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Saturday, April 28, 2007

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) has issued border alerts for specific protein ingredients, imported from China, that may be incorporated into products destined for human consumption.

Inspectors from the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) will hold products, such as wheat and corn gluten, as well as soy and rice proteins until they can be tested for melamine, the contaminant found to have sickened pets through its use in pet food. If determined to be free of melamine, the ingredients will be released to the intended recipient. Materials such as glutens and protein powders are used commonly in many forms of food products.

The CFIA said it was not acting on specific information, but rather taking a cautious approach to human protection. “That’s why we have the border lookout for the ingredient, so that we can proactively assess any potential that the product is contaminated,” Paul Mayers of the CFIA told CBC News.

Since the border alert for melamine is a new procedure, the government can’t be sure if the contaminant made it into the food chain previously. The CFIA acknowledged that the same Chinese company under suspicion in the tainted pet food affair had shipped wheat gluten to a Canadian company, which in turn used it in food for fish farms. Although the fish were subsequently eaten by people, the CFIA believes the health risk from such consumption would be low.

In related news, Canadian researchers at the University of Guelph believe they may have determined the mechanism of how melamine caused illness in cats and dogs.

Both cyanuric acid and melamine were found in urine samples from pets that died after consuming contaminated pet food. The two compounds react with one another to form crystals that may block kidney function, researchers at the university said. The researchers observed crystals formed in cat urine by the addition of melamine and cyanuric acid. The composition of these crystals matches those found in the urine of affected pets when compared by infrared spectroscopy (FTIR).

“You wouldn’t normally expect to find those compounds in pet food, and hence nobody was really looking for it,” said John Melichercik, director of analytical laboratory services. “It’s just another piece of the puzzle along the way in this particular pet-food issue.”

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

While nearly all cover of the 2008 Presidential election has focused on the Democratic and Republican candidates, the race for the White House also includes independents and third party candidates. These parties represent a variety of views that may not be acknowledged by the major party platforms.

As a non-partisan news source, Wikinews has impartially reached out to these candidates, throughout the campaign. The most recent of our interviews is Gaithersburg, Maryland’s Richard H. Clark (b. 1960), a senior software engineer and member of MENSA.

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Monday, March 19, 2012Hawker, Canberra — Coming off a national championship win for the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) men’s open team in mid-February, Australia men’s national softball team representatives Nick Norton and Adam Folkard are getting ready for more softball later this year, including the Australian club championships to be held in Brisbane in June.

Folkard and Norton have both won the World Championships and have each won a total of ten national championships with the ACT side. They are both named to the current men’s national team, which has roughly thirty players, and believe they are likely to survive the December cut down to eighteen players who will represent Australia at next year’s World Championship in Auckland, New Zealand.

The World Championship is one of the two most prestigious available to male softball players. The other is the International Softball Congress, an event Folkard and Norton have both competed at.

As national team representatives, there are a lot of expectations for them. In Australia, there is almost no financial support for the men’s game so they must cover most of their own costs, including travel to and from international competitions. According to Folkard’s father, these costs can be prohibitive. In one year, when Folkard was a representative on the men’s U18, U23 and Open team, it cost A$15,000 for travel and other expenses just for Folkard. When costs for bringing family members such as Folkard’s sisters to major international tournaments, the costs were even higher. Folkard, his father and Norton all joked this cost his father an investment property to allow Folkard to continue to compete at the highest level. Both Folkard and Norton currently work as tradesmen to support softball playing.

Beyond money, the national team requires players to be actively involved in wider softball community. Players must represent a club at the club championships in Brisbane if they want to retain a spot in the squad. Folkard plays for a Western Australian club and Norton plays for a Sydney based club, driving down from Canberra to play every Sunday during the season.

Folkard and Norton have both played softball at the highest level in the United States, where the men’s game is not yet fully professionalized but still presents more opportunities for players than are available at home. For several years, Folkard has gone to the United States for three-month stints, playing for teams in Chicago, Pennsylvania, and New York. One side he played was sponsored by Ernst and Young. Folkard currently plays for a Canadian side and has been trying to convince Norton, whom he has grown up playing softball with, to join him like Norton has done one previous season. According to Folkard, playing with a North American club has certain advantages. The clubs pay for his travel to and from Australia, and pay for Championship rings. When asked how North American clubs sign Australian players, he said they follow men’s softball in Australia and call up players to offer contracts. Australian men’s players gain additional exposure to potential clubs when they compete, with some sides approaching them during the North American season and seeking to contract them for the following season.

Both men would love the opportunity to play softball in the Olympics, but believe such an opportunity is unlikely. According to them, softball at the Olympics is a women’s game intrinsically linked to men’s baseball, and men’s softball is unlikely to ever be considered on the programme as a result.

Folkard and Norton both play for the same club in the ACT territory club competition. Their team has secured a grand final berth for the match in ten days. They are waiting to find out who they will play against based on a match this weekend. Both have previously won this competition.

Sunday, April 29, 2007

At least 45 people are reported to have eaten pork which came from a hog farm in Ceres, California in the United States, where pigs from the farm were fed pet food which was recalled because it was contaminated with the chemical melamine.

So far none of the individuals have experienced signs of illnesses, but it is not known what effect the chemical, when ingested, has on humans because no major study has taken place on melamine.

On April 21, at least seven urine samples taken from pigs at hog farm, were tested and the results came back positive for the chemical melamine. At least three samples from the feed used to feed the pigs were tested and those results also came back positive for melamine.

Yesterday, the United States Food and Drug Administration or FDA, said in a statement that “we have no evidence of harm to humans associated with the processed pork product” and that “no recall of meat products processed from these animals is being issued.”

Despite the consumption of pork by humans, the FDA states that the risk to human health is minimal.

“The assessment that, if there were to be harm to human health, it would be very low, is based on a number of factors, including the dilution of the contaminating melamine and melamine-related compounds from the original rice protein concentrate as it moves through the food system. First it is a partial ingredient in the pet food; second, it is only part of the total feed given to the hogs; third, it is not known to accumulate in the hogs and the hogs excrete melamine in their urine; fourth, even if present in pork, pork is only a small part of the average American diet. Neither FDA nor USDA has uncovered any evidence of harm to the swine from the contaminated feed,” added the statement.

On March 19, the manufacturer of the food, Menu Foods, which is based in Mississauga, Ontario in Canada, recalled all of its dog and cat food which totaled over 60 million items. On April 28, Canadian officials announced that they will hold products, such as wheat and corn gluten, as well as soy and rice proteins that have been imported from China until they can be tested for melamine.

It is not known how extensive the outbreak is.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

The Wikimedia Foundation has received a copyright infringement claim from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, widely known as the Mormon Church or LDS Church. The infringement claim is in reference to a URL used as a source in a Wikinews article about Mormon Church documents leaked to the website Wikileaks, titled “Copy of handbook for leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints obtained by Wikinews”. The URL was originally cited as a link in the sources subsection of the article. The Wikimedia Foundation is a donor-supported non-profit organization which runs Wikipedia and Wikinews. This is the first time that the Wikimedia Foundation has received a copyright infringement claim regarding an article published by Wikinews.

The Wikinews article, originally published on April 19, described material in the Church Handbook of Instructions. The work is a two-volume book of policies and is a guide for leaders of the Mormon Church. Wikinews obtained the Church Handbook of Instructions from Wikileaks, a whistleblower website which publishes anonymous submissions of sensitive documents while preserving the anonymity of its contributors. Wikileaks describes the material as significant because “…the book is strictly confidential among the Mormon (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, aka LDS in short form) bishops and stake presidents and it reveals the procedure of handling confidential matters related to tithing payment, excommunication, baptism and doctrine teaching (indoctrination).”

The material was released on the Wikileaks website on April 16, and according to the site was first made available on the document sharing website Scribd. A message at Scribd now states: “This content was removed at the request of copyright agent B. S. Broadbent of the Intellectual Property Division of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

On May 5, the Wikimedia Foundation received a copyright infringement claim from Intellectual Reserve, Inc., the legal entity that owns the intellectual property of the Mormon Church. The infringement claim is addressed to Jimmy Wales, the designated agent of the Wikimedia Foundation, and requests that access to the link to Wikileaks be removed. The link was removed from the article on May 5 by a Wikinews administrator, and the article remains available without the link. The infringement claim was sent by Berne S. Broadbent, president of Intellectual Reserve, Inc. and director of the Intellectual Property Division of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. According to Mike Godwin, general counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation, the Mormon Church has not filed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notice with the foundation.

In 1999, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, prominent critics of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, released material from the Church Handbook of Instructions to the Internet through their organization Utah Lighthouse Ministry, without including the copyright notice of Intellectual Reserve, Inc. or obtaining permission from the church. The website of the Utah Lighthouse Ministry describes as its purpose: “…to document problems with the claims of Mormonism and compare LDS doctrines with Christianity.” The Tanners had received a copy of the 1998 edition of Church Handbook of Instructions from an anonymous sender in October 1999. They published 17 pages of the 160-page handbook on the Utah Lighthouse Ministry website.

The church sent the Tanners a letter threatening a copyright infringement lawsuit if the material was not removed, and the Tanners removed the material from their site the same day, and posted the church’s letter to their website. The website still contained links to other locations that had the material, and an article in the Salt Lake Tribune listed addresses of these links. The church sued the Tanners through its company Intellectual Reserve, in the 1999 case Intellectual Reserve v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry.

The plaintiffs filed their complaint on October 13, 1999, and the United States district court issued a preliminary injunction on December 6, 1999 barring posting of the material by the defendants as well as posting links to other websites which contain the material. The New York Times and other news publications called the injunction a “chilling effect“. In November 2002, the church dropped the lawsuit against Utah Lighthouse Ministry, on condition that the Tanners destroy all copies of the Church Handbook of Instructions, and not include more than 50 words at a time from the handbook in any of their future articles.

Wikileaks has received copyright infringement claims from organizations including the Church of Scientology‘s Religious Technology Center and the Swiss Bank Julius Baer, and the Chinese government attempts to censor every website with the word “wikileaks” in the web page address. Bank Julius Baer sued Wikileaks after sending cease and desist letters in January 2008 which cited the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. As a result of the lawsuit, the bank obtained an injunction preventing the site’s domain name registrar from associating with Wikileaks, but this injunction was lifted in March 2008 and Bank Julius Baer dropped the case.

As of May 13 Wikileaks had not taken down the material on the Church Handbook of Instructions, and a second webpage at the site with a different version of the material was also still available. In a statement to Wikinews, a Wikileaks representative commented on the material hosted at the site: “WikiLeaks will not remove the handbooks, which are of substantial interest to current and former Mormons. WikiLeaks will remain a place where people from around the world can safely reveal the truth.”

Saturday, October 6, 2007

Torbjorn Zetterlund is running for the Green Party of Ontario in the Ontario provincial election, in the Willowdale riding. Wikinews’ Nick Moreau interviewed him regarding his values, his experience, and his campaign.

Stay tuned for further interviews; every candidate from every party is eligible, and will be contacted. Expect interviews from Liberals, Progressive Conservatives, New Democratic Party members, Ontario Greens, as well as members from the Family Coalition, Freedom, Communist, Libertarian, and Confederation of Regions parties, as well as independents.