Saturday, July 7, 2007

On Saturday, a suicide truck bomb in a Shiite village, Tuz Khurmato, north of Baghdad damaged homes, shops and a large outdoor market. The bomb blast, blamed on Sunni militants, killed at least 100 and wounded another 250 Iraqi civilians.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

NASA’s Cassini–Huygens spacecraft has discovered evidence for a large-scale saltwater reservoir beneath the icy crust of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The data came from the spacecraft’s direct analysis of salt-rich ice grains close to the jets ejected from the moon. The study has been published in this week’s edition of the journal Nature.

Data from Cassini’s cosmic dust analyzer show the grains expelled from fissures, known as tiger stripes, are relatively small and usually low in salt far away from the moon. Closer to the moon’s surface, Cassini found that relatively large grains rich with sodium and potassium dominate the plumes. The salt-rich particles have an “ocean-like” composition and indicate that most, if not all, of the expelled ice and water vapor comes from the evaporation of liquid salt-water. When water freezes, the salt is squeezed out, leaving pure water ice behind.

Cassini’s ultraviolet imaging spectrograph also recently obtained complementary results that support the presence of a subsurface ocean. A team of Cassini researchers led by Candice Hansen of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, measured gas shooting out of distinct jets originating in the moon’s south polar region at five to eight times the speed of sound, several times faster than previously measured. These observations of distinct jets, from a 2010 flyby, are consistent with results showing a difference in composition of ice grains close to the moon’s surface and those that made it out to the E ring, the outermost ring that gets its material primarily from Enceladean jets. If the plumes emanated from ice, they should have very little salt in them.

“There currently is no plausible way to produce a steady outflow of salt-rich grains from solid ice across all the tiger stripes other than salt water under Enceladus’s icy surface,” said Frank Postberg, a Cassini team scientist at the University of Heidelberg in Germany.

The data suggests a layer of water between the moon’s rocky core and its icy mantle, possibly as deep as about 50 miles (80 kilometers) beneath the surface. As this water washes against the rocks, it dissolves salt compounds and rises through fractures in the overlying ice to form reserves nearer the surface. If the outermost layer cracks open, the decrease in pressure from these reserves to space causes a plume to shoot out. Roughly 400 pounds (200 kilograms) of water vapor is lost every second in the plumes, with smaller amounts being lost as ice grains. The team calculates the water reserves must have large evaporating surfaces, or they would freeze easily and stop the plumes.

“We imagine that between the ice and the ice core there is an ocean of depth and this is somehow connected to the surface reservoir,” added Postberg.

The Cassini mission discovered Enceladus’ water-vapor and ice jets in 2005. In 2009, scientists working with the cosmic dust analyzer examined some sodium salts found in ice grains of Saturn’s E ring but the link to subsurface salt water was not definitive. The new paper analyzes three Enceladus flybys in 2008 and 2009 with the same instrument, focusing on the composition of freshly ejected plume grains. In 2008, Cassini discovered a high “density of volatile gases, water vapor, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, as well as organic materials, some 20 times denser than expected” in geysers erupting from the moon. The icy particles hit the detector target at speeds between 15,000 and 39,000 MPH (23,000 and 63,000 KPH), vaporizing instantly. Electrical fields inside the cosmic dust analyzer separated the various constituents of the impact cloud.

“Enceladus has got warmth, water and organic chemicals, some of the essential building blocks needed for life,” said Dennis Matson in 2008, Cassini project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

“This finding is a crucial new piece of evidence showing that environmental conditions favorable to the emergence of life can be sustained on icy bodies orbiting gas giant planets,” said Nicolas Altobelli, the European Space Agency’s project scientist for Cassini.

“If there is water in such an unexpected place, it leaves possibility for the rest of the universe,” said Postberg.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

A team of eight transplant surgeons in Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, USA, led by reconstructive surgeon Dr. Maria Siemionow, age 58, have successfully performed the first almost total face transplant in the US, and the fourth globally, on a woman so horribly disfigured due to trauma, that cost her an eye. Two weeks ago Dr. Siemionow, in a 23-hour marathon surgery, replaced 80 percent of her face, by transplanting or grafting bone, nerve, blood vessels, muscles and skin harvested from a female donor’s cadaver.

The Clinic surgeons, in Wednesday’s news conference, described the details of the transplant but upon request, the team did not publish her name, age and cause of injury nor the donor’s identity. The patient’s family desired the reason for her transplant to remain confidential. The Los Angeles Times reported that the patient “had no upper jaw, nose, cheeks or lower eyelids and was unable to eat, talk, smile, smell or breathe on her own.” The clinic’s dermatology and plastic surgery chair, Francis Papay, described the nine hours phase of the procedure: “We transferred the skin, all the facial muscles in the upper face and mid-face, the upper lip, all of the nose, most of the sinuses around the nose, the upper jaw including the teeth, the facial nerve.” Thereafter, another team spent three hours sewing the woman’s blood vessels to that of the donor’s face to restore blood circulation, making the graft a success.

The New York Times reported that “three partial face transplants have been performed since 2005, two in France and one in China, all using facial tissue from a dead donor with permission from their families.” “Only the forehead, upper eyelids, lower lip, lower teeth and jaw are hers, the rest of her face comes from a cadaver; she could not eat on her own or breathe without a hole in her windpipe. About 77 square inches of tissue were transplanted from the donor,” it further described the details of the medical marvel. The patient, however, must take lifetime immunosuppressive drugs, also called antirejection drugs, which do not guarantee success. The transplant team said that in case of failure, it would replace the part with a skin graft taken from her own body.

Dr. Bohdan Pomahac, a Brigham and Women’s Hospital surgeon praised the recent medical development. “There are patients who can benefit tremendously from this. It’s great that it happened,” he said.

Leading bioethicist Arthur Caplan of the University of Pennsylvania withheld judgment on the Cleveland transplant amid grave concerns on the post-operation results. “The biggest ethical problem is dealing with failure — if your face rejects. It would be a living hell. If your face is falling off and you can’t eat and you can’t breathe and you’re suffering in a terrible manner that can’t be reversed, you need to put on the table assistance in dying. There are patients who can benefit tremendously from this. It’s great that it happened,” he said.

Dr Alex Clarke, of the Royal Free Hospital had praised the Clinic for its contribution to medicine. “It is a real step forward for people who have severe disfigurement and this operation has been done by a team who have really prepared and worked towards this for a number of years. These transplants have proven that the technical difficulties can be overcome and psychologically the patients are doing well. They have all have reacted positively and have begun to do things they were not able to before. All the things people thought were barriers to this kind of operations have been overcome,” she said.

The first partial face transplant surgery on a living human was performed on Isabelle Dinoire on November 27 2005, when she was 38, by Professor Bernard Devauchelle, assisted by Professor Jean-Michel Dubernard in Amiens, France. Her Labrador dog mauled her in May 2005. A triangle of face tissue including the nose and mouth was taken from a brain-dead female donor and grafted onto the patient. Scientists elsewhere have performed scalp and ear transplants. However, the claim is the first for a mouth and nose transplant. Experts say the mouth and nose are the most difficult parts of the face to transplant.

In 2004, the same Cleveland Clinic, became the first institution to approve this surgery and test it on cadavers. In October 2006, surgeon Peter Butler at London‘s Royal Free Hospital in the UK was given permission by the NHS ethics board to carry out a full face transplant. His team will select four adult patients (children cannot be selected due to concerns over consent), with operations being carried out at six month intervals. In March 2008, the treatment of 30-year-old neurofibromatosis victim Pascal Coler of France ended after having received what his doctors call the worlds first successful full face transplant.

Ethical concerns, psychological impact, problems relating to immunosuppression and consequences of technical failure have prevented teams from performing face transplant operations in the past, even though it has been technically possible to carry out such procedures for years.

Mr Iain Hutchison, of Barts and the London Hospital, warned of several problems with face transplants, such as blood vessels in the donated tissue clotting and immunosuppressants failing or increasing the patient’s risk of cancer. He also pointed out ethical issues with the fact that the procedure requires a “beating heart donor”. The transplant is carried out while the donor is brain dead, but still alive by use of a ventilator.

According to Stephen Wigmore, chair of British Transplantation Society’s ethics committee, it is unknown to what extent facial expressions will function in the long term. He said that it is not certain whether a patient could be left worse off in the case of a face transplant failing.

Mr Michael Earley, a member of the Royal College of Surgeon‘s facial transplantation working party, commented that if successful, the transplant would be “a major breakthrough in facial reconstruction” and “a major step forward for the facially disfigured.”

In Wednesday’s conference, Siemionow said “we know that there are so many patients there in their homes where they are hiding from society because they are afraid to walk to the grocery stores, they are afraid to go the the street.” “Our patient was called names and was humiliated. We very much hope that for this very special group of patients there is a hope that someday they will be able to go comfortably from their houses and enjoy the things we take for granted,” she added.

In response to the medical breakthrough, a British medical group led by Royal Free Hospital’s lead surgeon Dr Peter Butler, said they will finish the world’s first full face transplant within a year. “We hope to make an announcement about a full-face operation in the next 12 months. This latest operation shows how facial transplantation can help a particular group of the most severely facially injured people. These are people who would otherwise live a terrible twilight life, shut away from public gaze,” he said.

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Friday, April 1, 2005

, holds a majority in the new parliament, and asserts that sharia is “non-negotiable”.]]

Half of those who won seats reserved for women in the new National Assembly of Iraq are members of a coalition dominated by Shi’a religious parties, and they say they want Islamic sharia-based laws with legal differences in treatment for the sexes, and which permit a certain level of domestic violence.

Says Nada al-Bayiati, of the Women’s Organisation for Freedom in Iraq, “It’s weakening our position. How can you argue for women’s rights when the women are undermining you?”

Eighty-nine in all, women make up one-third of the current parliament.

The Shi’a cleric-backed United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), holds the majority of seats in the National Assembly since the recent election, and asserts that sharia is “non-negotiable”.

“If you say to a man he cannot use force against a woman, you are asking the impossible,” pediatrician turned politician, Jenan Al-Ubaedey of the UIA, told The Times.

“So we say a husband can beat his wife, but he cannot leave a mark. If he does that, he will be punished.”

“If you don’t allow your husband to take another wife, he’d have an affair anyway […] I’d rather know my husband has another wife that I know about.”

Under a proposed law, men would be allowed up to four wives, regardless of the desires of the first wife, while women may have only one husband.

And if two other laws currently slated for debate go through, women will only be eligible for half the inheritance given to men, and denied custody of children over the age of 2 in the event of divorce.

Legitimacy of the election, and the Assembly it elected, has been questioned.

Forty Sunni groups via the Muslim Scholars Association, had called for boycotting to protest the U.S.-led occupation, while Shi’a on the other hand vigorously promoted voting in the election, influencing not only voter turnout, but also what candidates were on offer.

And over 40% of Iraq’s population live in mostly-Sunni governates of Baghdad, Al Anbar, Ninawa and Salah ad Din, where entrenched violence was significant-enough to dissuade willing voters.

Turnout in these four governates ranged from a mere 2%, in Al Anbar, to a high of only 51%, in Baghdad. Comparatively, in the nine more peaceful, mainly-Shi’a regions in the South, turnouts averaged 71%; and for the three Kurdish regions in the North, the average was 85%. [1]

Final official figures of the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq (IECI), reveal that overall, 58% of registered voters actually voted in the 2005 election — however many who were eligible did not register including three quarters of expatriates.

One woman who abstained, Houzan Mahmoud, a UK based spokesperson for The Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, did so not because of a clerical command or to protest the occupation. In a published statement she says that violence that has erupted against women since the invasion, and that policies do not differ significantly between candidates, when it comes to women’s rights.

“If Iraqi women take part in Sunday’s poll, who are they to vote for? Women’s rights are ignored by most of the groupings on offer,” she writes.

“In reality, these elections are, for Iraq’s women, little more than a cruel joke. Amid the suicide attacks, kidnappings and US-led military assaults of the 20-odd months since Saddam’s fall, the little-reported phenomenon is the sharp increase in the persecution of Iraqi women. Women are the new victims of Islamic groups intent on restoring a medieval barbarity and of a political establishment that cares little for women’s empowerment.

“Having for years enjoyed greater rights than other women in the Middle East, women in Iraq are now losing even their basic freedoms. The right to choose their clothes, the right to love or marry whom they want. Of course women suffered under Saddam. I fled his cruel regime. I personally witnessed much brutality, but the subjugation of women was never a goal of the Baath party.”

However, according to the US State Department’s Fact Sheet Iraqi Women Under Saddam’s Regime: A Population Silenced, Iraqi women in fact endured significant political repression under the regime of Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi government and its representitives are claimed to have used beheading, rape, torture, and murder as political tools against certain women such as political dissidents or those whom the government declared to be prostitutes, in order to maintain their party’s hold on power.

Some of these kinds of violence continue to be perpetrated by certain individuals and groups in the new Iraq. Mahmoud continued, “In the last six months at least eight women have been killed in Mosul alone – all apparently by Islamic groups clamping down on female independence. Among these, a professor from the city’s law school was shot and beheaded, a vet was killed on her way to work, and a pharmacist from the Alkhansah hospital was shot dead on her doorstep.”

But the move to sharia law actually came before the election. In January 2004, the Iraqi Women’s League (IWL) expressed horror at the interim Shi’a dominated Iraqi Governing Council’s Decision 137, which they explain replaced Iraqi civil law concerning family law, with sharia law.

“Decision 137 establishes sectarianism and gives formal power to informal, unaccountable and self appointed religious ‘leaders’,” the IWL statement said.

“The Iraqi family law (otherwise known as the Personal Status Law) is the achievement of the struggle of the Iraqi people for much of the past century not a law written by Saddam Hussein.”

After protest by IWL and others, and appeal to former U.S. administrator Paul Bremer, the Decision was anulled.

Iraq! What About Iraqi Women?, an essay by Bhaskar Dasgupta, tells that Iraqi women were winning rights as early as the 1920s and 30s, which improved their status. By the time of the overthrow of Hussein, they had formal equality under law, including not only the right to vote and freedom from wearing of veils, but the right to work with equal pay, paid maternity leave, higher education, extensive medical coverage, and eligibility for political office or voluntary military service, among other rights.

According to Dasgupta, these rights made Iraq a leader in equality of the sexes in the Middle East for the better part of last century, although a number of studies reveal horrific abuses of both women and men, under Hussein’s regime, and Hussein enabled laws allowing men to kill their wives in certain situations (see Wikipedia article Honor killing for background on the practice).

The first Gulf War in 1991, and ensuing sanctions, made economic conditions in Iraq difficult, and literacy and employment rates of women began falling.

Now the majority party in the only internationally recognised parliament of Iraq wants to reaffirm the interim Iraqi Governing Council’s repeal of the Personal Status Law, and its replacement with laws based on sharia, a doctrine which in some countries sees women stoned to death as punishment for engaging in extra-marital love affairs.

The Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq in its latest newsletter, Equal Rights Now, alleges widespread violence against women since the U.S.-led invasion. The violence has been facilitated by the general lack of order, and includes documented cases coming from U.S. troops, as well as locals.

“Violence against Iraqi women in general and in the city of Mosul in particular continues. Groups of political Islamists, in collaboration with remnants of the Ba’ath Party, have launched a campaign of terror and killing against women for no reason other than that we are women,” reads one report.

The report continues to detail killings of women attributed to Islamist gangs, who “have sanctioned the raping of’quislings‘ and ‘infidels‘ because they claim those women’s souls, property and bodies are fair game for all so-called freedom fighters”.

Many other such reports exist, despite a strong taboo against discussion of sexual abuse, which could be expected to result in significant under-reporting of these cases. However, many of the allegations have not had the degree of media coverage that the notorious abuse cases of Abu Ghraib Prison of 2003-04 received.

According to Dr Udaedey, many of the women legislators are in fact puppets. “It’s true that many of them — maybe a third — have just been put there by the men. They are not aware and don’t come to meetings, so they don’t know what’s going on,” she told The Times. “About 10 per cent of them are learning, but the others don’t really care.”

However, Dr. Udaedey plans to remained focused on protecting the role of Iraqi women as shar’ia law seems destined to become a guiding influence on Iraq’s new constitution. According to her interview in the Christian Science Monitor, “She plans to encourage women to wear the hijab and focus on nurturing their families. At the same time, she says, she will fight for salary equity, paid maternity leave, and reduced work hours for pregnant women.”

Elected Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, in an interview with Der Spiegel, also asserts that women will not be forgotten in the new Iraq. He says that sharia law will remain “only as one of several sources of jurisprudence” and that women will “Never [be required to wear veils in the new Iraq]. They will be free to choose for themselves.”

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

The Bush administration officially notified Congress Monday of its intention to sell sophisticated precision-guided bombs to Saudi Arabia. The action, coinciding with President Bush’s visit to Saudi Arabia, is part of a broader U.S. effort to bolster Gulf allies in the face of a more assertive Iran. VOA’s David Gollust reports from the State Department.

The Bush administration has already briefed Congress on its arms sales plans for Saudi Arabia. Monday’s announcement sets in motion a 30-day period in which the House and Senate can block the plan with a joint resolution – an action that appears highly unlikely.

Under the proposed deal, worth more than $120 million, the United States would provide Saudi Arabia with 900 kits and associated equipment to convert conventional gravity bombs into GPS-guided smart-bombs, known as JDAMs.

The weapons are a mainstay of the U.S. military arsenal and their accuracy would vastly enhance the capability of the Saudi Air Force, which has top-of-the-line U.S.-made fighter-bomber aircraft.

The sale is part of a broader $20-billion arms package for Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states announced by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates last August on a mission to the Gulf, aimed at shoring up U.S. allies concerned about Iranian influence in the region.

Several elements of the broader package including sales of Patriot anti-missile systems to Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, and upgrades for Saudi Arabia’s AWACS airborne command and control planes, have already gotten congressional assent. Officials here say they also expect the Saudi J-DAMS sale to proceed despite concerns expressed by some congressional supporters of Israel.

At the time the Gulf weapons sales package was announced last year, the Bush administration also committed to a 10-year, $30-billion arms package for Israel, representing a 25 per cent increase in annual U.S. arms aid to that country.

Briefing reporters, State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack said the administration has assured Congress it would do nothing to upset Israel’s military edge over potential enemies in the region.

“We’ve spent a lot of time assuring that we abide by our commitments to a qualitative military edge for Israel,” said Sean McCormack. “This is something that President Reagan first talked about and it’s been reiterated and reconfirmed by each successive president after that. We’re committed to maintaining that qualitative military edge for Israel.”

Israel itself has not protested the pending sale. Israeli officials have said they anticipate being provided with a new-generation U.S. smart bomb more capable than J-DAMS, which have been in service for more than a decade.

A spokesman for House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos, a prominent advocate for Israel in Congress, said he does not intend to push a resolution of disapproval.

However one House member, New York Democrat Anthony Weiner, said he would introduce such a measure and already has more than 30 co-sponsors.

Critics of the package have faulted Saudi Arabia’s record in combating terrorism and advancing political reform. Under questioning here, Spokesman McCormack said the Saudi government has made “quantum leaps” in action against terrorist cells and financing in recent years and has begun the process of reform, though not necessarily at a pace that would please some critics.

Two-thirds majorities of the members in both houses would be required to block the sale and officials here say chances for that appear nil.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

200,000 litres of oil leaked into waters off the coast of Brisbane from the Pacific Adventurer when their fuel tanks were damaged in rough seas on Wednesday. The figure is about ten times higher than the original estimate of twenty thousand litres of oil. The devastating diesel oil spill has spread along 60 kilometres (37 miles) of the Queensland coast. In addition, 31 containers with 620 tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertiliser flew overboard during the violent storm.

Questions are being asked why the Hong Kong cargo ship was out in seas with nine meter waves caused by Cyclone Hamish, a Category 5 tropical cyclone, as well as why the fertiliser containers were not properly secured. One of the overboard containers ruptured the hull of the Pacific Adventurer, causing between 30 to 100 tonnes of oil to spew from the severely damaged ship.

If the ammonium nitrate mixes with the heavy oil, an explosion could occur. None of the containers have been recovered. Some of these may float, but it is believed that they may have sunk which then may cause algal blooms.

Disaster zones have been declared at Bribie and Moreton Islands, and along the Sunshine coast.

The vessel’s owner, Swire Shipping, reported that a second leak began on Friday, when the ship began listing after docking at Hamilton for repairs. “As full soundings of the vessel’s tanks were being taken at the port to determine how much oil had leaked from the vessel, a small quantity of fuel oil escaped from the Pacific Adventurer,” it stated. The ship was brought upright, and a recovery vessel was used to suck up the oil from the water. The leak produced a 500m-long oil slick down the Brisbane River. Booms were placed around this oil spill so that a skimmer could clean up the second spill.

Swire Shipping could face clean up costs of AU$100,000 a day as well as fines up to AU$1.5million (US$977,000; £703,000) if found guilty of environmental breaches or negligence.

Sunshine Coast beaches are slowly starting to be reopened. The beach of Mooloolaba was still closed following reports of burning sensations from swimmers. 12 beaches remain closed; however, 13 have been reopened.

Over 300 state government and council workers are using buckets, rakes and spades in the clean up effort. Sunshine Coast Mayor Bob Abbott says the majority will be gone by Sunday afternoon. The full environmental impact on wildlife is not yet known. One turtle and seven pelicans have been found covered in oil.

There are concerns that the drinking water of Moreton Island is at risk, as the island uses water from the underground water table near the oil spill site.

“Every bucketload of contaminated sand has to be removed from the island by barge, and each bucketload from a front-end loader weighs about one tonne. It’s just an impossible task,” said Mr Trevor Hassard of the Tangalooma Dolphin Education Centre.

The commercial fishing industry has suffered from the incident. Trawlers won’t resume operations until Sunday evening, and any catches will be tested for human consumption.