Canada’s west coast battles high winds

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Currently, there are blackouts, heavy rain, and high winds in British Columbia. Over 220,000 BC Hydro customers have no power. Buildings have already collapsed and trees have been knowed down. Five Vancouver rivers were in danger of flooding, which rain fell at 10 mm an hour for more than six hours at midday.

The steel frame of a four-storey building under construction in Vancouver collapsed. Construction workers escaped injury, luckily they were on a coffee break at the time of the incident. The steel frame crushed cars in a parking lot and missed a truck driver.

Citizens had to evacuate a subdivision of 30 homes. The winds smashed trees into houses in West Vancouver.

“We have some real fears here with electrical problems,” said Captain Rob Jones Cook of the Vancouver Fire Department. “This is impinging on electrical poles and lamp standards. We also have hydro bus lines running down two sides of the building.” The Vancouver Fire Department says they have no idea as to why the building collapsed.

Winds are gusting at more than 100 kilometres an hour (62 mph) in some areas and rainfall amounts of 50 to 130 millimetres.

According BC Hydro spokeswoman Elisha Moreno, the hardest-hit areas are Vancouver, Surrey, Langley, Abbotsford and Mission, B.C. “We’re trying to be optimistic and hoping it’s by end of day today, but there may very well be customers that are into the early-morning hours before restoration,” Moreno said.

Extensive ferry cancellations, road closures, and massive power outages are in effect until the storm ends.

The RCMP have advised people to stay home and off the highway.

The same heavy weather has also affected nearby Washington State, USA.

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Canadian woman faces 234 counts of double-doctoring

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Brampton, Ontario woman Wendy Grant, 41, is facing 234 charges of double-doctoring after obtaining prescriptions for 6000 pills. The Ontario Provincial Police also charged her with fraud charge after allegedly obtaining false prescriptions for a narcotic, that werefraudulently billed to the Ontario Drug Benefits Plan.

From February to May, Grant obtained pills from 28 doctors and 22 pharmacies in Peel and Halton regions.

The Workers’ Compensation Board of Nova Scotia defines “double doctoring” “as a situation where a [person] seeks or obtains a prescription for a controlled drug or narcotic from more than one doctor to treat the same condition for the same period of time.”

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Business Continuity And Payment Systems

The Bank for International Settlements definition of a payment system states; A payment system consists of a set of instruments, banking procedures and, typically, interbank funds transfer systems that ensure the circulation of money (From A glossary of terms used in payments and settlement systems, Committee on Payment & Settlement Systems. BIS, Basel. March 2003).

Despite this we often associate the word system with only the technology; the bits and bites, the hardware and the software. We tend to forget that there is a lot more that goes into making up a payment system.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25EhtuE3XkE[/youtube]

A further problem is the users perspective, and in the case of a bank this is often from that banks own point of view a view that only concerns the bank itself. The outside world is seen as exogenous to the banks system. This is often the view taken when considering such critical issues as disaster recovery and business continuity planning. What is often overlooked is the big picture the users, the clearing system and the settlement agent.

This total picture is something that was very clearly illustrated in the effect that the events of 9/11 had on the payments system in the United States generally, but more specifically in lower Manhattan. The aftermath of the 9/11 events clearly illustrated this – that disaster recovery and business continuity planning had been too focused on single localized events and assumed that all the other system components would remain intact.

The major lessons learned were;

  • Business continuity planning failed to take into account the possibility of wide-area disasters and for the major loss of or inaccessibility of critical staff
    • At many organizations contingency planning had generally concentrated on problems with a single building or system.
    • Some firms maintained their backup facilities in nearby buildings, assuming that an event might debilitate or destroy a single facility.
    • Very few firms planned for an emergency that would disrupt whole business district or city. This led certain firms to loose access to both their main and backup facilities following 9/11 attacks.
    • Generally firms had also not considered the possibility that transportation of staff could be significantly disrupted and that their ability to move personnel to an alternative location would become extremely difficult or impossible.
  • The market and geographical focus intensified the effect of operational disruptions
    • Those financial institutions that were significantly concentrated within the geographic area in New York City were most affected by the devastation at the World Trade Center. This was made worse by the fact that some had consolidated their staff in one or two locations for efficiency purposes.
    • Certain critical market functions, especially in the clearing and settlement of funds, securities, and financial contracts, depend on a small number of specialist organizations each with their own operations in a concentrated area.
    • There were major weaknesses in telecommunications capabilities because of these concentrations. Many firms believed they had full redundancy in their communications systems because they had arrangements with multiple telecommunications providers or because they had contracted for diverse routing, only to discover that all of the communication lines traveled through any of several single points of failure.
  • There was a strong interdependence among financial system participants irrespective of where they were located
    • While financial institutions situated outside the New York City area were affected to a much lesser degree than were those inside it, many felt the effects of the disaster.
    • Most financial factors lost the ability to connect to banks, brokers and other organizations in lower Manhattan. This blocked their ability to conduct business and establish whether transactions had been completed as anticipated.
    • Some customers were affected by actions of institutions with which they did not even do business, when funds or securities could not be delivered due to operational problems at other institutions.
    • The suspension of all commercial flights had serious implications for the clearing of cheques.
    • In the post-9/11 world there is a clear understanding that the financial system has many components, and they all have to work. It is the big picture, not the narrow own view that has to be planned for.

Business continuity planning needs to be made far more robust. Revised plans should include the ability for a rapid resumption of critical operations following the loss or inaccessibility of staff in at least one major operating site; or following a wide-scale, regional disruption. It is vital that all critical internal and external continuity arrangements are effective and compatible.

Gregory Kurtzer discusses plans for Rocky Linux with Wikinews as Red Hat announces moving focus away from CentOS

Friday, December 18, 2020

Last week, on December 8, US-based software company Red Hat announced plans to shift their focus away from CentOS in favour of CentOS stream.

Started in 2004, CentOS has been a free-of-cost free/libre open source software which provided binary-code compatibility with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) — Red Hat’s GNU General Public Licensed paid operating system. Gregory Kurtzer told Wikinews he started CAOS Linux around the time when Red Hat announced End of Life for their Red Hat Linux in favour of subscription-based Red Hat Enterprise Linux. CAOS was succeeded by CentOS when Rocky McGaugh, a developer of CAOS rebuilt the source code of RHEL to provide a monetarily free alternative. CentOS was absorbed into Red Hat in 2014, with Red Hat gaining the trademark rights of “CentOS”.

Red Hat also sponsors the development of the Fedora operating system. Until now, software development took place on Fedora, which was later adopted in RHEL, which the Red Hat maintained and provided support for, for those customers who had RHEL subscription. CentOS would then follow RHEL’s release cycle to provide the same features free of cost, but without the support.

Stream was announced in September 2019, just two months after Red Hat was acquired by IBM. CentOS Stream’s development cycle had new features added to it before the features became a part of RHEL. Stream receives more frequent updates, however, it does not follow RHEL’s release cycle.

With CentOS Stream, developments from the community and the Red Hat employees would take place beforehand on both Fedora, and Stream as a rolling release, before those features are absorbed into RHEL. CentOS followed the release cycle of RHEL and therefore it was a stable distribution. Features available in CentOS were tried and tested by Fedora, and then RHEL maintainers.

Red Hat’s Chief Technical Officer Chris Wright wrote in the announcement “CentOS Stream isn’t a replacement for CentOS Linux; rather, it’s a natural, inevitable next step intended to fulfill the project’s goal of furthering enterprise Linux innovation.” Since the announcement was made, many people expressed their anger on Internet Relay Chat (IRC), Reddit and CentOS project’s mailing list. CentOS 8’s End of Life (EOL) has been moved up from May 2029 to December 31, 2021, while CentOS 7 is expected to receive maintenance updates through June 2024, outliving CentOS 8.

Soon after Red Hat’s announcement, Kurtzer announced his intentions to develop Rocky Linux, to fill the role CentOS had been playing for so long. Kurtzer said Rocky Linux was named after Rocky McGaugh. “Thinking back to early CentOS days… My cofounder was Rocky McGaugh. He is no longer with us, so as a H/T [hat tip] to him, who never got to see the success that CentOS came to be, I introduce to you…Rocky Linux”, Kurtzer wrote. Wikinews discussed with Kurtzer the beginning of CentOS, and future of Rocky Linux.

While no formal date of release has been announced for Rocky Linux, Kurtzer said they are planning to release the CentOS replacement before the end of life of CentOS 8. Kurtzer also said Rocky Linux will run on both x86-64 and ARM-based processors, and CentOS users would be able to convert their OS to Rocky Linux just by running a single command.

Saying Rocky Linux is for the community, Kurtzer said he “take[s] the responsibility of ensuring that all decisions are in favor of the community and the project and free from corporate control” including his own company. Talking about the attention from the userbase Rocky Linux has received, Kurtzer said, “I have never seen an open community come together this fast and be this passionate about working together towards a common goal.”

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Gregory_Kurtzer_discusses_plans_for_Rocky_Linux_with_Wikinews_as_Red_Hat_announces_moving_focus_away_from_CentOS&oldid=4602939”

News briefs:April 16, 2010

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Need To Breakup But Can’t? How To End A Relationship When You’re Too Scared To Leave

By Michael Freeman, M.A.

Do you feel like your partner is standing in your way? Do you have the strong desire to break-up, but you feel stuck? This article discusses what to do when you want to break-up, but — for whatever reason — you can’t.

– Why Can’t You Leave? –

Relationships are a choice. Or at least, they should be. Sometimes, we realize that a relationship is no longer working, but we stay anyway. There are many reasons why people stay stuck in relationships they no longer want, including:

* Guilt — You can’t bear the thought of hurting our parnter

* Loyalty — You’ve invested so much and have a long history with them, even if it’s a bad history

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHiAtlg4FLI[/youtube]

* Misplaced priorities — You feel that your partner’s needs are more important than your own

* Expectations – – You don’t want to disappoint your family or your partner’s family by breaking up

* Financial or logistical reasons — You don’t have the money to leave, you live together, or you have a child together (sometimes a good reason to maintain a relationship, but not always)

* He or she will “freak out” — You fear your partner’s reaction to the news

If your partner stands in the way of you living a fulfilling life, you probably need to leave. That doesn’t mean disregarding commitments and responsibilities, but if you should never feel trapped in a life you don’t want. All relationships require some amount of sacrifice, but giving up the possibility for happiness is not part of the deal.

Many people find themselves staying simply for their partner’s benefit. This is a mistake — it’s not only unfair to you, it’s unfair to your partner, who deserves someone who truly wants to be with him or her.

– Taking the first step –

Leaving may seem impossible at times, but you can do it, regardless of your circumstances. The first step is accepting that you will have to take action to change your situation. The longer you wait, the more invested in the relationship you both become. You’re wasting you and your partners time.

You probably have been thinking of different disaster scenarios that may happen when you leave. Stop! It’s not going to be nearly as bad as you imagine. Yes, hurt feelings are often inevitable, but with just a little planning and consideration, you can guarantee that you can breakup without fear.

– What now? –

Have the courage to at least explore the possibility that there is a way to breakup without fear — you won’t regret it. If you feel stuck in an unhappy relationship, and you don’t know how to get out, see my resources. My breakup guides will lead you step-by-step in the break up process, minimizing pain for you both. Stop imaging the worst — get my guide and get on with your life: See the websites listed below.

About the Author: Michael Freeman, M.A., helps women and men get FREEDOM from unhappy relationships. Ladies can find breakup guidance

breakup guidance

:www.LeavingHim.com , and men can find

breakup advice

here: www.LeavingHer.com

Source:

isnare.com

Permanent Link:

isnare.com/?aid=394172&ca=Break-up

Dead children found in car in Sussex, UK

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

The bodies of two children were found this morning in a car in Heathfield, East Sussex, in the United Kingdom. A 43-year-old woman has been arrested on suspicion of the murders.

The boy and girl were both less than five years old, and were discovered at 11:46 this morning (GMT) when Sussex police officers forced their way into the vehicle, which was parked on Mill Close in Heathfield. The woman, who has yet to be identified, had visited Heathfield police station earlier this morning to report “an incident”, and was later arrested on suspicion of murder. The police say that they have identified the bodies. The identities will be revealed when the post mortem examinations take place, which is scheduled for next Thursday.

I would like to reassure people that it is fully contained and there is no threat to anyone in the area

The woman was taken to Eastbourne District General Hospital, and has not yet been interviewed by the police. She is believed to be from Surrey but have connections with the Heathfield area. Mill Close, the road on which the incident occurred, has been closed, according to a police spokeswoman, who said, “An investigation is now under way and the area around the scene is cordoned off.” Chief Inspector Julia Pope, Wealden district policing commander, said, “This is a very tragic incident, but I would like to reassure people that it is fully contained and there is no threat to anyone in the area. We will move to restore normality and access to Mill Close as quickly as possible.” A spokesman for the South East Coast Ambulance Service said, “We sent an ambulance and two response cars but sadly two young children were pronounced dead at the scene.”

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Dead_children_found_in_car_in_Sussex,_UK&oldid=3844137”

Category:Health

This is the category for Health.

Refresh this list to see the latest articles.

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  • 21 March 2021: European Medicines Agency calls AstraZeneca vaccine “safe and effective”
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Study Finds Increased Mesothelioma Death Rates In A Group Of Shipyard Workers

By Sam Gurgis

A recent study conducted on workers in a US Coast Guard shipyard has found a significantly greater mortality rate associated with lung cancer and mesothelioma compared to the general population. The study also found an increased general mortality rate.

The study followed 4702 (4413 men and 289 women) civilian workers who were employed at the shipyard between January 1950 and December 1964. The study then measured the number of deaths and their causes through 31 December 2001.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYs_nuNfFjk[/youtube]

The study was conducted by S Krstev, P Stewart, J Rusiecki, A Blair and was published in Occupational and Environmental Medicine. The original study publication is available at http://oem.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/64/10/651.

Mesothelioma is a form of cancer that is usually associated with exposure to asbestos. The majority of individuals who are diagnosed with mesothelioma have a history of exposure to asbestos particles at work or home. Family members of workers have also been affected. Renovators of homes containing asbestos cement material are accounting for an increasing number of diagnosed sufferers. Symptoms of mesothelioma may not appear for decades after the exposure to asbestos. Symptoms include abdominal pain and weight loss. Diagnosis of mesothelioma can be difficult due to the fact that the symptoms are similar to other respiratory diseases.

Since mesothelioma is primarily caused by exposure to asbestos, mesothelioma can be best be prevented by avoiding or limiting exposure to asbestos in homes, public buildings, and at work. Workers that may be at risk include miners, factory workers, insulation manufacturers, railroad workers, ship builders, contractors and construction workers, particularly those involved with insulation. If there is a possibility of exposure (such as when renovating old buildings) protective equipment should be used and safety procedures should be applied. Asbestos was commonly used in building materials due to its durability and fire-resistant properties. In addition to buildings, asbestos was used in the manufacture of cars and ships and many other products.

About the Author: Sam Gurgis is a scientific writer and the webmaster at

mesotheliomawise.org

and

sam-gurgis.com

Source:

isnare.com

Permanent Link:

isnare.com/?aid=191877&ca=Wellness%2C+Fitness+and+Diet

Gregory Kurtzer discusses plans for Rocky Linux with Wikinews as Red Hat announces moving focus away from CentOS

Friday, December 18, 2020

Last week, on December 8, US-based software company Red Hat announced plans to shift their focus away from CentOS in favour of CentOS stream.

Started in 2004, CentOS has been a free-of-cost free/libre open source software which provided binary-code compatibility with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) — Red Hat’s GNU General Public Licensed paid operating system. Gregory Kurtzer told Wikinews he started CAOS Linux around the time when Red Hat announced End of Life for their Red Hat Linux in favour of subscription-based Red Hat Enterprise Linux. CAOS was succeeded by CentOS when Rocky McGaugh, a developer of CAOS rebuilt the source code of RHEL to provide a monetarily free alternative. CentOS was absorbed into Red Hat in 2014, with Red Hat gaining the trademark rights of “CentOS”.

Red Hat also sponsors the development of the Fedora operating system. Until now, software development took place on Fedora, which was later adopted in RHEL, which the Red Hat maintained and provided support for, for those customers who had RHEL subscription. CentOS would then follow RHEL’s release cycle to provide the same features free of cost, but without the support.

Stream was announced in September 2019, just two months after Red Hat was acquired by IBM. CentOS Stream’s development cycle had new features added to it before the features became a part of RHEL. Stream receives more frequent updates, however, it does not follow RHEL’s release cycle.

With CentOS Stream, developments from the community and the Red Hat employees would take place beforehand on both Fedora, and Stream as a rolling release, before those features are absorbed into RHEL. CentOS followed the release cycle of RHEL and therefore it was a stable distribution. Features available in CentOS were tried and tested by Fedora, and then RHEL maintainers.

Red Hat’s Chief Technical Officer Chris Wright wrote in the announcement “CentOS Stream isn’t a replacement for CentOS Linux; rather, it’s a natural, inevitable next step intended to fulfill the project’s goal of furthering enterprise Linux innovation.” Since the announcement was made, many people expressed their anger on Internet Relay Chat (IRC), Reddit and CentOS project’s mailing list. CentOS 8’s End of Life (EOL) has been moved up from May 2029 to December 31, 2021, while CentOS 7 is expected to receive maintenance updates through June 2024, outliving CentOS 8.

Soon after Red Hat’s announcement, Kurtzer announced his intentions to develop Rocky Linux, to fill the role CentOS had been playing for so long. Kurtzer said Rocky Linux was named after Rocky McGaugh. “Thinking back to early CentOS days… My cofounder was Rocky McGaugh. He is no longer with us, so as a H/T [hat tip] to him, who never got to see the success that CentOS came to be, I introduce to you…Rocky Linux”, Kurtzer wrote. Wikinews discussed with Kurtzer the beginning of CentOS, and future of Rocky Linux.

While no formal date of release has been announced for Rocky Linux, Kurtzer said they are planning to release the CentOS replacement before the end of life of CentOS 8. Kurtzer also said Rocky Linux will run on both x86-64 and ARM-based processors, and CentOS users would be able to convert their OS to Rocky Linux just by running a single command.

Saying Rocky Linux is for the community, Kurtzer said he “take[s] the responsibility of ensuring that all decisions are in favor of the community and the project and free from corporate control” including his own company. Talking about the attention from the userbase Rocky Linux has received, Kurtzer said, “I have never seen an open community come together this fast and be this passionate about working together towards a common goal.”

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Gregory_Kurtzer_discusses_plans_for_Rocky_Linux_with_Wikinews_as_Red_Hat_announces_moving_focus_away_from_CentOS&oldid=4602939”