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Here is some News
Here is some News |
Cancer Doctor Invites Health Secretary to See Results of Smoking; Wetherspoon to Ban Smoking in its Pubs25 January 2005 A lung cancer expert has invited Health Secretary John Reid to his specialist unit to see the terrible price of high smoking rates in Manchester. Phil Barber, director of the North West Lung Centre, said the time has come for a total smoking ban. He estimates 90% of lung cancer patients are smokers. Once the cancer is diagnosed, there is little hope as only 5 to 10% of patients survive another five years. Dr Barber wants John Reid to see the problem first hand in the hope he will strengthen proposals for a smoking ban in public.
Last year the government pledged to ban smoking in all restaurants and bars that serve food by 2008, but Dr Reid stopped short of a total ban on public places. Dr Barber says this compromise will only lead to more deaths. He said: "A complete ban on smoke-free places, including licensed premises, is the single most important public health measure which any government could undertake. To exclude licensed premises risks the creation of ghettos encompassing the most addicted and also the most disadvantaged members of society." Pub giant JD Wetherspoon is to ban smoking in all 650 of its pubs in May 2006 - two years ahead of the government's ban. Source: Manchester Evening News, 25 January 2005 British Medical Association’s ViewThe BMA supports a ban on smoking in public places on the grounds that such a move would save lives and protect health. At least one thousand people die every year because of second-hand smoke. Passive smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, asthma, respiratory illnesses and ear infections in children. The Prime Minister says he is worried that a ban on smoking in enclosed public places will turn the UK into a nanny state – but the same arguments were made about drink driving and seat belt laws and these are now accepted. Sometimes you need legislation to protect lives and health. Mount Everest Shrinking26 January 2005
The snow-covered mountain top is believed to have declined by 1.3 metres to 8,848 metres, according to state media reports. Mount Everest straddles the border between China and Nepal, and its height has been controversial. The country last surveyed the mountain in 1975, China Daily reported. Geographers will set out on an expedition in March, using radar and global positioning equipment to re-measure the peak, called Mount Qomolangma in Chinese. Officials are worried the snow and ice at the top are melting because of global climate change. Nepalese Sherpas have reported seeing signs of receding snowlines as temperatures warmed. In 1999, researchers in the U.S. calculated the height of Mount Everest to be 8,850 metres. Source: http://www.cbc.ca/story/science/national/2005/ A Very British Mess8 July 2004Metric campaign launched to end British measurements mess An all-party campaign has been launched to end the confusing muddle of different weights and measures (metric and imperial) used in Britain. At a press conference chaired by Lord Howe, the former Conservative Deputy Prime Minister, the UK Metric Association (UKMA) announced the publication of its report “A very British mess”.
Lord Howe, Britain’s first Consumer Affairs Minister in the 1970s, commented: “Plainly we can’t stay where we are, with two confused, competing systems. Magna Carta endorsed the need for only one set of standards. And it would be madness to go backwards. The only solution is to complete the changeover to metric – and as swiftly and cleanly as possible.” The report points out that the changeover to metric was started in 1965 (long before Britain entered the Common Market), and that the slow progress and continuing opposition has been due to the failure of successive governments to attempt to justify the change or educate the public. It calls on the government to:
UKMA hopes that the publication of its report will be a signal to responsible opinion-formers in industry and commerce, the professions, the academic world, politics and the media to put their heads above the parapet and state publicly that the present nonsense has gone on long enough, and that it is time to complete the change that was begun 39 years ago. Robin Paice, Chairman of UKMA, commented: “Of course we understand why some politicians are nervous of this issue, but most people realise that we have to go through with the changeover. It will cause some grumbling, of course, but, as with decimalisation of the currency in 1971, not long after the change, people will wonder what all the fuss was about. So for goodness sake, let’s get it over with!”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3934353.stm http://bookmark.iop.org/bookpge.htm?&isbn=0750310146
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The Government Is Watching You 14 November 2003 The “snoopers' charter” that will see every phone call made, website visited and email sent monitored by the government officially became law in the United Kingdom on 13 November 2003. While the almost universal rejection of the data retention orders from the opposition was widely expected to derail the governments plans, last minute political manoeuvring saw it through the House of Lords. Deputy opposition leader, Baroness Blatch had proposed a “fatality motion” — a way of killing off the Order in an event that happens only a few times in a century — but it was scuppered when the government threatened to return the favour by nixing every Order that any future Tory government tried to pass. And so the proposals were passed unopposed. But a couple of amendments were made that went down well with privacy campaigners: the Interception of Communications Commissioner will now have to have to inform individuals when their privacy has been improperly invaded and Baroness Blatch said that the government would have face a Private Members Bill designed to make the Order more palatable to the opposition. Despite claims from legal authorities that the Order contravenes the European Convention on human rights, the Order will now oblige all communication service providers to keep records of who their customers phoned, where from, who and when they emailed and what websites they visited for 12 months. While the government claims that the Act is necessary for purposes of national security, a number of authorities not known for their anti-terrorist activities, including the ministry for gambling, will be able to get their hands on users details. Simon Davies, head of Privacy International, has vowed to fight the law through the courts and puts its successful political passage through the Lords down to the ISPs themselves: "They have acted in a reprehensible manner all the way through, sitting on the sidelines. They never raised the whole issue of privacy, they just had a fever-like concern to get their costs underwritten by the government", he told silicon.com. "They should hang their heads in shame." James Blessing, technical development at business ISP Zen, says that service providers are caught between a rock and a hard place, defending their users' interests and at the same time having to be seen to be doing the 'right thing'. "With an act like this, you can't fight the idea — you can't turn round and say you won't monitor your users after 9/11— but you can fight bits of the Act, but then you're seen as petty and people think it's just a case of ISPs not wanting to spend money." The Act's passage through the House of Lords wasn't the worst case of political wrangling however. It seems the big names in the ISP world have led the way in smoothing the legislation's path through parliament. Blessing said: "BT couldn't be seen to be objecting, AOL are a bespoke service with filtering and controls already in place, Freeserve don't want to be seen to be kicking up a fuss and with the smaller ISPs, they're just trying to carve out a niche and keep things going." Source: Silicon.com PayPal Mimail Worm Variant on the Loose14 November 2003
Be warned about a new variant of the Mimail worm on the loose that takes victims to a fake PayPal web page in an attempt to steal credit card details. The variant, W32/Mimail-I, hits inboxes with the subject line "Your Paypal.com account expires" and tells the user they need to update their credit card details because of a new security policy being implemented. But in a twist on the spate of “phishing” scams in recent weeks, the email tells the victim not to send personal information via email, saying that email is insecure – and asks them to run an attached program instead. The attached file, www.paypal.com.scr, brings up a pop-up box with a PayPal logo when run that requests a user's credit card details including card number, PIN number and expiry date. Not only are gullible or unsuspecting users fleeced of their credit card details but Mimail-I sends itself to everybody whose email address appears on the victim's hard disk in order to spread itself. David Emm, AVERT marketing manager at McAfee, said the worm is currently rated as low-risk but added that the PayPal element is a new twist. “We have increasingly seen over the last two years things that drop back door trojans onto systems to gather information but this is the first time we have seen it wrapped up with the whole PayPal scam,” he said. Anti-virus firm Sophos reaffirmed its advice to users not to click on web links or attachments sent in emails that claim to come from banks or financial companies and block all Windows programs such as exe, dll, scr, bat and pif files at the email gateway – and of course, update your anti-virus software regularly. Source: Silicon.com The
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© 2004 David King Updated January 27, 2005 All rights reserved. www.kingdavid.org/news.html |
China is sending a team of scientists to re-measure
Mount Everest because they fear climate change is causing the world's
highest peak to shrink.
