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Burma blocks emergency telecoms

June 25, 2008 – 9:57 pm
Two teams of foreign aid workers dedicated to delivering emergency telecoms in disaster areas have been forced to leave cyclone-hit Burma. The members of Telecoms Sans Frontieres (TSF) left the country after attempts to reach affected areas were blocked. The charity, which described the situation as "unprecedented", said it had no other choice but to leave. TSF finally reached Burma on 1 June after waiting nearly a month to be granted visas to enter the country. "The frustration is that we were allowed into the country but not allowed to deploy," TSF spokesman Oisin Walton told BBC News. Many international charities were allowed into Burma following a visit to the area by UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon. But repeated attempts to get the necessary authorisation to visit affected areas such as the Irrawaddy Delta, were met with a wall of silence. "We got no reply at all," said Mr Walton. Time lags TSF is a specialist  agency which works ...

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Police look to digital switchover

June 25, 2008 – 4:15 pm
The tape recorder has been a constant in police interviews for the last 20 years but it could soon be consigned to the bin. Plans to conduct and store interviews in digital format could radically speed up the time it takes to bring criminals to justice, say experts. The majority of forces still rely on analogue recorders, with many having up to half a million tapes in storage. No timeframe has been set to switch the 43 police forces in England and Wales. Networked evidence Time is running out for analogue tape which has already become a dead format on the high street; something that has an impact on police use of tape recorders. "Spares are getting harder to find and it is time for a change," said Andy Griffiths, Detective Chief Inspector with Sussex Police who also sits on the ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officers) steering committee for investigative interviewing. The steering committee has been examining ...

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Need a Body Part?

February 19, 2008 – 11:00 pm
Someday - maybe not too far in the future - a machine  may grow the new body part you need. That would be a miracle as some "98,000 people are on a waiting list for transplants right now" according to . CBS says a research team at Wake Forest University believes any body part replacement you need can be grown. From blood vessels to muscle tissue, Atala and his team at Wake Forest University believe that in theory anything inside the body can be grown outside the body, CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports. And it's real: They've made 18 different types of tissue so far. "That's a heart valve?" Andrews asked. Atala said: "This is an engineered heart valve." What he pointed to was a pulsing heart valve to be transplanted into a sheep. "When people ask me 'what do you do,' we grow tissues and organs," he said. "We are making body parts that ...

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Cloned Animals For Human Consumption (FDA)

January 16, 2008 – 8:00 pm
The FDA says clones are ok to eat. The FDA's food safety chief Dr. Stephen Sundlof said that they "found nothing in the food that could potentially be hazardous. The food in every respect is indistinguishable from food from any other animal." The Associated Press  that two companies have alread produced over 600 cloned animals for U.S. breeders. The two main U.S. cloning companies, Viagen Inc. and Trans Ova Genetics, already have produced more than 600 cloned animals for U.S. breeders, including copies of prize-winning cows and rodeo bulls. They agreed to USDA's call for a continued moratorium Tuesday, but stressed that it applied only to clones themselves, not those animals' conventionally produced offspring, which can begin selling immediately. The FDA spent six buy cialis cialis years tracking the safety of cloning, and its decision was long expected, but it came after an emotional fight by opponents. Congress passed legislation last month ...

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Norovirus in England

January 13, 2008 – 2:00 am
Norovirus is raging through England. Times Online  that 2.8 million people have been sick with the norovirus in England and another 200,000 are falling ill each week. The rate of new cases being confirmed has reached the levels of reports during the massive outbreak five years ago, when officials  announced an epidemic. Norovirus can prove deadly for vulnerable people, such as children and the elderly. The impact of the bug has been exacerbated by a new outbreak of flu with those most at risk now being given antiviral drugs by their doctors. NHS Direct, which patients can telephone for health advice, has been inundated with people calling with symptoms of the norovirus. Helen Young, the clinical director, said: "We are seeing an increasing number of calls about diarrhoea and vomiting. Norovirus is a major issue for the whole NHS right now and we urge anyone who has symptoms to engage in good hygiene to ...

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