Tuesday, October 26, 2010

The Group of 20 (G20) of the world’s leading developed and developing countries’ finance ministers agreed on Saturday to pursue a plan that would avoid dangerous currency devaluations and would also would attempt to reduce trade imbalances. The plan was introduced by the United States, and the G20 meeting was held in South Korea.

The plan was announced amid rising worries of a “currency war” that would lead to devalued currencies in order to get an export advantage and would damage the global economy. “Our cooperation is essential. We are all committed to play our part in achieving strong, sustainable and balanced growth in a collaborative and coordinated way,” a statement released by the G20 said.

On the topic of trade imbalances, the G-20 stated that “excessive imbalances” would be “assessed against indicative guidelines to be agreed.” This statement was weaker than a commitment proposed by United States Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, which would keep trade imbalances “below a specified share” of GDP for the next few years. This proposal was met with strong opposition from export-based economies such as Japan, whose Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda argued that specific targets were “unrealistic”, but approved of unspecific “guidelines”. He added: “There are many perspectives on the current account issue. Every country has a different situation when it comes to surpluses and deficits. So we need to study this carefully.”

The United States said that they will continue to push for numerical targets and specific time frames at next month’s South Korean summit, where the heads of state of the G20 will convene. “If the world is going to be able to grow at a strong, sustainable pace in the future . . . then we need to work to achieve more balance in the pattern of global growth as we recover from the crisis,” US Treasury Secretary Geithner declared. The finance ministers also set China on the track to floating its currency more, and overhauling the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to give more representation to developing powers such as China and India.

The G20 was created in 1999, includes both developed and developing countries, and represents 85% of the world’s economy. The G20’s heads of state will meet in Seoul, South Korea, next month.

Thursday, July 20, 2006

An Auckland, New Zealand policewoman, who has not been named, has been working part-time as a prostitute. Her employer, Auckland City Police, did not know that she had been working as a prostitute for a limited time. She has been able to keep her police job.

Prostitution became legal in New Zealand in 2003.

The police officer was prostituting herself because of financial difficulties. A person working in the Christchurch sex industry said “It’s usually either for debts or drugs.”

She is now undergoing counselling.

The New Zealand Police would not comment on how long she had been acting as a prostitute.

Lyn Provost, Deputy Commissioner, said “the nature of the secondary employment was incompatible with policing and would never have been approved.”

The police say that if a police officer was to seek secondary employment then it must be signed off, this job hadn’t been. It would have been a conflict of interest.

Ron Mark, New Zealand First Party Law and Order spokesman, said “the case is concerning, because while prostitution is legal, it is associated with criminal activity.”

A representative of the New Zealand Prostitutes’ Collective (NZPC) said there were law students and doctors who were sex workers.

“NZPC’s philosophy is that we support people that are in that secondary employment … we support them for their sexual health needs or any other needs – emotionally, physically, spiritually – that we can accommodate.” a representative of the New Zealand Prostitutes’ Collective said.

Monday, June 21, 2010

Sweden’s first royal wedding since 1976 took place Saturday when Crown Princess Victoria, 32, married her long-time boyfriend and former personal trainer, Daniel Westling, 36. The ceremony took place at Stockholm Cathedral.

Over 1,200 guests, including many rulers, politicians, royals and other dignitaries from across the world, attended the wedding, which cost an estimated 20 million Swedish kronor. Victoria wore a wedding dress with five-metre long train designed by Pär Engsheden. She wore the same crown that her mother, Queen Silvia, wore on her wedding day 34 years previously, also on June 19. Victoria’s father, King Carl XVI Gustaf, walked Victoria down the aisle, which was deemed untraditional by many. In Sweden, the bride and groom usually walk down the aisle together, emphasising the country’s views on equality. Victoria met with Daniel half-way to the altar, where they exchanged brief kisses, and, to the sounds of the wedding march, made their way to the the silver altar. She was followed by ten bridesmaids. The couple both had tears in their eyes as they said their vows, and apart from fumbling when they exchanged rings, the ceremony went smoothly.

Following the ceremony, the couple headed a fast-paced procession through central Stockholm on a horse-drawn carriage, flanked by police and security. Up to 500,000 people are thought to have lined the streets. They then boarded the Vasaorden, the same royal barge Victoria’s parents used in their wedding, and traveled through Stockholm’s waters, accompanied by flyover of 18 fighter jets near the end of the procession. A wedding banquet followed in the in the Hall of State of the Royal Palace.

Controversy has surrounded the engagement and wedding between the Crown Princess and Westling, a “commoner”. Victoria met Westling as she was recovering from bulemia in 2002. He owned a chain of gymnasiums and was brought in to help bring Victoria back to full health. Westling was raised in a middle-class family in Ockelbo, in central Sweden. His father managed a social services centre, and his mother worked in a post office. When the relationship was made public, Westling was mocked as an outsider and the king was reportedly horrified at the thought of his daughter marrying a “commoner”, even though he did so when he married Silvia. Last year, Westling underwent transplant surgery for a congenital kidney disorder. The Swedish public have been assured that he will be able to have children and that his illness will not be passed on to his offspring.

Westling underwent years of training to prepare for his new role in the royal family, including lessons in etiquette, elocution, and multi-lingual small talk; and a makeover that saw his hair being cropped short, and his plain-looking glasses and clothes being replaced by designer-wear.

Upon marrying the Crown Princess, Westling took his wife’s ducal title and is granted the style “His Royal Highness”. He is now known as HRH Prince Daniel, Duke of Västergötland. He also has his own coat-of-arms and monogram. When Victoria assumes the throne and becomes Queen, Daniel will not become King, but assume a supportive role, similar to that of Prince Phillip, the husband of the United Kingdom’s Queen Elizabeth II.

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.

Tuesday, March 1, 2005

Aylesbury, England — The Arsenal F.C. midfielder Jermaine Pennant, currently on loan to Birmingham City, has today pleaded guilty to drink-driving, driving while disqualified, and driving without insurance by Aylesbury magistrates court. Pennant received a sentence of three months imprisonment. Pennant’s lawyer, Bary Warbutton, has said that the footballer will appeal against the severity of the sentence.

The incident occurred on January 23 of this year, Pennant was arrested after crashing teammate Ashley Cole’s car into a lamppost. The 22-year-old claimed that he crashed the car after attempting to operate the car’s Satellite navigation system.

Despite the claim by Warbutton that imprisonment “could completely destroy his career”, Birmingham City have said that they will stand by the player, and help to rehabilitate him. Arsenal released a statement saying that the sentence would not impact the player’s future with the club; his contract with club expires in the summer, at the same time as his loan-spell with Birmingham ends.