Monday, 21 June 2010 08:21 A Scottish hospital will become the first in the UK to use robots to clean, deliver food and dispense drugs. The Forth Valley Royal Hospital's fleet of bots will also be carrying clinical waste and cleaning operating theatres when the new £300m Stirlingshire hospital opens in August. The robot squad will move around via their own dedicated network of corridors beneath the hospital. Staff will use hand-held PDA's to call the machines to move meal trays or bed linen.' Monday, 21 June 2010 08:05 'Hundreds of demonstrators, gathering at the Port of Oakland before dawn, prevented the unloading of an Israeli cargo ship. The demonstrators, demanding an end to Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip, picketed at Berth 58, where a ship from Israel’s Zim shipping line is scheduled to dock later today. The day shift of longshoremen agreed not to cross the picket line.' Read more: Bay Area Picket Line Stops Israeli Ship From Unloading Monday, 21 June 2010 07:49 Monday, 21 June 2010 07:43 'And are we any safer now that the EU has failed to restore full confidence with its €750bn (£505bn) "shock and awe" shield, that is to say after throwing everything it can credibly muster under the political constraints of monetary union? This is the deep angst that lies behind last week's surge in gold to an all-time high of $1,258 an ounce. The World Gold Council said on Friday that the central banks of Russia, the Philippines, Kazakhstan and Venezuela have been buying gold, and Saudi Arabia’s monetary authority has "restated" its reserves upwards from 143m to 323m tonnes. If there is any theme to the bullion rush, it is fear that the global currency system is unravelling. Or, put another way, gold itself is reclaiming its historic role as the ultimate safe haven and benchmark currency.' Read more: Gold Reclaims its Currency Status as the Global System Unravels Monday, 21 June 2010 07:35 'In a dark but little-known chapter of U.S. history, the federal government ordered the poisoning of alcohol supplies to deter and punish those who sought to flout Prohibition-era bans. Starting in 1906, the United States began requiring manufacturers of industrial ethanol to put the chemical through a process to distinguish it from the identical substance found in alcoholic beverages. After the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcohol was banned by the 18th Amendment and the government cracked down on smuggling operations, bootleggers turned to chemistry to keep their customers supplied. A simple process was used to extract toxic chemicals from the industrial alcohol used in paints, solvents, fuels and medicine, and this relatively clean alcohol was then used to make beverages. By the mid-1920s, an estimated 60 million gallons of industrial alcohol were being stolen per year.' Read more: U.S. Government Poisoned its Own Citizens During Prohibition Monday, 21 June 2010 04:48 'A Corruption scandal gripping the Italian government has crept into the Vatican as a senior cardinal and a former minister come under probe for fraud. Hardly has the dust settled over the sex scandal in the Catholic Church hierarchy that a new report shows Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe and Pietro Lunardi, a former infrastructure and transport minister have been implicated for aggravated corruption, The Independent newspaper reported on Monday.'
Monday, 21 June 2010
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