Frail Amy Winehouse has been struck down by the deadly lung condition emphysema - and she could be in a wheelchair within a MONTH if she doesn't stop smoking crack cocaine, her dad revealed last night. Doctors have also told the star, 24 - rushed to hospital after having a fit this week - that she will need a permanent oxygen mask to survive unless she takes their advice.
She's 24? I thought she was about twice that from her pictures...
In an emotional interview, her devastated father Mitch told the Sunday Mirror how watching his daughter deteriorate reminded him of his own 78-year-old mother struggling for breath on an aspirator before she died of lung cancer. Worried dad Mitch said: 'To think this could be my beautiful 24-year-old daughter's life is preposterous. But if drugs mean more to her than breathing properly, then so be it. But the doctors have told her if she goes back to smoking drugs it won't just ruin her voice, it will kill her. It's been a tough week.'
Mitch also told of his fears as Amy underwent tests after a mystery lump was found on her chest during scans at private London hospital The Clinic. He said: 'After lots of tests they found a lump in Amy's chest. A scan has shown it's not cancerous and there are no traces of cancer in her blood. But they might need to double check. There is a chance she might need a biopsy. If they need to cut the lump out then that will mean a massive and painful operation and a lot of recuperation.'
At the moment that doesn't look likely. 'When they told me she had a lump, I was very, very worried. At times Amy seems nervous about it but she doesn't panic until something's 100 per cent.'
Okay folks, let's talk about emphysema.
Emphysema is destruction of the peripheral lung: specifically the alveolar septal walls. Think of the lungs as a million tiny balloons in which gas exchange occurs, and think of emphysema as a needle that pops the balloons. Once popped you don't get them back, and you can't make more balloons. It's a slow process, and you need to lose about 30 to 50% of the total number of alveoli (balloons) before you're symptomatic (short of breath with exertion).
Most people who have emphysema get it some smoking coffin nails cigarettes. Numerous gasses and particulate matter in the cigs contribute to the destruction of the lung. Depending on one's innate genetic susceptibility, the risk for emphysema scales with the number of cigarettes you've smoked. But it's relatively rare to get emphysema prior to age 50 or so, because popping enough balloons to make you symptomatic takes time. If you're a smoker, understand that, all things considered, your lifetime risk of emphysema (all comers) is about 20%.
One special group should be considered, since the loverly Ms. Whitehouse might be one of these. 1% of all people with emphysema have it due to a specific genetic problem: alpha-1-antitrypsin deficiency. If you have A1AT and you smoke, you're guaranteed to have emphysema and may have it as early as your late 20s/early 30s. These folks generally need a lung transplant in their 30s/40s to survive.
Now there's a second way to get emphysema, and that's by inhaling substances other than cigarette smoke. And the most common group of substances are the illegal ones: marijuana, heroin and cocaine. This leads to a classic presentation of emphysema (slightly different than that seen with cigarettes, though you needn't worry about the details unless you're taking the pulmonary board exam). Heroin and cocaine in particular can cause emphysema, and that's true whether you inhale or inject. In the big urban charity hospitals (and I trained at two of those), it was colloquially known as 'drug lung', and we saw a couple a month. Inhaled cocaine, inhaled cocaine smoke (crack), and inhaled, sniffed heroin, along with their cutting agents (e.g., talc) can destroy the peripheral lung as surely as cigarettes. As with cigarettes, the more you inhale/inject, the greater your risk.
The prevalence of drug-lung isn't exactly known: it certainly isn't a majority of heroin/cocaine users, but it's an appreciable number.
The treatment for drug-induced emphysema is about the same as for that caused by cigarettes: oxygen, flu/pneumonia vaccination, smoking cessation, and inhaled bronchodilators to relieve shortness of breath.
So now you know Ms. Whitehouse's problem. She's not old enough to have emphysema from cigarettes unless she's also A1AT deficient -- bad luck but it can happen. But more likely, if I had to hazard a guess, it's from the drugs.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/23/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
There's not much to say about this but that it sounds like lifestyle and environment does matter. Too bad talent does not mean intelligence in most cases.
#2
"Due to a specific genetic problem" > S-o-o then, AMY may had inherited her disposition to emphysema.
INTERESTING - the former CLassmate that AMY reminds me alot of also smoked in Junior High and High School, and allegedly also tried drugs on the side. 'SGOT ME WONDERING HOW SHE'S DOING IN HER LIFE HEALTHWISE.
#5
For those who don't know, she was widely imitated by young ladies in costume, last Halloween. She should be ashamed of that. However, she is gifted with a strong voice that song writers love. What a waste.
#7
I can't believe this skank is only 24!!!!
She looks, and I believed her to be, in her late 30's. I wouldn't touch her with a 10ft. cattle prod, and a Hepatitis booster shot!
Truly a GenY poster child.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
06/23/2008 13:19 Comments ||
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#15
I have shortness of breath after mild exertion, but it's not emphysema. Doctors tell me it's the result of having pneumonia eight times by the age of 18. Don't know Amy's history, but I do know that things that we do (and that happen to us) when we're "young and foolish" have a way of catching up with us. Maybe this will be enough for her to change, although I doubt it. She seems pretty stubborn to me.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
06/23/2008 13:39 Comments ||
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#16
I think Highlander meant that in a tongue/cheek sarcastic sort of way gents.
James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.
Jim still uses gasoline and heats his home, I wager ...
Hansen will use the symbolically charged 20th anniversary of his groundbreaking speech in his own mind to the US Congress - in which he was among the first to sound the alarm over the reality of global warming - to argue that radical steps need to be taken immediately if the 'perfect storm' of irreversible climate change is not to become inevitable.
Speaking before Congress again, ...
'Again?'
'Again, Senator.'
'Couldn't we do something less painful? Maybe subpoena the Vice-President?'
'He'll never appear.'
'Great, just great. What earmark do I have to vote for to make this peasant go away?'
he will accuse the chief executive officers of companies such as ExxonMobil and Peabody Energy of being fully aware of the disinformation about climate change they are spreading. In an interview with the Guardian he said: 'When you are in that kind of position, as the CEO of one the primary players who have been putting out misinformation even via organisations that affect what gets into school textbooks, then I think that's a crime.'
He is also considering personally targeting members of Congress who have a poor track record on climate change in the coming November elections. He will campaign to have several of them unseated.
Sounds like it's going to be a real stemwinder ...
Hansen's speech to Congress on June 23 1988 is seen as a seminal moment in bringing the threat of global warming to the public's attention. At a time when most scientists were still hesitant to speak out, he said the evidence of the greenhouse gas effect was 99% certain in his own mind, adding 'it is time to stop waffling'.
His sharpest words are reserved for the special interests he blames for public confusion about the nature of the global warming threat. 'The problem is not political will, it's the alligator shoes - the lobbyists. It's the fact that money talks in Washington, and that democracy is not working the way it's intended to work.'
'You should be listening to me! ME! ME-E-E-E-E-E-E!!!!!'
#1
It's the fact that money talks in Washington, and that democracy is not working the way it's intended to work.
Funny how that applies to your green movement and its messiah, Al Gore.
...put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature...
You mean like Canada's "human rights" tribunal? Where it is a show trial? 'cuz if your "facts" went against the other scientists facts, you would lose in a real court very quickly since most of your "facts" are just made up.
Nice to see Stalinism and fascism have come back into vogue.
#2
And we will fly in witnesses from all over the world in private jets, based upon the urgency of the case......heh.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
06/23/2008 9:32 Comments ||
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#3
Hmmm...how about a tribunal like Galileo got, Pope Hansen?
Isn't this the dude who withheld data, derived as part of his government duties and therefore in direct contrivance of the Freedom of Information Act, that when backchecked showed a remarkable error in computation?
#10
Remember when global warming was about scientific inquiry? Now its about dollars and jobs. Sort of like "The Children" and "Diversity" and "Victimization".
#13
Hanson needs to be out looking for a real job. He's already shown he has no professional integrity, and his approach to the scientific method is to decide what he wants to "discover", and manipulate the data until it agrees with his beliefs. There's no room for a man like that working for the government. Of course, if they got rid of all the "jim hansons" in the government, we'd have a half-trillion dollar surplus.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
06/23/2008 13:43 Comments ||
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#14
NASA is a socialist organization, should we be surprised when the leadership acts like a typical socialist?
#16
This may be a pre-emptive strike, as Hansen is probably guilty of fraud (and if not fraud then widespread negligence)in compiling the GISS temperature data.
Climate Audit is all over Hansen's incredibly shoddy work.
#17
Fascist NASA Goddard Head Demands Oil Company Show Trials, Political Control
AHEM: Hansen is not the head of Goddard Space Flight Center (in Maryland). He's the head of the NASA-Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City. As bad as that is, it's not as bad him being the head of GSFC.
As I said yesterday, most of the people flogging AGW are actors, musicians, politicians, media pundits, and similar riff-raff. While there are undeniably scientists who study and believe in it, we don't hear from them as often.
Hansen is an exception, and I wasn't sure what to make of him, since he does hold a very respectable position.
Now I know: he's a clown, and I can disregard all further pronouncements from him.
(Xinhua) -- The past weekend marked one of the darkest dates in the Philippines' natural disaster-battering history, with reports of floods, landslides, flooded streets and a sunken ship with over 700 passengers on board.
The country's Red Cross and disaster relief authorities on Sunday night announced that at least 229 people have been killed, 700 others missing as typhoon "Fengshen" ripped through the archipelago since Friday afternoon.
More people, officials said, are feared dead as the hope of survival is fading for the 700 people on ferry "M/V Princess of the Star" which completely sank off the coasts of central Philippine province of Romblon on Sunday.
So far, only four survivors have reached shores and the rest are "still unaccounted for," Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) spokesman Armand Balilo said.
The 23,000-ton ship of the Sulpicio Lines, carrying more than 700 people on board, left Manila for central Philippine hub of Cebu on Friday. It met rough weather at sea on Saturday noon before the caption ordered to abandon the ship, whose engine had been seriously damaged in high waves and strong winds.
PCG rescuers reaching the scene on Sunday reported that they had failed to "see any survivors or bodies around the upturned ship, or even any life jackets or other flotation devices," the national news network INQUIRER.NET reported. "The rescuers will also be scouring the other coastal areas to check for the passengers," PCG Commandant Admiral Wilfredo Tamayo told INQUIRER.NET. "I hope and I pray that many are alright," he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/23/2008 00:00 ||
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HARARE, Zimbabwe - Zimbabwe's opposition leader has sought refuge at the Dutch Embassy, the Dutch Foreign Ministry said Monday, while police raided his party's headquarters and took about 60 people away.
Morgan Tsvangirai went to the embassy Sunday shortly after announcing he was withdrawing from Friday's presidential runoff against longtime leader Robert Mugabe, citing violence against opposition supporters. "He asked to come and stay because he was concerned about his safety," ministry spokesman Rob Dekker said. There has been no request for political asylum, Dekker said.
Opposition spokesman Nqobizitha Mlilo refused to comment on the report and referred callers to The Hague.
Tsvangirai had returned to Zimbabwe a month ago to campaign despite information his party had said it received that he was the target of a state-sponsored assassination plot. Since then, his top deputy has been arrested on treason charges which carry the death penalty and Tsvangirai has been repeatedly detained by police.
He has survived at least three assassination attempts and last year he was hospitalized after a brutal assault by police at a prayer rally. Images seen around the world of his bruised and swollen face have come to symbolize the plight of dissenters in Zimbabwe.
He had applied for a new passport earlier this month and Zimbabwean officials refused, saying he lacked proper police clearance. His current passport has not expired but its pages are full.
On Sunday, Tsvangirai pulled out of the violence-wracked presidential runoff, declaring that the election was no longer credible and the loss of life among his supporters was simply too high.
Mugabe's government says Friday's vote will go ahead. The prospect of a sham election drew strong criticism from the international community.
#1
Here is a country that is setting a good example for not electing an arrogant, naive, inexperienced politician to be your leader. Also, Mugabe did bring a gun to a knife-fight and was able to turn the most prosperous, fertile economy in sub-saharan Africa into the most corrupt, inflationary, non-productive basket case since Somalia was used for the set of "I am Legend".
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
06/23/2008 13:24 Comments ||
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#2
Should we have a pool to guess the date of when the people of Zimbabwe will have to resort to cannibalism.
(Xinhua) -- Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai announced on Sunday that he had withdrawn form the country's scheduled presidential run-off on June 22.
Tsvangirai cited mounting violence and intimidation against his party as major reasons for him to quit the run-off. Speaking to the press, Tsvangirai said ' We in the MDC cannot ask them to cast their vote on the 27th when that vote would cost them their lives.'
'Conditions as of today do not permit the holding of a credible poll,' Tsvangirai said.
He also said it is the responsibility of the United Nations to make sure the people of Zimbabwe are protected from the ongoing violence in the country.
There's your first problem, depending on the U.N. ...
The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission set June 27 as the date for the presidential run-off in which in which MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai had been expected to challenge incumbent President Robert Mugabe. In the March 29 elections, Tsvangirai won 47 percent of the votes and Mugabe 43. The winner has to garner at least 51 percent to take residence at state house in the capital, Harare.
In a quick Reponse to Tsvangirai's announcement, the Zimbabwe government, which has repeatedly denied directing violence and intimidation against the opposition, said it will proceed with the June 27 presidential run-off election unless opposition leader Tsvangirai formally withdraws from the poll in writing, a senior government minister said.
'Tsvangirai must write formally to ZEC (Zimbabwe Electoral Commission) advising that he is withdrawing from the race, in which event there will be one candidate, meaning there will not be a poll. If he doesn't, the poll will take place,' Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa said.
South Africa, which is mediating between President Robert Mugabe and Tsvangirai, on Sunday urged Zimbabwe's opposition to continue with talks to find a solution to the political problems in Zimbabwe after Tsvangirai announced to pull out of the June 27 presidential run-off election.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/23/2008 00:00 ||
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KINSHASA - Congo's army has killed 29 militia fighters in operations since late May against a local militia group and its Rwandan Hutu rebel allies in the country's northeast, a senior army officer said on Sunday. Four government soldiers were also killed in the clashes and a number of others were wounded, General Jean-Claude Kifwa, the army commander in Orientale province of Democratic Republic of Congo, told U.N.-sponsored Radio Okapi.
The army had launched the operations to force militia fighters known as Mai-Mai in gold-rich Bafwasende territory, around 260 km (160 miles) northwest of the provincial capital Kisangani, to disband or join the army. There was no immediate independent confirmation from Congo's UN peacekeeping mission of the death toll given by the army.
The situation is tense. We are asking them to lay down their arms ... Otherwise, we will be forced to act, Kifwa told Radio Okapi.
Congo's eastern borderlands remain a volatile patchwork of militia-controlled zones and rebel fiefdoms where violence has persisted despite the official end of a 1998-2003 war and government efforts to impose state authority. The army accuses the Bafwasende Mai-Mai of links with the Hutu rebel Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), which includes ex-Rwandan military and militia blamed for Rwanda's 1994 genocide of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
In November, Congo promised eastern neighbour Rwanda it would disarm members of the FDLR on its soil, by force if necessary, as part of efforts to defuse cross-border tensions. Clashes involving Rwandan Hutu insurgents have grown more frequent in recent months as the army has stepped up operations near their strongholds.
Hutus: the Paleos of Africa ...
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/23/2008 00:00 ||
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JEDDAH There has been an increase in the number of mental patients in the holy city of Makkah in the last few years and to take care of them the ministry of social affairs has allocated SR65 million which will be used to build a sanitarium in the city.
How 'bout another sanitarium for the people who visit?
According to Dr Rajab Bersali, a psychologist, careful convalescing is essential for the proper healing of mental disorders or else there is the likelihood of their relapsing. Bersali said that sanitarium would also prevent the chance of mental patients being exploited by drug peddlers and other anti-social elements. He said according to available data, nearly 2,000 cases a month were documented in 2006, and a third of the total 24,000 mental cases during that year, involved women.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/23/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
One could make the argument that once a year....
Saudi Arabia may raise its oil production beyond a planned 200,000 barrel-a-day increase in July if the oil market requires extra supply, Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi told consumers at a summit in Jeddah.
Saudi Arabia's commitment to government and business leaders to pump 9.7 million barrels a day next month came after crude rose to a record $139.89 in New York on June 16. Saudi King Abdullah said at today's summit that his country, the world's biggest oil exporter, seeks ``reasonable'' prices. OPEC President Chakib Khelil said a Saudi boost is ``illogical'' because refiners don't need more crude.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/23/2008 00:00 ||
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#3
Reminder: a large number of the 3700 Gulf of Mexico well heads are capped, and their product is listed as non-calculated (not in corporate reserves). When Clinton unleashed the Oil Options battle between NYMEX and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, pundits said that oil vendors would follow that artificial market. It happened. Google "Arjun N. Murti" (Goldman Sachs) if you want to learn of NYMEX bubble effects. The influential Platt's monitoring service, which gets trader data, issues this statement today:
"Global crude futures continued to move higher in European morning trading on Monday amid persistent Nigeria supply worries, shrugging off the outcome of the oil producer and consumer summit in Jeddah on Sunday, which saw Saudi Arabia pledge to increase production to 9.7 million b/d from 9.45 million b/d currently."
Is the "futures" market determining oil vendor quotes? It shouldn't and that will become a political football this year. Things were better when Chicago had the "pork belly" commodities monopoly.
We have an Oil Options market because we have one. Scrap it and real market forces will prevail.
THE same publisher who helped to sink John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign plans a follow-up effort to dish dirt on this year's Democratic hopeful, Barack Obama. The Case Against Barack Obama by conservative journalist David Freddoso will offer an alternative to the media's 'whitewashed' view of the Illinois senator, Regnery Publishing president Marjory Ross told Politico.com overnight.
Ms Ross said the book was due out on August 4 - the same month in 2004 that he published Unfit for Command, a scathing attack on Mr Kerry's Vietnam War record that contributed to his defeat.
The release date is three weeks before Senator Obama is to be crowned the Democratic White House nominee at the party's Denver convention, when his general election campaign against Republican John McCain will move into top gear. 'I think it's critically important that the country gets a clear and honest view of who is running and what they stand for - warts and all,' Ms Ross said.
While the publisher promised a 'comprehensive, factual look at Obama', the new book's subtitle is: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favourite Candidate.
A publicist at Regnery Publishing did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Politico said the book would examine Senator Obama's ties to his controversial former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and to a Chicago professor named William Ayers who was once part of a 1960s group of leftist bombers. It will also portray Senator Obama as an unvarnished liberal with a Senate voting record that contradicts his talk of ending bipartisan rancor, the website reported.
Three quick bios of Sarah Palin, Carly Fiorina, and Kay Bailey Hutchison. My personal pick is Palin: have McCain name her now and let Obama struggle to find someone who has her cachet.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/23/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
I can't buy any of the three of them at this point: Carly Fiorina, because she's a failed CEO who enriched herself while eroding shareholder value and laying off thousands; Kay Bailey Hutchison, because she's part of the longtime Trunk crew in the Senate whose complacency and stubbornness led to the Quislingcrat takeover in '06; and Palin, because she isn't even halfway through her first term as Governor (but I do want to see her as Bobby Jindal's running mate in 2012).
If McCain thinks that all he has to do to regain positive press attention is to name a female running mate, he just might be senile for real. Journos are determined to put Obama in the White House by any means fair or foul, and the only way McCain could get back on their good side is to just concede now. He needs to start channeling Ronaldus Maximus and figure out how to reach the voters despite the media's attempts to filter and censor his message.
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) ||
06/23/2008 0:39 Comments ||
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#2
My friend, a republican, will ask the Obama office is they need volunteers if he sees Fiorina anywhere near the ticket. He worked for HP and isn't impressed by her resume to say the least and I don't think he's alone.
I liked what I've read about the AK governor. She's the only acceptable one and it is good to see the Republicans have a bench for the next time. I think Jindal needs more seasoning, so does she, but I don't really see any other choices either at this point.
#7
Allegedly, Gen Mattis is who pushed through the trials of the Haditha Marines, and consulted with Jackass Murtha, and may have had undeu command influence.
Put Mattis on the ticket and I'm sitting this one out.
#8
Candidate McCain now wants to open up the coastal areas to drilling. What happened to Governor Steele? It seems to me the VP bench is pretty deep on the Republican side.
#12
OS - I'm on the same side as you 99.97% of the time, but I have to respectfully disagree on this one. To me it didn't look so much like Mattis "pushed" to have the Haditha Marines brought up to GCM as much as he simply trusted the judgment of the investigating officers, and the integrity of the military-justice system. As for the Murtha thing, didn't that treasonous asshat state that General Hagee, the CMC, had personally briefed him on the Haditha situtation?
For a good read on supporting both Mattis AND the Haditha Marines, go here. Keep scrolling & RTWT...I'm surprised I never found this lady's blog before. An excerpt - she actually corresponded with GEN Mattis on this matter:
"Gen Mattis did not ignore my email last week when he very easily could have told himself that he was too busy to respond to a civilian. He is, after all, a four star general, and some might have thought 'who is this woman from Texas who had the audacity to think she had the right to email a four star general whom she has never met.' He answered my email almost immediately with a response that was thoughtful to what I had said without discussing the case.
...
As the CG of the IMEF, LtGen Mattis was duty bound to make judgments in the Haditha cases. In his letter to me he spoke of trusting the UCMJ more than the civilian justice system. Interestingly, one by one, the cases against the Haditha Marines are falling apart, and I am seeing that Mattis' trust in the UCMJ is well placed.
... The wrath of the people angered by the Haditha prosecutions should be directed solely at Murtha, the media, and those responsible for not stopping this insanity before it got to LtGen Mattis' desk for review. These are the people whose actions so egregiously interfered with the lives of the Haditha Marines. Murtha, et al are also hoping that you will project their guilt onto the men who stood up to the task of dealing with their mess. Don't blindly fall for that subterfuge (Emphasis mine - RbR).
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) ||
06/23/2008 12:12 Comments ||
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#13
We're now selecting candidates based on gender or race.
#14
Big Jim, the problem is that in today's politics there is no other way than gender or race. Obviously, experience doesn't count - look who you got at the end - 3 friggin senators including straight talk McCain himself whose only leadership experience outside the Navy has been watching his 2nd wife get those beer trucks rolling. There is a reason we never elected a sitting congressperson since JFK.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
06/23/2008 13:45 Comments ||
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#15
The obvious selection is the one that keeps saying "NO", Condoleeza Rice.
#16
RWV - I think Condi's become a nonstarter for several different reasons:
(1) Her becoming a captive of the Foggy Bottom Arabist/"realist" axis,
(2) Her association with the Administration's stubborn pre-Surge insistence that all was well in Iraq, that McClellan and Burnside Rummy and Bremer had the situation well in hand, and that no changes in strategy were necessary, and
(3) Actually a corollary of (2) in that her long-term presence in the Bush adminstration gives the Obamedia an actual piece of data to hang its hat on for its "McCain = 3rd Bush Term" theme.
Wish I didn't have to make this comment...I had high hopes for her too.
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) ||
06/23/2008 15:41 Comments ||
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#17
We're now selecting candidates based on gender or race.
It is a part of the lawyering of America mentality. I recall asking an attorney why he thought he and his client needed a certain kind of expert witness; the reply was because the other side has one.
I would hope the trunks would go for the veep candidate possible--man or woman. Someone that can add to the ticket and someone that could become president if necessary.
#18
JQC - that's because the political hax worry about winning vice leading. Our country is in for some rought times. We're long overdo for a revolution.
(Xinhua) -- A ferry carrying over 700 passengers capsized near Romblon province in central Philippines in typhoon "Fengshen" Saturday night, killing at least 20 people, local media reported Sunday.
A local town mayor told news network ABS-CBN that some dozens of bodies have been recovered. But the report has not yet been confirmed. The national news network GMA News quoted coast guard official Vice Admiral Wilfredo Tamayo as saying the ship "Princess Star" was "dead in the water" after its engine failed near the central Philippine island of Sibuyan.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/23/2008 00:00 ||
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Iranians on Saturday were told to cut their electricity consumption by 10 per cent or face daily power cuts because of a severe drought and low production by hydroelectric power plants.
Residents of the capital Tehran could face up to four hours of blackouts each day, officials said according to media reports.
If consumers do not cut down consumption by 10 per cent, we will have blackouts until the end of the summer, Deputy Energy Minister Mohammad Ahmadian told Fars news agency.
Newspapers published a table issued by the state electricity company dividing the sprawling capital of 12 million into 11 zones, with each area to face two-hour-long power cuts twice a day from Saturday.
Ahmadian told state television that the table was provisional, and that blackouts were most likely to hit the zones where consumers failed to save energy.
Energy Minister Parviz Fattah warned in May that Iran would face severe electricity shortages and power cuts this summer due to the drought and the lack of water in dams.
Energy officials have predicted that daily consumption would reach 37,000 megawatts in July while production would stand at only 35,000 megawatts.
In the past weeks Tehran and other cities have already been hit by cuts of up to three hours in certain areas as the authorities seek to make up the shortfall.
Blackouts were common in Iran during the 1980-1988 war with Iraq but in the 1990s Iran made significant investments in power generation to meet ever-increasing consumption.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/23/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Facing the same thing here due to reductionin oil production, hydro decreasing due to dams beign tornn down and new ones prevented by enviros, and also new plants being entangled in red tape and lawsuits from enviros.
Look for brownouts and blackouts in 201o-2012 thanks to us being at capacity - due to NIMBYS for conventional plants, enviros for coal, and anti-nuke morons for nuclear plants.
#3
Give me one JDAM and I could decrease their power production well below 35,000 MWatts.
Nuclear facilities here in the states have some pretty serious looking power feeds going into them, I can only assume that nuclear enrichment and separation takes massive amounts of energy. That might be a good place to start.
#4
There is some decline in use happening in the U.S. due to small changes like increased use of compact fluorescent lightbulbs, turning off the bloody computer when not actually using it, running the dishwasher between 8 pm and 8 am, things like that. Also, my local energy company (Duke, if anyone wants that detail) sent out a notice requesting permission to reduce power to my house air conditioner compressor a few minutes per hour when electricity demand peaks. If even a significant minority of customers agreed to this, that will make a difference.
#5
Positive and sustainable GDP is inexorably linked to increased electric demand and supply. It is a well proven econometric used by utility planners in strategic assessments of new supply whether new build, repowering, purchasing, etc. Enviromentalists cannot have it both ways (i.e. electric car technology will go no where without a significant increase in baseload powerplants which means coal or nuclear).
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
06/23/2008 13:50 Comments ||
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#6
Wait!!!
Isnt' all of that radioactive stuff they are whipping up in those undergroung bunkers supposed to be for their power generation.
An electrical power shortage should give some credence to ole Baradei that the Iranians are building a bomb??? Wait, he's one of them!!!
Posted by: James Carville ||
06/23/2008 20:09 Comments ||
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By ALAN FRAM and EILEEN PUTMAN, Associated Press Writers Who recommend that it's hopeless and everybody should just roll over and die...
WASHINGTON - Is everything spinning out of control? Midwestern levees are bursting. Polar bears are adrift. Gas prices are skyrocketing. Home values are abysmal. Air fares, college tuition and health care border on unaffordable. Wars without end rage in Iraq, Afghanistan and against terrorism. Awwwwwwwww, no! Not the polar bears!
The can-do, bootstrap approach embedded in the American psyche is under assault. Eroding it is a dour powerlessness that is chipping away at the country's sturdy conviction that destiny can be commanded with sheer courage and perseverance. Glad I saved all my MRE's and bottled water from the Great Millenium Disaster.
The sense of helplessness is even reflected in this year's presidential election. Each contender offers a sense of order and hope. Republican John McCain promises an experienced hand in a frightening time. Democrat Barack Obama promises bright and shiny change, and his large crowds believe his exhortation, "Yes, we can." Yes! Yes, Barack! Save us!! Please, save us!!!
Even so, a battered public seems discouraged by the onslaught of dispiriting things. An Associated Press-Ipsos poll says a barrel-scraping 17 percent of people surveyed believe the country is moving in the right direction. That is the lowest reading since the survey began in 2003. An ABC News-Washington Post survey put that figure at 14 percent, tying the low in more than three decades of taking soundings on the national mood. Coming up next: 86% of Americans don't even bother to get out of bed. Right after this from Prozac...
"It is pretty scary," said Charles Truxal, 64, a retired corporate manager in Rochester, Minn. "People are thinking things are going to get better, and they haven't been. And then you go hide in your basement because tornadoes are coming through. If you think about things, you have very little power to make it change." Thanks, Charlie. By the way, when did you become the spokesman for three hundred million people?
Recent natural disasters around the world dwarf anything afflicting the U.S. Consider that more than 69,000 people died in the China earthquake, and that 78,000 were killed and 56,000 missing from the Myanmar cyclone. See. There's something to be grateful for. Ya don't live in China or Myanmar.
Americans need do no more than check the weather, look in their wallets or turn on the news for their daily reality check on a world gone haywire. A world gone Haywire, I tells ya! Haywire!!
Floods engulf Midwestern river towns. Is it global warming, the gradual degradation of a planet's weather that man seems powerless to stop or just a freakish late-spring deluge? Maybe it's...rain?
It hardly matters to those in the path. Just ask the people of New Orleans who survived Hurricane Katrina. They are living in a city where, 1,000 days after the storm, entire neighborhoods remain abandoned, a national embarrassment that evokes disbelief from visitors. Katrina! My God! Why hasn't the government made New Orleans Paradise on Earth!
Food is becoming scarcer and more expensive on a worldwide scale, due to increased consumption in growing countries such as China and India and rising fuel costs. That can-do solution to energy needs turning corn into fuel is sapping fields of plenty once devoted to crops that people need to eat. Shortages have sparked riots. In the U.S., rice prices tripled and some stores rationed the staple. Oh. Am I supposed to be starving to death? Sorry, I didn't know. Maybe I'll skip lunch...
Residents of the nation's capital and its suburbs repeatedly lose power for extended periods as mere thunderstorms rumble through. In California, leaders warn people to use less water in the unrelenting drought. I'll...try...to...read...on. Don't...know...if...I...can...
Want to get away from it all? The weak U.S. dollar makes travel abroad forbiddingly expensive. To add insult to injury, some airlines now charge to check luggage. My God! There's no escape!!
Want to escape on the couch? A writers' strike halted favorite TV shows for half a season. The newspaper on the table may soon be a relic of the Internet age. Just as video stores are falling by the wayside as people get their movies online or in the mail. Oh, no! Not that!! Next you'll be telling me AP's going under and Eileen and Alan will be...unemployed!!
But there's always sports, right? The moorings seem to be coming loose here, too. Not if you're from Boston.
Baseball stars Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens stand accused of enhancing their heroics with drugs. Basketball referees are suspected of cheating. Stay tuned for less than pristine tales from the drug-addled Tour de France and who knows what from the Summer Olympics. ...and the Cincinnatti Bengals. And Pacman Jones. And...there's just too much to mention.
It's not the first time Americans have felt a loss of control. Alger, the dime-novel author whose heroes overcame adversity to gain riches and fame, played to similar anxieties when the U.S. was becoming an industrial society in the late 1800s. But he became a corporate robber baron and screwed everybody.
American University historian Allan J. Lichtman notes that the U.S. has endured comparable periods and worse, including the economic stagflation (stagnant growth combined with inflation) and Iran hostage crisis of 1980; the dawn of the Cold War, the Korean War and the hysterical hunts for domestic Communists in the late 1940s and early 1950s; and the Depression of the 1930s. "All those periods were followed by much more optimistic periods in which the American people had their confidence restored," he said. "Of course, that doesn't mean it will happen again." But BushCo wasn't around then to screw everything up!!! So we're all doomed!
Each period also was followed by a change in the party controlling the White House. Save us, Barack! Save us!!
This period has seen intense interest in the presidential primaries, especially the Democrats' five-month duel between Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Records were shattered by voters showing up at polling places, yearning for a voice in who will next guide the country as it confronts the uncontrollable. It's like fighting Godzilla! Nothing can stop it! Our weapons are useless against it!
Never mind that their views of their current leaders are near rock bottom, reflecting a frustration with Washington's inability to solve anything. President Bush barely gets the approval of three in 10 people, and it's even worse for the Democratic-led Congress. Save us, Barack! Saaaaaave us!!
Why the vulnerability? After all, this is the 21st century, not a more primitive past when little in life was assured. Surely people know how to fix problems now. Maybe. And maybe this is what the 21st century will be about a great unraveling of some things long taken for granted. I just hope when death comes, it's quick and painless...
#2
Even so, a battered public seems discouraged by the onslaught of dispiriting things. An Associated Press-Ipsos poll says a barrel-scraping 17 percent of people surveyed believe the country is moving in the right direction.
Sounds like cause for a Mission Accomplished banner in the newsrooms.
Posted by: Grenter Protector of the Geats4975 ||
06/23/2008 10:47 Comments ||
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#3
Is everything spinning out of control?
It's all a matter of perspective. From a different take, it's not too bad. Personally, I don't live in newsrooms with editors or producers looking for the next big scare, hype, or that Pulitzer for Fiction.
#10
I haven't seen this much pure bullshit since I last had to clean out my uncle's barn, 40 years ago. AP needs to be renamed: American Pulp Fiction (APF). Most of the midwest levees are holding (the New Orleans mayor wasn't there to siphon off the upkeep funds). Gas prices are being manipulated by muslims in Iran and Sudan, plus increased demand from China, India, and Latin America (people aren't paying much attention to what's going on south of the border, but there are places where things are booming). The two wars AP is hyping as "never ending" are pretty well won, with some cleaning up to do. But news programs have been doing everything they can to preach doom and gloom, and then wondering why people are responding. Take the whole herd out and shoot 'em - they're infected with "mad (insane predisposition to negative) reporter disease".
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
06/23/2008 14:10 Comments ||
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#11
By ALAN FRAM and EILEEN PUTMAN, Associated Press Writers. How can we get a hold of these idiots? Hey, why isn't the government handing out credit cards to the folks in Iowa and Missourri? I wonder if they took a survey 1000 years ago whe there was storms, tornadoes, floods, etc.? Oh, I forgot. No global warming back then.
Posted by: Art ||
06/23/2008 14:40 Comments ||
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#12
"Midwestern levees are bursting."
Flashback to The Great Midwest Flood of 1993. Did midwesterners learn anything from that?
"Polar bears are adrift."
Al Gore is adrift.
"Gas prices are skyrocketing."
Skyrocketing? High, but not skyrocketing. I don't know anyone who has stopped driving. I'm not even convinced that many have cut back.
"Home values are abysmal."
21 years in the same home and I'm not planning to move, so no big deal. But it's a good market for buyers, isn't it?
"Air fares, college tuition and health care border on unaffordable."
We still consume air travel, college, and health care at record levels.
"Wars without end rage in Iraq, Afghanistan and against terrorism."
Apparently these AP reporters believe AP's spin.
"natural disasters around the world"
That's new?
"1,000 days after the storm, entire neighborhoods remain abandoned"
Maybe they prefer higher ground.
"In the U.S., rice prices tripled."
Last I looked at the local Asian market, a 20 pound bag was about $20. Do you have any idea how many servings of rice that makes?!
"...some airlines now charge to check luggage."
$15 -- oh, the humanity.
What a sorry excuse of an article. These two writers need to go back on their meds and their editor needs to be fired for indulging them in this crap.
#13
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight; somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Frail Amy Winehouse has been struck down by the deadly lung condition emphysema - and she could be in a wheelchair within a MONTH if she doesn't stop smoking crack cocaine, her dad revealed last night. Doctors have also told the star, 24 - rushed to hospital after having a fit this week - that she will need a permanent oxygen mask to survive unless she takes their advice.
James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.
KINSHASA - Congo's army has killed 29 militia fighters in operations since late May against a local militia group and its Rwandan Hutu rebel allies in the country's northeast, a senior army officer said on Sunday. Four government soldiers were also killed in the clashes and a number of others were wounded, General Jean-Claude Kifwa, the army commander in Orientale province of Democratic Republic of Congo, told U.N.-sponsored Radio Okapi.
THE same publisher who helped to sink John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign plans a follow-up effort to dish dirt on this year's Democratic hopeful, Barack Obama. The Case Against Barack Obama by conservative journalist David Freddoso will offer an alternative to the media's 'whitewashed' view of the Illinois senator, Regnery Publishing president Marjory Ross told Politico.com overnight.
