Sunday, April 3, 2011

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued proposed calorie labeling rules requiring most retail food vendors to display the calorie counts in items on their menus and menu boards. The proposed rules, issued Friday and expected to be finalized in 2012, would apply to most restaurants, snack bars, vending machines, coffee shops, drive-through restaurants, and convenience and grocery stores.

The US Congress required the rules in the health-care reform law passed in 2010. The rules proposed by the FDA must undergo a public comment period before they are finalized and take effect, said Michael R. Taylor, Deputy Director for Foods at the FDA.

The proposed regulations pertain to businesses devoting more than 50 percent of their floor space to the sale of food or that consider themselves restaurants, specifically food-selling chains with at least 20 stores nationally. Included are candy stores, bakeries, and ice-cream parlors.

The FDA’s proposed guidelines specify that chains post the calorie counts of foods and drinks on menus and menu boards or next to the food item, such as at a salad bar. The menu is to prominently exhibit the calorie content of each item in a way customers can see easily, giving them the same information packaged foods prepared at home currently provide. The information must be displayed in “clear and conspicuous” print and colors.

Many cities and states have passed laws requiring calorie labeling on menus, beginning with New York City in 2008. California implemented a similar law in January, although many counties are waiting for the release of the federal guidelines before they begin enforcement. Some fast-food chains there, such as McDonald’s and Starbucks, are displaying calorie counts on menus in some of their stores.

The rules are intended to curb the national obesity epidemic since, according to FDA estimates, one third of the calories people consume yearly come from food eaten out. In a statement issued yesterday, Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services said, “Giving consumers clear nutritional information makes it easier for them to choose healthier options that can help fight obesity and make us all healthier.”

Excluded from the rules are businesses whose primary product is not food sales but that sell it, such as bowling alleys, airports and airplanes, amusement parks, hotels and movie theaters. Alcohol is also excluded.

Monday, September 11, 2006

Due to a failure to secure appropriate sponsorship, the Global Challenge Round the World Yacht Race will not be being held next time it’s due in 2008.

The unusual race features ordinary people competing as opposed to major yachting sportspeople. For a final twist, the race is the “wrong way”, namely against the prevailing winds. This leads the UK’s newspaper, The Guardian to describe it as “the world’s toughest yacht race”.

Tuesday, February 7, 2006

Shortly after ending its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the government of Iran has now ordered the IAEA to discontinue some of its surveillance of Iran’s nuclear facilities. Tehran has also asked the agency to remove any and all signage from their nuclear sites by the end of next week.

This is in response to the Saturday resolution by the IAEA to report Iran to the United Nations Security Council, which was made without waiting for the director of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, chairman of the IAEA, to finish preparing a report on Iran’s civilian (and allegedly military) nuclear programs for the regular IAEA meeting scheduled for March 6. ElBaradei had given Iran until March to answer IAEA questions. By a vote of 27 to three (with five abstentions), and without the information in ElBaradei’s report planned for March 2006, the IAEA recommended that the matter of the Iranian nuclear program be brought before the Security Council.

The recommendation claims that there are serious concerns about Iranian nuclear aims, and the agency does not have confidence that the program is intended solely for civilian or other non-military use. Although the meeting was taken without waiting for ElBaradei’s March report, the recommendation requests ElBaradei to make his report anyway, including a list of “steps Iran needs to take to dispel suspicions about its nuclear ambitions” by March 6.

The IAEA’s resolution calls for Iran to reinstate a freeze on its nuclear programs, consider ending construction of a plutonium-producing heavy water reactor, and to continue allowing the IAEA’s purposes and actions in Iran. However, the council will not implement any further action until ElBaradei makes his full report on March 6.

ElBaradei also reported to the IAEA Monday that Iran would also demand a reduction in the amount of facilities inspections from the agency, and that they would discontinue their agreement to the Additional Protocol of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) if the agency reported Iran to the Security Council. This protocol entitles the IAEA to hold unannounced inspections of facilities, increased surveillance capability, and placing IAEA seals on nuclear equipment.

Other diplomatic ventures are being planned. On February 16, Iranian officials will meet with the Russian government in Moscow to discuss the possibility of Russia enriching uranium for export to Iran in exchange for a halting of its nuclear enrichment program. And Wang Guangya, China’s ambassador to the UN, said Monday that “Even with the adoption of this IAEA resolution, it is the belief of most of the members there that a diplomatic solution is the way out within the framework of the IAEA.”

Monday, October 29, 2007

On Monday, October 22, as the latest Wikimedia fundraiser began, Wikinews reporter Brian McNeil thought his own small donation could be turned into a bigger donation by his buying some advertising on a popular website and encouraging others to contribute. With this in mind he approached Howard Tayler, creator of the Schlock Mercenary webcomic.

Tayler’s response was not as McNeil expected, prompting a Wikinews investigation. Tayler refused to help the foundation raise money although he conceded that he does sometimes use the site. Instead he explained that some members of the webcomic community feel slighted by Wikipedia because over 50 articles on webcomics were deemed not to meet their notability guidelines and were deleted during January and February of 2007. Some members of the webcomics community considered this unacceptable. Whilst some of the comic related articles deleted did not qualify for inclusion in the encyclopedia under Wikipedia guidelines, the deletion of a large number of articles in such a short time period struck some webcomics writers and fans as a selective purge.

Much of the criticism has been focused on Wikipedia editor Dragonfiend, who has described notability as “whether a topic has been noted by independent reputable sources”. She has said that “If we include every article that anyone wants to write, then the encyclopedia becomes useless because nobody can find the actual needle of worthwhile information on a topic hidden in that hay stack of trivia.” She has said Wikipedia should only have articles on webcomics like Penny Arcade, Get Your War On, Fetus-X, and Achewood.

This deletion of numerous webcomic articles has not sat well with some in the webcomic community. Modern Tales editor and Websnark blogger Eric Burns has written that “There are people — and Dragonfiend is clearly one of them — who are clearly going through Wikipedia looking for articles that should be weeded out as non-notable. and they’re doing it in fields they clearly — I mean, clearly — have no interest, experience or knowledge.”

Erfworld and PartiallyClips writer Rob Balder has expressed similar viewpoints, calling the deletion of the webcomics articles a “goddamned crime” and describing a “deletionist jihad” by “the politest bunch of book-burning assholes on the planet”. Balder also labelled “Deletionism” as a form of “naughtymancy” magic in Erfworld. Deletionism refers to the Wikipedia ideology that favours relatively rigorous standards for maintaining access to articles, as opposed to inclusionism which favours keeping and amending problematic articles.

There is concern among some webcomic groups that the notability guidelines are too rigorous for the typical webcomic. The standards usually require significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, which is rare since even comics with dedicated followings do not always attract mainstream book publishers or reviews from mainstream journalists. It seems that this policy has alienated webcomic artists and fans and discouraged them from contributing to Wikipedia.

Conflicts such as this are not uncommon. Members of a Wikimedia Foundation mailing list pointed to other examples where the application of the rules has been perceived to be selective, leaving other communities disgruntled with a variety of Wikimedia projects, not just Wikipedia.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a drug-resistant strain of bacteria, killed nearly 19,000 Americans in 2005 alone, according to a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. That is more people than were killed by AIDS in the United States. More than 94,000 Americans were afflicted with MRSA infections in 2005.

Although the supergerm, or superbug, is primarily found in hospitals, a growing number of cases have been contracted at public gyms and schools. In Moneta, Virginia, a high school senior died from an infection that spread to his kidney, liver, lungs and heart. In Bedford County, where Moneta is located, school officials have reported five cases of the Methicillin-resistant strain of the Staph bacteria. County officials closed the schools to clean them.

“Certainly, MRSA now has to be viewed as a very important target for prevention and control,” said Dr. David A. Talan, an infectious diseases specialist at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center.

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Yesterday, English football club Manchester United F.C. announced signing Frenchman Paul Pogba from Italian club Juventus F.C. Pogba rejoined The Red Devils on a five-year contract for €105 million making him the most expensive footballer of all time by breaking the previous fee record of Gareth Bale’s transfer from Tottenham Hotspur to Spanish capital club Real Madrid.

23-year-old midfielder Paul Pogba made his professional debut for United in 2011 after graduating from their academy. He played only seven games before leaving for Juventus the next year. Spending four years with the Old Lady, Pogba has won four Serie A titles, three Italian Super Cups, and two Coppa Italia trophies as well.

Pogba has played 38 games for the French side, netting six goals. Last month he collected a silver medal with the national team finishing runners-up at the UEFA Euro 2016, losing 1–0 to Portugal. This year, Pogba was named in the FIFA FIFPro team of the year as well as the UEFA team of the year.

After signing the five-year contract, Paul Pogba said, “I am delighted to rejoin United. It has always been a club with a special place in my heart and I am looking forward to working with [United manager] José Mourinho.” Mourinho praised Pogba and said Pogba “will be a key part of the United team”.

Pogba has been allotted the number 6 jersey. Previously, Manchester United signed Zlatan Ibrahimovi?, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, and Eric Bailly.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

On Monday, June 2, the Danish embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, was attacked with a car bomb. The bomb went off in the parking lot of the embassy at around 12:10 pm (UTC+5), killing at least six and wounding at least 30 others. One Danish citizen was killed.

“I think we can say with a reasonable degree of confidence that it was a suicide attack,” said Tariq Pervez, the director-general of the Pakistani Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).

The bomb forced the closure of the Danish embassy, as well as those of Norway and the Netherlands, which were nearby.

While no group has claimed responsibility, the Danish national security intelligence agency PET has concluded that al-Qaeda was behind the attack. “Extremists can be inspired by the attack in Pakistan,” said PET’s director, Jakob Scharf in a statement.

“We are just trying to find any clue, any evidence,” Pakistani investigator Muhammad Mustafa said to the Associated Press. “You know yesterday it was panic here. Usually we miss important things in panic.”

“Samples have been sent to the laboratory to determine what type of explosive was used,” said Mohammad Ashraf Shah, who is in charge of the investigation. Investigators have found that the car with the bomb was a Toyota Corolla, which bore diplomatic license plates.

“One can of course only condemn it, it’s terrible that terrorists commit such acts,” said Per Stig Møller, the Foreign Minister of Denmark, on TV 2 television.

“It was to be expected that they would do something,” said Ikram Sehgal to Reuters, referring to Ayman al-Zawahiri‘s recent video encouraging attacks against Denmark over the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy.

“I urge and incite every Muslim who can harm Denmark to do so in support of the prophet, God’s peace and prayers be upon him, and in defense of his honorable stature,” Ayman al-Zawahri said in a video which became public on April 21.

“This attack was not linked to any event in the country or the region, rather it was part of widespread outrage throughout the Islamic world against publishing blasphemous caricatures,” a local official told Daily Times, adding that it would not affect Pakistani negotiations with “local” Taliban, which is considered separate from the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Monday, March 21, 2005

Portal and search company Yahoo! has purchased Ludicorp Research and Development Ltd., the private corporation which owns the photo sharing site Flickr. The news was officially disclosed in a Sunday posting to the corporation’s staff blog and is credited to Caterina Fake, Flickr’s vice president of marketing and community. The posting announced the sale, but did not disclose details of the deal. In a report by Silicon.Com, Yahoo! spokeswoman Joanna Stevens confirmed the deal on Sunday but also did not disclose the terms.

Both Fake and Stevens said Flickr will remain independent. Stevens added that Flickr’s employees will relocate to the Yahoo! headquarters in Sunnyvale, California later this year.

Rumors of the sale have been circulating amongst bloggers for some time, though neither company would confirm or deny the rumored sale. Other rumors had Google or AOL as Flickr’s probable suitor.

Flickr allows users to upload pictures from their computers, digital cameras, or camera phones to a personal website where they can display them, engage in photo blogging and create photo albums. The graphics may be licensed under a variety copyright license schemes including public domain, and photo owners can be easily contacted through the website.

Yahoo! had earlier announced Yahoo! 360°, a blogging service with sharing privileges and integration with other Yahoo! services such as internet broadcasting and instant messaging.