health: Lincoln Tribune

السبت، 24 ديسمبر 2011

Lincoln Tribune

Christmas Eve
All clear after Ebola scare at Nairobi hospital
All clear after Ebola scare at Nairobi hospital
Indian court summons Google, Facebook and other websites
Indian court summons Google, Facebook and other websites

Posted: 23 Dec 2011 09:00 PM PST

Profile America — Saturday, December 24th. Today is Christmas Eve — and last-minute shoppers searching for their final gifts are eagerly scanning shelves nearly picked bare. If the recipient is a man, one gift can always be counted on. All over the country, millions of dads, husbands, uncles, brothers and boyfriends will unwrap a suspiciously familiar, long, thin package — inside will be a necktie. One of every five ties sold is a Christmas gift — that’s why this is National Tie Month. King Louis the 14th of France is credited with making ties popular. He was impressed by the visit of a military regiment from Croatia, whose officers wore bright colored handkerchiefs around their necks. Today in the U.S., making neckties is a $300 million a year business. Profile America is in its 15th year as a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau.

Sources: Chase’s Calendar of Events 2011, p. 610
2007 Economic Census, NAICS 315993
http://www.census.gov/econ/industry/hierarchy/i31599.htm

All clear after Ebola scare at Nairobi hospital

Posted: 23 Dec 2011 07:37 PM PST

NAIROBI (BNO NEWS) -- A woman who died at a hospital in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi on Thursday morning did not have Ebola or other well-known infectious diseases, Kenyan and U.S. health authorities confirmed on Friday. The cause of death remains unknown.

The 29-year-old woman, who was identified as Gladys Muthoni, was taken by taxi to Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi but died before she could be taken out of the car by doctors. She had complained of sharp pains all over her body and a headache before starting to vomit blood.

Because the symptoms appeared to be similar to those of the deadly Ebola virus, health authorities immediately declared an alert and launched a major investigation. Muthoni's father, a friend and the taxi driver who transported her were placed in quarantine as a precaution.

Later on Thursday, experts from the Kenya Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation (MOPHS), the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Army Medical Research Unit in Kenya (USAMRU-K) collected samples from the woman for testing at a laboratory.

"The KEMRI/CDC laboratory, part of CDC's Global Disease Detection (GDD) Regional Center in Nairobi, tested the samples for a number of infectious diseases, including Rift Valley fever, Chikungunya, Dengue, Ebola, Marburg, Yellow fever, O'nyong-nyong and Congo-Crimean Hemorrhagic fever," said Joel Montgomery, Director of the International Emerging Infections Program at GDD-Kenya. "The testing by KEMRI/CDC and KEMRI/USAMRU-K laboratories ruled out these diseases."

The three individuals who were being held in quarantine were released on Friday after the results came in, but it remains unclear what caused Muthoni's death. Some doctors suggested it may have been a severe ulcer in her stomach which caused the vomiting of blood.

The last known case of Ebola was reported earlier this year when a 12-year-old girl died in a town near the Ugandan capital of Kampala. The case sparked immediate fears of an epidemic, and the Kenyan Ministry of Health issued an alert to people living near the Ugandan border.

All clear after Ebola scare at Nairobi hospital

Posted: 23 Dec 2011 07:37 PM PST

Indian court summons Google, Facebook and other websites

Posted: 23 Dec 2011 07:00 PM PST

NEW DELHI (BNO NEWS) -- An Indian court on Friday issued a summons to social networking website Facebook, search giant Google, Yahoo!, video-sharing website YouTube and seventeen other websites to stand trial for allegedly publishing 'objectionable contents.'

New Delhi Metropolitan Magistrate Sudesh Kumar claimed that the websites contain obscene pictures and content offensive to Hindus, Muslims and Christians. The court's order comes just three days after another court restrained these websites in a civil case from publishing any 'anti-religious' or 'anti-social' content which promotes hatred or communal disharmony.

"It is also evident that such contents are continuously, openly and freely available to everyone who is using the said network, irrespective of their age and even the persons under the age of 18 years have full and uncensored access to such obscene contents," the court said, as quoted by the Press Trust of India (PTI).

Earlier this month, the Indian government vowed to stop what it calls 'offensive and defamatory' content on internet websites. However, several major websites immediately rejected the plan and Indian officials complained their requests fell on 'deaf ears'.

Telecommunications minister Kapil Sibal said on December 6 that the government does not want to interfere with the freedom of the press. However, he said, if the social networking websites are not willing to cooperate, then it is "the duty of the government" to ensure "blasphemous material" does not appear on the internet.

Social networking site Facebook, which has more than 25 million users in the country, said it would remove any content that is hateful, threatening, incites violence or contains nudity from the service. "We recognize the government's interest in minimizing the amount of abusive content that is available online and will continue to engage with the Indian authorities as they debate this important issue," Facebook said in a statement earlier this month.

Google said it would abide by local laws and take any material off if it violates its policies. "But when content is legal and does not violate our policies, we will not remove it just because it is controversial, as we believe that people's differing views, so long as they are legal, should be respected and protected," the company's spokesperson said, as quoted by PTI.

India has about 100 million internet users, the third-largest number after China and the United States.