World News(Stuff to Discuss) Free For All

[Predator24]

Transsexual Killer serves time in Womens prison

From Times Online September 4, 2009

Transsexual killer wins battle to serve life sentence in a women's jailFrances Gibb, Legal Editor

A transsexual killer who was born a man has won a legal battle to be transferred to a women?s prison.

The prisoner, who was also convicted of attempted rape, will be moved to a women?s jail within weeks after a High Court ruled that the refusal by Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, to transfer her violated her basic human rights and increased her long-term risk to society.

The prisoner is in her 20s and serving a life sentence for manslaughter and attempted rape.

She has had her womanhood recognised by law and her birth certificate has been amended accordingly, the High Court in London was told. She has had hair on her face and legs permanently removed by laser and has developed breasts after hormone treatment, but is forbidden from wearing skirts or blouses, or more than ?subtle? make up, at the men?s prison where she is held on a wing for vulnerable prisoners.

Describing her as ?a woman trapped inside a man?s body?, her barrister, Phillipa Kaufman, said the final step to her achieving full womanhood is gender reassignment surgery - but she had been told she cannot have it while in a men?s prison.

Doctors have refused even to consider her for the operation unless she fulfills the ?living role requirement? - living as a woman for an extended period; so she has no hope of getting the surgery she so desperately wants unless moved to a women's jail.

The barrister told Judge David Elvin, QC, that, although the woman has now served her minimum jail term, she has been told by the Parole Board that she remains an unnacceptable risk to the public, still has ?a great deal of work to do? and is ?nowhere near release?.

That, Miss Kaufman argued, was a direct result of her intense frustration at being unable to have gender reassignment surgery.

The prisoner, dressed in a dark blue blouse and striped jacket and wearing gold earrings, listened by video link as Miss Kaufman told the judge: ?At the moment, she lives as a woman amongst men on a vulnerable prisoners' unit and she can?t wear what she wants or more than subtle make up. They are an important statement of her femaleness.?

Oliver Sanders, for the Justice Department and the prison authorities, argued that the woman would be no more likely to be accepted by inmates at a female prison and that, if moved, she would have to spend long periods in segregation, at an extra cost of ?80,000 per year.

But today Judge Elvin ruled that the Justice Department?s refusal to transfer her to a women's jail amounted to a violation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which enshrines the right to respect for privacy.

Regardless of any extra cost involved, the judge said that to block her progress towards full gender reassignment surgery was irrational and would only increase her risk to the public.

After the judge?s ruling, Miss Kaufman told the judge that the woman is now expected to be moved to a women's jail within a few weeks.

The transsexual prisoner, referred to in court only as ?A?, was convicted of manslaughter and jailed for five years after smothering her boyfriend with a pillow and strangling him with a pair of tights.

Her life sentence tariff, the minimum period she must serve before being considered for parole, expired in 2007. "A" was diagnosed as suffering from gender dysphoria and had been aware of her condition from an early age, the judge said.

The woman said in her evidence that when her gender was legally recognised it was ?a reflection of how it should have been from the start?.

The judge said that her detention in a men?s jail had both scotched her desire to live fully ?in role? as a woman - and thus qualify for a full gender reassignment - and had also had a ?serious adverse effect? on her ability to take part in work aimed at reducing her risk status and moving towards release.

The judge issued a mandatory order requiring Mr Straw to transfer ?A? to a women's prison.

[ThatHaole]

^^^ Do you know him/her???

[Predator24]

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Why you want me to introduce you to her?

Whatever happened on that last date I set you up on with "Bobbi"???

[Striker]

The Placebo Effect

http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/m...urrentPage=all

Long article, but worth the read. Here are the first few paragraphs.

Merck was in trouble. In 2002, the pharmaceutical giant was falling behind its rivals in sales. Even worse, patents on five blockbuster drugs were about to expire, which would allow cheaper generics to flood the market. The company hadn't introduced a truly new product in three years, and its stock price was plummeting.

In interviews with the press, Edward Scolnick, Merck's research director, laid out his battle plan to restore the firm to preeminence. Key to his strategy was expanding the company's reach into the antidepressant market, where Merck had lagged while competitors like Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline created some of the best-selling drugs in the world. "To remain dominant in the future," he told Forbes, "we need to dominate the central nervous system."

His plan hinged on the success of an experimental antidepressant codenamed MK-869. Still in clinical trials, it looked like every pharma executive's dream: a new kind of medication that exploited brain chemistry in innovative ways to promote feelings of well-being. The drug tested brilliantly early on, with minimal side effects, and Merck touted its game-changing potential at a meeting of 300 securities analysts.

Behind the scenes, however, MK-869 was starting to unravel. True, many test subjects treated with the medication felt their hopelessness and anxiety lift. But so did nearly the same number who took a placebo, a look-alike pill made of milk sugar or another inert substance given to groups of volunteers in clinical trials to gauge how much more effective the real drug is by comparison. The fact that taking a faux drug can powerfully improve some people's health?the so-called placebo effect?has long been considered an embarrassment to the serious practice of pharmacology.

Ultimately, Merck's foray into the antidepressant market failed. In subsequent tests, MK-869 turned out to be no more effective than a placebo. In the jargon of the industry, the trials crossed the futility boundary.

Ugly Blind Date Causes Teen Suicide
Lying about your age and beauty is par for the course when it comes to Internet dating. In China, such deceptions had deadly results for one lovesick teen who killed himself after a disappointing meeting with an Internet ?hotty? he had been chatting with.

The 17-year-old boy from the northeastern Heilongjiang province, whose name has not been released, chatted with what he thought was a 19-year-old girl for weeks on popular free Chinese instant messaging and chatroom service Tencent QQ.

The woman, who used the name Qunjiaofeiyang (meaning ?Flying Skirt?) in chats with the boy, described herself as beautiful and the two had conversations online for weeks before deciding to meet in person. When they finally met in the nearby town of Mudanjiang, the woman turned out to be ten years the boy?s senior ? and much less attractive than advertised.

Disappointed and depressed, the teen returned home immediately and discontinued eating and sleeping. He made the tragic choice to end his life through hanging himself four days later.

The teen is just one of many in China, which has one of the world?s highest suicide rates.

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MadamMeow note: He should have killed the lady. lol

[thermos]

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I was dreadfully concerned that I'd drive someone to this too (I'm the ugly, older hag in this story). I tried to compensate with a cool car - and I think that's the only thing that forestalled a tragic death.

[Five Inch Taint]

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Been there done that. Except I ended up having sex with her. She was not older but she was bigger than advertised.

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Lol a cool car can work magic. I think girls come to expect such from men though otherwise you would hear about chicks killing themselves all the time.

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Not too shocked, just too bad the girls don't get that most guys wouldn't care anyway and it's better to be honest.

[Predator24]

Out of Africa my ass


A skull that rewrites the history of man

By Steve Connor, Science Editor

Wednesday, 9 September 2009

The conventional view of human evolution and how early man colonised the world has been thrown into doubt by a series of stunning palaeontological discoveries suggesting that Africa was not the sole cradle of humankind. Scientists have found a handful of ancient human skulls at an archaeological site two hours from the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, that suggest a Eurasian chapter in the long evolutionary story of man.


The skulls, jawbones and fragments of limb bones suggest that our ancient human ancestors migrated out of Africa far earlier than previously thought and spent a long evolutionary interlude in Eurasia ? before moving back into Africa to complete the story of man.

Experts believe fossilised bones unearthed at the medieval village of Dmanisi in the foothills of the Caucuses, and dated to about 1.8 million years ago, are the oldest indisputable remains of humans discovered outside of Africa.

The story of humans unravels but what has really excited the researchers is the discovery that these early humans (or "hominins") are far more primitive-looking than the Homo erectus humans that were, until now, believed to be the first people to migrate out of Africa about 1 million years ago.

The Dmanisi people had brains that were about 40 per cent smaller than those of Homo erectus and they were much shorter in stature than classical H. erectus skeletons, according to Professor David Lordkipanidze, general director of the Georgia National Museum. "Before our findings, the prevailing view was that humans came out of Africa almost 1 million years ago, that they already had sophisticated stone tools, and that their body anatomy was quite advanced in terms of brain capacity and limb proportions. But what we are finding is quite different," Professor Lordkipanidze said.

"The Dmanisi hominins are the earliest representatives of our own genus ? Homo ? outside Africa, and they represent the most primitive population of the species Homo erectus to date. They might be ancestral to all later Homo erectus populations, which would suggest a Eurasian origin of Homo erectus."

Speaking at the British Science Festival in Guildford, where he gave the British Council lecture, Professor Lordkipanidze raised the prospect that Homo erectus may have evolved in Eurasia from the more primitive-looking Dmanisi population and then migrated back to Africa to eventually give rise to our own species, Homo sapiens ? modern man.

"The question is whether Homo erectus originated in Africa or Eurasia, and if in Eurasia, did we have vice-versa migration? This idea looked very stupid a few years ago, but today it seems not so stupid," he told the festival.

The scientists have discovered a total of five skulls and a solitary jawbone. It is clear that they had relatively small brains, almost a third of the size of modern humans. "They are quite small. Their lower limbs are very human and their upper limbs are still quite archaic and they had very primitive stone tools," Professor Lordkipanidze said. "Their brain capacity is about 600 cubic centimetres. The prevailing view before this discovery was that the humans who first left Africa had a brain size of about 1,000 cubic centimetres."

The only human fossil to predate the Dmanisi specimens are of an archaic species Homo habilis, or "handy man", found only in Africa, which used simple stone tools and lived between about 2.5 million and 1.6 million years ago.

"I'd have to say, if we'd found the Dmanisi fossils 40 years ago, they would have been classified as Homo habilis because of the small brain size. Their brow ridges are not as thick as classical Homo erectus, but their teeth are more H. erectus like," Professor Lordkipanidze said. "All these finds show that the ancestors of these people were much more primitive than we thought. I don't think that we were so lucky as to have found the first travellers out of Africa. Georgia is the cradle of the first Europeans, I would say," he told the meeting.

"What we learnt from the Dmanisi fossils is that they are quite small ? between 1.44 metres to 1.5 metres tall. What is interesting is that their lower limbs, their tibia bones, are very human-like so it seems they were very good runners," he said.

He added: "In regards to the question of which came first, enlarged brain size or bipedalism, maybe indirectly this information calls us to think that body anatomy was more important than brain size. While the Dmanisi people were almost modern in their body proportions, and were highly efficient walkers and runners, their arms moved in a different way, and their brains were tiny compared to ours.

"Nevertheless, they were sophisticated tool makers with high social and cognitive skills," he told the science festival, which is run by the British Science Association.

One of the five skulls is of a person who lost all his or her teeth during their lifetime but had still survived for many years despite being completely toothless. This suggests some kind of social organisation based on mutual care, Professor Lordkipanidze said.

[The Godfather]

From Deep Pacific, Ugly and Tasty, With a Catch
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: September 9, 2009



The answer to the eternal mystery of what makes up a Filet-O-Fish sandwich turns out to involve an ugly creature from the sunless depths of the Pacific, whose bounty, it seems, is not limitless.

The world?s insatiable appetite for fish, with its disastrous effects on populations of favorites like red snapper, monkfish and tuna, has driven commercial fleets to deeper waters in search of creatures unlikely to star on the Food Network.

One of the most popular is the hoki, or whiptail, a bug-eyed specimen found far down in the waters around New Zealand and transformed into a major export. McDonald?s alone at one time used roughly 15 million pounds of it each year.

The hoki may be exceedingly unattractive, but when its flesh reaches the consumer it?s just fish ? cut into filets and sticks or rolled into sushi ? moist, slightly sweet and very tasty. Better yet, the hoki fishery was thought to be sustainable, providing New Zealand with a reliable major export for years to come.

But arguments over managing this resource are flaring not only between commercial interests and conservationists, but also among the environmental agencies most directly involved in monitoring and regulating the catch.

A lot of money is at stake, as well as questions about the effectiveness of global guidelines meant to limit the effects of industrial fishing.

Without formally acknowledging that hoki are being overfished, New Zealand has slashed the allowable catch in steps, from about 275,000 tons in 2000 and 2001 to about 100,000 tons in 2007 and 2008 ? a decline of nearly two-thirds.

The scientific jury is still out, but critics warn that the hoki fishery is losing its image as a showpiece of oceanic sustainability.

?We have major concerns,? said Peter Trott, the fisheries program manager in Australia for the World Wildlife Fund, which closely monitors the New Zealand fishery.

The problems, he said, include population declines, ecosystem damage and the accidental killing of skates and sharks. He added that New Zealand hoki managers let industry ?get as much as it can from the resource without alarm bells ringing.?

The hoki lives in inky darkness about a half-mile down and grows to more than four feet long, its body ending in a sinuous tail of great length. Large eyes give the fish a startled look.

Scientists say its fate represents a cautionary tale much like that of its heavily harvested forerunner, orange roughy. That deepwater fish reproduces slowly and lives more than 100 years. Around New Zealand, catches fell steeply in the early 1990s under the pressures of industrial fishing, in which factory trawlers work around the clock hauling in huge nets with big winches.

Hoki rose commercially as orange roughy fell. Its shorter life span (up to 25 years) and quicker pace of reproduction seemed to promise sustainable harvests. And its dense spawning aggregations, from June to September, made colossal hauls relatively easy.

As a result, the New Zealand Ministry of Fisheries set very high quotas ? roughly 275,000 tons a year from 1996 to 2001. Dozens of factory trawlers plied the deep waters, and dealers shipped frozen blocks and fillets of the fish around the globe.

Moreover, the fishery won certification in March 2001 from the Marine Stewardship Council, a private fisheries assessment group in London, which called it sustainable and well managed. The group?s blue label became a draw for restaurant fish buyers.

?Most Americans have no clue that hoki is often what they?re eating in fried-fish sandwiches,? SeaFood Business, an industry magazine, reported in April 2001. It said chain restaurants using hoki included McDonald?s, Denny?s and Long John Silver?s.

Ominous signs of overfishing ? mainly drops in hoki spawns ? came soon thereafter. Criticism from ecological groups soared. The stewardship council promotes hoki as sustainable ?in spite of falling fish stocks and the annual killing of hundreds of protected seals, albatross and petrels,? the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society of New Zealand said in May 2004.

When the stewardship council had to decide whether to recertify the hoki fishery as sustainable and well managed, the World Wildlife Fund, a Washington-based group that helped found the council, was strongly opposed. ?The impacts of bottom trawling by the hoki fishery must be reduced,? the fund said.

The wildlife fund was overruled, and the council recertified the fishery in October 2007. At the same time, the New Zealand ministry cut the quota still further, reducing the allowable commercial catch from roughly 110,000 tons to about 100,000 tons.

Some restaurants cut back on hoki amid the declines and the controversy.

Last year, Yum Brands, which owns Long John Silver?s, issued a corporate responsibility report that cited its purchases of New Zealand hoki as praiseworthy because the fishery was ?certified as sustainable.?

Now, Ben Golden, a Yum Brands spokesman, said hoki was ?not on the menu.?

Denny?s said it served hoki only in its New Zealand restaurants.

Gary Johnson, McDonald?s senior director of global purchasing, said hoki use was down recently to about 11 million pounds annually from roughly 15 million pounds ? a drop of about 25 percent. ?It could go up if the quota goes up,? he said in an interview. He noted that McDonald?s also used other whitefish for its Filet-O-Fish sandwiches.

Mr. Johnson called the diminishing quotas a sign not of strain on fish stocks but of good management. ?Everything we?ve seen and heard,? he said, ?suggests the fishery is starting to come back.?

The Ministry of Fisheries agreed. ?If you look at the current state of the fishery, it?s apparent that the string of management actions that we?ve taken, which came at severe economic impact, have been effective,? said Aoife Martin, manager of deepwater fisheries.

But the Blue Ocean Institute, a conservation group in East Norwich, N.Y., that scores seafood for ecological impact on a scale from green to red, still gives New Zealand hoki an unfavorable orange rating. The fish is less abundant over all, the group says, and the fishery ?takes significant quantities of seabirds and fur seals.?

Mr. Trott of the wildlife fund was more pointed. He called the fishery?s management ?driven by short-term gains at the expense of long-term rewards? ? a characterization the ministry strongly rejects.

But he, too, held out the prospect of a turnaround that would raise the hoki?s abundance off New Zealand and significantly reduce levels of ecological damage and accidental killing.

?We are currently working with both industry and government to rectify all these issues,? he said. ?Our hope is that we will see great change and willingness by industry and, importantly, government to improve the situation dramatically.?