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Tuesday, October 4, 2005

President Bush has asked Congress to discuss the option of allowing him to deploy military resources if avian flu breaks out in America.

“I’m concerned about what an avian flu outbreak could mean for the United States and the world,” said the president in a conference today. The president also expressed concern that local response would be slow, given the precedent provided by the recent gulf coast hurricane disasters, the aftermath of which has triggered widespread criticism for what many view as instances of long-delayed and inadequate delivery on the part of the white house and congress. “I want there to be a robust discussion about the best way for the federal government, in certain extreme circumstances, to be able to rally assets for the good of the people,” the President said previously.

Avian flu is not currently able to easily pass from human to human, limiting epidemics. The president and others warn that the virus may mutate into a form that more easily spreads through social contact.

Friday, July 13, 2007

Employees of British video game retailer GAME are reporting an email sent around stores to remove the popular Wii board party game Mario Party 8 and all applicable advertising due to the game having a word considered to be offensive in Britain.

The word is “spastic,” and can be seen on the “Shy Guy’s Perplex Express” board. If a player lands on one of several certain green spaces, Magikoopa will appear and, before rearranging the train cars, will say, “Magikoopa magic! Turn the train spastic Make this ticket tragic!”

Nintendo is currently developing an updated version of the game without the offending word.

This is not the first time a video game has been banned in the UK for including the word “spastic.” Last month, Ubisoft announced a recall of its PSP brain-training game Mind Quiz after a mother of a child with cerebral palsy complained because the game called her a “spastic” for not doing well.

Saturday, November 25, 2006

With the hopes of funding the creation of a statue in northern India that would end up dwarfing the Statue of Liberty, an unprecedented collection of Buddhist artifacts continue crisscrossing American, Europe, and Asia in three different, but related collections.

The Maitreya Project, the brainchild of Lama Zopa Rinpoche, seeks to build a monument and development dedicated to Buddhism at Kushinagar, Uttar Pradesh in northern India. The centerpiece of this massive development will be a 152m (500 ft) bronze statue of the Maitreya Buddha, the Buddha of the future.

Buddhist belief says that there have been Buddhas in the distant past and there will be Buddhas in the distant future. The historical Buddha, the one who was born in India about 2500 years ago, is known as Shakyamuni Buddha. Buddhist belief says that sometime in the distant future the teachings that Shakyamuni Buddha brought to Earth will fade away. At that point the Maitreya Buddha will be born and gain enlightenment in order to refresh and renew Buddhist teachings.

Along with the statue, the development is also planned to include temples, exhibition halls, parks, a museum, library, and a theater as well as a hospital and educational center.

In order to move forward with this project the Maitreya Project has created collections of artifacts that are touring the world. Once the statue is built these artifacts will be housed in it for viewing.

Buddhist artifacts are usually associated with the body of the person involved. While they can be such things as bone and teeth, usually they are pearl-like objects that are found and collected after the enlightened person is creamated. These pearl-like objects are called ringsel.

There are three collections of artifacts currently touring American, Europe, and East Asia. They include relics from the immediate past Buddha, called Kasyapa, the historical Buddha, five of his original disciples, several Tibetan and Zen masters, and the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso.

Wikinews reporter Richard Kinne spent three days with the relics when the North American tour came to Ithaca, NY a few weeks ago. The relics travel with two caretakers, one of whom is always in close proximity to the relics. Setup for the relics display can take about four hours depending on the venue. Taking it down takes a bit under two hours.

Each morning of the tour the relics are taken out of their padded case and placed in clear plexiglass display cases. The relics are displayed individually in small containers called stupas. Some containers appear very full, while others contian just one very small object. Each evening the process is reversed and the padded case stays with the relic caretakers.

Between the morning and the evening people from all walks of life come to see the relics – believers, people who are curious, academics, Buddhist monks and nuns, both older folks and small children. While the Heart Relic Tour just does deals with displaying the relics, the sponsoring venue can add to the display in various ways such as lectures, meditation classes and demonstrations, or various other rituals.

The tour in North America reaches Jacksonville, FL during the first weekend of December. From there it will go to Miami between the 9th to the 11th, and then to Phoenix, AZ between the 15th to the 17th. In Asia the tour spends time in Malaysia in the first part of December.

Thursday, February 1, 2007

Microsoft Corp. is establishing, in Shanghai, China, a center for research and development. The center will work on the company’s MSN service. It will be Microsoft’s first research and development center of this kind outside the U.S.

Microsoft decided to take this step because of several setbacks that occurred in its online services working in China. One of the company’s setbacks concerns the resignation of Luo Chuan, who was Microsoft’s top executive responsible for the Chinese Windows Live unit.

The company’s new research and development center is to be established in Shanghai’s Zizhu Science Park. At this location, where another giant, Intel Corp, already has its research office, Microsoft plans to develop Internet software.

The center is estimated to cost $ 20 million. It will have a special technical support team that will work on Microsoft’s MSN Messenger. The company hopes to make its online communication tool popular among Chinese teenagers and young professionals.

Microsoft already has an R&D center in Beijing. However, the software giant lacks a facility to work with its well-known MSN service. Investing in its communication tool may strengthen the company’s leading position on the Chinese market.

Setting up the MSN research and development center in Peoples Republic of China implies that Microsoft looks forward to taking advantage of the Chinese market, which represents a quite flexible environment. This statement was made by Doug Crets, who works at Media Partners Asia as a Hong-Kong-based analyst.

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Efforts to salvage the Indonesian naval vessel Arung Samudera from where she ran aground on the Sunshine Coast Queensland, have been delayed due to poor weather conditions.

The 35-metre, tri-masted vessel was originally grounded on August 23 in stormy weather at Inskip Point, near Rainbow Beach. A salvage contractor has being brought in to rescue the stricken vessel, her hull is intact and it is believed the ship is in no imminent danger of breaking apart.

However, the tall ship did drag its anchors and break its rudder and centreboard during the beaching.

Australian Navy Commander Forbes Peters says that although salvage has been postponed until early next week, the vessel will be surveyed today by the salvage firm.

“To develop a plan for how they would salvage the vessel of the beach, that’s going to involve a tugboat pulling the thing off the beach with a longline.

“The trouble with actually conducting the salvage will be the sea state… Until the weather abates there really will not be able to do much in terms of salvage,” he said.

The 18-man crew – six officers and 12 sailors – of the New Zealand-built vessel have managed to retrieve their belongings from the ship, and are now expected to be transported to temporary accommodation in local barracks in Bulimba, Brisbane.

It is still hoped the ship can be repaired in time for it to attend a summit next month in Sydney, but this to be unlikely. A decision on whether to take her to Brisbane or Gladstone for repairs is expected to be made on Monday.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

The United States Senate has approved a hard-fought measure to overhaul the health care system. The vote will be followed by the difficult process of reconciling the Senate-passed bill with one approved by the House of Representatives, in order to get a final measure to President Barack Obama.

“The yeas are 60, the nays are 39. H.R. 3590 as amended, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is passed,” Vice President Joe Biden announced. Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky did not show up for the vote leading to the 39 nays. Mike Reynard, a spokesman for Bunning, said in an e-mail that “The senator had family commitments.”

The vice president presided over the Senate at the time of the vote in his role as President of the United States Senate.

As expected, Republicans voted against the bill while all Democrats and two Independents, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, voted for it.

At an estimated $87 billion, the measure would expand health insurance coverage to about 30 million more Americans currently without it, and create new private insurance marketplaces, or exchanges, to expand choice.

And, like the slightly more expensive measure passed by the House of Representatives, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, it would end a practice by private insurance companies of denying coverage to individuals with existing health problems.

Both the Senate and House measures would require nearly all Americans to purchase some form of insurance, while lower-income Americans would receive help from federal government subsidies.

In remarks before the vote, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Democrat from Nevada, said opponents had done everything they could to prevent the vote from taking place.

Speaking to reporters, Reid and others hailed the vote as a victory and a major step toward providing millions more Americans with access to health care. “This is a victory because we have affirmed that the ability to live a healthy life in our great country is a right and not merely a privilege for the select few,” Reid said.

Reid and others including Robert Byrd, the 92-year-old Democrat from West Virginia, paid tribute to Senator Edward Kennedy, who died this past August after spending decades of his career in the Senate pursuing health care reform.

When casting his vote Byrd said, “Mr. President, this is for my friend Ted Kennedy. Aye.”

Victoria Reggie Kennedy, the widow of Senator Kennedy, watched the proceedings from the Senate visitor’s gallery, as did Representative John Dingell, Democrat from Michigan, who has been a long time advocate of health care reform and who sponsored and introduced the House version of the health care reform bill.

In the final hours of debate on the Senate bill, Republicans asserted it would be ineffective and add sharply to the U.S. budget deficit.

Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican from Alabama said of the bill, “This legislation may have a great vision, it may have a great idea about trying to make the system work better. But it does not. These are huge costs [and] it’s not financially sound.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell vowed to defeat the bill when the Senate reconvenes in January saying, “This fight is not over. This fight is long from over. My colleagues and I will work to stop this bill from becoming law.”

Senator Olympia Snowe, a moderate Republican from Maine who helped approved the Senate Finance Committee’s version of health care reform, the America’s Healthy Future Act, earlier in the year and who remarked she may not vote on the final bill, said, “I was extremely disappointed,” noting that when the Democrats reached their needed 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, “there was zero opportunity to amend the bill or modify it, and Democrats had no incentive to reach across the aisle.”

Ahead are difficult negotiations with the House of Representatives to craft a final bill President Obama would sign into law. These talks, which will formally get under way early in the new year, will take place amid anger among many liberal House Democrats the Senate bill failed to contain a government-run public health insurance option.

Members of the House Progressive Caucus have vowed to fight to keep this public option in any final legislation that emerges, along with other provisions they say are needed to protect lower and middle-income Americans and hold insurance companies accountable.

In a statement, the Democratic chairmen of three key House committees said while there are clear differences between House and Senate bills, both will bring fundamental health care coverage to millions who are currently uninsured.

Obama administration officials have been quoted as saying they anticipate negotiations on a final bill would not be complete until after the President’s State of the Union Address in January, and could slip even later into the new year.

President Obama issued a statement to the press in the State Dining Room in the White House saying that the vote is “legislation that brings us toward the end of a nearly century-long struggle to reform America’s health care system.”

He also pointed out the bill’s strengths, noting, “The reform bill that passed the Senate this morning, like the House bill, includes the toughest measures ever taken to hold the insurance industry accountable. Insurance companies will no longer be able to deny you coverage on the basis of a preexisting condition. They will no longer be able to drop your coverage when you get sick. No longer will you have to pay unlimited amounts out of your own pocket for the treatments you need. And you’ll be able to appeal unfair decisions by insurance companies to an independent party.”

He also noted how historic the bill is, saying, “If passed, this will be the most important piece of social policy since the Social Security Act in the 1930s, and the most important reform of our health care system since Medicare passed in the 1960s.”

Obama noted the potential social impact, saying, “It’s the impact reform will have on Americans who no longer have to go without a checkup or prescriptions that they need because they can’t afford them; on families who no longer have to worry that a single illness will send them into financial ruin; and on businesses that will no longer face exorbitant insurance rates that hamper their competitiveness.”

Obama afterwards made phone calls to various Senators and other people, including Victoria Kennedy and David Turner of Little Rock, Arkansas. Mr. Turner had his health insurance rescinded in January of last year, after his insurance company went back into his record and alleged that he failed to disclose his full medical record at the time he applied for coverage. Turner was First Lady Michelle Obama’s guest during her husband’s speech to a joint session of Congress on health care reform back in September.

Friday, April 3, 2009

The G20 Summit held in London, England concluded Thursday with an injection into the economy of US$5 trillion by the end of 2010.

Global trade would be supported by $250 billion (169.5 billion pounds). “We are going to act decisively to kickstart international trade. We will ensure availability of at least $250 billion over the next two years,” said Gordon Brown Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

The International Monetary Fund IMF will have access to $750bn in resources of which $250bn will support special drawing rights.

Developing countries received $100bn which will be dispensed via Multilateral development banks. Towards this end, the IMF will sell off gold reserves.

China will support the IMF fund by $40bn, the European Union by $100bn, and Japan by $100bn.

There will be increased regulation on banking and credit ratings agencies. There was a commitment to clamp down on hedge funds, tax havens and toxic assets. To restore consumer confidence in the financial sector, a new Financial Stability Board will be initiated internationally. There would be new policies implemented to control pay and bonuses paid to the heads of banks and corporations.

The G20 leaders were adverse to protectionism and rallied to support international trade and investment.

The Leaders’ statement said, “We reaffirm the commitment made in Washington: to refrain from raising new barriers to investment or to trade in goods and services, imposing new export restrictions, or implementing World Trade Organization (WTO) inconsistent measures to stimulate exports.”

Eoin O’Malley, senior adviser on international trade at BusinessEurope, said “The measure also needs to be part of wider package to avoid protectionism and conclude the Doha round which will stimulate trade growth. The key point now is to move forward with Doha. The key now is implementation. G20 governments must act quickly to provide this finance to companies that need it urgently.”