Monday, January 7, 2008

The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing arguments on the constitutionality of the use of lethal injection as a method for the imposition of the death penalty in the United States. Two men, Ralph Baze and Thomas Clyde Bowling Jr., who were convicted of murder in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and sentenced to death, sued the state in 2004 arguing that the use of lethal injection as a method of imposition of capital punishment violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

Thirty-seven states and the Federal Government have capital punishment for some crimes, all except Nebraska (which uses electrocution) use lethal injection. The process uses three chemicals in a “cocktail”, which, by the procedures that are used to apply them to the condemned, (three injections given consecutively) allegedly “create a significant and unnecessary risk of inflicting severe pain that could be prevented by the adoption of reasonable safeguards”, their lawyers said in court papers. “Kentucky seeks to execute in a relatively humane manner and has worked hard to adopt such a procedure,” Kentucky Attorney General Gregory Stumbo has said. The state has also argued in its brief against supporting the plaintiffs’ appeal that it will lead to “an endless road of litigation. … Condemned inmates will never run out of ideas for changes to the procedures, drugs or equipment used during lethal injection.”

Baze was scheduled to be executed on January 8 after Governor of Kentucky Ernie Fletcher signed his death warrant, but the Kentucky Supreme Court suspended his execution on September 12, 2007, arguing it needed more time to examine arguments he had made in a separate appeal. He was convicted of killing Powell County Sheriff Steve Bennett and Deputy Arthur Briscoe in 1992 while the lawmen were trying to serve him with arrest warrants. Bowling was convicted of killing Edward and Tina Earley in Louisville in 1990.

According to the article on lethal injection in Wikipedia, the three chemicals used are Sodium thiopental to render the offender unconscious; Pancuronium/Tubocurarine: to stop all muscle movement except the heart, causing muscle paralysis, collapse of the diaphragm, and would eventually cause death by asphyxiation; and Potassium chloride to stop the heart. The chemicals apparently cannot be combined together as they could precipitate into a solid and be ineffective. It is argued that thiopental is a very short-term anesthetic and may wear off during the procedure, causing anesthesia awareness and excruciating pain from the effects of the other drugs.

In oral hearings today, the justices seemed skeptical that the chemical concoction causes extreme pain or that a better method was available. A lawyer for one of the plaintiffs argued that if insufficient anesthetic is given, when the inmate is given the paralyzing drug, they will experience agonizing pain, but be unable to react, and that it is even illegal in Kentucky to euthanize animals in this fashion. Some of the justices have considered sending the case back for further hearings to determine if a single barbiturate would be superior to the current method.

While the Supreme Court has examined the application of the death penalty many times over the past 40 years, this is the first time the court has reviewed the issue of the method of execution in 100 years, according to lawyers for the plaintiffs. A ruling is not expected until June. There are about 3,000 people on death row in the United States, and about 60 are executed each year. Since the case was accepted by the Supreme Court, all executions in the United States have been temporarily suspended pending the decision.

The case name is Baze v. Rees.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

At the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities (SARM) conference, a resolution was passed that encourages the Government of Saskatchewan, Canada to place a moratorium on specialty livestock farms raising wild boar. All wild boars that have escaped to roam wild should be killed, according to the resolution.

Agriculture Minister Bob Bjornerud endorses a ban on wild boar farming. The wild boar population is expanding exponentially. There are over 2,000 feral Sus scrofa swine roaming the prairies. Two litters of approximately 12 piglets are sired by each wild boar sow every year. The Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation (SWF) likewise passed a similar resolution at their 79th annual convention to urge the Saskatchewan Government to declare the wild boar as a nuisance species which can be killed on sight.

3% of farmed “wild” boars escape. Cells of wild boars are ravenous creatures killing and eating everything in their path. Horses, cows, and other livestock run from wild boars, breaking through fences in the process.

Ostriches, emus, llamas, alpacas, reindeer, wild boar, and fallow deer were amongst the animals introduced to farms in Saskatchewan during the agricultural diversification program in the late 1970s. Production of wild boars was promoted throughout the 1980s.

According to the Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food 2001 statistics, there were 150 wild boar producers raising approximately 15,000 and 20,000 head. Of these there were about 2,700 sows. On the 2006 Census of Agriculture, 401 farms reported 4,926 boars.

The boar’s red meat is an export commodity to Europe and Asia. The live breeding stock are also sold to trophy hunt ranches. Full blooded wild boar and hybrid crosses are raised.

Thursday, June 15, 2006

One hundred and twenty detainees at an immigration removal centre in Oxford, UK, are on hunger strike. The protest started when some detainees refused breakfast on Wednesday 14th June 2006. A letter from the hunger strikers explaining why they are seeking to draw attention to their plight in this way has been reproduced in full below.

Those detained at the centre are mostly men who have sought asylum in the UK and whose asylum applications have been rejected. These people are then held without knowing how long they will be detained for – some end up being held for many years while awaiting deportation.

The removal centre, known as Campsfield, or Campsfield House is approximately 5 miles north of Oxford and has been in operation since 1993. It was managed on behalf of the UK Government by Global Solutions Limited, until may 2006 when it was taken on by GEO UK, the centre has a capacity of 198. Only males are detained at Campsfield.

According to the campaign group Barbed Wire Britain Over 2,600 individuals, mostly asylum seekers, are detained indefinitely in the UK without trial and with no automatic right to bail.

There have been reports in the UK press of the state taking people to detention centres without notice, in the early hours of the morning using excessively heavy handed tactics, taking children out of schools and separating families.

Many UK people and politicians express their disgust at the way detainees are treated, yet it continues. Perhaps this action by the detainees themselves will further highlight their plight and result in more UK electors writing to their MPs and demanding improvements to the way in which rejected asylum seekers are treated.

“We are detainees at Campsfield removal centre in Oxford. Most of us have been here for a long while now. There are people who have been detained for up to two years and down to three months. We are cramped in here like animals. We are treated like animals and moved around different detention centres like animals. The immigration service have taken husbands from their families and taken people who ran away from persecution in their various countries, and dumped everyone in here.

Once you are put in here the immigration service forget you. There are detainees who have applied to go back to their own countries that are still being held here for months without any news about their cases, just so that the private security companies get more money.

Detainees are asked to seek asylum and then refused. The immigration service also ask detainees to apply for bail. When you get a bail hearing date all of a sudden they serve you with removal papers that are not valid. There are many of these situations. In most cases the immigration service don’t take you to your court hearings. And then they tell the judges you refused to turn up, just so the hearing goes ahead in your absence. Many detainees have been served with removal papers and travel documents but nothing happens on the removal day.

Campsfield has become a slave house. We detainees are treated like slaves, to do odd jobs for officers. Detainees are handcuffed to see doctors or dentists in hospitals or clinic appointments. We have some racist security officers who make racist comments to detainees and go out of their way to make you feel like committing suicide. Detainees have to be at the point of death before they get to see the doctors.

The food is not worth eating. Even dogs would refuse to eat what we eat. But we don’t have a choice; every single day we eat the same food (the food we eat is rice, chicken, sandwiches, and left-over eggs)”.

• “120 Immigration Detainees on Hunger Strike at Campsfield IRC” — Oxford Indymedia, June 14, 2006
• UK Home Office webpage on Campsfield
• Close Campsfield Campaign
• “Dawn raid furore family deported” — BBC, September 29, 2005
• Barbed Wire Britain
• “Asylum seekers on hunger strike” — BBC, July 14, 2005
• “Construction/Building Press Releases” — PR Newswire, Oct 01, 2005

Saturday, June 29, 2013

Fiji’s national airline Air Pacific has now officially returned to its original name: Fiji Airways. Fiji Airways adopted the Air Pacific name in 1971, slightly prior to its first international flight on June 3, 1973. The re-brand was described by interim CEO Aubrey Swift as allowing the airline to align itself “closer with Fiji as a destination”. The name change is designed in part to reduce the confusion which surrounded the name Air Pacific. Swift noted that “Air Pacific just didn’t resonate with our customers” and said that same people “thought we were an air conditioning company”.

Along with the name change, the airline has redesigned its website, and changed the name of each of its classes of service. Pacific Voyager and Tabua Class have been replaced with economy and business class respectively. The airline has also introduced plans to overhaul its fleet of older Boeing 747s with Airbus A330s. It has said that the completion of this overhaul and the re-branding efforts will be completed by the end of the year.

The airline’s new brand-mark and livery features a masi design created by Fijian artist, Makereta Matemosi. The new identity is to “symbolises the airline’s new identity and epitomises all that Fiji Airways represents. It is authentic, distinctive, and true to the airline’s Fijian roots”, the airline said.

Friday, July 6, 2007

The first female Chief Justice of Ghana, Georgina Theodora Wood was among 77 others who received national awards in Accra today. The awards are for distinguished services to Ghana.

Georgina Wood, who became Chief Justice on June 15, 2007, received her award from President John Kufuor. She was given the Order of the Star of Ghana, the nation’s highest award. Two others who received this award as well were Dr Paul Acquah, Governor of the Bank of Ghana and the Omanhene (King) of the Juaben Traditional Area, Nana Otuo Serebour II, a former head of Ghana’s Statistical Service, for his contribution to industry and public service (traditional category).

President Kufuor is quoted as saying at the award ceremony that “Like the Olympic medalist, we should seek to surpass existing limits to set new records hitherto deemed unattainable. This way, Africa, including Ghana, can excel in the competition and thereby carve a dignified niche for itself in the Global Village.”

As Dr. Paul Acquah received the award, the audience shouted “The value is the same” which is the catchphrase for the Ghanaian cedi redenomination in process at present. Nana Otuo Serebour did a short Adowa dance much to the admiration of the audience. The loudest ovation was however reserved for Georgina Wood as she received her award. Professor Atukwei Okai, a writer, poet and educationist, recited a poem which translates as “You are because we are”.

Other awards given out were the in the Order of the Volta (Companion), Order of the Volta (Member) and the Grand Medal categories. Among the winners were Paul Victor Obeng, influential member of Jerry Rawlings’ military government in the 1990s, Dr G.K. Agama, a former governor of the Bank of Ghana, Ike Quartey, former WBA welterweight champion. Some popular musicians, including Nana Kwame Ampadu, Kofi Ghanaba, Diana Akiwumi, Pat Thomas and Sidiku Buari also received honours.

Friday, August 24, 2007

Just before midnight Wednesday, four-year-old Taylor Bailey, nicknamed Bucky, was attacked by a neighbor’s dog. The Staffordshire Bull Terrier mix named Money chased the boy after he stepped out of his mother’s car, eventually knocking the boy to the ground and latching onto his leg.

The same dog had bitten the boy’s father the week before, according to the family, although this has not been confirmed by police. He recognized the dog and alerted his mother to the dogs presence just moments before the attack. She urged her son to come to her, but the one-year-old, 85-pound (~39 kg) male broke free from his restraints and attacked the screaming boy.

The struggle lasted several minutes before the boy’s mother, Melinda Walters, was able to fight off the dog, leaving her knees scraped and thigh scratched. The boy’s legs were punctured, scratched and bruised with bits of flesh missing. “It didn’t go away. It was just trying to grab me … trying to kill me,” the boy said. Walters was carrying her three-year-old son Jason on her hip during much of the fight.

The dog’s owner, Marquita Mooney, 23, was ticketed along with a relative who was watching the dog. She said that rather than register the dog as a potentially dangerous animal—which involves an insurance bond, fees, kennel requirements and more—she would have the dog put down. Police reports indicate that the dog bit two other dogs about two weeks ago. Mooney has been ticketed for both incidents.

This is the second such incident in Minneapolis this month—seven-year-old Zach King Jr. was attacked and killed in his home last week by his family’s pit bull—fueling the debate over banning pit bulls and other “dangerous breeds” in some communities. Since 1966, there have been four other deaths from dog attacks in Minnesota, all but one of which were of children seven-years-old or younger.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

The 28th-annual COMPUTEX Taipei show, the second largest IT show in the world, is the largest one since they held their first show in 1982 since expanding to TWTC Nangang. Not only were vast ICT products showcased from upper, mid, and lower-stream vertical and horizontal OEMs, OBMs, and world-class stellar companies like Intel, AMD, ASUS, Foxconn, Acer, BenQ, and Kingston, but also featured products related to green technology. Companies from Korea will be hosting the biggest international pavilion to catch the buyers’ eyes.

The Taipei Computer Association (TCA), one of the show organizers, will hold the 2008 WiMAX Taipei Expo at the Taipei Show Hall 2. It will allow the networking industry to chain the WiMAX Pavilion located in the TWTC Nangang and echo the basic infrastructure construction of WiMAX.

Organizing the show and promoting the ICT industry are considered major tasks by newly-elected President of the Republic of China Ying-jeou Ma. Pavilions like “mega trends”, “multimedia”, and “green technology” will be re-arranged to host trendy and energy-efficient products launched prior to this show.

According to Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA), there were several seminars like “e21 Forum”, “DRAMeXchange Forum”, “Next Generation Networks Taipei”, “Taiwan Design Center Forum”, “CE Summit”, “Green IT Forum” held at the Taipei International Convention Center. TWTC Nangang was organized for buyers and companies to glance the vision of global ICT industry during the show hours. Since Jonney Shih, Chairman of ASUStek, showcased Eee PC before its launch during 2007 e21 Forum, seminars were progressively respected by industrial businessmen, especially international buyers.

Not only will there be a senior competition – Best Choice of COMPUTEX, mainly promoted by the TCA, but also the TAITRA will cooperate with International Forum Design (iF) holding the “Design and Innovation Award of COMPUTEX”. Its goals aims at discovering innovative and brand-new IT products to elevate the notability of Taiwan’s innovations.

TAITRA and TCA, the organizers, promised to do the be the best at services for transportation (Shuttle Buses, Taxis, MRT, International Airlines), living (Hotels), networking (TAITRA Lounge), and business (Trade Opportunity Rooms and Business Center) for the best quality of COMPUTEX.