a period of swings driven by the tax credit. We’re likely to have another surge in the spring. Job creation is the key to a continued recovery in the second half of the year.”

Pierre Ellis, a senior economist for Decision Economics in New York, commented on the figures, saying: “The drop in home sales is the payback for the acceleration of sales that occurred with the original first-time home buyers tax credit. […] There is an issue as to whether the decline represents a fundamental weakening.”

“The housing market continues to face significant headwinds, including high unemployment, record delinquencies and foreclosures, the specter of rising mortgage rates as the Fed’s [mortgage-backed securities] purchase programs comes to a close in late March, and tight credit,” Omair Sharif, an economist for RBS Securities, noted.

“Still, the resale market showed resilience in the second half of 2009, and the expansion and extension of the tax credit to April 30 could boost purchases during the spring selling season,” he said.

“We’ll see a pickup in existing home sales in the next couple of months as people take advantage of the tax-credit extension”, economist Adam York of Wells Fargo Securities LLC in Charlotte, North Carolina claimed. He fore-casted a pace of 5.4 million. He said that there were unlikely to be buyers of homes, despite the fact that the U.S. was “past the bottom.”

All four regions of the country saw a decline in sales. In the Northeast, sales fell 19.5 percent, in the Midwest, they plunged 25.8 percent. The South, the country’s largest region, saw a 16.3% decline, while in the West, sales waned by 4.8%.

US stocks fell slightly after the announcement, but went back up later in the day.

Thursday, February 8, 2007

A new version of Canada’s Food Guide was announced by Canadian Health Minister Tony Clement on Feb. 5, 2007. The guide has helped Canadians with healthy eating habits since 1942 but was last updated in 1992. It is the Canadian government’s most-requested publication after income tax forms.

Changes to the Food Guide include:

• a first-time recommendation to include a small amount of unsaturated fat in regular diets;
• physical activity to complement healthy eating;
• advice for some people to take vitamin supplements;
• an advisory to limit foods with excess salt, sugar, fat and calories, which is considered an unprecedented caution regarding junk food.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Environmentalists in Brazil are urging the country’s residents to urinate in the shower while washing themselves, to help conserve water and save the rainforest. Television ads being aired in the country claim that by doing so, the nation could save over 1,000 gallons of water per household each year.

SOS Mata Atlantica ran the ad campaign in an attempt to use comedy to get people to reduce the amount of water they use. “[The ad is] a way to be playful about a serious subject,” said Adriana Kfouri, a spokesperson for Atlantica.

The animated ad narrated by children shows people, including a trapeze artist, an alien and dancers, all taking a shower while at the same time, urinating in it. The ending of the ad then states, “Pee in the shower! Save the Atlantic rainforest!”

Ken Livingstone, former mayor of London, England, proposed a similar campaign in 2006. He said urine should be classified as a “green waste” and that “there is no earthly reason that you need to flush the loo if you have merely urinated. That’s a huge saving of water.”

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

0 A.D. is a historical, open source, strategy game, published by Wildfire Games. It focuses on the period between 500BC and 500AD. The game will be released in two parts: the first covering the pre-AD period, and the second running to 500AD. With development well underway, Wikinews interviewed the development team.

Aviv Sharon, a 24-year-old Israeli student responsible for the project’s PR, compiled the below Q&A, which the full team approved prior to publication.

Monday, July 9, 2007

Dutch adventurer Ralph Tuijn has reached the halfway point of his attempt to be the first person to row across the Pacific Ocean unaided.

The 16,000 kilometre journey from the coast of Peru to the seaside city of Brisbane, Australia, the widest section of the Pacific, has never been crossed absolutely unaided by a rower, and Tuijn says just nine people have rowed it even with assistance.

Tuijn reached the central point of his crossing, an insignificant point of water in the ocean, 111 days after setting off from Peru in March. He has been making good progress, and has since cut his estimated time of arrival in Brisbane by a month.

The Dutchman, who now expects to reach his destination on October 20, has kept in touch with those tracking his movements through daily internet postings from his laptop computer, including his wife Winnie. His boat, the Zeeman Challenger, is a seven-metre custom plywood vessel.

Tuijn has overcome a variety of obstacles to reach the halfway point. He is suffering from the constant attention of sharks, who often bump his boat and disrupt his attempts at sleep. One particular shark, dubbed ‘Gomulka’ by Tuijn, has been trailing the adventurer’s boat for extended periods.

He has also accidentally burnt himself when he spilled hot water on his foot whilst trying to make coffee, apparently also from a shark ‘bump’. He is also forced to manually pump water for cooking and drinking after his automatic water pump broke down not long into his journey.

His vessel has no motors or sails, but relies on his physical rowing power to move. The boat does have a solar power system to provide energy for his laptop, a telephone and a global positioning system.

Tujin, who is raising money for a children’s home in Mumbai, India, is rowing at an average speed of 58 kilometres each day. His diet consists of freeze-dried foods and fish, which are keeping him physically well-conditioned despite tiring mentally.

Tuijn is a serial adventurer and experienced rower. He has rowed across the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea, as well as cycled across Russia and the icy terrain of Greenland.