Friday, November 3, 2006

On November 13, Torontonians will be heading to the polls to vote for their ward’s councillor and for mayor. Among Toronto’s ridings is St. Paul’s West (Ward 21). One candidate responded to Wikinews’ requests for an interview. This ward’s candidates include John Adams, Tony Corpuz, Joe Mihevc (incumbent), and John Sewell.

For more information on the election, read Toronto municipal election, 2006.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

The United Stated Department of Justice has asked for corruption charges against former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens to be dropped because evidence was withheld from the defense team by the original prosecutors. The Justice Department has stated that they will not retry Stevens.

In a statement, US Attorney General Eric Holder said, “After careful review, I have concluded that certain information should have been provided to the defense for use at trial. In light of this conclusion, and in consideration of the totality of the circumstances of this particular case, I have determined that it is in the interest of justice to dismiss the indictment and not proceed with a new trial.”

Stevens was convicted in October on seven felony counts of lying on senate disclosure forms about gifts, largely in the form of free renovations to his home, received from an oil service company; his conviction is thought to have been a large factor in his November electoral defeat to former Anchorage mayor Mark Begich, the current junior Senator from Alaska. Stevens immediately appealed his conviction and has maintained his innocence.

The prosecution case has met with a number of procedural difficulties, with US District Court judge Emmet G. Sullivan holding the prosecution in contempt in March for failing to turn over documents concerning an FBI whistleblower’s reports of mishandling of the case. The Justice Department has since replaced the case’s prosecutors, and the allegations of misconduct have held up sentencing from the original convictions.

The filed papers indicate that notes were never turned over from an interview that has the oil contractor estimated the house renovation for far less then he specified at trial.

The original trial team was removed, but in the end Attorney General Eric Holder thought it would be best if the case was dropped. NPR’s source indicate that Holder wish to forcefully transmit that prosecutorial misconduct will not be tolerated. The trying prosecutors are under investigation by the Justice Department for their conduct in the matter.

Stevens, now 85, served as Alaska’s Senator from 1968 to 2009.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Researchers have found a crucial genetic difference between humans and chimps that could help explain our language and speech abilities. The difference lies in a gene called FOXP2 which encodes for a protein of the same name. This acts as a transcription factor, controlling the activity of other genes.

The human and chimp versions of the protein differ in only two of their 740 amino acid components, but when researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, replaced the human gene with the chimp version in neurons grown in the laboratory, they found it affected the expression of at least 116 other genes.

The results are detailed in a paper published on Thursday in the scientific journal Nature.

Author of the study Dr. Daniel Geschwind, of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, said the gene had a “major role” in differences between chimps and humans. “We showed that the human and chimp versions of FOXP2 not only look different but function differently too.”

Some of the affected genes control the formation of connections in the brain, whilst others relate to facial movements. Several have already been found to be involved in language disorders. Mutations in FOXP2 itself were also known to affect speech and language; the gene was first identified in members of a family suffering from language problems who were found to share a genetic mutation.

Frances Vargha-Khadem at University College London has studied patients with FOXP2 mutations, and agrees with the new research. As well as language problems, some of her subjects have changes in the shape of their jaws, mouths and tongues. She thinks that chimps may also have these differences.

“We believe FOXP2 is not only important for the higher order cognitive aspect of language but also for the motor aspect of speech and language,” said Genevieve Konopka, one of the authors of the paper at UCLA.

Previous research indicates that the changes in FOXP2 occurred around 200,000 years ago with the rise of modern humans. Geschwind also suggests that several of the related genes may have evolved together. Preliminary studies have shown signs that they too emerged relatively recently.

Scientists are now keen to further study FOXP2 and the genes that it affects. Geschwind believes this could eventually lead to breakthroughs in treatment for disorders such as autism and schizophrenia, which affect language skills.

The study was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the A.P. Giannini Foundation and the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression.

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Ikeda Kanako, a 21-year-old senior student of the Meiji Gakuin University and the first daughter of celebrity surgeon Yuko Ikeda, was kidnapped at about 1225 (UTC+9), June 26, 2006, in Shibuya, Tokyo.

A bullet was fired and one officer slightly cut when police stormed a Kawasaki apartment to rescue the girl.

Kanako was dressed in a white light half-sleeved cardigan, blue jeans with a bistre belt made of leather, a spring green camisole and carried a bag of Vuitton when she was abducted at a bus stop.

She was found unharmed 13 hours later by Japanese police at a condominium located in Nakahara-ku, Kawasaki, Kanagawa. The young woman’s make-up was not disordered; Kanako’s long brown fringe was not disheveled at all and she was wearing what she had been when she was kidnapped.

The kidnapping of Kanako was a big story in Japanese media in June, 2006. The story appeared in many newspapers as the front-page news on June 27, 2006.

Kanako and her kidnappers had been in touch with her mother using Kanako’s mobile phone. The effort to free her was helped greatly by a woman who witnessed the moment Kanako was taken; she wrote down the license plate of the van and other details.

Police traced mobile phone calls and were able to locate the van in Kawasaki where they detained two of the kidnappers as they went shopping.

One conspirator Li Yong, 29, from China, led the policemen to the apartment and tricked Kaneo Ito, 49, from Japan, to open the door. Ito managed to discharge one bullet before being restrained by an assistant police inspector, the first man in the room.

The other man involved in the kidnap of Kanako was Choi Gi Ho, 54, from South Korea. Kanato was freed unharmed.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department arrested three men on suspicion of conspiring to kidnap a woman and hold her to a reported 300 million yen ransom.

Monday, August 15, 2005

Oregon State University (OSU) animal researchers in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Agriculture‘s (USDA) Dubois, Idaho-based Sheep Experiment Station released a report on an OSU-USDA study which was initiated in 1995 after breeders asked the government to determine why some rams bought as breeding studs showed no interest in females. The researchers are working under a $2.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health in hopes of developing a test which can determine the likelihood of a ram being female-oriented before it is sold as a stud.

By studying difference in the animal’s brains after slaughter, the study also showed what could be a biological determiner for what makes a ram male-oriented instead of female-oriented sexually. The scientists’ results showed that the anterior preoptic area of the rams’ hypothalamus was 50 percent smaller in male-oriented rams as opposed to female oriented rams. A 1991 study of human brains of AIDS victims showed a similar hypothalamus size difference between gay and heterosexual men.

The sheep researchers postulate that low levels of aromatase hormones in the brain of a developing male sheep fetus may have kept the brain from fully masculinizing, leading to sexually male-oriented rams.

“This lends further support to the idea that homosexuality has biological underpinnings,” Charles Roselli, a professor of physiology and pharmacology, said in an interview with the Corvallis Gazette-Times.

Professor Stormshak believes that “understanding sexual drives and the continuum of sexual behavior could possibly help explain the scientific basis of sexual assault [and] put an end to assertions that homosexuality is a lifestyle choice.”

Thursday, December 6, 2007

A United States Senate committee has passed landmark legislation aimed at combating global warming by limiting carbon dioxide emissions. The vote was timed to coincide with the U.N. conference on climate change taking place in Bali, Indonesia.

The bill would set caps on U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from electric utility, transportation and manufacturing industries beginning in 2012 with the goal of cutting emissions 60 percent by 2050. It would create an incentive system that would give credits to industries that cut pollution. Industries that failed to reduce emissions would be forced to buy credits from others.

The Democratic-led Senate Environment and Public Works Committee voted eleven to eight, largely along party lines, to send the measure to the full Senate for what supporters hope will be action early next year.

“We are facing a crisis that will hit our children and our grandchildren the hardest if we do not act now. Not to act would be wrong, cowardly, and irresponsible,” said Senator Barbara Boxer, a Californian Democrat, chairwoman of the committee.

Senator Boxer, who is expected to travel to Bali as part of a U.S. congressional delegation next week, said committee approval of the bill sends a signal to the rest of the world that the United States is serious about reducing global warming.

But many Republicans oppose the legislation, saying it would increase energy costs and lead to job losses. They argue the measure does not ensure that other nations, particularly China and India, will cut emissions.

“China’s emission will continue to accelerate as it builds coal plants and imports jobs from the United States. This will be enormously expensive to households within seven years as electricity prices skyrocket by 35 to 65 percent,” said Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the top Republican on the committee.

But co-sponsor Republican Senator John Warner of Virginia, who broke with many in his party to support the measure, offered a different view: “If we do not act, China and India will hide behind America’s skirts of inaction and take no steps of their own. Therefore we simply have to lead,” he said.

The House of Representatives has yet to draft its own version of the legislation.

Monday, September 7, 2015

The US economy added 173,000 jobs in August, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday. The unemployment rate fell from 5.3 to 5.1 percent, the lowest since April 2008.

Although August job gains were lower than most economists forecast, job growth numbers for June and July were revised upwards by a combined 44,000. Average job gains over the past three months stand at 221,000, compared to March-May’s 189,000 monthly average. Over the past twelve months, job growth has averaged 247,000 per month.

Average hourly earnings rose 0.3 percent, or 8 cents, marking the largest increase in earnings in seven months. Hourly earnings had risen by 6 cents in July. Wages have risen by 2.2 percent over the past year.

Job growth in August was primarily concentrated in the health care and social assistance, financial activities, and professional and business services sectors. Those three areas of the economy added a combined 108,000 jobs. Food service and drinking places employment increased by 26,000 over the month, and other economic sectors saw employment hold steady. Manufacturing, on the other hand, saw employment decline by 17,000 in August. A stronger dollar and worldwide economic weakness make US exports less desirable, leading to a flattening in manufacturing employment so far this year after steadily rising in the early years of the US economic recovery.

The solid overall job gains led analysts to slightly raise expectations for a decision by the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates this month. Investors raised the likelihood of a September rate increase from 26 percent before the jobs report to 30 percent, and stocks dropped by over one percent on Friday. “The payrolls data is certainly good enough to allow for a Fed rate hike in September,” said Deutsche Bank’s head of currency strategy, Alan Ruskin. “The big question is still whether financial market volatility will scupper the plans.”

“This is the first time the market has looked at a Fed meeting and really has no idea what the Fed is going to do,” said Mark Kepner, a New Jersey equity trader with Themis Trading. “Right now you’re looking at the overall uncertainty and that’s what’s hanging on the market. I don’t think this number in and of itself changes how somebody’s going to vote.”