anahataenergy.com

Sunday, January 8, 2006 — Original Reporting

A woman in Australia has been killed in a shark attack. The attack occurred at 5pm (Local Time) just off Amity Point, North Stradbroke Island, south-east of Brisbane.

The woman, described as 21, had lost both arms up to the elbow and sustained severe wounds to her torso and legs. She was carried to shore by friends and was then flown by rescue helicopter to the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane. Surgeons were unable to save her.

The woman was holidaying from Brisbane with a church camp and attempts to contact her family have been made.

Emergency Services Rescue Helicopter crew officer Rod Morgan said the woman had suffered massive blood loss.

“She was very pale” he said, “We were diverted right away and were able to be on the scene within minutes and were able to have the patient at hospital within an hour of the attack.”

“She had life threatening injuries she had lost significant amounts of blood and the patient had what we would call an altered level of consciousness where it wasn’t able to communicate directly with the patient” said Queensland Ambulance paramedic Lachlan Parker.

There were many witnesses at the scene and they are now being interviewed by Police at Amity Point. They are described as being distraught.

One witness, who asks to not be identified, described that the victim was swimming in the sea with her Border Collie. When the attack happened, the dog ran home to raise the alarm.

“I was across the road from where she was staying and I saw the dog come flying up the road all wet and shivering and whimpering,” she said, “Then a little boy came running up and said the girl had lost her leg and her arm and everyone ran out of the house towards the beach. It was just a little black-and-white dog but he was crazy so I locked him under the house.”

Other reports claim that the woman had been scuba diving in murky shallow water approximately 15 metres from the shore.

The woman is believed to be from McDowall in Brisbane, but her name has not yet been released.

A resident of Amity Point for 20 years, Brad Ross, said tourists visiting the area have been warned of potential attacks; “The shore just falls away into 30m of water and there are plenty of bull sharks out there. People know when they enter the water there they’re stepping into a shark habitat.”

Other beaches on the island are protected by drum lines.

Queensland state police inspector Peter Harding believes from the severity of the woman’s injuries that she was attacked by a group of bull sharks, a species known for aggressive behavior this time of year. Water police will search for the sharks today and as a result, beaches on the east and west of Amity Point have been closed.

This is the first attack in the area since August 1972.

Local wisdom cautions against allowing dogs in the water at swimming beaches, because of a fear that they attract sharks, perhaps because of residue accumulated from fleas which live on the dog’s blood.

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

The nomination of Judge Michael Mukasey as the next Attorney General of the United States, passed the Senate Judiciary Committee today and will move to a vote before the entire United States Senate. Two Democrats joined the nine Republicans to yield an 11-8 vote. Observers believe that Mukasey will easily succeed in the Senate vote.

The nomination of Mukasey by George W. Bush had originally drawn broad support. Nonetheless, Mukasey triggered a political row, during pre-confirmation questioning, when he refused to state that waterboarding amounted to illegal torture. In the end, he was able secure the votes of the two Democrats after assuring them that, if Congress passed legislation that made waterboarding illegal, he would in fact work to enforce such a law.

Patrick Leahy, Senator from Vermont, who opposed Mukasey said: “Some have sought to find comfort in Judge Mukasey’s personal assurance that he would enforce a future, a new law against waterboarding if this Congress were to pass one. Unsaid, of course, is the fact that any such prohibition would have to be enacted over the veto of the president.”

“Now, I wish I could support Judge Mukasey’s nomination,” Senator Leahy further said. “I like Michael Mukasey. We have many things in common in our past careers. I certainly don’t question his intellectual ability or his independence.”

The two Democrats that voted for Mukasey were Senator Chuck Schumer of New York and Senator Dianne Feinstein of California. Schumer has been reported as suggesting Mukasey as Attorney General to White House during the search for a nominee.

Schumer defended his vote, saying: “If six months from now … the same policies continued, the victory in defeating Mukasey would seem hollow. No one questions that Judge Mukasey would do much to remove the stench of politics from the Justice Department. I believe we should give him that chance.”

Feinstein said that her vote for Mukasey was because, otherwise, Bush could have an acting Attorney General, who would not need confirmation, until the end of his term. In explaing this, she said: “I don’t believe a leaderless department is in the best interests of the American people or of the department itself. [Bush] appointed this man because he believes he is mainstream.”

Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts did not agree with Mukasey’s view on waterboarding. “Waterboarding is already illegal under United States law. It’s illegal under the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit outrages upon personal dignity, including cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment,” he said.

White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said of the committee vote: “Judge Mukasey has clearly demonstrated that he will be an exceptional attorney general at this critical time.”

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Sixteen were wounded, one seriously when a Palestinian rammed a backhoe loader into a bus followed by attacks on several other vehicles Tuesday afternoon in Jerusalem before he was shot dead by the security forces. This is the second such incident in Jerusalem in three weeks. A spokesman for the Israeli police said that a civilian shot the vehicle’s driver but the bulldozer was still running. A police patrol continued shooting until the driver died.

The bulldozer driver who was, according to witnesses, wearing a large white skullcap common to religious Muslims, first hit the No. 13 bus on its side and then chased it while raising the shovel of his front-end loader, the driver managed to make a right turn and get away from the bulldozer which then went on to zig zag across the street and hit further cars until it came to a stop following the driver being gunned down.

Speaking in Amman, United States presidential candidate Barack Obama said: “Today’s bulldozer attack is a reminder of what Israelis have courageously lived with on a daily basis for far too long. I strongly condemn this attack and will always support Israel in confronting terrorism and pursuing lasting peace and security.”

After the attack, which follows a similar attack on July 2, and the indictment of six Israeli-Arabs from Jerusalem accused of belonging to a terrorist cell, Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski, said: “We should reconsider the employment of these people.”

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Yesterday, UK singer Ed Sheeran won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year for his song Thinking Out Loud from his album × ahead of Kendrick Lamar’s Alright; Wiz Khalifa’s, featuring Charlie Puth, See You Again; Little Big Town’s Girl Crush; and Taylor Swift’s Blank Space. Girl Crush won the Grammy Award for Best Country Song.

Welsh singer Amy Wadge co-wrote the song. Sheeran during the ceremony said they wrote the song on a couch in his house. In remarks to the Western Mail, Wadge said the album was already complete when they wrote the song.

Thinking out Loud remained #2 on Billboard Hot 100 for almost two months, and topped the UK rankings last year. Its video song has 969 Million YouTube views and has more than four million likes. The song also won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Solo Performance.

US singer Stevie Wonder announced the winner for the Song of the Year, and the envelope was written in Braille script. He joked about it saying “You can’t read it, you can’t read Braille!”

Along with Ed Sheeran’s first Grammy, Canadians The Weeknd and Justin Bieber won Grammy awards for the first time.

Friday, May 26, 2006

Rail services between Melbourne and Adelaide in Australia are expected to be disrupted until early next week following a fatal crash between a truck and freight train in Lismore, Victoria 170 Km (105 miles) South-West of Melbourne.

The B-Double truck hit the side of a 1,375 metre long freight train at a level crossing at 7:13 a.m. AEST on Thursday in heavy fog, derailing two locomotives and 44 goods wagons. Victorian police said that the truck had been wedged beneath the wreckage of the train.

The driver of the truck, thought to be a 34-year-old man from Wedderburn in Victoria’s North-West died in the crash. The train driver and an observer escaped uninjured. Police said it could take a number of days to retrieve the truck driver’s body. “It could possibly take days to retrieve the body” a Victorian police spokesperson said.

Great Southern Railways, which operates “The Overland” passenger train service between Melbourne and Adelaide said it expected rail services to be disrupted up until early next week. The company will transfer passengers to bus services or allow them to claim a full refund.

The crash will also disrupt freight services between Melbourne and Adelaide.

Local residents and the Victorian opposition are blaming the crash on the level crossing itself, which has no booms, lights or bells.

Rob Dennis, a local resident said the level crossing is the cause of the crash, as it is not fitted with boom gates or flashing lights.

“And it’s a blind turn for anything in a large vehicle,” he said.

Terry Mulder, the opposition’s transport spokesperson said the Bracks Government should have spent part of the $750 million allocated to fast rail projects to upgrading level crossings in Victoria.

“The State Labor Government has wasted $750 million on fast rail projects,” Mr Mulder said.

Mr Mulder said that Victoria has 2,274 level crossings, 1,468 which have no warning systems in place.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Space probe Cassini performed a close flyby of Saturn‘s icy moon Enceladus on Wednesday. The fate of the $3.5 billion mission was in the balance as the bus-sized spacecraft swooped to just 50 km (30 mi) above the surface of Enceladus to sample the frozen spray issuing from geysers on the moon’s surface. The “water” spraying from these geysers is in the form of dust-sized, frozen water particles, which are ejected into space by gaseous water vapors that build up pressure deep within icy fissures on Enceladus.

Cassini’s cosmic dust analyzer was unavailable due to a glitch in the updated software that was supposed to provide an increased hit count of the geyser dust particles. However, dust samples were collected before and after the closest approach and the mass spectrometer functioned throughout the flyby, providing useful data which is now being analyzed.

Mission controllers will have a chance to capture more geyser dust on October 9, 2008 when they may choose to steer Cassini even closer to the surface of Enceladus.

Tidal flexing of this moon due to the gravitational proximity of its host planet, Saturn, continually heaves and cracks the icy surface. This suggests that Enceladus may have a squishy, liquid-water ocean beneath an icy crust. Deep, parallel fissures in the ice crust, dubbed the “Tiger Stripes”, measure warmer than uncracked, stationary surfaces nearby. Friction of these massive, moving plates of ice is thought to provide the heat responsible for the pressurized geysers of sublimated water and ice dust. The presence of these geysers amounts to more empirical evidence of a large, liquid water ocean below the surface of Enceladus.

The Cassini-Huygens space probe is an international mission involving the cooperative efforts of NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency. Launched in 1997, Cassini has orbited Saturn since 2004 but has never before flown so close to a moon. On 14 January 2005, the Huygens lander successfully explored the atmosphere and surface conditions of Saturn’s biggest moon, Titan.