All posts by Admin

Friday, January 25, 2008

Pioneer modern Anaesthetic techniques Thomas Cecil Gray, born 11 March 1913 in Liverpool, died peacefully 5 January 2008 at home in Formby. A requiem mass was held at Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral on 26 January 2008.

Born in Liverpool in 1913, educated at Ampleforth College, he qualified in medicine at The University of Liverpool in 1937. He began his career as a General Practitioner before joining the Royal Army Medical Corps.

He later returned to the University to become Head of the Department of Anaesthesia and was made Dean of the Faculty of Medicine in 1970, retiring in 1976. As Senior Lecturer he established the Department of Anaesthesia at Liverpool University, the ‘Liverpool technique’, based on the triad of unconsciousness, analgesia and muscle relaxation, was developed as a result.

Professor Gray was the editor of the British Journal of Anaesthesia from 1948 to 1964. Until recently Professor Gray continued to give occasional lectures at the university.

Professor Gray was presented with a CBE by Queen Elizabeth and in 1982 was honoured by Pope John Paul II who made him a Commander of the Order of St. Gregory the Great. In 2007 the Liverpool Echo included him in its list of the 800 greatest Liverpudlians, as part of Liverpools 800th anniversary.

Married twice. He married his first wife Marjorie Kathleen Hely in 1937 they had 2 children, she died in 1978; He married Pamela Mary Corning in 1979, they had 1 son. He had four grandchildren.

Thursday, October 6, 2005

Five soldiers in the southern Thailand province of Narathiwat were killed and another two injured in a drive-by attack by suspected Islamic militants.

The attack occurred whilst the soldiers were eating their evening meal. A representative of the Thai army said that the attackers fired assault rifles at the group before fleeing the scene in a pick-up truck. Metal spikes were strewn on the road to foil pursuit. In addition to the deaths, a number of firearms were stolen prior to the insurgents making their escape.

This was the second incident involving suspected Islamic militants on the day prior to Ramadan. Earlier in the day the decapitated body of a middle-aged man was found at a roadside in Yala Province.

Over one thousand people have been killed in insurgency-related incidents in the predominantly Muslim south of Thailand since 2004.

Friday, December 18, 2009

International media attention has been a harsh mistress for 32-year-old Heather Richard of Winnipeg, Manitoba, who gave birth on Sunday while sitting on the toilet. Richard, who believed she was barren and thus assumed she could not be pregnant, thought she was suffering from cramps and a bad bowel movement.

“I kept getting the urge to push and just thought it was a real bad bowel movement,” Richard told the Winnipeg Sun, whose interview was picked up by the Canadian wire service. “It just fell out. I thought it was my intestines, so I’m freaking out…but then it’s a little boy.” Richard realized that the product was a baby and not her insides when its leg twitched.

Relatives of Richard’s found her hysterically crying and pointing at the toilet. “She was crying and saying, ‘Help me, get my baby out of the toilet, he’s drowning,” Keith Richard, her cousin, told the Sun. While the rest of the family was immobile by the revelation, police officers knocked on her front door; she was to be arrested due to outstanding warrants that Richard says have since been cleared.

One officer performed CPR on the baby and it was rushed to the hospital. The baby, since named Isaiah, weighed five pounds, nine ounces, and suffered a skull fracture, presumably as a result of his head hitting the toilet bowl. The baby is in stable condition and Richard is recovering from her birth at home.

The incident spread like wildfire in the Canadian and international press on Tuesday and Wednesday. When asked about the coverage, Richard told the website canoe.ca that she was embarrassed at all the fuss the story generated.

Monday, December 29, 2008

At least nine people have been killed in a two-story house in Covina, California, after a man dressed in a full Santa Claus outfit opened fire at a Christmas Eve party and then set the house ablaze. Covina is a city in Los Angeles County, California about 22 miles (35 km) east of downtown Los Angeles.

According to local police, the Christmas party at the 1100 block of East Knollcrest Drive was attended by about 25 people. Trend News Agency said that the gunman fired two semi-automatic handguns and used an apparently home-made pressurized device to spread some kind of accelerant. As the guests tried in vain to escape, the gunman used his ‘present’ to spray inflammable liquid that started the raging blaze. Reports from the scene said Molotov cocktails were also used by the madman.

Media reports said the gunman was plotting vengeance against his ex-wife. Prime suspect, Bruce Jeffrey Pardo, age 45, six-foot-three-inch, 250 pound (1.9 meter, 113 kilogram), an electrical engineer, is long time Roman Catholic church usher and a laid-off aerospace worker. He worked with ITT Electronic Systems, Radar Systems, in Van Nuys from February 2005 to July 2008, and as an engineer at Northrop Grumman for five months in 2005, according to Court records. He had also worked for about nine years at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena until 1994.

Pardo’s ex-sister-in-law, who escaped from the Covina house alive with her injured daughter, called 911. Police on Friday released her 911 audio.

Msnbc.com has reported that Pardo “has brown hair and blue eyes, and known to frequent La Crescenta and La Verne.” Court records reveal that Mr Pardo’s wife acrimoniously divorced him last September. The divorce decree was finalized December 18. Until earlier this year, he lived in the Sylmar house with his ex-wife and her three children. The marriage lasted barely a year. However, Pardo held no criminal record and had no history of violence.

There is some speculation that the divorce may have been caused by Pardo concealing a paraplegic child from a previous relationship. Matthew, his nine-year-old son, by another former girlfriend, Elena Lucano, became brain damaged when he fell into a backyard swimming pool on Jan. 6, 2001. Pardo kept this child a secret from his wife. Pardo owed her $10,000 as part of the divorce settlement, according to court documents that detailed a bitter split. He also lost a dog he doted on and did not get back a valuable wedding ring. Pardo complained in a court declaration that Sylvia Pardo was living with her parents, not paying rent, and had spent lavishly on a luxury car, gambling trips to Las Vegas, meals at fine restaurants, massages and golf lessons.

After the mass murder, Pardo put on his street clothes and drove his rental Dodge Caliber car to the house of his brother, Jimmy Pardo, in Sylmar, approximately 30 miles away from the crime scene, where he committed suicide from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. His brother was not present in the home and he broke inside to enter in. It was believed that Pardo intended to flee to Canada by plane as he had bought an airline ticket to a flight there from Los Angeles to Moline, Illinois. However due to suffering from severe third-degree burns on both arms stemming from the blaze, he decided to go against the initial plan.

Police had found $17,000 cling-wrapped on his legs inside a girdle, the car key, and his rental car that had been parked on Herrick Avenue, one block from his brother’s house, which had been rigged by remnants of his Santa suit that would ignite a flame and detonate the car with black powder if removed. Also recovered from the scene were four 13-round capacity handguns that were each empty, and at least 200 rounds of ammunition. Suggesting that what had been inside the car was being treated as a threat, police fired an incendiary device into it, destroying and burning it.

The police found on early Thursday, Mr Pardo bore a single gunshot wound to the head. According to LA County coroner’s official Ed Winter, the bodies found in the ashes were “extremely charred and burned.” All three of Sylvia Pardo’s children — Selina, Sal and Amanda — survived. According to the Scott Nord, the Ortega family lawyer, “the entire family was wiped out, and there’s basically like 16 orphans.”

Three other party guests have injuries, according to police. A 16-year-old girl was shot in the back, and an eight-year-old girl suffered facial gunshot wounds that were not life-threatening, while a 20-year-old woman had a broken ankle, after jumping from a second-story window, the police specified. About 80 firefighters put off the fire that soared fifteen metres (40 to 50 feet) high for more than one hour. The police discovered two handguns at the scene, and found two more in the in-laws’ house. Media reports on Friday said the 16-year-old daughter of Sylvia Pardo was released from Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center.

Meanwhile, investigators served a search warrant at Pardo’s Montrose house, where they retrieved evidence of high-octane racing fuel, five empty boxes for semi-automatic handguns, as well as two shotguns.

Covina police Lt. Pat Buchanan on Saturday said they are looking for Pardo’s rented gray 1999 RAV4, with California license plate 5RYD562. Police have found the second rental car Saturday night in a Glendale, California but found no bombs nor any explosives.

The police also revealed Saturday the names of nine people missing since the Christmas Eve massacre occurred. They are Pardo’s ex-wife, Sylvia Pardo, 43; her parents, Joseph Ortega, 80, and Alicia Ortega, 70; Alicia Ortiz, 46, and her son, Michael Ortiz, 17; Sylvia’s brother, Charles Ortega, 50, and his wife, Cheri, 45; another brother, James Ortega, 52, and his wife, Teresa, 51, according to Lt. Buchanan. “Hopefully, we’ll get positive identifications early next week,” Covina Police Chief Kim Raney said.

A murder-suicide is an act in which an individual kills one or more other persons immediately before, or at the same time as, killing him or herself. According to the psychiatrist Karl A. Menninger, murder-suicide or murder and suicide are interchangeable acts – suicide sometimes forestalling murder, and vice versa.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has released a comprehensive report on the current state of the global environment. Climate change, food and water shortage and a decline in biodiversity threaten humanity’s survival, so urgent action is necessary, the report warns.

UNEP’s Global Environment Outlook: environment for development (GEO-4) report involved the work of about 390 experts in various fields from around the world.

While the GEO-4 report salutes some improvements, for example the increased public awareness of environmental issues and political interest, it also warns that “There are no major issues… for which the foreseeable trends are favourable.” Although the report sets out a gloomy scenario, its main aim is to call for action.

Thursday, May 4, 2006

Scientists warn that Mount Merapi, or “The Mountain of Fire,” a large Indonesian volcano on the island of Java is likely to erupt. Molten lava and shallow volcanic earthquakes were recorded on Wednesday, as well as further tremors on Thursday morning.

Mount Merapi is the most active of 130 volcanoes in Indonesia. It is a strato-volcano with an active summit lava dome. It has small eruptions every 3-4 years and larger eruptions every 10-15 years. It has produced more pyroclastic flows, popularly known as heat cloud and magma, than any other volcano in the world. The last fatal eruption happened in 1994, killing 60. During the eruption in 1930, 1,300 people died. Historians say that Mount Merapi has been erupting for 10,000 years.

Mount Merapi is considered very sacred by the locals. According to the local folk-lore the volcano’s eruption is the result of spirits being angered by not receiving sufficient offerings or by a disrespectful attitude among the people in slopes. 27,000 locals in 3 villages could be affected by this eruption. Scientists gave a warning of eruption a fortnight back and asked for immediate evacuation. The nearest city is Yogyakarta. The awesome sight of the erupting volcano has attracted many tourists and locals.

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

A Knoxville, USA woman has sold her name on eBay and received an offer. Terri Iligan, age 33, will legally be named “goldenpalace.com” after the required legal work is complete.

The casino owning the website paid $15,199 over the eBay auction service.

She said that she got the idea when trying to find how much it would cost to send one of her children to a golf school previously attended by Tiger Woods.

In an interview by Knoxville TV station WATE, she said, “To my kids and to my husband, I will always be Terri.” As to the opinion of her husband and children, she said, “He thinks it’s funny. As long as they get to call me mom, they don’t care.”