Tuesday, March 22, 2011

0 A.D. is a historical, open source, strategy game, published by Wildfire Games. It focuses on the period between 500BC and 500AD. The game will be released in two parts: the first covering the pre-AD period, and the second running to 500AD. With development well underway, Wikinews interviewed the development team.

Aviv Sharon, a 24-year-old Israeli student responsible for the project’s PR, compiled the below Q&A, which the full team approved prior to publication.

Saturday, February 11, 2006

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon underwent emergency surgery at Hadassah Medical Center in Israel to treat intestinal damage revealed by a recent computed tomography, better known as a CT scan. The Chief Surgeon said, “Sharon is out of danger, for the moment. His condition is stable and the surgery was a success.” Sharon is currently in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the hospital.

Yesterday doctors treating Sharon had noticed a swollen abdomen and ordered a CT scan on his torso and found the damage to his intestine. Later tests had shown that part of the large intestine had developed necrosis and needed to be immediately removed.

Hospital director Shlomo Mor-Yosef stated a press conference that there were “no complications” during surgery. “His (Sharon’s) key problem is lack of consciousness. There is no significant change in his condition. Doctors did not find any occluded artery and there were no blood vessels blocked. He is stable but in critical condition at this time and he is in no immediate danger at this moment.”

Yosef also said that Sharon’s sons and family had met earlier and decided to go forward with the surgery and treatment.

Doctors removed at least 50cm of Sharon’s large intestine.

Yosef also said that possible reasons as to why Sharon’s intestine was damaged were, “maybe infection or decline of blood supply to the intestine.” Yosef also said that the surgery was both a “routine procedure” and “not a dramatic” one. “Hospitals perform these operations sometimes two or three times a day,” he added.

Yael Bossem-Levy, a spokesman for Hadassah Medical Center said earlier that, “the prime minister’s life is in danger. His condition is now very serious, or critical. Sharon’s digestive tract has undergone severe deterioration while he’s been unconscious, and there appears to be a blockage in his blood circulation. The restricted blood flow raised the possibility of necrosis, or death of tissue, in the intestines.”

Levy also stated that Sharon’s condition has “deteriorated to its most critical point since his admission.”

The 77 year-old leader has been hospitalized since January 4th, after suffering a massive stroke which left him comatose. This is his seventh surgery since his hospitalization.

Sharon has been hospitalized for thirty-nine days, and has been on a feeding tube for two weeks.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Members of Australia’s Health Services Union (HSU) will go on strike in Victoria next week in a dispute over stalled wage and career structure negotiations. Over 5000 physiotherapists, speech pathologists and radiation therapists will walk off the job next week, effectively closing the state’s 68 largest health services.

The strike will force the closure of intensive care units and emergency departments across the state.

It is feared the strike could continue into Easter.

National secretary of the HSU, Kathy Jackson said admissions would be crippled, while intensive care patients would have to be evacuated to New South Wales, Tasmania and South Australia as hospitals will not be able to perform tests or administer treatment.

“When an ambulance shows up you can’t admit a patient without an X-ray being available, you can’t intubate them and you can’t operate on them,” she said.

“If something goes wrong in an ICU you need to be able to X-ray, use nuclear medicine or any diagnostic procedure,” said Ms Jackson.

Ms Jackson said the HSU offered arbitration last year, but the state government refused. “They’re not interested in settling disputes, they hope that we are just going to go away.”

“We’re not going away, we’ve gone back and balloted the whole public health workforce in Victoria, those ballots were successful, 97 percent approval rating,” she said.

The HSU is urging the government to commence serious negotiations to resolve the dispute before industrial action commenced.

The government has offered the union a 3.25 per cent pay increase, in line with other public sector workers but the union has demanded more, but stopped short of specifying a figure.

Victorian Premier John Brumby said the claim would be settled according to the government’s wages policy. “The Government is always willing and wanting to sit down and negotiate with the relevant organisations . . . we have a wages policy based around an increase of 3.25 per cent and, above that, productivity offset,” he told parliament.

The union claims it is also arguing against a lack of career structure, which has caused many professionals to leave the health service. Ms Jackson said wages and career structures in Victoria were behind other states.

Victorian Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu said he was not in support of the proposed strike and called on the government to meet with unions. “There could not be a more serious threat to our health system than has been announced today.”

“We now have to do whatever is possible to stop this strike from proceeding,” he said.

The opposition leader will meet with the union at 11:30 AM today.

Victorian Hospitals Industry Association industrial relations services manager Simon Chant said hospitals were looking at the possible impact and warned that patients may have to be evacuated interstate if the strike goes ahead.