Google provides latitude for both good and evil

By Calvin Palmer

Forget George Orwell’s Big Brother, Google today ushered in the era of Big Mother with its new software that enables people to be tracked through their mobile phones and other wireless devices.

The feature, dubbed Latitude, expands upon a tool introduced in 2007 to allow mobile phone users to check their own location on a Google map with the press of a button.

“This adds a social flavor to Google maps and makes it more fun,” said Steve Lee, a Google product manager.

The Gestapo tracking the whereabouts of Jews in Nazi Germany was hardly fun but then they had to do it by car or on foot.

Google is doing its best to avoid a backlash concerning privacy concerns by requiring each user to turn on manually the tracking software and making it easy to turn off or limit access to the service.

Google also is also promising not to retain any information about its users’ movements. Only the last location picked up by the tracking service will be stored on Google’s computers, Lee said.

That might be true until the FBI comes knocking on the door.  I can just see Lee serving a five-year stretch for obstructing the police.  Yeah, right!

The software plots a user’s location — marked by a personal picture on Google’s map — by relying on cell phone towers, global positioning systems or a Wi-Fi connection to deduce their location. The system can follow people’s travels in the United States and 26 other countries.

Each user is left to decide who can monitor their location.

Initially, Google Latitude will work on Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry and devices running on Symbian software or Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Mobile. It will also operate on some T-Mobile phones running on Google’s Android software and eventually will work on Apple Inc.’s iPhone and iTouch.

To widen the software’s appeal, Google is offering a version that can be installed on personal computers as well. I think they mean to increase Google’s profits.

The PC access is designed for people who don’t have a mobile phone but still may want to keep tabs on their children or someone else special, Lee said. People using the PC version can also be watched if they are connected to the Internet through Wi-Fi.

Google can plot a person’s location within a few yards if it’s using GPS, or might be off by several miles if it’s relying on transmission from cell phone towers. People who don’t want to be precise about their whereabouts can choose to display just the city instead of a specific neighborhood.

The technology is likely to be greeted enthusiastically by a younger generation hooked on social networking websites such as Facebook. In testing, the feature was quickly adopted by people to locate friends in crowded areas, and by families to give themselves a rough idea of when loved ones would be returning home.

And paranoid American mothers who want to track every move of darling Ashley, Taylor, Joshua or Tyler.  Isn’t part of being a teenager going to places your mother wouldn’t approve of?
 
Children’s groups in Britain said that, though the principle of being able to check up on the whereabouts of a child may bring peace of mind to many parents, problems would arise when children became teenagers and sought more responsibility and independence.

“Is a mobile phone becoming an electronic leash on children?” said John Carr, the secretary of the Children’s Charities Coalition on Internet Safety. “You can see situations where this kind of thing might be useful, but it is also kind of imprisoning children even more.”

Carr called for the Government to look into the security of the system, and said that any company that wished to offer or sell tracking software such as this should be required to get a license.

The Information Commissioner’s office said the opt-in nature of Latitude indicated that the feature satisfied data protection laws, but said it would monitor the system closely.

[Based on reports by the Associated Press and The Times.]

Bird remains found in both engines of ditched airliner

By Calvin Palmer

Bird remains were found in both engines of the Airbus A320 that ditched in the Hudson River, New York, last month, according to federal officials.

The National Transportation Safety Board said today the left engine from US Airways Flight 1549, pulled from the river, had “organic material” in it, and the “organic material” in the right engine, which remained attached to the plane after its January 15 ditching, was bird remains.

The remains taken from both engines have also been sent to the bird laboratory at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, in Washington, D.C., to have the particular bird species identified; geese are suspected.

Pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, reported moments after taking off from LaGuardia Airport that the airliner had collided with birds and both engines had failed. He brought the jet down on the Hudson River and all 155 people aboard survived.

The NTSB also said that an engine surge experienced by the Airbus 320 two days before the accident was due to faulty temperature sensor. The sensor was replaced, and the engine was examined and found to be undamaged before being returned to service.

The plane’s left engine has been shipped to the headquarters of the manufacturer, CFM International, in Cincinnati, where it is dismantled, the board said.

The flight data recorder revealed no anomalies or malfunctions in either engine until Sullenberger reported striking birds.

Engine maintenance records also show the engines had been serviced in compliance with the Federal Aviation Administration’s most recent safety directive, the board said.

Last week, the aircraft was moved from the barge where it had been docked in Jersey City, New Jersey, to a secure salvage yard in Kearny, New Jersey, where it will remain throughout the estimated 12 to 18 months the NTSB investigation could take.

[Based on reports by The New York Times and Associated Press.]

Fossils reveal existence of giant snake

By Calvin Palmer

Scientists have discovered fossils of a giant snake to rival the one dreamed up by Hollywood to menace Jennifer Lopez in the 1997 movie Anaconda.

Vertebrae measuring four inches long were found in northeastern Colombia.  Paleontologists at the University of Florida compared them with existing snakes to estimate the beast must have reached 42 to 45 feet in length and weighed more than 2,500 pounds.

Lead researcher Dr Jason Head, of the University of Toronto, said: “If it tried to enter my office to eat me, it would have a hard time squeezing through the door.”

The creature has been named Titanoboa cerrejonensis and it slithered around the South American rainforest more than 60 million years ago.

Titanoboa, described in the weekly science journal Nature, was dug up at Cerrejon, one of the world’s largest open-pit mines. Researchers also discovered fossils of the creatures Titanboas preyed on,  including crocodiles and turtles.

Head said: “The discovery of Titanoboa challenges our understanding of past climates and environments, as well as the biological limitations on the evolution of giant snakes.

“This shows how much more information about the history of Earth there is to glean from a resource like the reptile fossil record.”

Titanoboa’s size indicates it lived in an environment where the average yearly temperature was 86F to 93F (30C to 34C).

Staff scientist Dr Carlos Jaramillo, of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, said: “This temperature estimate is much hotter than modern temperatures in tropical rainforests anywhere in the world.

“The fossil floras that the Smithsonian has been collecting in Cerrejon for many years indicate that the area was a tropical rainforest.

“That means that tropical rainforests could exist at temperatures three to four degrees Celsius hotter than modern tropical rainforests experience.”

The beast was revealed in early 2007 at the Florida Museum of Natural History, at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

“Graduate students unwrapping the fossils from Colombia realized they were looking at the bones of a snake,” said Dr Jonathan Bloch, the museum’s curator of vertebrate paleontology. ” Not only a snake, but a really big snake.”

They quickly consulted the skeleton of a 17-foot anaconda for comparison. A backbone from that creature is about the size of a silver dollar, Bloch said, while a backbone from Titanoboa is “the size of a large Florida grapefruit.”

So far the scientists have found about 180 fossils of backbone and ribs that came from about two dozen individual snakes, and now they hope to go back to Colombia to find parts of the skull, Bloch said.

[Based on reports by The Daily Telegraph and Associated Press.]

Jade Goody’s cancer has spread

By Calvin Palmer

Big Brother star Jade Goody has been told by doctors that her cervical cancer has spread to her liver, bowel and groin.

The 27-year-old has Stage 4 cervical cancer, the most advanced stage, and almost certainly incurable.

The mother-of-two discharged herself last week to be with sons Bobby, five, and four-year-old Freddie at their Essex home, but she returned to London’s Royal Marsden Hospital after becoming violently ill and collapsing.

Yesterday doctors told her they were now treating her to prolong her life rather than cure the cancer.

Jade now has metastatic cancer, which can sometimes be controlled to prolong survival but it is highly unlikely she will ever be free from the disease.

Treatments for metastatic cancer include chemotherapy, radiation, hormone therapy, surgery and drug treatments, or these in combination.

Only 15 percent to 30 percent of women with Stage 4 cervical cancer will live longer than five years.

Martin Ledwick, head of cancer information nurses for Cancer Research UK, said: “When cervical cancer has spread to other parts of the body away from the cervix, particularly if it’s in other major organs, then the likelihood of it being cured is very low.

“However, some women may live for some time following treatment. It’s very difficult to predict who is going to be in that position.”

Goody shot to fame in 2002 as a contestant in Big Brother 3, becoming a figure of ridicule in the media, depicted as a pig by one tabloid newspaper and denounced for being two-faced and ignorant.

In 2007, she again made headlines for the wrong reasons when she was accused of racism towards Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty in the UK version of Celebrity Big Brother.

Her clash with Shetty prompted a flood of complaints – and led to the appearance on the Indian show where she first learned that she could have cancer.

Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer in women under 35 after breast cancer. However, the vast majority of cases still occur in older women.

Around 3,000 women are diagnosed with the disease each year in the UK and the prognosis is good if it is caught early. In the United States the figure is around 11,000.

In addition, around 24,000 British women will get smear test results each year showing severely abnormal changes to the cells of their cervix, indicating the likelihood of cancer in the future unless treatment is given.

Signs of cervical cancer can be picked up through smear tests, Pap tests in the United States, and having regular smear or Pap tests from a young age will pick up the vast majority of changes to cells before they even get a chance to develop into cancer.

Most cases of cervical cancer are caused by the sexually transmitted infection, human papillomavirus (HPV).

A UK-wide vaccination program of girls aged 12 and 13 is currently ongoing to protect against HPV.

A catch-up program for girls up to the age of 18 has also been set up using the vaccine Cervarix.

[Based on a report by The Independent and the Press Association.]

Men ‘baked and ate’ teenage girl’s body parts

By Calvin Palmer

Two young men, one of them a butcher, have been charged with killing a 16-year-old girl, dismembering her and eating her body parts.

Prosecutors in St Petersburg, Russia, said the girl disappeared while on her way to school in the Kirov district on January 19. She was killed that night and body parts believed to be hers were later found in plastic bags scattered around the city.

Police arrested Yuri Mozhnov, 19, a florist, and Maxim Golovatskhikh, 19, a street-market butcher and one-time psychiatric patient.

Prosecutors believe they drowned the girl in a bathtub, cut her body into pieces and ate some of her internal organs in an act of cannibalism.

“The arrestees said they ate the girl’s body parts because they were hungry,” said Sergei Kapitonov, a spokesman for the city’s prosecutors.

He said that the accused told investigators that they baked some of her insides with potatoes in a stove and allegedly then bagged up her remains and disposed of them.

Both men are being held on suspicion of murder, he said.

The suspects knew the victim, and she accompanied them voluntarily to an apartment rented by another acquaintance on the day she went missing, Kapitonov said.

They were arrested on Saturday, a day after plastic bags – one containing a girl’s head and others holding other body parts – were found in at least two separate locations.

The St Petersburg news Web site fontanka.ru cited a top city prosecutor, Andrei Lavrenko, as saying investigators believe the suspects decided to kill the victim after an argument erupted between the girl and Mr Golovatskikh about the different youth culture groups they belonged to.

[Based on reports by The Daily Telegraph and Press Association.]

Teenage girl dies after sledding accident

By Calvin Palmer

The fun of sledding turned to tragedy when a 16-year-old Yorkshire girl died yesterday evening from injuries she received when her makeshift sled crashed in a country park.

Francesca Anobile, of Mosborough, Sheffield, was one of four girls injured in the accident at Rother Valley Country Park, in Rotherham, South Yorkshire.

It is believed the girls were sledding shortly after 1:00 p.m. yesterday in a field that had been fenced off for cattle grazing.  Their sled, the roof off a 4×4 vehicle, went through a barbed wire fence before hitting a second fence.

Francesca, who reportedly suffered serious head injuries, was airlifted to hospital. She died at the Sheffield’s Northern General Hospital at 6:00 p.m.

Nikki Burns,16, of Waterthorpe, Sheffield, is being treated at the city’s Royal Hallamshire Hospital.

The two other victims, named only as Cherie and Laura, were described by ambulance staff as “walking wounded” and taken to Rotherham District General Hospital.

Francesca gained 15 GCSE passes last summer at Westfield Sports College and won a silver Duke of Edinburgh Award in November 2007.

Head teacher Sue Simmons paid tribute to the “gifted and talented” girl who had been hoping for a place at either Oxford or Cambridge University.

She said Francesca was also involved in the community and was working towards her gold Duke of Edinburgh Award.

Simmons said: “It was a privilege to know her. Staff here could not have wished for a better student and role model. What has happened is absolutely heartbreaking.

“She was bubbly and outgoing with a lovely sense of humour. She put a lot back into her local community working as a young leader teaching sports to children from local primary schools. She was a delightful young lady.”

Phil Rogers, director of culture and leisure at Rotherham Council, said: “People have been using the slopes in the park for sledding. The young girls got themselves a cut-off top from a Land Rover type vehicle and got in it and hit a fence. They were not able to control it.”

South Yorkshire Police described the situation as a “tragic accident” and warned about the dangers of playing on snow and ice.

A spokesman said: “Police would like to highlight the importance of personal safety during this period of adverse weather and advise everyone to take extra care when playing out in the snow and ice.”

[Based on reports by The Guardian, The Times and BBC News.]