Saturday, February 11, 2006

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon underwent emergency surgery at Hadassah Medical Center in Israel to treat intestinal damage revealed by a recent computed tomography, better known as a CT scan. The Chief Surgeon said, “Sharon is out of danger, for the moment. His condition is stable and the surgery was a success.” Sharon is currently in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the hospital.

Yesterday doctors treating Sharon had noticed a swollen abdomen and ordered a CT scan on his torso and found the damage to his intestine. Later tests had shown that part of the large intestine had developed necrosis and needed to be immediately removed.

Hospital director Shlomo Mor-Yosef stated a press conference that there were “no complications” during surgery. “His (Sharon’s) key problem is lack of consciousness. There is no significant change in his condition. Doctors did not find any occluded artery and there were no blood vessels blocked. He is stable but in critical condition at this time and he is in no immediate danger at this moment.”

Yosef also said that Sharon’s sons and family had met earlier and decided to go forward with the surgery and treatment.

Doctors removed at least 50cm of Sharon’s large intestine.

Yosef also said that possible reasons as to why Sharon’s intestine was damaged were, “maybe infection or decline of blood supply to the intestine.” Yosef also said that the surgery was both a “routine procedure” and “not a dramatic” one. “Hospitals perform these operations sometimes two or three times a day,” he added.

Yael Bossem-Levy, a spokesman for Hadassah Medical Center said earlier that, “the prime minister’s life is in danger. His condition is now very serious, or critical. Sharon’s digestive tract has undergone severe deterioration while he’s been unconscious, and there appears to be a blockage in his blood circulation. The restricted blood flow raised the possibility of necrosis, or death of tissue, in the intestines.”

Levy also stated that Sharon’s condition has “deteriorated to its most critical point since his admission.”

The 77 year-old leader has been hospitalized since January 4th, after suffering a massive stroke which left him comatose. This is his seventh surgery since his hospitalization.

Sharon has been hospitalized for thirty-nine days, and has been on a feeding tube for two weeks.

Monday, August 15, 2005

In the city of Grozny in Chechnya, a car bomb may have killed a 10-12 year old boy and/or a 20 year old man and a woman (sources differ). The explosion wounded two other people. Grozny is the capital of Chechnya, where rebels have been waging a campaign for independence from Russia.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Chinese officials have said that their country’s exports surged last December to edge out Germany as the world’s biggest exporter.

The official Xinhua news agency reported today that figures from the General Administration for Customs showed that exports jumped 17.7% in December from a year earlier. Over the whole of 2009 total Chinese exports reached US$1.2 trillion, above Germany’s forecast $1.17 trillion.

Huang Guohua, a statistics official with the customs administration, said the December exports rebound was an important turning point for China’s export sector. He commented that the jump was an indication that exporters have emerged from their downslide.

“We can say that China’s export enterprises have completely emerged from their all-time low in exports,” he said.

However, although China overtook Germany in exports, China’s total foreign trade — both exports and imports — fell 13.9% last year.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Rico Daniels is a British TV presenter living in France who is known for his two television series — The Salvager — whilst he still lived in the UK and then Le Salvager after he moved to France. Rico has been in a variety of jobs but his passion is now his profession – he turns unwanted ‘junk’ into unusual pieces of furniture. Rico’s creations and the methods used to fabricate them are the subject of the Salvager shows.

Rico spoke to Wikinews in January about his inspiration and early life, future plans, other hobbies and more. Read on for the full exclusive interview, published for the first time:

Monday, August 21, 2006

John Mark Carr, the man who has been accused of killing six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey ten years ago, has arrived in the US after being extradited from Bangkok in Thailand.

The forty-one year-old American schoolteacher was escorted by US security officials from Bangkok, but officers from the Los Angeles Police Department accompanied him after he went through customs. He was then whisked off in a helicopter and taken to the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown Los Angeles.

“Mr. Karr is expected to remain in the custody of local authorities while the Boulder District Attorney’s Office seeks his extradition to Colorado,” a statement from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.

In a press conference on Wednesday, Karr confessed to being with JonBenét when she died, adding that her death was an accident. “I was with JonBenét when she died. I loved JonBenét. She died accidentally. I am so very sorry for what happened to JonBenét. It’s very important for me that everyone knows that I love her very much, that her death was unintentional, that it was an accident.”

Despite his confession, Karr’s then ex-wife said that he was in Alabama with her when the murder occurred.

JonBenét was found beaten and strangled in her Colorado home on the day after Christmas in 1996.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Mauritanian refugees stuck in Senegal for nearly two decades after fleeing ethnic clashes in their home country have begun returning to Mauritania under a U.N.-sponsored program. But many do not want to return.

There were goodbye ceremonies and welcoming ceremonies attended by officials on both sides of the Senegal River as more than 100 former refugees were ferried on motorized pirogues.

A spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency, Alphonse Munyaneza, explained international funding will help pay for resettlement.

“Each refugee returning back to Mauritania will receive a piece of land equivalent to 140 square meters for establishing a house. UNHCR and the government of Mauritania will provide construction material so that they can build a house,” explained Munyaneza. “We will provide three months of food ration. We will provide a tent also.”

Mauritanian refugee children broke out in song and laughter when officials arrived at their camps close to the border to get the process going.

There are more than 20,000 Mauritanian refugees in Senegal. Officials say the return program will extend over 18 months.

One of those happy to go is Haddy Sy. She says she left Mauritania after she was beaten up. This took place during a wave of ethnic violence that began in Arab Moor-dominated Mauritania in 1989 and escalated into border clashes, forcing tens of thousands of black, mostly ethnic Fula, Mauritanians into exile.

In the late 1990s, more than 30,000 refugees returned by their own means and some U.N. assistance.

Sy says she is leaving behind many good things in Senegal, including a peaceful setting, but that she is still happy to return to her home country.

Since taking office last year, the government of the elected, post-coup President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi has been making efforts to bring home the refugees, including several thousand more in Mali.

But many in Senegal do not want to return home, like Yaraah Sow, who lives in the Dagana refugee camp about 400 kilometers northwest of Dakar.

He says he is still very bitter about what happened nearly 20 years ago. He said his father, who was a civil servant, was attacked by a mob and died of internal bleeding at the gates of a hospital after doctors refused to treat him.

Sow accuses the military of seizing all his family’s property. He says that two of his younger brothers died on the trip to Senegal. He says his children are now going to school and that they are better off in Senegal.

One of the refugee leaders, Mohamed Ali Sow, who left when he was 10, says he is studying at a university in Senegal to become a lawyer to defend the rights of chased out Mauritanians.

He says the return program has been rushed, because he says people who had their property seized, houses burned, and jobs taken away, should have guarantees these will be restored. He says until then, he does not think it is wise to go back.