File photograph of a Virgin Voyager Class 220 train (Cr. Chris McKenna)
A Virgin Trains train travelling at high speed collided with a car near Copmanthorpe, Yorkshire, England, killing the car’s driver.
The accident took place at approximately 20:55 GMT when the Class 220/221 train, travelling at close to 100mph, hit the car which was on the tracks. The train then partially derailed but remained upright, coming to a stop further down the tracks. The car driver is believed to have been killed instantly. No one on the train was injured.
The car was not at a level crossing. North Yorkshire Police said that the car had left the road, driven through a fence and ended up on the track.
The train was the 14:25 Virgin Voyager cross-country service from Plymouth to Edinburgh Waverley, capable of speeds up to 125mph, but was deccelerating on approach into York. There were 74 passengers on board.
The line between York and Leeds was closed for several hours, delaying other services. Virgin Spokesman Arthur Leathley told reporters that Network Rail hoped to have three of the four lines in that section of the track operational by Tuesday morning.
Scientists use DNA analysis to track elephant poaching networks
Cambodian customs agents pose with a cache of illegal ivory from Mozambique on December 21, 2016, seized in the same period as those in the study. Image: Andyb3947.
Findings published Monday by a team composed mostly of University of Washington Center for Forensic Science researchers in Nature Human Behaviour report using a form of DNA analysis techniques originally designed for human teeth to track ivory poached from African elephants.
The scientists, in collaboration with the United States Department of Homeland Security, identified the criminal networks that killed the endangered animals and smuggled their valuable tusks across national borders.
The scientists took DNA samples from 4,320 tusks taken from both African bush (Loxodonta africana) and African forest (Loxodonta cyclotis) elephants that were confiscated from 49 separate ivory smuggling events in twelve countries from 2002 to 2019. The scientists found that teeth from the closely related elephants, or even two tusks from the same individual, often surfaced in different shipments that transited through the same ports. The data also showed when criminal networks shifted their operations from between port cities. They inferred poachers were making kills, then separating the tusks at some point along the smuggling route.
The team had been studying DNA analysis on poached tusks for years: in 2018, they found two tusks from different shipments had come from the same animal, which indicated both shipments were from the same kill and transited by the same criminal network. This is the first report of DNA identification tusks that came from elephants in the same families.
Lead author Dr Samuel Wasser said: “Identifying close relatives indicates that poachers are likely going back to the same populations repeatedly — year after year — and tusks are then acquired and smuggled out of Africa on container ships by the same criminal network.” He added: “This criminal strategy makes it much harder for authorities to track and seize these shipments because of the immense pressure they are under to move large volumes of containers quickly through ports.”
Wasser said similar studies will provide law enforcement groups access to a greater range of evidence with which to prosecute poachers and their criminal partners by providing verifiable links between different caches of captured ivory. The researchers concluded in their paper that law enforcement could use their information to discern the ways in which poachers are collaborating.
Humans have used the ivory from elephant tusks to make art, decorations, and tools since prehistory. Many countries have since outlawed the sale of ivory, but poachers continue to kill tens of thousands of elephants each year.
The paper’s authors were from the University of Washington, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Kenyan-based organisation SeeJ-Africa, the Kenya Wildlife Service, and Singapore’s National Parks Board.
Australian health workers to close intensive care units in Victoria next week
Members of Australia’s Health Services Union (HSU) will go on strike in Victoria next week in a dispute over stalled wage and career structure negotiations. Over 5000 physiotherapists, speech pathologists and radiation therapists will walk off the job next week, effectively closing the state’s 68 largest health services.
The strike will force the closure of intensive care units and emergency departments across the state.
It is feared the strike could continue into Easter.
National secretary of the HSU, Kathy Jackson said admissions would be crippled, while intensive care patients would have to be evacuated to New South Wales, Tasmania and South Australia as hospitals will not be able to perform tests or administer treatment.
“When an ambulance shows up you can’t admit a patient without an X-ray being available, you can’t intubate them and you can’t operate on them,” she said.
“If something goes wrong in an ICU you need to be able to X-ray, use nuclear medicine or any diagnostic procedure,” said Ms Jackson.
Ms Jackson said the HSU offered arbitration last year, but the state government refused. “They’re not interested in settling disputes, they hope that we are just going to go away.”
“We’re not going away, we’ve gone back and balloted the whole public health workforce in Victoria, those ballots were successful, 97 percent approval rating,” she said.
The HSU is urging the government to commence serious negotiations to resolve the dispute before industrial action commenced.
The government has offered the union a 3.25 per cent pay increase, in line with other public sector workers but the union has demanded more, but stopped short of specifying a figure.
Victorian PremierJohn Brumby said the claim would be settled according to the government’s wages policy. “The Government is always willing and wanting to sit down and negotiate with the relevant organisations . . . we have a wages policy based around an increase of 3.25 per cent and, above that, productivity offset,” he told parliament.
The union claims it is also arguing against a lack of career structure, which has caused many professionals to leave the health service. Ms Jackson said wages and career structures in Victoria were behind other states.
Victorian Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu said he was not in support of the proposed strike and called on the government to meet with unions. “There could not be a more serious threat to our health system than has been announced today.”
“We now have to do whatever is possible to stop this strike from proceeding,” he said.
The opposition leader will meet with the union at 11:30 AM today.
Victorian Hospitals Industry Association industrial relations services manager Simon Chant said hospitals were looking at the possible impact and warned that patients may have to be evacuated interstate if the strike goes ahead.
Gastric bypass surgery performed by remote control
A robotic system at Stanford Medical Center was used to perform a laparoscopicgastric 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.
UK allows corporations to award high school credits
The government of the United Kingdom has given corporations like fast food chain McDonald’s the right to award high school qualifications to employees who complete a company training program.
McDonald’s said it will offer a “basic shift manager” course, which will train staff in marketing, customer service, and other areas of restaurant management. Completion of this course will be the equivalent of passing the GCSE, the standard exam taken at age 16, or the Advanced Level, taken at age 18.
Network Rail plans to offer a course in rail engineering, while Flybe is developing a course involving aircraft engineering and cabin crew training. Passing Flybe’s course could result a university level degree.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown supports the plan. “It is going to be a tough course, but once you have got a qualification in management you can probably go anywhere,” Brown said. He emphasized the importance of higher education, saying, “Every young person needs a skill and to think about going to college, doing an apprenticeship or university.”
John Denham, Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, called the decision “an important step towards ending the old divisions between company training schemes and national qualifications” and said it will “benefit employees, employers and the country as a whole.”
However, some people are unsure of the plan’s effectiveness. Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union, said, “We are unsure whether those institutions would be clamoring to accept people with McQualifications,” using a derogatory term for the program.
A federal jury found Bernard Ebbers guilty of all nine counts in the indictment brought against him. The verdict was handed down by a New Yorkjury after 8 days of deliberation on the former WorldComCEO and mastermind behind the accounting scandal that brought down the telcom giant.
AP writer Erin McClam reports, “Ebbers’ face reddened.”, as the verdict was read. Sentencing is set for June 13 when he will face up to 85 years in prison.
Ebbers testified in his own defence, saying he left the details of the company’s accounting to others and that he had no knowledge of shady practices. But Scott Sullivan, ex-chief financial officer and key prosecution witness, directly linked Ebbers to the fraud. He had agreed to co-operate with prosecutors in the hopes of receiving a lenient sentence for his own involvement in the fraud.
The demise of WordCom sparked a massive class action law suit by investors. The drastic plunge of WorldCom’s stock value cost upwards to $11 billion as the scandal unravelled. Secuities fraud case filings stemming from the suits will probably break new legal ground whereby the actions of investment banks and public accounting firms will be called into legal question.
Massachusetts lawmakers enact plan for universal health coverage
Businesses that employ more than 10 people are required to provide health insurance for all staff or face fines of $295 per year per uninsured worker.
Individuals will be required to enroll in a health plan by July 1, 2007, or face tax penalties.
Health insurers will provide partially to fully subsidized coverage for low-income residents.
At least one other state (Hawaii) requires employers to provide employee health insurance, but no other state holds individuals accountable for coverage.
The government of China has decided to stop its currency peg to the U.S. dollar. The country will revalue its currency, the yuan, for the first time in a decade. This comes after international pressure from Western countries, especially from the United States. The yuan will now be linked to a variety of different currencies.
The People’s Bank of China has announced a 2.1% revaluation increase which will allow the yuan to fluctuate +/- 0.3 yuan in daily trading. This means, like other currencies, that closing prices one day become opening prices the next day.
The U.S. government has been pressuring China to revalue its currency since China joined the WTO. The U.S. said that China has kept the yuan up to 40% under its real value to increase exports, thus giving China an unfair advantage against western industrial competitors as well as industry in developing nations.
Since the announcement the yuan has strengthened to 8.11 yuan to the US dollar instead of 8.28 as it has been for the last ten years. This means the yuan is more expensive and that Chinese goods will become more expensive in western countries.
Economic growth in China might also slow down, but it has been soaring for the last several years. This could have serious consequences in China, but a People’s Bank of China person has said that the exchange rate will be “basically stable”.
China linked the yuan to the dollar in 1997 during the major economic crisis in Asia. This has provided the stability which has allowed the Chinese economy to grow over the last ten years. This move will make China vulnerable to future financial fluctuations.
This move could also mean that the US dollar would fall if China switches from holding dollars to holding for example the euro or other strong currencies.
BBC: Ethiopian famine aid ‘siphoned off’ to buy weapons according to rebels, report
According to a BBC report, funds raised for famine relief aid in Ethiopia, such as those raised by the Live Aid benefit concert pictured here, were “siphoned off” by rebels to buy weapons. Image: Squelle.
An investigation by the BBC has revealed that millions of dollars in famine relief aid money, including the money raised from the charity supergroup Band Aid and the Live Aid concert held by Bob Geldof, was “siphoned off” by Ethiopian rebels to buy weapons. One rebel said that at least US$ 95 million (£63 million) from — Western governments and private charities — was diverted into rebel coffers.
This was also noted in a declassified Central Intelligence Agency assessment of the famine situation titled Ethiopia: Political and Security Impact of the Drought, in which the report states, “Some funds that insurgent organizations are raising for relief operations, as a result of increased world publicity, are almost certainly being diverted for military purposes.”
During the 1984–1985 famine, Ethiopia was fighting Eritrean and Tigray rebels in those two northern provinces, although Eritrea has since gained its independence. Since the countryside was out of the government’s control, aid was brought in from neighboring Sudan. Some aid came in the form of food, while other aid came as cash which would be used by the aid agencies to buy grain from Ethiopian farmers.
Rebels would disguise themselves as traders and merchants to get their hands on the currency. “I was given clothes to make me look like a Muslim merchant. This was a trick for the NGOs,” said Gebremedhin Araya, a senior member of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).
Some funds that insurgent organizations are raising for relief operations, as a result of increased world publicity, are almost certainly being diverted for military purposes.
One such aid worker that brought the grain was Max Peberdy, who worked for the charity Christian Aid. Peberdy is seen in a photo with Araya buying grain.
Araya said that only some of the sacks were filled with grain; the rest were filled with sand. The transaction was overseen by a member of the Relief Society of Tigray (REST), the humanitarian wing of the TPLF. The money was then given to TPLF leaders, including chairman Meles Zenawi, who has been Prime Minister of Ethiopia since 1991. Zenawi has not commented on the allegations.
Peberdy disputes the claims that he was duped, saying, “As far as we were concerned and as far as we were told by REST, the people we were dealing with were merchants.” He added, “It’s 25 years since this happened, and in the 25 years it’s the first time anybody has claimed such a thing.”
Meles Zenawi, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia since 1991 and chairman of the TPLF since 1985. Image: Helene C. Stikkel, Department of Defense.
However, an exiled TPLF commander who lives in the Netherlands, Aregawi Berhe, is backing Araya’s story. He said the group got their hands on over US$100 million (£66 million) of which 95% went to buy weapons and build up a hardliner Marxist party inside the rebel movement. The remaining five percent would go to famine victims. Berhe told the BBC that the group would put on a “drama” to get the money. Berhe said, “The aid workers were fooled.”
In response to the allegations, the charity Christian Aid issued a statement saying, “There are allegations in the story which are against all of Christian Aid’s principles and our initial investigations do not correspond to the BBC’s version of events.”
I was given clothes to make me look like a Muslim merchant. This was a trick for the NGOs.
Nick Guttmann, who is director of emergency relief operations for the group, says the “story has to be put into context”. “We were working in a major conflict, there was a massive famine and people on all sides were suffering,” Guttmann said, adding, “Both the rebels and the government were using innocent civilians to further their own political ends.”
Bob Geldof, the Irish rock star who help organized Live Aid, said, “We are talking about a disgruntled, exiled general. The essence of the report also is not just about Live Aid. It’s that all monies going into Tigray — that would be Oxfam, Save the Children, UNICEF and Christian Aid — somehow, we were all duped and gulled. And that’s simply not the case. It just didn’t happen.”
Virgin Rail train collides with car near Copmanthorpe, killing driver