Surgeon punches wiggling patient
TOKYO:
A Japanese
doctor punched a patient during surgery and told him to "shut up"
after the patient on local anesthesia asked for the operation to stop.
The patient at the national
Shiga Hospital wiggled during the surgery and yelled "please stop the
operation," Kyodo news said.
The doctor then punched the
patient's forehead and said: "Stay still! Shut up!"
The operation was stopped. The
physician and a hospital executive later visited the patient to
apologize, Kyodo said.
The doctor didn't speed up the
patient's recovery. The report said the patient needed five days for
his forehead to heal.
theaustraliannews.com 9/1/05
Pumping water out could take six months, engineers say
Draining
the billions of liters
of water from flooded New Orleans could take three to six months-much
longer than first thought.
"There is a lot of water here,"
said Colonel Richard Wagenaar, the Army Corps of Engineers' senior
officer in New Orleans, who is directing recovery efforts.
"The news cameras do not do it
justice. And I'm worried the worst is yet to come."
An army engineer, Walter Baumy,
said the corps was struggling with river beds clogged with loose barges
and debris and could not find contractors able to maneuver heavy
equipment into the flood zone. Communication had also proved difficult.
The water is nine meters
deep in some parts of the city, covering the roofs of homes. In
the city's ninth
ward, homes have shifted and floated away, leaving nothing that
resembled the city grid before the storm, Colonel Wagenaar
said. Hurricane Katrina has shut down an extremely complex plumbing and
flood control system, with levees breached in three places.
The 17th Street Canal pumping
station is the largest single drainage pump in the world, able to move
283 cubic meters of water per second.
One of the first tasks facing the
army team is trying to start up the city's 22 massive pumps-which can
match the flow rates of the Colorado River- and repairing the levees.
But the engineers are not sure
when they will fix breaches and are even more concerned about the
condition of the pumping system, which is without electricity and could
be clogged with debris.
The levee breach responsible for
most of the flooding was at the 17th Street
Canal, used to divert water to Lake Pontchartrain during river floods,
the senior project engineer, Al Naomi, said. The wall failed when
waters rose over the top and cascaded down to the base, scouring a hole
that undermined the foundation.
Engineers will use helicopters to
put nine-ton sandbags and concrete highway barriers along the 60-meter
breach in the 17th Street Canal.
"They'll drop sandbags from the
edges and build the levee back toward the middle," said Rick Van
Bruggen, a California hydrologist and levee expert.
The levees, made of dirt
and reinforced concrete, are designed to hold back a 3.5 meter storm
surge. But the Katrina surge was believed to have been significantly
higher.
Once that levee is restored,
engineers will use the city's vast pumping system to move water back
into the lake and the Mississippi.
Mr. Naomi complained that as the
Gulf Coast braced for an intense hurricane season earlier this year a
$71 million cut was announced in the New Orleans district budget to
guard against such storms.
But even as the city begins to
dry out, Mr. Van Bruggen said, the situation inside the
deluged area could get worse because of pollution, disease and
lawlessness.
"The storm is over, but
people still don't understand the scope of the problem," Mr.
Van Bruggen said. "New Orleans as we've known it is gone."
Los Angeles Times 9/2/05
Pope Wants Crosses Back In Public Places
Pope
Benedict called for
the return of the Christian spaces, his latest plea against Europe's
growing secularization.
"The modern age believed that if
we put God aside and followed only our own ideas and our own desires we
would become truly free, but this has not happened," Pope Benedict said
during a Mass at his summer retreat.
"It is important that
God is visible in private houses, that God is present in public life,
with the sign of the cross visible in public places."
Former Roman Catholic stronghold
France banned large Christian crosses, Jewish skullcaps and Muslim
headscarves from its state school last year in an attempt to foster a
secular society in the face of growing Islamic fervor.
Italian Muslim activist Adel
Smith also gained legal backing to have crosses taken off the walls of
an Italian school, although the decision was later overthrown following
a backlash from the Vatican and lawmakers.
Pope Benedict is warming up for
his first international trip this week since the death of his
charismatic predecessor John Paul.
The 78-year-old German goes to
Cologne in his homeland for four days to conclude the Church's World
Youth Day aiming to reinvigorate Christianity for Catholic youth as the
Vatican confronts dwindling church attendance in the Western world.
Reuters
Platforms lost at sea, gas pipeline ablaze as oil industry grinds to a halt
Baton
Rouge: At least
20 oil rigs and platforms are missing in the Gulf of Mexico and a
ruptured gas pipeline is on fire, the US Coast Guard says.
"We have confirmed at least 20
rigs or platforms missing, either sunk or adrift, and one confirmed
fire where a rig was," Robert Reed of the Louisiana Coast Guard said.
The latest tally from the federal
Minerals Management Service said 561 platforms and rigs have been
evacuated in the gulf, which accounts for a quarter of US oil
production. More than 91 percent of normal daily crude oil
production in the gulf—1.5 million barrels—has
been shut down, and more than 83 percent of natural gas production.
The two main petrol pipelines to
the east coast—Plantation, which terminates in Washington and
Colonial, which ends in New Jersey—remain idle as they await
electricity. Eight big refineries are shut down, squeezing US
refining capacity by 10 percent. Supplies of jet fuel and
heating oil are also pinched.
But the refineries could
face a longer recovery period. Many of the thousands of evacuated
workers have no homes to return to. And as long as the region has no
electricity, refineries cannot reach full capacity.
Potential shipments from
operational refineries up the Mississippi have been halted by
hopelessly clogged river lanes. Daniel Robinson, president of
Placid Refining, which has a refinery outside Baton Rouge, said the
distribution system was in a "complete state of chaos."
The Washington Post 9/2/05
Up to 500 Iraqi Shi'ites die in stampede
By
Sebastian Alison
BAGHDAD: Up to 500
people died when a crowd of Iraqi Shi'ites stampeded off a bridge over
the Tigris river in Baghdad on Wednesday, fleeing rumors of a
suicide bombing threat, Iraq's deputy health minister said.
"So far we have 500 dead," Jalil
Al-Shumari, the deputy minister, told Reuters. The
crowd, on its way to
the Kadhimiya mosque for an important religious ceremony, panicked as
rumors spread that a suicide bomber was preparing to blow himself up.
Earlier at least seven people
died in three separate mortar attacks on the crowd. One
hospital said it had received
at least 100 bodies by 12:30. The hospital source said bodies were
being sent to two other nearby hospitals as well.
A crowd of several thousand had
been marching through the old Kadhimiya district of northern Baghdad to
a major Shi'ite religious ceremony. The streets leading to the mosque
are narrow, making it almost impossible for rescue workers to reach the
dead and injured in the packed throng, and raising the possibility that
the death toll could rise further, witnesses said.
Tensions have been
running high between the main religious and ethnic communities
ahead of a referendum of a divisive new constitution for the
post-Saddam Hussein era.
The Kadhimiya mosque is a major
Shi'ite shrine in the old district of north Baghdad. The crowd
was celebrating the
martyrdom of Musa Al-Kadhim, a revered religious figure among Shi'ites.
Explosions were heard across Baghdad on Wednesday morning.
A Reuters correspondent reported
hearing six mortar rounds exploding near the international airport,
although the U.S. military had no information of any attacks there.
Parliament completed work on the
draft text of the constitution on Sunday, but it must be approved by a
popular mandate before October 15 to come into force.
Reuters 8/31/05
Encephalitis Killing Children In Asia
By
Margie Mason
HANOI,
Vietnam (AP) A Japanese
encephalitis outbreak that has killed hundreds of children in northern
India and Nepal in recent weeks has no cure or effective treatment. It
is easily preventable, but the necessary vaccines are simply not
available to millions.
The disease has overwhelmed
hospitals in Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, since the
outbreak began there last month. More than 260 have died and about
1,100 others remain hospitalized. Blinding headaches, seizures, nausea,
and high fever usually precede death.
In Nepal, the disease has also
been spreading since April in the country's south, across the border
from Uttar Pradesh. Nearly 100 have died there.
About 50,000 cases of Japanese
encephalitis are recorded each year, according to the World Health
Organization. Of the survivors, up to 75 percent suffer disabilities,
including paralysis and mental retardation.
Though closely related to West
Nile virus, this illness isn't as widely known as the other
mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria or dengue fever. It is found
only in Asia and kills about 15,000 people each year. A Chinese
vaccine, made from a weakened form of the virus, has been used widely
within the communist country since 1988. Last year, about 200 deaths
were reported nationwide there, according to the Chinese Ministry of
Health.
Japanese encephalitis is spread
mostly from pigs to people via mosquitoes. Annual outbreaks occur
across Asia, often near rice paddies after water is left following
monsoon rains. Like polio, only about 1 in 250 people infected ever
develop symptoms. Japanese encephalitis has also expanded, reaching
northern Australia in the 1990s.
Associated Press 8/31/05
In interview, Abbas invites Pope to visit Palestinians
Palestinian
leader Mahmoud Abbas
has urged Pope Benedict XVI to visit the Palestinian people, according
to an Italian religious affairs magazine.
Monthly magazine 30 Giorni said
in a promotion of an interview with Abbas that he extended the
invitation "to visit the Palestinian people in Palestine," Italian news
reports said.
Abbas was quoted as urging
Benedict to "use all his weight and the spiritual and moral importance
of the Catholic Church to put an end to the suffering of the
Palestinian people and to guarantee their legitimate right to create an
independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital."
No one answered at the
magazine's Rome headquarters, and an advance copy of the interview
could not be immediately obtained.
30 Giorni is directed by Giulio
Andreotti, the former Christian Democrat premier whose coalitions were
largely sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.
Palestinians want the Israeli
withdrawal from the Gaza strip to be a first step toward a negotiated
settlement giving them an independent state that includes all of the
West Bank and East Jerusalem.
www.haaretz.com 8/24/05