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Friday, October 5, 2007

You may not know Joseph Merlino, but he knows about you and what makes you function. He knows what turns you on and he knows whether it is a problem for you. Merlino, who is the psychiatry adviser to the New York Daily News, is one of the more accomplished psychiatrists in his field and he is the Senior Editor of the forthcoming book, Freud at 150: 21st Century Essays on a Man of Genius. The battle over interpreting Freud’s legacy still rages, a testament to the father of psychoanalysis and his continuing impact today.

On the eve of the book’s publication, Wikinews reporter David Shankbone went to the Upper East Side of Manhattan to discuss the past and future of Freud and psychoanalysis with Dr. Merlino, one of the preeminent modern psychoanalysts. Shankbone took the opportunity to ask about what insanity is, discuss aberrant urges, reflect upon sadomasochism (“I’m not considered an expert in that field,” laughed Dr. Merlino), and the hegemony of heterosexuality.

Dr. Merlino posits that absent structural, biochemical or physiological defects, insanity and pathology are relative and in flux with the changing culture of which you are a part. So it is possible to be sane and insane all in one day if, for instance, you are gay and fly from the United Kingdom to Saudi Arabia.

Wednesday, April 6, 2005 A landmark study comparing effectiveness in reducing major depression of two forms of initial treatment — cognitive therapy which involves discussing thought processes with a qualified counselor, vs medication — has revealed that both forms of therapy reduce depression, but that the benefits of cognitive therapy last longer than those of medication. The study finding contradicts current treatment guidelines of the American Psychiatric Association (APA).

The 16-week study, by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Vanderbilt University, was the largest trial yet undertaken to resolve the years-old debate. Two-hundred-and-forty patients with moderate-to-severe depression were given one or other of the treatments, or a purposely-ineffective placebo. Study representatives described the two treatments about equally effective — both much more effective than the placebo — but with the positive effect of talk-therapy lasting longer.

In fact, the cognitive therapy group saw only as many relapses as a another group that had continued to receive drug therapy.

“We believe that cognitive therapy might have more lasting effects because it equips patients with the tools they need to learn how to manage their problems and emotions,” said Robert DeRubeis, professor and chair of Penn’s Department of Psychology. “Pharmaceuticals, while effective, offer no long term cure for the symptoms of depression. For many people, cognitive therapy might prove to be the preferred form of treatment.”

“Medication is often an appropriate treatment, but drugs have drawbacks, such as side effects or a diminished efficacy over time,” DeRubeis said. “Patients with depression are often overwhelmed by other factors in their life that pills simply cannot solve. In many cases, cognitive therapy succeeds because it teaches the skills that help people cope.”

Researchers pointed out that while the effectiveness of cognitive therapy depended largely on the experience of the practitioner, the same was true of medication, due to the judgement required in prescribing correct dosages of drugs.

The APA declined to comment, on the basis that a quote appearing on Wikinews could be distorted by subsequent edits of the article.

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Sunday saw Formula One racer Lewis Hamilton win the Bahrain Grand Prix after an “incredible” race he spent battling with teammate Nico Rosberg. It was F1’s 900th ever World Championship Grand Prix.

The two Mercedes drivers were neck-and-neck throughout the race, with Hamilton usually in front. Rosberg started from pole position after Hamilton made a mistake in qualifying, going off-track and settling for second. After the race Hamilton said it was “an incredible day, a really tough day” and he wanted some relaxation time.

Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo had to start from thirteenth despite qualifying third after an incident in Malaysia last race saw him given a ten-place grid penalty. His car left the pits with a wheel loose, and stewards imposed the penalty after deeming it unacceptably dangerous. Ricciardo managed to finish fourth to score his first points of the season after a disqualification in the opening race in his native Australia.

Reigning champion Sebastian Vettel continued to struggle with technical problems, including his drag reduction system and gearbox. Starting from tenth ahead of teammate Ricciardo, he was able to reach sixth by the finish line. He missed much of the final practice session before qualifying after he spun off the track and beached his car. The closure of the night race was marked with a fireworks display.

Venezuelan driver Pastor Maldonado also saw his troubles continue. Having newly switched to Lotus, he failed to complete the opening two races this year and damaged his car with an accidental wheelie practicing for this one. Exiting the pit lane on the 41st lap Maldonado struck the side of Sauber racer Esteban Gutiérrez with sufficient force to send the Mexican’s car onto its back before rolling back upright.

Gutiérrez received medical attention on-site and in hospital as a precaution, but was uninjured. “Wow!” Gutiérrez told his team via radio before leaving the car. “What was that?” Maldonado received a stop-and-go penalty and finished outside the points.

Stewards had further punishment for the Lotus driver after the race. He will have a five-place grid position penalty at the start of his race in China. He also had three points added to his racing driver’s licence, a new system this year comparable to a normal motorist receiving points after traffic offences.

Maldonado seemed to imply the other driver played a roll in the collision. “We will need to have a look again at what happened,” he said, “as Esteban seemed to be off his line coming into turn one — maybe he missed his braking point, I don’t know — and by then I was in the corner with nowhere to go”.

Fan opinion is sharply against him, with some using the derogatory nickname Crashtor Maldonado. Others said his punishment was unfair compared to Ricciardo’s ten-place grid position drop after his team’s mistake in Malaysia. Gutiérrez thanked supportive fans via social media after the race in English and Mexican, and returned to the circuit yesterday as teams took to testing.

Maldonado was not alone in causing accidents. Jules Bianchi received a drive-through penalty after colliding with Adrian Sutil, leaving both cars sporting punctures. Sutil later retired from the race.

Other retirements included Marcus Ericsson and Kevin Magnussen, both rookies, who separately pulled up at the trackside. Fellow newcomer Daniil Kvyat of Russia, who claimed the title of F1’s youngest-ever points scorer at the season opener, was placed just outside the points despite setting one of the fastest laps of the early part of the race. He had also scored in Malaysia.

“Not an easy race for us yesterday!” Kvyat tweeted on Monday. “But many things learned, and helpful for the future.”

The podium was rounded out by Sergio Pérez in third, claiming Force India’s second-ever podium finish off the back of a failure to even start in Malaysia with a gearbox malfunction. Nico Hulkenberg took fifth. Both he and ninth-place Fernando Alonso celebrated upon completing the race, arms in the air. Williams racers Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas scored seventh and eight place respectively. Kimi Räikkönen claimed the final scoring position of tenth despite a minor collision with Magnussen at the race start.

Williams, who this year are using new bright white livery on their cars, where able to keep the coloured stripes of sponsor Martini. Constraints from the host nation meant the word Martini itself, however, was changed to ‘racing’ on the cars. Williams test driver Susie Wolff of Scotland started a competition during the race weekend to win one of her Martini-coloured caps for submitting pictures of designs using the Martini colours.

A further near miss was suffered by Bottas when he ran off-track after becoming caught in battling between Räikkönen and Ricciardo. His team radioed to promise a complaint would be made to race director Charlie Whiting.

Rosberg told his Twitter followers “Great fight with @LewisHamilton but I’m back in two weeks to take the win”. Hamilton tweeted “What a race! Amazing to get my first win in Bahrain” and also paid tribute to his Mercedes team.

Anti-government protestors turned out in their thousands at the start of the race weekend. The peaceful rally at the capital, Manama, was marred by small groups throwing molotov cocktails at police. The protestors were opposed to the international attraction giving patronage to Bahrain. Events at the circuit were given heavy security.

The race has been the target of intense protesting for several years.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Yesterday, the deadline expired for the rainbow colored sidewalk located at Rainbow Oxford St, Taylor Square in Sydney, Australia to remain intact.

The pedestrian crossing had been painted with the colors of the rainbow to celebrate lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community (LGBT) pride march in Sydney during this year’s Mardi Gras celebrations, at a cost of AU$11,000 and, according to a spokesman for the City of Sydney, it had a very positive impact for local tourism and within the community.

The initial idea plan was to conduct a month long pilot and, if positive, keep the crossing painted in rainbow colors for twelve month period. However, the Roads and Maritime Services (RMS) warned of the potential danger the painted the road could pose for drivers and demanded the road be painted over. Despite an online petition gathered almost 15,000 signatures to save the rainbow, the Roads Minister Duncan Gay and Premier Barry O’Farrell decided not to meet the requests from the City of Sydney for the road to remain with the colors of rainbow.

A spokeswoman for Gay’s office cited road safety hazard and unsafe behavior as the reason for removal, including people who sat in the road to take pictures. Alex Greenwich, the local representative from Sydney in the New South Wales state government, had organised the petition earlier and said Gay exaggerated the potential safety hazards, and said that people took pictures during the parade of Mardi Gras, when there was no traffic.

Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore also disputed Mr Gay’s claims, citing no safety hazards, “The audit also shows that generally the risk to the public of having the rainbow crossing is low. This is bureaucracy gone wild — the Minister wants to remove the crossing because he doesn’t like some pictures that people have been taking. Those pictures are a drop in the ocean compared to the tens of thousands of other pictures of the crossing that have … promoted Oxford St as one of the best LGBT tourism destinations in the world.” The walk is scheduled to be painted over this week and will cost about AU$35,000.

Sunday, August 9, 2015

Authorities are investigating what’s left of debris believed to belong to a plane, that washed ashore several small islands in the Maldives. The investigation began as a result of photos of the debris being uploaded to the social networking website Facebook. Some of the debris is reported to have washed ashore as early as May 31 and was found on a beach owned by the Banyan Tree Vabbinfaru resort, located in Kaafu Atoll. In the past few days, several other pieces of debris were recovered on at least three other islands. Authorities are trying to determine if it may be part of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (MH370). Last week, a piece of a wing known as a flaperon, reported to be from MH370, was found washed ashore on Réunion Island.

Pictures taken of the objects recovered in the Maldives on, reportedly, May 31, were posted to Facebook by an employee of the resort. That prompted authorities to launch an investigation into the debris, but before it could be examined, it had already been sent away for disposal. The photographs show a large white object, possibly two, stained with algae and appear to be made of a fiberglass and honeycomb material. The objects appear to be several feet in length and width and in one photo where the paint is severely peeled, red letters “IC” can be seen. Those pieces, along with others, were taken away and disposed of as trash. When authorities discovered the photographs, they returned to the site, but only found a small, five to seven inch (about 13–18 cm) piece of debris they say doesn’t appear to be part of a plane.

According to the resort’s manager Mr. Naseem, the bigger pieces of debris and other waste were taken away and disposed of in the usual way. He added other forms of debris and trash with no value, such as buoys and suspected military waste, wash up on the islands all the time, especially during monsoon season. Local residents and resort workers regularly collect trash which is sent to the garbage island Thilafushi where it’s sorted, exported for recycling, or burned. Reports say at the time the debris was collected, no one suspected it could be from MH370.

“Although some of it was taken to Thilafushi, there is still a five or a seven inch piece on the resort. It was left because it is small. The management has decided to hand it over to the Police”, said an unnamed official to SunOnline, who said authorities don’t know if any of the debris taken away has been destroyed. The Serious and Organized Crime Unit of the Maldives Police Service and experts from the Maldives Civil Aviation Authority are heading the investigation.

Yesterday, reports stated several more pieces of debris, one piece measuring some eight feet by two feet (about 2.4 by 0.6 m), were found on Baa Atoll, Fehendhoo and Fulhahdhoo and washed ashore sometime in the past few days. One piece appears to have a serial number on the side, possibly reading ‘021411270507.’ Initially residents who found the debris took it home. “A resident had found the debris and taken it home. Nobody had thought twice about it then. When he heard about the discovery in Vabbinfaru resort we immediately called the Police,” said Mohamed Ibrahim, a councilman for Fehendhoo Island, to Haveeru Daily.

MH370, while flying from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Beijing, China, vanished without a trace on March 8, 2014. All 239 passengers and crew are believed to be dead. On the day the plane went missing, residents on the small Maldive island of Kudahuvadhoo claimed to have seen a very “low flying jumbo jet” crash into the Indian Ocean. Some also noted the colors appeared to resemble that of a Malaysia Airlines plane. “I’ve never seen a jet flying so low over our island before. We’ve seen seaplanes, but I’m sure that this was not one of those. I could even make out the doors on the plane clearly”, one resident was quoted as saying to the newspaper Haveeru Daily. Some claim the plane appeared to be headed in the direction of Diego Garcia.

According to The Huffington Post, Haveeru reported the witnesses were interviewed by authorities who deemed their statements to be truthful, but Maldive military officials along with Malaysian officials say no such aircraft was in Maldive airspace at the time MH370 went missing. “Based on the monitoring up to date, no indication of Flight MH370 has been observed on any military radars in the country [Maldives]. Furthermore, the data of radars at Maldives airports have also been analysed and shows no indication of the said flight”, said Malaysian Transport Minister Hishamuddin Hussein.

Saturday, September 27, 2008

On October 14, 2008, Canadians will be heading to the polls for the federal election. Liberal candidate Andrew Lang is standing for election in the riding of Toronto—Danforth.

Raised with Liberal values, Andrew attended his first Liberal rally at age 6. He has worked 18 elections since that introduction to the political sphere, but this is his first time as a candidate. A University of Toronto graduate (and player for the Varsity Blues), his career highlights include managing Bill Graham’s constituency office. (A now-retired MP, Graham’s career included serving as Minister of National Defence and Minister of Foreign Affairs, as well as interim Leader of the Liberals and Leader of the Opposition.) He is currently with the Ontario Chiropractic Association.

Wikinews contacted Andrew, to talk about the issues facing Canadians, and what they and their party would do to address them. Wikinews is in the process of contacting every candidate, in every riding across the country, no matter their political stripe. All interviews are conducted over e-mail, and interviews are published unedited, allowing candidates to impart their full message to our readers, uninterrupted.

The incumbent in this riding is National Democratic Party (NDP) leader Jack Layton. Other than Lang, trying for the riding are Sharon Howarth (Green), and Christina Perreault (Conservative). Minor party candidates Marie Crawford (Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party of Canada), Marcell Rodden (Marxist-Leninist), and Bahman Yazdanfar (Canadian Action Party) are also running, as is independent John Richardson. The riding has existed federally since 1979, and has the seat has been occupied by Bob Rae (NDP, 1979–1982), Lynn McDonald (NDP, 1982–1988), Dennis Mills (Liberal, 1988–2004), and Layton (NDP, 2004 to present).

For more information, visit the campaign’s official website, listed below.