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Now, ‘Australian Fritzl’ who raped daughter, fathered four kids emerges

September 17, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Melbourne, September 17 (ANI): Lisa Neville, Australian Community Services Minister, has come under fire after huge number of bungling in the child protection services emerged, including a sex horror case of a man accused of fathering four children with his daughter.

Neville is expected to be faced with calls to resign after revelations of failed attempts by Victoria’s Department of Human Services (DHS) to conduct proper background checks on a known sexual predator before letting a child into his care.

The accused is said to have caged his daughter as a virtual prisoner, raping her almost daily from when she was 11 years old, reports the Herald Sun.

All the four kids bore by the woman, who is now under the care of authorities in a safe house, had health problems when delivered in major hospitals in Melbourne. One of the kids died soon after birth.

Their birth certificates do not hold the name of their fathers, prompting alarms as to why questions were not asked at the time.

The man denied the allegations, but was charged after DNA tests allegedly proved he was the father of her children. He is due to appear in court in November.

Comparisons have been drawn between the case and that of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man who held his daughter as a sex slave for 24 years and fathered seven children with her.

Minister Lisa Neville told ABC Radio: “I was extremely appalled to see the allegations.”

“They are only allegations and are before the courts at the moment and we need to be very careful about how much detail we go into,” Neville said.

“I became aware of this from the media today and I don’t know what, or if, (there has been) any involvement of the police, the department or other agencies … over the past 30 years.

“This will be a priority to look into,” she added. (ANI)

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Grapes ‘keep your heart hale and hearty’

April 23, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, April 23 (ANI): A new study in rats has suggested that eating grapes could help in fighting high blood pressure and could also reduce other cardiovascular risks and heart muscle damage.

University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center researchers, who conducted the study, said that the benefits may be the result of the phytochemicals – naturally occurring antioxidants – turning on a protective process in the genes that reduces damage to the heart muscle.

The researchers studied the effect of regular table grapes (a blend of green, red, and black grapes) that were mixed into the rat diet in a powdered form, as part of either a high- or low-salt diet.

Comparisons were made between rats consuming the grape powder and rats that received a mild dose of a common blood pressure drug. All the rats were from a research breed that develops high blood pressure when fed a salty diet.

After 18 weeks, researchers found that the rats, which received the grape-enriched diet powder, had lower blood pressure, better heart function, and fewer signs of heart muscle damage than the rats that ate the same salty diet but didn’t receive grapes.

Rats that received the blood pressure medicine, hydrazine, along with a salty diet also had lower blood pressure, but their hearts were not protected from damage as they were in the grape-fed group, the researchers found.

“There are the small changes that diet can bring, but the effect of grape intake on genes can have a greater impact on disease down the road,” said E. Mitchell Seymour, M.S., who led the research as part of his doctoral work in nutrition science at Michigan State University.

Heart cells, like other cells in the body, make an antioxidant protein called glutathione, which is one of our first defenders against damaging oxidative stress.

High blood pressure causes oxidative stress in the heart and lowers the amount of protective glutathione. However, intake of grapes actually turned on glutathione-regulating genes in the heart and significantly elevated glutathione levels.

This may explain why the hearts of grape-fed animals functioned better and had less damage.

The study was presented at the 2009 Experimental Biology convention in New Orleans. (ANI)

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CIA interrogation methods are almost illegal, says lawyer

April 17, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Apr. 17 (ANI): Most of the interrogative techniques that the Central Intelligence Agency has been approved to use, are considered to be torture under federal law or international treaties, according to a US Justice Department lawyer.

Lawyers in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel felt that the CIA was using almost illegal methods of interrogation.

“The question is substantial and difficult,” Justice Department official Steven Bradbury write in a May 2005 memo.

Bradbury expressed reservations about plans to subject detainees to a combination of the “enhanced” techniques while also being told that interrogators “will do what it takes to get important information.

“The top Justice Department attorney said it was possible a detainee might view that as a threat of severe physical pain, exposure to mind-altering substances, or perhaps even…imminent death,” the Politico quoted him, as saying.

Bradbury went on raising doubts about serial waterboardings method of the interrogation that was not authorized anywhere else.

“Comparisons to the military’s counter-interrogation training involving the simulated drowning technique known as the waterboard not were of limited utility because while the military subjected its trainees to just one such session the CIA was authorized to conduct a series of back-to-back waterboardings under an extremely detailed protocol,” he noted in the memo. (ANI)

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Skype IPO Worth $3 Billion? Dream On

April 15, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

We love our friends over at Business Insider (which until a few months ago was known as Silicon Alley Insider). But occasionally we wonder if the pressure of filing 85 items a day clouds the judgment of their finger-sore contributors.

On Tuesday evening, BI’s Dan Frommer published a post saying that the planned public spinoff of voice-over-Internet-protocol phone provider Skype from eBay (EBAY), announced that afternoon, might be worth as much as $3.1 billion. He based that on a note from an investment banker predicting that Skype might have pre-tax earnings of $156 million in 2010 (an aggressive but not absurd estimate). The banker then multiplied that figure by the not terribly precise range of 10 to 20, and came up with the not terribly precise range of $1.6 billion to $3.1 billion.

Why is that number so laughable? We already know that Skype today is worth nowhere near that much money; eBay would not be taking the IPO route if it could fetch even half of $3 billion for the company that eBay purchased in one of Meg Whitman’s more questionable moments.

But ok, IPOs have been known to get overheated. And even if the IPO market today is about as dead as a shot pirate, it will bounce back some day.

Still, given today’s slump, how can anyone justify the 10-20x multiplier? Certainly not by rational projections of Skype’s future growth. The service boasts some 400 million users, but as Om Malik argued pretty definitively in January, Skype’s growth is clearly flattening. Perhaps most importantly, Skype’s most important selling point is that it’s free between Skype users. If Skype as a standalone company tries to charge users, millions of them will simply switch to a free competitor. The fact is, standalone VOIP companies–even when they are able to charge for their services–don’t have a great track record. Just ask Vonage (VG).

Don’t get me wrong, the eBay plan is smart: Get Skype off the books. But eBay’s wishful thinking about Skype’s value was wrong in 2005; any investment banker arguing it’s worth $3.1 billion today or next year is just as wrong, and ought to be quizzed, not copied.

UPDATE: The New York Times has found an even more credulous analyst to say Skype’s IPO could fetch as much as $4 billion! Hey, why not $10 billion? Doesn’t anyone ever ask these people to define and defend the valuation yardsticks they use? Comparisons to past IPOs have little use since, as the Times at least acknowledges, “public markets [have] not been very receptive to initial offerings” of late.

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Gazza reveals facets of his 12-month nightmare

February 24, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, Feb.24 (ANI): A troubled former England football star Paul Gascoigne a.k.a. Gazza has revealed how he careered towards insanity during a year of drink and drugs hell.azza opened his heart to give a painfully honest account of the worst 12 months of his life.

He confessed to snorting cocaine and revealed how cops dragged him from his hotel bath amid family fears that he would kill himself.

He also revealed how he downed hundreds of bottles of wine and gin over a six-week spell during which he didn’t get a wink of sleep, and admitted he became so disturbed he thought his toy parrots were real – and his only friends.

Gazza, 41, is now battling back to full health after a four-week spell in the rehab clinic inspired by ex-Arsenal ace Tony Adams.

Looking tanned and fit, he told The Sun: “I was staring into the abyss, but now the future looks great for me. I can’t say I will never drink again – all I can say is that I didn’t drink today and I hope I don’t drink tomorrow.”

Comparisons are often odious, but when it comes to making it between two great England football players who fell on bad days at the prime of their careers, it is acceptable.

If it is Gazza on the one hand; it George Best on the other.

Gazza is now on the mend, calm, clear-eyed and confident, and prefers a glass of water to liquor.

In contrast, George Best, looks troubled at the same health farm that Gazza is now at in 2004.

Best, who had a glass of wine next to him, died 18 months later aged 59.

The extreme sleep deprivation that Gazza claims to have endured would have made it far harder for him to deal with all his other problems.

Studies have shown your brain suffers a great deal from lack of sleep.

In terms of driving or operating machinery, being sleep-deprived can be as bad as being drunk, reports The Sun.

Gazza’s nightmare 12 months, which saw him sectioned three times under the Mental Health Act, was triggered by a hip replacement operation in December 2007.

The star, who had battled the bottle for years, kept off the booze in the run-up to the operation.

But hobbling round his flat in Jesmond, Newcastle – with only a few visitors – he was soon drinking heavily again. (ANI)

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Now, ‘Australian Fritzl’ who raped daughter, fathered four kids emerges

CIA interrogation methods are almost illegal, says lawyer

Skype IPO Worth $3 Billion? Dream On

Gazza reveals facets of his 12-month nightmare

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