Indonesian Train Crash kills at Least 43

A train crash in central Indonesia killed at least 43 people and injured dozens on Saturday, many of them critically, officials and witnesses said.

The toll was expected to rise with some bodies still trapped in the mangled wreckage.

The accident occurred at a station in Petarukan, a city on the northern coast of Central Java province, at around 3 a.m. (0800 GMT; 9 p.m. EDT Friday) as many passengers were sleeping, witnesses told TVOne.

A train from the capital, Jakarta, slammed into a train sitting idle near the platform, causing severe damage to both.

Cendana Banandi, a government life insurance official, told The Associated Press that by midmorning the total number of dead from three separate hospitals stood at 43.

He says another 50 were injured, many of them seriously.

Meanwhile, another passenger train crashed in the town of Solo at around 4 a.m., said Transportation Ministry spokesman Bambang Ervan, adding data was still being collected about casualties.

An official at a public hospital who identified himself only as Peter told Metro TV and El Shinta that one person had died in that crash.

Ervan said it was not yet clear what caused the first, more deadly crash.

“We’re still investigating to see if it was due to negligence of the driver or because signaling equipment on one of the trains was faulty,” he said.

Effective HIV Vaccine Announced

Hiv vaccine, Aids vaccine, Effective HIV Vaccine Announced,

In a first, an experimental vaccine was found to reduce the likelihood of contracting HIV.

It’s very far from 100% effective. Based on a trial of 16,000 participants, incidents of contracting the virus fell 31%, but that’s much more significant than has been seen in any past trials.

WSJ: The study actually tested a two-vaccine combo in a “prime-boost” approach, where the first one primes the immune system to attack HIV and the second one strengthens the response.

They are ALVAC, from Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccine division of French drug maker Sanofi-Aventis; and AIDSVAX, originally developed by VaxGen Inc. and now held by Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases, a nonprofit founded by some former VaxGen employees.

ALVAC uses canarypox, a bird virus altered so it can’t cause human disease, to ferry synthetic versions of three HIV genes into the body. AIDSVAX contains a genetically engineered version of a protein on HIV’s surface. The vaccines are not made from whole virus — dead or alive — and can’t cause HIV.

Neither vaccine in the study prevented HIV infection when tested individually in earlier trials, and dozens of scientists had called the new one futile when it began in 2003.

Obviously, one trial is just the beginning of what will probably be years of development before this turns into anything that is deemed worthwhile and scalaable. Still, it’s exciting news. Watch shares of Sanofi (SNY) to move today.

by Joe Weisenthal

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Effective HIV Vaccine Announced was first posted on September 24, 2009 at 6:48 pm.
©2009 “News Trends“.

19 Pound Baby Born

19 Pound Baby Born, JAKARTA – An Indonesian woman has given birth to an 8.7-kilogramme (19.2-pound) baby boy, the heaviest newborn ever recorded in the country, a doctor said Wednesday.

The baby, who is still unnamed and is 62 centimetres (24.4 inches) long, was born by caesarean section Monday at a public hospital in North Sumatra province, a gynaecologist who took part in the operation told.

‘This heavy baby made the surgery really tough, especially the process of taking him out of his mum’s womb. His legs were so big,’ Binsar Sitanggang said.

The boy is in a healthy condition despite having to initially be given oxygen to overcome breathing problems, the gynaecologist said.

‘He’s got strong appetite, every minute, it’s almost non-stop feeding,’ he said.

‘This baby boy is extraordinary, the way he’s crying is not like a usual baby. It’s really loud.’

The boy’s massive size was likely the result of his mother, Ani, 41, having diabetes, Sitanggang said.

She had to be rushed to hospital due to complications with the pregnancy, which had reached nine months. The baby, her fourth, was the only child not delivered by a traditional midwife.

When a diabetic mother’s glucose level is high during pregnancy, the baby can receive too much glucose and grow too large, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

Indonesia’s previous heaviest baby, weighing in at 6.9 kilos, was born in 2007 on the outskirts of the capital Jakarta, according to the Indonesian Museum of Records website.

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19 Pound Baby Born was first posted on September 24, 2009 at 6:56 pm.
©2009 “News Trends“.