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Four company members gained Duke of Edinburgh bronze awards, and are working towards both the silver and the BB Queen’s Badge.
The company is taking part in Ayr Flower Show, seniors being involved in site admin, and juniors helping as messengers and at the funfair.
The company pipe band is a traditional BB band, led from within by junior staff and the boys.
Major investment has seen the purchase of pipes, plus extra drums for an expanding drum corps.
The fledgling band’s line-up is four pipers, six trainee chanter players, and eight drummers.
All sections of the 1st Alloway meet in Alloway Primary on Friday evenings.
Anchor Boys (P2 and 3), 6.30 to 7.30pm in the gym; Junior Section (P4 to 6), 6.45 to 8.15pm in the dining hall; Company Section (P7 to S6), 7.30 to 10pm.
Enrolment for session 2013-14, which promises to be even more successful than last year, takes place on Friday, August 30.
Baltimore — On Feb. 19, protesters with People’s Power Assemblies demonstrated here outside the Margaret Brent Elementary School in solidarity with Flint, Mich. They also spoke out against the ongoing lead problem in Baltimore. Since 2007, all water fountains in Baltimore public schools have been shut off. Students are...
Martha Grevatt, who was part of the Detroit Workers World delegation to the Flint rally the same day, spoke via telephone to the Baltimore crowd. Describing conditions in Flint and the demands being made by the people, she noted that at least 11 people have died as a result of the crisis, including two teenagers on Feb...
Activists in New York with the People’s Power Assembly, ‪Black Lives Matter‬ and environmental justice groups commemorated the 51st anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X with a rally and march to demand justice for the people of Flint and to oppose environmental racism. ‪The march went from the Harlem State Off...
Brenda Ryan contributed to this article.
October 16, 2011: Indian troops in Kashmir are bracing for lots of action along the Pakistan border in October and November. These are the last two months that Islamic terrorists based in Pakistan can sneak across, before snow closes the passes for five months.
Over the last decade, Indian Army troops have increased their border defenses, using heat sensors and night vision equipment, plus other new equipment, to make it more difficult for infiltrators to get across undetected. Thus, so far this year, 80 Islamic terrorists have been killed on the border, with many more captur...
These improved border defenses have caused problems back in Pakistan, where terrorist training camps have prepared more men for action than can be gotten across the border. Terrorist morale has suffered and the trained terrorists have become difficult to control. Some have gone elsewhere in the Pakistani tribal territo...
Meet Dylane, a toddler who suffers from a rare genetic disorder known only as chromosome 1q43-q44 deletion syndrome. By what the parents have been told, only about 50 other cases have been identified in the world since a first study in 1976.
When they hear the ambulance sirens come piercing through the trees, each member of the Picard-Mercier family has a role to play.
From their tucked-away home in the forested area surrounding Dunes Lake in St-Lazare, the family goes into what it calls survival mode — a routine they never discussed, but was moulded by repetition instead.
First, 14-year-old Faith takes the family’s Labrador-Pinscher to the basement, making sure it doesn’t get in the way.
Then Emil, 10 years younger, opens the front door for the ambulance technicians, while Noah, 9, moves the living room furniture out of the way and picks up all the kids’ shoes on the floor, clearing a path for the stretcher along a wall of family portraits.
Eleven-year-old Eliot assumes the role of team manager, helping where he can.
All the while, parents Marilyn Picard and Dominick Mercier tend to their 2 1/2-year-old daughter Dylane, her eyes reaching backwards, her mouth foaming as her face goes a dark grey-blue, enough to always awe the nurses who will greet her at the hospital.
Dylane suffers from a rare genetic disorder known only as chromosome 1q43-q44 deletion syndrome. By what the parents have been told, only about 50 other cases have been identified in the world since a first study in 1976.
With it, as often as twice a month, come the life-threatening seizures that draw the ambulances to their front door.
The disorder stems from bad cell division during Dylane’s embryonic stage, and results in an exhaustive list of health problems, delayed development or mental retardation, a geneticist told the parents when she was two months old.
When she heard that the things she thought made her daughter unique — small excess skin on her little finger, a tucked chin, a smaller-than-usual head — were actually signs of the condition, Picard locked herself in the hospital bathroom and wept.
Mercier, at the hospital over his lunch break, cried on his way back to work, allowing a mix of self-pity and sadness in for the first and last time.
The day by day part hasn’t been easy, nor do they expect it ever to be.
“But we make it work,” says the 32-year-old Picard, who had to quit her job as a graphic designer to stay home full time to look after Dylane; Mercier picking up as much overtime as possible to try to support the family on one salary.
The hospital bills, medicine and treatment costs are overwhelming, an extra layer of stress added to sleepless nights where they have to keep an eye on Dylane at all times — her body too little that even the thrashing and jerking of her seizures in her hospital bed in her room wouldn’t necessarily wake them.
The family doesn’t know what the best-case scenario is for Dylane, as there just isn’t enough known of her disorder to establish any sort of basic expectations on how she’ll develop. Picard says she currently has the development of a nine-month-old.
They aren’t expecting her to ever walk or talk, because expectations can yield crushing results. But at the same time, they won’t give up on the idea of it one day being a possibility because whereas she used to always lay flat, she can now sit herself up.
They borrow a specialized walker for Dylane, her brothers helping as they put boots with ankle straps on her calves, slowly lifting her upwards to stand and tightening straps along the back of her thighs and shoulders. The device applies pressure on her legs, similar to walking, and prevents her bones and muscles from ...
It’s all “just in case” she ever walks, but that’s not important to them, Picard says. What’s important is that she’ll be physically able to if she ever can.
Of the hundreds of meetings the family has had with Dylane and doctors, two stand out. When she turned one, shortly after her brothers had danced in the kitchen to celebrate her first tooth, they decided to have the life-expectancy talk; things had been especially bad, seizures both more common and severe.
They were told if she gets to three years old, it would be a good start. Dylane turns three in January, but the family was never given a clear answer on what to expect from there, given how rare her disorder is.
The other meeting came last summer, when they decided to sign a consent form, stating that if Dylane’s heart stops during a seizure, she is not to be resuscitated. Picard calls it the hardest thing she’s ever had to do, and still has days — especially on the good ones — where she catches herself wondering if it was the...
“Life’s already hard enough for her, and chances are it would be worse if she gets resuscitated,” she said. “I know it’s a taboo subject for a lot of families, but as parents, we were ready. She’s already fought so hard.
“Dylane is too special, too unstable for a simple caregiver at home,” said Julien Pagé, a nurse who takes care of her on her visits.
But, Pagé said, the one thing that’s certain is the improvement they’ve seen in terms of her responsiveness, especially in how she sometimes reacts when her parents come to pick her up.
There’s a video the family keeps of Dylane from a few months ago, the first time she truly laughed. It’s a real gut laugh, the kind that comes from deep within. In it she can be seen straightening her legs out in her stroller, her feet flying forwards as her brothers circle around her, throwing themselves to the ground...
It’s a moment that kind of changed everything, Mercier said.
Flipping through a stack of ambulance bills on her kitchen counter, Marilyn Picard explains how easily the expenses can add up.
A base price of $125 for the ambulance itself is added to $1.75 for each of the 53 kilometres from their home to Ste-Justine Hospital for a usual bill of $217.75.
But the ambulance bills are only part of her worries, she says.
Though it varies, Dylane’s medical expenses can total upwards of $1,400 a month.
There’s her medicine, necessary to keep the seizures in check: $120 per month.
Her ketogenic diet, not approved by Health Canada, consists of special milks and thickeners, needed, because normal liquids have a tendency of ending up in her lungs: $245 a month.
Different therapies to make sure her motor skills keep developing and her symptoms stay under control: $475 a month.
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy treatments, where Picard and Dylane, or Dylane and her grandmother, sit together in a chamber, her head enclosed by a glass helmet to push oxygen through her bloodstream and ease her symptoms: $5,732.
Then come the bigger costs, planned over the next few years as they equip the home for Dylane. An elevator of sorts to allow her to move from the first floor to the second floor or the basement is budgeted at $44,700, $23,000 of which they hope will be covered under the government’s home-adaptation program.
Renovations to the bathroom, installing a bathtub with a door and floor-level shower were about $6,000, only after local organizations chipped in to help with materials and installation.
Next will be installing access ramps in front of the home and widening all of the hallways inside so her eventual wheelchair can fit through. In two years they’re planning to adapt the family van for handicapped transportation as well, hopefully covered by the S.A.A.Q.
The family has private insurance through Mercier’s work, covering some costs up to 80 per cent, and being a one-income family, hasn’t been able to secure loans with banks, said Picard.
Picard says the family receives $400 total a month from both governments combined above what families without ill children receive. She thinks it should be more, not only for herself, but for families across the country dealing with similar situations.
Picard is hoping for a reform of sorts that would allow governments to step-in with social-assistance help for specific families with severely fragile children.
“I feel helpless when my daughter is sick, and I feel helpless when I face the government,” she says.
Lucie Charlebois, both the Minister for Rehabilitation, Youth Protection and Public Health and Vaudreuil-Soulanges MNA, said she’s personally met with the family and can understand the frustration.
Charlebois said they do everything a government can, “but there’s limits to what we can do, which isn’t fun to say.
Mobile gaming social platform OpenFeint has announced that it is shutting down, giving developers just a few short weeks to migrate to Gree.
Launched by Aurora Feint in 2009 and purchased by Japanese company Gree in 2011, the platform's eventual closure was more or less a done deal, with Gree announcing earlier this year that it would be giving developers a full year to migrate to its eponymous rival social platform, Gree.
However, the company has changed its mind, announcing on 16 November that OpenFeint will be closing on 14 December — meaning that developers have had to drop everything to recode their apps to avoid losing all information and unsecured player data.
In an interview with Pocket Gamer, Gree senior vice president of marketing Eros Resmini said that the decision to abruptly close the platform came about because it was continuing to grow, even though the company has more or less stopped doing anything with it.
Unfortunately, despite our encouraging to developers to migrate as soon as possible, many did not take action. In fact, the OpenFeint service has continued to grow at an unmanageable pace over the last six months.
As many of you might know, we've stopped launching new titles on OpenFeint, and the system has been in a "maintenance-only" mode for several months. The combination of these factors means the antiquated OpenFeint servers can't take the anticipated load going into the holiday season, and we don't have the ability to cha...
Gree has apologised for the inconvenience, but we doubt that offers much consolation to the scrambling developers. Who hates fun now, OpenFeint?
STANDING in the big bay window of No 10, looking across to Glasgow’s Queen’s Park, where dog walkers and joggers bound across the huge swathes of grass, it’s possible to forget you’re in the heart of Scotland’s biggest city.
Yet this four-star boutique hotel on the Southside is only minutes from a station that will take you right into the centre, making it an ideal place to stay for gigs, shopping, the football around the corner at Hampden, a blast of culture, or even just a walk in the park.
Comprising two converted Victorian mansions, the hotel is boutique without encroaching on original features. There are beautiful original stained glass windows in the rooms and vestibules, and cornices and ceiling roses aplenty. Money has clearly been spent landscaping the gardens and building a terrace to accommodate ...
No 10 has recently launched its new restaurant and bar which is open seven days a week for breakfast, lunch, light bites, afternoon tea and dinner, with an à la carte and bar classics menu of timeless dishes.
With a wedding reception elsewhere to get to we were on a tight time schedule and our waiter accepted the challenge gratefully. He had others ready to jump into our still-warm seats when we left, so our meals were served up fast and piping hot. No 10 has already established a reputation for its food, and the meals serv...
From the adventurous à la carte menu we were presented with a pleasing clash of taste, colour and texture in a roast beetroot and feta filo basket and beautifully arranged scallops and king prawns. This was followed by mains of plaice and smoked salmon with a rich scallop butter sauce and a light on texture, deep on fl...
Breakfast next morning was served buffet-style in the dining room with staff on hand to bring as much fresh toast and tea and coffee as required. The views over the gardens, park and terrace on a sunny morning made for a tranquil start to the day.
Boutique in a Victorian setting, with boutique prices.
There are 26 rooms and suites, which are about to undergo upgrades, with 24-hour internet access, TV, toiletries in the en-suites and a hospitality tray with tea/coffee making facilities. Our spotless suite was a former drawing room of one of the mansions overlooking the hotel’s gardens and Queen’s Park beyond, and was...
There’s Queen’s Park, The Burrell Collection, Hampden Park, with the National Football Museum, and The Citizens’ Theatre. With a station nearby, the hotel is only 10 minutes from the city centre and Glasgow’s cultural, shopping and foodie haunts are all waiting to be explored. The SECC and The Hydro are only 15 minutes...
Tea-making facilities and biscuits were more than welcome and made up for the lack of an overpriced mini bar. There is free on-site parking.
A peaceful location away from the city centre, yet within easy reach, with spacious accommodation, amenable staff and food you couldn’t fault.
Israel Bombs Gaza’s Only Rehab Hospital: Staff Forced to Evacuate Paralyzed Patients After Shelling \| Democracy Now!
executive director of al-Wafa Hospital in Gaza. He was forced to evacuate his patients after Israel shelled the hospital on Thursday.
independent journalist and Democracy Now! correspondent reporting from Gaza.
Al-Wafa Hospital, the only rehabilitation hospital in Gaza and the West Bank, was shelled by Israel on Thursday. At the time of the attack, the hospital was filled with patients who were paralyzed, unconscious and unable to move. We speak with the hospital’s executive director, Basman Alashi, who says the hospital rece...
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Sharif, if I could interrupt you for a second, we have—you mentioned the al-Wafa Hospital. We have Dr. Basman Alashi, the executive director of the hospital in Gaza, on the phone. He was forced to evacuate his patients on Thursday.
DR. BASMAN ALASHI: Thank you. Thank you.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Could you tell us, Doctor, what happened at the hospital in the last few days?
DR. BASMAN ALASHI: Last night, just before 9:00, they sent us a warning over the phone that “We will bomb the hospital, so you need to evacuate.” And we’ve been receiving these calls for the last 11 days, so we did not take that call, that issue and matter seriously, because of repeated calls from the Israeli forces th...
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Alashi, how do you get warned? Who actually calls you to say that they’re going to bomb your hospital?
DR. BASMAN ALASHI: He identified himself as if he is from the Israeli army, with a Hebrew accent.
AMY GOODMAN: And that’s who tells you that you’ve got to clear out the hospital. Now, a few days ago, two women were killed in a rehabilitation home. Is that different from the al-Wafa Hospital?
DR. BASMAN ALASHI: It is different.
AMY GOODMAN: When the Israelis shelled it.
DR. BASMAN ALASHI: Yes, it is different. It’s about 10 kilometers away from us. That home was for handicapped children and young ladies, and these are the ones that are born with deficiency. And Israelis have targeted this clinical hospital.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The call then would indicate that this was a deliberate attack; it wasn’t an errant missile, because they knew beforehand that they were going to hit. Why would they hit your hospital?
DR. BASMAN ALASHI: I don’t understand why they hit us. We’ve been in this place since 1996. We are known to the Israeli government. We are known to the Israeli Health Center and Health Ministry. They have transferred several patients to our hospital for rehabilitations. And we have many success stories of people come f...
AMY GOODMAN: Where did you put all of the patients? How many did you have, Dr. Alashi?
DR. BASMAN ALASHI: We moved 17. There’s a clinic that—they called us, and they said they will clear a floor, complete floor, for us. The clinic’s name is Sahaba clinic. And we were able to move to that place, and we are there right now. The only thing that we’re missing is the medications for our patients. All of it wa...
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Dr. Alashi, have you been able to assess the extent of the damage? Can the hospital be repaired quickly once the hostilities and the attacks from Israel stop?
DR. BASMAN ALASHI: We are determined to go back to our building once the hostility stops. We will be using the ground floor and the first floor. The second, the third, the fourth is [uninhabitable], and we need to do a lot of repair. And I estimated—just roughly an estimate—the cost of repairs about $3 million.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Basman Alashi, how do you respond to the Israeli military saying they’re launching this ground invasion to stop the shelling of Israel by the rockets?
DR. BASMAN ALASHI: I have no answer to them. I need them to stop shelling, because this area, Gaza, is similar to a concentration camp. They are squeezing people from the ground, from the air, from the sea, and they are expecting people to just sit there as a duck and shooting. People here are responding naturally, tha...

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