9. august 2003

Pilot: I have a bomb in my shoe An Air France pilot was arrested after making a bomb threat joke on the JFK airport in New York. A plane with 350 passengers bound for Paris was delayed until a replacement pilot could be flown in. Port Authority spokeswoman Tiffany Townsend said the pilot was detained at a security checkpoint in the airport after making "comments that were deemed inappropriate". Law enforcement sources said the pilot had initially refused to pass through a metal detector at the checkpoint, and also declined to remove his shoes when asked to do so. "At some point during the exchange, he said, 'I have a bomb in my shoe', and then he tried to leave the checkpoint," one source said, adding that the pilot was arrested by Port Authority police. Just as well. I wouldn't feel safe in a plane with such a moron in the cockpit. PS: I find no mention of this story in American online news sources; only in Australian ones! Strange. 7:00:17 PM    comment []  trackback []

Sharia group puts end to polio vaccination The World Health Organisation's plans to erdaicate poliomyelitis in Nigeria has reached a superstitious problem as a Muslim organisation in the north of the country has argued that the oral drug contains anti-fertility drugs. As is typical, it is conspiracy theories and anti-Americanism that has fermented the belief, which lacks foundation in fact. The secretary general of the Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria, Dr Ibrahim Datti Ahmed, said the application of the oral polio vaccine should be suspended to allow time for the investigation of the council’s claim. Dr Datti said investigations by his organisation have found that recently declassified US documents show that the United States had had a policy, since 1975, that promoted the depopulation of African and Muslim countries. He added that the documents showed that WHO had introduced human chorionic gonadotrophin (HCG), a naturally occurring hormone essential for maintaining pregnancy in women, through massive anti-tetanus health campaigns in Nigeria, Tanzania, the Philippines, Nicaragua, and Mexico. The WHO denies the charges and says the claims are politically motivated. 5:07:56 PM    comment []  trackback []

Measles returns to the UK Fear that the MMR vaccine triggered autism, since dispelled, has had a direct impact on health in the UK. Now measles is on the increase. The original fear was triggered by an article in the medical journal Lancet, but subsequent tests failed to confirm its findings. Thus, MMR was exonated. Mud sticks, however, and by 2002 measles-vaccination coverage in Britain was less than 85%. In some areas of London - the kind of densely populated city most likely to host a measles epidemic - it had fallen to 64%. Ramsey's team studied measles outbreaks in Britain between 1995 and 2002. Outbreaks have grown larger and spread faster since 1998, when MMR fears began, the researchers found. "This is a warning signal for parents," says team member Vincent Jansen at Royal Holloway University of London. The situation should improve soon, predicts vaccine safety expert Neal Halsey of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. "Overwhelming" evidence that MMR does not cause autism combined with continued measles outbreaks, will slowly turn public opinion he says. "It just takes three to four years for new evidence to sink in." Sadly, people are more scared of a possible, theoretical danger exaggarated through a media scare than a real, known danger. 2:03:36 PM    comment []  trackback []

Dem candidate fails count test In criticising Bush, Democratic presidential candidate Bob Graham did the the sort of gaffe the president is normally famous for. Graham, who participated in a candidate's forum at the NAACP convention, was asked if the president lied to the American people when he said in his State of the Union address that Iraq had been trying to buy uranium in Africa to develop nuclear weapons — a claim the White House has acknowledged should not have been included. "I would not use the three-letter word," the Florida senator told reporters. "I would use the five-letter word: deceit." So is this a mistake related to the five-letter word "count" or to the five-letter word "spell"? 12:23:44 PM    comment []  trackback []

Telecomm giant went into private espionage Finland's Sonera, that is the greatest telecom in the Nordic countries, was not too happy with the critical investigations of two journalists. What to do? It used its near-monopoly over telecommunications networks in Finland to keep the journalists, and about 50 other people, under total surveilance. The top managment in Sonera used the communication system to see not only who they called and when, but also used the mobile phone system to track their whereabouts at all times. The episode demonstrates the reliance of modern telecommunication in our time, and also shows there are virtually no safeguards against telecom giants misusing its powers to keep track of its own people, competitors and other undesired elements. Privacy proponents have been deply worried about government spooks, but private companies may be a bigger threat. It would be very difficult to know if telecom companies did this wholesale, anywhere in the world. (From a Danish article in Politiken) 12:16:06 PM    comment []  trackback []

SA government to offer Aids drugs South Africa's government surprisingly turned around on anti-retroviral drugs for the HIV positive, and will now offer the lifesaving medicine. Still, Aids activists don't fully trust the government. I strongly suspect that the government's absurd and genocidal opposition to drugs are related to president Thabo Mbeki's irrational belief that HIV does not cause Aids. 10:07:57 AM    comment []  trackback []

© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.09.2003; 14:08:38.