Day: December 8, 2016

Surgeon General Calls Youth Vaping A Public Health Threat

WASHINGTON — 
The U.S. surgeon general is calling e-cigarettes an emerging public health threat to the nation’s youth.

In a report released Thursday, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy acknowledged a need for more research into the health effects of “vaping,” but said e-cigarettes aren’t harmless and too many teens are using them.

“My concern is e-cigarettes have the potential to create a whole new generation of kids who are addicted to nicotine,” Murthy told The Associated Press. “If that leads to the use of other tobacco-related products, then we are going to be moving backward instead of forward.”

Battery-powered e-cigarettes turn liquid nicotine into an inhalable vapor without the harmful tar generated by regular cigarettes. Vaping was first pushed as safer for current smokers. There’s no scientific consensus on the risks or advantages of vaping, including how it affects the likelihood of someone either picking up regular tobacco products or kicking the habit.

Federal figures show that last year, 16 percent of high school students reported at least some use of e-cigarettes – even some who say they’ve never smoked a conventional cigarette. While not all contain nicotine, Murthy’s report says e-cigarettes are the most commonly used tobacco-related product among youth.

Nicotine is bad for a developing brain no matter how it’s exposed, Murthy said.

“Your kids are not an experiment,” he says in a public service announcement being released with the report.

It’s already illegal to sell e-cigarettes to minors. Earlier this year, the Food and Drug Administration issued new rules that, for the first time, will require makers of nicotine-emitting devices to begin submitting their ingredients for regulators to review. The vaping industry argues the regulations will wipe out small companies in favor of more harmful products, and likely will lobby the incoming Trump administration to undo the rules.

Murthy’s report calls on parents and health workers to make concerns about e-cigarettes clear to young people. He said local officials should take action, too, such as including e-cigarettes in indoor smoke-free policies.

Ghana Awaits Election Results

Ghana Incumbent President, John Dramani Mahama candidate of the National Democratic Congress, holds up his ballot, during the Presidential and parliamentary election, in Bole Ghana, Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2016.

Vote-counting has begun in the West African nation of Ghana, after polls to choose the country’s next president and parliament.

VOA’s Peter Clottey, reporting from Ghana’s capital of Accra, reports polls closed in Ghana at 5 p.m. local time, although people in line at that hour were allowed to vote. He says the electoral commission postponed voting in one western Ghanaian district (Jaman North) until Thursday, due to an unspecified security threat.

Otherwise, Clottey says, “It has been really quiet … A little bit of competitiveness. Nothing in the way of violence.”

Incumbent President John Mahama is seeking a second term against main opposition leader Nana Akufo-Addo, the man he defeated four years ago.

Nana Akufo-Addo, presidential candidate of the opposition New Patriotic Party, cast his vote during the Presidential and parliamentary elections at the Rock of Ages pooling centre in Kibi, eastern Ghana, Dec. 7, 2016.
Akufo-Addo, a former foreign minister, has seized on Ghana’s current economic woes as a campaign theme, accusing Mahama and his ruling National Democratic Congress of incompetence.

Ghana is a major exporter of oil, gold and cocoa. But Mahama’s term has been overshadowed by the plunge in global oil prices, which reduced government revenues and contributed to soaring inflation. The government accepted a $918 million bailout from the International Monetary Fund.

The president traveled across the country in the waning days of the campaign to promote a set of new major infrastructure projects he has undertaken.

Ghana has enjoyed a reputation as beacon of democracy on the African continent, but this year’s campaign has been marred by accusations of voter intimidation and concerns about the country’s electoral commission.

John Glenn, First US Astronaut to Orbit the Earth, Dies at 95

John Glenn, the first U.S. astronaut to orbit the earth, has died at age 95, officials said Thursday.

Glenn had been admitted more than a week ago to Ohio State University’s James Cancer Hospital, according to the John Glenn College of Public Affairs.

He was the last surviving member of a group known as “the Mercury Seven” — seven military test pilots selected in 1959 to become America’s first astronauts.

After serving as a military pilot in World War II and the Korean conflict, Glenn was a test pilot on U.S. Navy and Marine Corps jet fighters and won a place in the first class of U.S. astronauts assembled by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, in 1958.

Glenn became the first U.S. astronaut to orbit the Earth, flying a ship called the Friendship 7 around the world in a nearly 5-hour flight on February 20, 1962.

Much later, he became the oldest man to fly in space in 1998, as a crew member on the U.S. space shuttle Discovery.

Glenn also had political aspirations, running as a Democrat for a U.S. Senate seat for Ohio in 1964. He was unsuccessful, but won a seat 10 years later, defending attacks on his military record in comments that came to be known as the “Gold Star Mothers” speech.

During the Democratic primary race for the Senate in 1974, opponent Howard Metzenbaum accused Glenn, a career military man, of never holding a real job. Glenn retorted, “You go with me to any Gold Star mother (a mother whose child has died in active U.S. military service) and you look her in the eye and tell her that her son did not hold a job.”

The speech is credited with giving Glenn the edge over his competitor in the primary, and he went on to win the Senate seat. He remained a member of the U.S. Senate until 1999, and was the oldest living former member of the Senate until his death.

FILE – In this Friday, Sept. 23, 1977 file photo, Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, center, speaks to a group of Youngstown, Ohio Steelworkers on the steps of the Capitol in Washington.
Glenn made his final trip into space in 1998, while still a senator, after persuading NASA to send him on a space shuttle flight. He was 77 at the time and became the oldest man ever to fly in space. His participation in the 9-day mission was criticized by some as folly, but supporters said it provided valuable data on the effects of space flight on an elderly person, as well as providing data that could be compared with Glenn’s space flights from three decades earlier.

After leaving the Senate, Glenn helped to found a public service school at The Ohio State University, which later became the John Glenn College of Public Affairs.

President Barack Obama awards the Medal of Freedom to astronaut John Glenn in the East Room of the White Housem May 29, 2012 (AP)
Catapulted into the spotlight by the 1962 space flight, Glenn went on to win numerous accolades, including honorary degrees at a number of universities, the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service, a U.S. Senate public service award, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

VOA

Regent Plaza fire: Police register case against owners, management

Police on Thursday registered a First Information Report (FIR) against Regent Plaza hotel’s owners and management, said SSP South Saqib Ismail Memon.

The case was registered after an inquiry report regarding the incident was completed and submitted to Chief Minister Sindh Murad Ali Shah.

The FIR was registered at Saddar police station citing criminal negligence, carelessness and not following the security plan in place for emergency situations.

The senior police official further stated in the inquiry report that the management of the hotel not only failed to follow the security plan, but also failed to inform emergency services in a timely manner.

At least 12 people were killed and 75 others injured when a huge fire erupted at Karachi’s Regent Plaza hotel earlier this week.

The blaze broke out in the kitchen located at the ground floor of the four-star hotel located on the city’s Shahrah-i-Faisal, and swept through the building, trapping scores of hotel guests in their rooms.

The firefighters were able to contain the blaze after three hours.

By Dawn

Today In History

1660 The first Shakespearian actress to appear on an English stage (she is believed to be a Ms. Norris) makes her debut as Desdemona.

1861 CSS Sumter captures the whaler Eben Dodge in the Atlantic. The American Civil War is now affecting the Northern whaling industry.

1863 Union General William Averell‘s cavalry destroys railroads in the southwestern part of West Virginia.

1914 The German cruisers Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Nurnberg, and Leipzig are sunk by a British force in the Battle of the Falkland Islands.

1920 President Woodrow Wilson declines to send a representative to the League of Nations in Geneva.

1932 Japan tells the League of Nations that it has no control over her designs in China.

1941 Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita begins his attack against the British army at Singapore.

1943 U.S. carrier-based planes sink two cruisers and down 72 planes in the Marshall Islands.

1944 The United States conducts the longest, most effective air raid on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima.

1948 The United Nations approves the recognition of South Korea.

1967 In the biggest battle yet in the Mekong Delta, 365 Viet Cong are killed.

1968 South Vietnam’s Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky arrives in Paris for peace talks.

1980 John Lennon is shot to death outside his Manhattan apartment building.

1982 In Washington, D.C., police shoot and kill a man threatening to blow up the Washington Monument.

1987 The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is signed.

1987 An Israeli army tank transporter kills 4 Palestinian refugees and injures 7 others during a traffic accident at the Erez Crossing on the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip, leading to the First Intifada.

1991 The leaders of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine sign an agreement that dissolves the Soviet Union and establishes the Commonwealth of Independent States.

2004 The Cuzco Declaration signed in Cuzco, Peru, establishing the South American Community of Nations.

2010 SpaceX becomes the first privately held company to successfully launch, orbit and recover a spacecraft.

2010 The Japanese solar-sail spacecraft IKAROS passes the planet Venus.

Born on December 8

65 BC Quintus “Horance” Horatius Flaccus, Roman poet and satirist best known for his three books Odes.

1542 Mary, Queen of Scotland (1542-67).

1626 Christina, Queen of Sweden (1644-54).

1765 Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin.

1894 James Thurber, American writer, cartoonist and editor (The Secret Life of Walter Mitty).

1906 Richard Llewellyn, author (How Green Was My Valley).
1913 Delmore Schwartz, poet and writer.

1916 Richard Fleischer, film director, (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Soylent Green).

1922 Jean Ritchie, singer, songwriter of folk music (“Blue Diamond Mines”).

1925 Sammy Davis Jr., singer (“The Candy Man”), dancer, actor (Ocean’s 11); member of the “Rat Pack”.

1930 Maximilian Schell, actor, writer, director, producer; won Academy Award for Best Actor for Judgement at Nuremberg (1961).

1933 Flip Wilson (Clerow Wilson Jr.), comedian and actor; won a Golden Globe and two Emmy Awards for his 1970s TV variety series, The Flip Wilson Show.

1939 Sir James Galway, virtuoso flute player known as “The Man With the Golden Flute.”

1941 Bobby Elliott, drummer, member of the band The Hollies.

1943 Jim Morrison, singer, songwriter, poet; lead singer for The Doors and Rick & the Ravens.

1943 Larry Martin, paleontologist; leading opponent of the “birds are living dinosaurs” theory.

1947 Gregg Allman, singer, songwriter, musician; founding member of The Allman Brothers Band.

1953 Kim Basinger, actress, singer, producer; won Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for L.A. Confidential (1997).

1964 Teri Hatcher, actress; Lois Lane on Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman TV series; won Golden Globe for Best Actress as Susan Mayer on Desperate Housewives TV series.

1966 Sinead O’Connor, Irish singer, songwriter; has frequently generated controversy with her views on social issues such as organized religion and women’s rights.