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Monday, June 7, 2010

An acrobatic group known by the name of Spelbound has been declared as the winner of Britain’s Got Talent 2010, a televised variety talent show competition broadcast on ITV in the United Kingdom. As the winning act of the show, Spelbound have won £100,000 (US$144,580, €120,313, A$175,079) and a place at The Royal Variety Performance, an annual gala evening that is attended by senior members of the British Royal Family.

In no particular order, the top three acts were revealed to be two dancers known by their stage name of Twist and Pulse, gymnastic group Spelbound and Kieran Gaffney, whose act involves playing on the drum kit. After Kieran Gaffney was revealed to be in third place, Anthony McPartlin, who hosts Britain’s Got Talent with Declan Donnelly, said to Kieran: “Well done Kieran. Kieran, you’re a star, you came back, you got all the way to the final. I know you’ve loved this. You’ve loved this, haven’t you?” In response to this, Kieran Gaffney stated: “Thank you very much. Thank you, everyone for supporting me. Thank you.”

Shortly afterwards, on the episode that was broadcast live on ITV1 on Saturday, Anthony announced: “After tens of thousands of auditons, five semi-finals and an amazing final, this…this is it. One of you is about to walk away with £100,000 and a place at this year’s Royal Variety Performance. The winner of Britain’s Got Talent 2010 is…Spelbound!” Glen Murphy from Twist and Pulse commented about finishing in second place, stating: “Yeah, it’s amazing. I can’t even believe it. I can’t believe it at all.”

Alex Uttley, a 24-year-old member of Spelbound, commented on the gymnastic group’s victory, commenting: “Oh, my god. This is unbelieveable. We just want to say thank you to everyone out there. It just shows that all our hard work has paid off.” One of the coaches of Spelbound, named Neil Griffiths, stated about Spelbound: “Oh, they’ve worked so hard over the last few weeks. Um, since the semi-final, we…we really had to pull out the stops to try and up the game. They’ve not known they’ve worked in the gym from six in the morning till twelve…twelve o’clock of the night. I couldn’t have asked for more. Um, it’s a team of coaches. I don’t take all the credit myself. There’s, uh, two people up there that know who they are who’ve been fantastic.”

Spelbound consists of 24-year-old Alex Uttley, Nicholas Illingworth, aged 24, Adam Buckingham, aged 21, 20-year-old Adam McAssey, 19-year-old Douglas Fordyce, 18-year-old Edward Upcott, 18-year-old Leighanne Cowler, 17-year-old Katie Axten, 17-year-old Lauren Kemp, 15-year-old Jonathan Stranks, Abigail Ralph, aged 15, 13-year-old Hollianne Wood and Amy Mackenzie, aged 12. Bookmakers had previously predicted that Spelbound would be the most likely act to become the winner of the series.

The running order for the final started with Twist and Pulse. The second act to perform was Liam McNally, a 14-year-old singer. The running order subsequently continued with 40-year-old impressionist Paul Burling, singer Christopher Stone, aged 28, Tina & Chandi, a woman and dog dancing act, Connected, a five-piece singing group, Kieran Gaffney, aged 12, 22-year-old Tobias Mead, a dancer, 80-year-old singer Janey Cutler and Spelbound in that particular order.

Earlier on in the final, Britain’s Got Talent judge Amanda Holden has stated to Spelbound: “We are hosting the 2012 Olympics and I think ‘what a brilliant opening act’.” Fellow judge Piers Morgan also commented that “[t]he purpose of this show is to identify hidden great British talent. You are that act.” After Spelbound won in the final, another judge, named Simon Cowell, stated that “the right boys and girls won on the night” and that he could “only say on live TV that that was one of the most astonishing things I have ever seen. Seriously.”

Thursday, June 11, 2009

The remains of three children were discovered in a bucket at a home at 1302 Sandford Street in London, Ontario in Canada on Saturday, June 6, 2009. The bodies were in an advanced state of decomposition, so much so that it was originally thought to be a single corpse until further investigation revealed that it was actually the remains of three children.

“He came outside and told everybody he discovered this bucket,” a neighbour of the resident who discovered the remains, told CBC News. “He said his girlfriend had this bucket for two years with gardening stuff in it, and he opened it on Saturday, and it was [filled with] bloody clothes and a blanket, and he called the police.”

“Due to the decomposition it was difficult to see that there was more than one there. The bodies have been decomposing, it could be over a number of years,” said London Police Detective-Superintendent Ken Heslop, “We won’t know anything until, I’m hoping, Thursday or Friday, depending on how long the examinations take.”

Jennifer Sinn, 32, a former resident of the building has been charged with concealing a child’s body and offering an indignity to a dead human body. Neighbours have described her as a recluse staying to herself with parents delivering meals to her. Neighbours have also come forward saying that a young child about one year old has not been seen for awhile and that there had also been two older children. Police are seeking any further information in the case.

There is no report of charges against the man who called the police to report the bodies, who is believed to be the ex-boyfriend of Sinn, who is charged with the crime. Reportedly, she had moved out of the building two weeks prior to the discovery of the bodies.

The London police are following up with local police at various locations where the young lady had resided before.

The provincial forensic pathology unit in Toronto, Ontario will undertake the full autopsies.

Constable Amy Phillipo said, “The investigation into the cause and manner of death of the three infants is continuing.”

Sunday, December 20, 2015

Today, Chennai-based football club Chennaiyin FC defeated FC Goa 3–2 at Fatorda Stadium in Margao in the Indian Super League final.

The match saw five yellow cards, two for the home side. Chennai’s Mehrajuddin Wadoo was the first one to be booked in the 18^th minute. In the 33^rd minute, Goa’s Moura’s shot was deflected by Wadoo. With a single booking, the first half ended 0–0.

In the second half, in the 53^rd minute, Pronay Halder committed a foul on Chennai’s Stiven Mendoza in the penalty area, and the visitors were awarded a penalty kick. Stepping forward for the kick, Bruno Pelissari’s kick was saved by Laxmikant Kattimani but the ball bounced back, and Pelissari made no mistake, scoring. Chennai got a 1–0 lead.

Thoi Singh was booked in the 57^th minute. Halder, in the 58^th minute, assisted Thongkhosiem Haokip and the Indian footballer scored an equaliser for the home side. Grégory Arnolin received a yellow card in the 60^th minute for protesting the referee’s decision. Chennai was awarded another penalty kick. Stiven Mendoza stood up for the penalty, but missed.

Table-turning events took place in the dying moments of the game. Jofre scored a goal in the 87^th minute. A minute later, he was yellow-carded; but, Goa had a 2–1 lead. Goa’s goalie Laxmikant Kattimani scored an own goal for a 2–2 equaliser and in the additional time, Mendoza netted a goal assisted by Jayesh Rane. Next minute, Mendoza was yellow-carded, but the final whistle blew a few moments later, and Chennaiyin FC won the second edition of the Indian Super League in the 3–2 goal tally.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

News Corp. has purchased a controlling interest in Jamba, the ringtone company created by VeriSign. The $188 million give News Corp. a 51% interest in the public-owned company.

Jamba, and its American brand Jamster, will be merged into News Corp.’s Mobizzo. Mobizzo sells short video clips of television series. It is expected MySpace will integrate the ringtone sales somehow into News Corp.’s social networking website MySpace; MySpace recently announced it would sell music on its website.

News Corp President and CEO Peter Chernin commented to Reuters that “wireless technology gives us an enormous opportunity to reach billions of mobile phone users with our content”.

The announcement was made this morning by News Corporation, which owns MySpace.

Saturday, October 22, 2016

The California Department of Justice on Wednesday released the warrant and affidavit of a criminal investigation of the Wells Fargo bank. The State of California served the warrant on October 5 to search the San Francisco headquarters of Wells Fargo for felonious activities related to identity theft.

The warrant said property to be seized at the bank’s San Francisco headquarters was related to the unauthorized creation of accounts by Wells Fargo employees including the names of individuals for the accounts; account information and fees; the names of employees and their managers who created accounts without the consent of the Wells Fargo customers in question; and all communications including emails referencing the unauthorised accounts.

California Attorney General Kamala Harris’s criminal probe is part of an increasing list of officials nationwide questioning the business practices of Wells Fargo such as California State Treasurer John Chiang who announced a one-year suspension of State investment with the bank on September 28; Illinois State Treasurer Mike Frerichs followed suit with a year-long ban on October 3; and Democratic United States Senators Bob Menendez of New Jersey, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who wrote to the U.S. Security Exchanges Commission (SEC) suggesting investigation on September 29.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Last night HBO premiered I Am An Animal: The Story of Ingrid Newkirk and PETA. Since its inception, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has made headlines and raised eyebrows. They are almost single-handedly responsible for the movement against animal testing and their efforts have raised the suffering animals experience in a broad spectrum of consumer goods production and food processing into a cause célèbre.

PETA first made headlines in the Silver Spring monkeys case, when Alex Pacheco, then a student at George Washington University, volunteered at a lab run by Edward Taub, who was testing neuroplasticity on live monkeys. Taub had cut sensory ganglia that supplied nerves to the monkeys’ fingers, hands, arms, legs; with some of the monkeys, he had severed the entire spinal column. He then tried to force the monkeys to use their limbs by exposing them to persistent electric shock, prolonged physical restraint of an intact arm or leg, and by withholding food. With footage obtained by Pacheco, Taub was convicted of six counts of animal cruelty—largely as a result of the monkeys’ reported living conditions—making them “the most famous lab animals in history,” according to psychiatrist Norman Doidge. Taub’s conviction was later overturned on appeal and the monkeys were eventually euthanized.

PETA was born.

In the subsequent decades they ran the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty against Europe’s largest animal-testing facility (footage showed staff punching beagle puppies in the face, shouting at them, and simulating sex acts while taking blood samples); against Covance, the United State’s largest importer of primates for laboratory research (evidence was found that they were dissecting monkeys at its Vienna, Virginia laboratory while the animals were still alive); against General Motors for using live animals in crash tests; against L’Oreal for testing cosmetics on animals; against the use of fur for fashion and fur farms; against Smithfield Foods for torturing Butterball turkeys; and against fast food chains, most recently against KFC through the launch of their website kentuckyfriedcruelty.com.

They have launched campaigns and engaged in stunts that are designed for media attention. In 1996, PETA activists famously threw a dead raccoon onto the table of Anna Wintour, the fur supporting editor-in-chief of Vogue, while she was dining at the Four Seasons in New York, and left bloody paw prints and the words “Fur Hag” on the steps of her home. They ran a campaign entitled Holocaust on your Plate that consisted of eight 60-square-foot panels, each juxtaposing images of the Holocaust with images of factory farming. Photographs of concentration camp inmates in wooden bunks were shown next to photographs of caged chickens, and piled bodies of Holocaust victims next to a pile of pig carcasses. In 2003 in Jerusalem, after a donkey was loaded with explosives and blown up in a terrorist attack, Newkirk sent a letter to then-PLO leader Yasser Arafat to keep animals out of the conflict. As the film shows, they also took over Jean-Paul Gaultier‘s Paris boutique and smeared blood on the windows to protest his use of fur in his clothing.

The group’s tactics have been criticized. Co-founder Pacheco, who is no longer with PETA, called them “stupid human tricks.” Some feminists criticize their campaigns featuring the Lettuce Ladies and “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur” ads as objectifying women. Of their Holocaust on a Plate campaign, Anti-Defamation League Chairman Abraham Foxman said “The effort by PETA to compare the deliberate systematic murder of millions of Jews to the issue of animal rights is abhorrent.” (Newkirk later issued an apology for any hurt it caused). Perhaps most controversial amongst politicians, the public and even other animal rights organizations is PETA’s refusal to condemn the actions of the Animal Liberation Front, which in January 2005 was named as a terrorist threat by the United States Department of Homeland Security.

David Shankbone attended the pre-release screening of I Am An Animal at HBO’s offices in New York City on November 12, and the following day he sat down with Ingrid Newkirk to discuss her perspectives on PETA, animal rights, her responses to criticism lodged against her and to discuss her on-going life’s work to raise human awareness of animal suffering. Below is her interview.

Monday, August 7, 2006

Dogs can be trained to detect early and late stages of lung and breast cancer accurately according to a study published by California scientists in the little-known scientific journal Integrative Cancer Therapies.

The study took place over the last five years at the Pine Street Foundation, a non-profit organization which conducts evidence-based research on integrative medicine (combining complementary and alternative medicine and mainstream medicine). Michael McCulloch and colleagues used three Labrador Retrievers and two Portuguese Water Dogs, both common pets, that received basic behavioral dog training. The researchers trained the dogs to lie down next to a sample from a cancer patient and to ignore other samples.

The samples used were breath samples from 55 patients with lung cancer and 31 with breast cancer — the two types of cancer with the highest mortality rates in the United States.

After the training phase, the dogs’ accuracy diagnosis was tested in a double-blind experiment. Among lung cancer patients, the sensitivity and specificity were 99% accurate and for breast cancer sensitivity was 88% and specificity 98%. Because these figures seem almost too good to be true, cancer experts are the same time baffled and skeptical. The authors of the study themselves also say replication of the study is needed.

Importantly, this was independent of the cancer stage, meaning the dogs were able to pick up the scent of cancer in its early stages. This is important because in many cases, the success of any treatment depends on early diagnosis. However, the researchers don’t believe this will lead to the use of dogs in the clinic soon, rather they want to find out which chemicals are actually sensed by the canines, because they could be used in laboratory assays. “It’s not like someone would start chemotherapy based on a dog test,” Dr. Gansler of the American Cancer Society said, “They’d still get a biopsy.”.

The researchers were inspired by anecdotal reports about dogs detecting cancer. In 1989, a British women consulted with her family physician because her Dalmatian kept licking a mole on her leg. At biopsy it showed to be malignant melanoma. When diagnosed too late this form of cancer has a poor survival rate, but in this case early surgery was made possible, and the women survived. Prior studies showed that breath samples from patients with lung cancer or breast cancer contain distinct biochemical markers. This provides a basis for the hypothesis that some cancer types produce volatile chemicals that dogs could smell. A study published in the British Medical Journal already proved that dogs could use their exquisite sense of smell to detect bladder cancer in urine samples, but they were only correct in 41% of cases, and another study provided preliminary evidence that dogs could detect melanomas.

This doesn’t mean you can show your breasts to your dog and it will tell you if you have cancer, other physicians caution, and scientists do not advise people to train their dogs to sniff for cancer. Unresolved issues from the study include the fact that subjects were required to breathe deeper than normal, so it’s not sure whether dogs can smell cancer in normal breath. Also, whether this is a permanent skill that would be retained by dogs was not tested.

Finally, there are concerns that could arise over liability issues: who would be responsible when the dog makes a mistake?

Current detection methods for both lung and breast cancer are not flawless. For lung cancer, chest X-ray and sputum cytology (detecting cancer cells in coughed up fluid) fail to detect many early cases, and CT scan produces many false-positive results unless combined with expensive PET scans. Although it might be comparing apples and oranges, a $2.5 million CT scanner has an accuracy of 85 to 90%. Mammography also produces false-positive results, and it may be difficult in women with dense breast tissue. As such, another type of “pet”-scan, using dogs as a biological assay, might prove feasible for screening if supported by further research. Current tests are also expensive so the use of dogs for preliminary cancer testing could prove to be an affordable alternative for countries in the developing world.