The Hague (AFP) July 27, 2010 The Netherlands is destroying more than 17 million unused doses of swine flu vaccine that were nearing their expiry date and that it could not resell, the health ministry said Tuesday. "We have started destroying" the vaccines, health ministry spokeswoman Inge Freriksen told AFP. "In the coming months, 17.8 million doses will be destroyed because the expiry date is approaching." The Dutch government bought 31 million doses of vaccine against the A(H1N1) virus at the height of the global swine flu outbreak last year. About 11 million were used. Some 2,156 people infected with swine flu were hospitalised in the Netherlands between April and December last year and 53 died.
"We have started destroying" the vaccines, health ministry spokeswoman Inge Freriksen told AFP. "In the coming months, 17.8 million doses will be destroyed because the expiry date is approaching."
The Dutch government bought 31 million doses of vaccine against the A(H1N1) virus at the height of the global swine flu outbreak last year. About 11 million were used.
Some 2,156 people infected with swine flu were hospitalised in the Netherlands between April and December last year and 53 died.
Glasgow, UK (SPX) Jul 27, 2010 When American space pioneer, Dr Robert L Forward, proposed in 1984 a way of greatly improving satellite telecommunications using a new family of orbits, some claimed it was impossible. But now engineers at the University of Strathclyde's Advanced Space Concepts Laboratory have proved that Forward was right. The late Dr Forward - a renowned physicist who worked in the United States and from his second home in Scotland - believed it was possible to use 'displaced orbits' to deploy more satellites to the north or south of the Earth's equator, helping to meet the growing demand for communications.
But now engineers at the University of Strathclyde's Advanced Space Concepts Laboratory have proved that Forward was right.
The late Dr Forward - a renowned physicist who worked in the United States and from his second home in Scotland - believed it was possible to use 'displaced orbits' to deploy more satellites to the north or south of the Earth's equator, helping to meet the growing demand for communications.
Inequality in Britain is so entrenched that "rich, thick kids" achieve more than their "poor, clever" peers even before they start school, the education secretary said today.Michael Gove told MPs on the cross-party Commons education committee that a "yawning gap" had formed between the attainment of poor children and their richer peers.Gove has come under criticism for using parliamentary procedures usually reserved for national emergencies to rush through his academies bill.
Inequality in Britain is so entrenched that "rich, thick kids" achieve more than their "poor, clever" peers even before they start school, the education secretary said today.
Michael Gove told MPs on the cross-party Commons education committee that a "yawning gap" had formed between the attainment of poor children and their richer peers.
Gove has come under criticism for using parliamentary procedures usually reserved for national emergencies to rush through his academies bill.
'Rich, thick kids' achieve much more than poor clever ones,...
"achieve much more" ... i.e. accumulate even more wealth.
This is news? What do they do of VALUE?! In the end, might makes right. Nothing has changed since the caveman.
I remember an employee, Ralph, whom I supervised at the Quaker Oats Company, in poemless' neighborhood, back in the early '80s. I had announced I was leaving in 6 weeks to move back to CA. Ralph was shaking my hand, looked me right in the eye, and said "Good, ... you were too damn good for this place." His words stay with me to this day. In the end, might makes right. Nothing has changed since the caveman.
Frank Delaney ~ Ireland
The academies legislation will allow parents, teachers and charities to set up their own Swedish-style "free schools".
Gove revealed that Richard Dawkins, an academic and prominent atheist, is interested in setting up an atheist free school. Critics of faith schools have warned that religious fanatics could try to take advantage of the new law and create schools that teach their beliefs. Dawkins has described faith schools as a form of child abuse.Gove told MPs that he encouraged atheists to start their own schools.
Gove told MPs that he encouraged atheists to start their own schools.
A month ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a dispute involving the right of public universities to enforce anti-bias rules as a requirement for recognition of student organizations. The university's rules were upheld, dealing a blow to Christian student groups who argued that they should be protected by the First Amendment to receive recognition and to bar gay people.Now a new issue is emerging that involves a similar set of players and issues: public universities, anti-bias rules, and the rights of gay people and Christian students. On Tuesday, a federal judge upheld the right of a counseling program at Eastern Michigan University to kick out a master's student who declined to counsel gay clients in an affirming way -- as required by the university program and counseling associations. The judge found that the university was enforcing a legitimate curricular requirement -- namely that counseling students learn to work with all kinds of clients in ways that did not judge their values or orientations.
A month ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a dispute involving the right of public universities to enforce anti-bias rules as a requirement for recognition of student organizations. The university's rules were upheld, dealing a blow to Christian student groups who argued that they should be protected by the First Amendment to receive recognition and to bar gay people.
Now a new issue is emerging that involves a similar set of players and issues: public universities, anti-bias rules, and the rights of gay people and Christian students. On Tuesday, a federal judge upheld the right of a counseling program at Eastern Michigan University to kick out a master's student who declined to counsel gay clients in an affirming way -- as required by the university program and counseling associations. The judge found that the university was enforcing a legitimate curricular requirement -- namely that counseling students learn to work with all kinds of clients in ways that did not judge their values or orientations.
Last week I had an encounter with open justice. I was attending the Information Tribunal hearing of a friend who is trying to peel back layers of secrecy surrounding allegations that the Liverpool Women's NHS Foundation Trust had a history of silencing whistleblowing staff by offering them public money to sign confidentiality or `gagging' contracts. I've been to the Tribunal before when I was fighting for the release of MPs' expenses and that's when I discovered the only record of proceedings of this so-called "open" people's court (the Tribunals are meant to be a less formal, more accessible form of justice) were my scribbled notes. When it came time to write a script for a dramatised version of the hearing my notes and those of other reporters were all we had to go on. I'd asked at the time if I could tape record the hearing and was told "no".
Last week I had an encounter with open justice. I was attending the Information Tribunal hearing of a friend who is trying to peel back layers of secrecy surrounding allegations that the Liverpool Women's NHS Foundation Trust had a history of silencing whistleblowing staff by offering them public money to sign confidentiality or `gagging' contracts.
I've been to the Tribunal before when I was fighting for the release of MPs' expenses and that's when I discovered the only record of proceedings of this so-called "open" people's court (the Tribunals are meant to be a less formal, more accessible form of justice) were my scribbled notes. When it came time to write a script for a dramatised version of the hearing my notes and those of other reporters were all we had to go on. I'd asked at the time if I could tape record the hearing and was told "no".
The hardening conventional wisdom on the Afghanistan "war logs" is that they are not the Pentagon Papers. Nor are they, as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange rather grandiosely claimed, the equivalent of opening the Stasi archives. Having digested to varying degrees Sunday night's breaking story--poring through what they can of the 92,000 raw documents as well as lengthy pieces based on those documents from The New York Times, Der Spiegel, and The Guardian--columnists, pundits, and editorial boards emerged on Tuesday to roundly echo the line Robert Gibbs gave reporters Monday: "There weren't any new revelations in the material." So, let's move on
There's a lot of talk about politics becoming more divisive across parties, with less and less common ground, and Republicans being called and embracing the "party of no" label. But is it true? No need to speculate; we can find out with the help of the raw data in the form of Senate roll call votes (the last ~21.5 years of which are conveniently available), plus some perl scripts.
Another rad browser plugin called Google Alarm hit the Internets this week, which alerts you every time your personal info is sent to Google's servers. How? Via notifications, a running tally of dangerous sites and, naturally, a super annoying, vuvuzela-like alarm....According to Wilkinson, Google makes great products and gives them all away for free, which has made them into a ubiquitous and omniscient force on the Internet (). Google Alarm and F*ck Google in general are meant to illustrate how this single unregulated company now captures more information about us than any government agency ever could. When I started developing Google Alarm I was blown away to discover that 80+% of websites I visit have some kind of Google tracking bugs on them."
Google, which first sold shares to the public in 2004, has never issued a dividend. In November, Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt said the Mountain View (Calif.)-based company planned to use cash to buy back shares once its all-stock purchase of AdMob Inc. was completed, to keep the deal from diluting the stock. The purchase closed in May. "We have made no decisions at all on share buybacks," Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette said on a conference call with analysts July 15. "It's a topic that is regularly debated, brought to the board for debate, and we have nothing to announce." Google spokeswoman Jane Penner declined to comment.... In the past year, Google has hired bond traders, portfolio managers, and other Wall Street veterans to work on a new trading floor in Mountain View, where they invest the company's cash to bolster returns. Google keeps about 50 percent of its cash holdings overseas, Pichette said on the July 15 call. That might inhibit the company from pursuing a buyback or dividend, says Benchmark's Moran. "If you pay a lower tax rate internationally, and then you bring those profits back to the U.S., you have to pay that difference," says Moran, who recommends that Google buy back about $10 billion of stock. "They could finance it via cash flow generated over the next 12 months, and it would be a sizable buyback within 7 percent of the market cap." Yet Google, with its stock in decline and growth slowing in its main search advertising business, may be trying to avoid giving the perception that its days of high growth are behind it, investor Lancz says. Some investors say that Microsoft's decision to pay a dividend signaled the stock had become "more value-oriented than growth-oriented," Lancz says. Google may be concerned that "if they start buying back stock, that may be the first step toward becoming a Microsoft," he says. Read more...
In the past year, Google has hired bond traders, portfolio managers, and other Wall Street veterans to work on a new trading floor in Mountain View, where they invest the company's cash to bolster returns. Google keeps about 50 percent of its cash holdings overseas, Pichette said on the July 15 call. That might inhibit the company from pursuing a buyback or dividend, says Benchmark's Moran. "If you pay a lower tax rate internationally, and then you bring those profits back to the U.S., you have to pay that difference," says Moran, who recommends that Google buy back about $10 billion of stock. "They could finance it via cash flow generated over the next 12 months, and it would be a sizable buyback within 7 percent of the market cap." Yet Google, with its stock in decline and growth slowing in its main search advertising business, may be trying to avoid giving the perception that its days of high growth are behind it, investor Lancz says. Some investors say that Microsoft's decision to pay a dividend signaled the stock had become "more value-oriented than growth-oriented," Lancz says. Google may be concerned that "if they start buying back stock, that may be the first step toward becoming a Microsoft," he says.
Read more...
Google Says Censorship Not Obstacle to Its Middle East Growth "We tend to operate in a very, very competitive industry, so users are generally one click away from changing their preferences," Ari Kesisoglu [Turk], manager for Google Middle East [!], said in a Bloomberg Television interview in Dubai. "We are not censoring our own information, and we've never been asked to."... "If you want to play ball in China or the Middle East or basically any other country outside, you've got to play by the local rules," said Jin Yoon, an analyst at Nomura Holdings Inc. in Hong Kong [!]. "If you don't play by the local rules, you essentially have to mark yourself out of the market."... "Whatever happened in China is completely exceptional and it doesn't result in us making any decisions globally," Kesisoglu said.... In many Middle Eastern countries, television programs and films cut out nudity, physical intimacy or homosexual scenes. Internet firewalls are common across the region, particularly in the Persian Gulf, where several countries ban popular websites such as Skype and Flickr. Websites that are critical of Islam or ruling political regimes are often blocked. In August, Yahoo! Inc. purchased Maktoob.com, providing it with an entry point into a market that includes 22 countries and more than 350 million Arabic speakers. Maktoob is the largest portal in the Arab world with 16 million monthly users. Vodafone Egypt last year purchased Sarmady, a Cairo-based provider of digital content. "Google [?], Yahoo, help the region and lobby the government for less censorship," said Samih Toukan, founder of Maktoob.com. "We lobby as local people because censorship hurts us, it hurts innovation it hurts growth." Read more....
"We tend to operate in a very, very competitive industry, so users are generally one click away from changing their preferences," Ari Kesisoglu [Turk], manager for Google Middle East [!], said in a Bloomberg Television interview in Dubai. "We are not censoring our own information, and we've never been asked to."...
"If you want to play ball in China or the Middle East or basically any other country outside, you've got to play by the local rules," said Jin Yoon, an analyst at Nomura Holdings Inc. in Hong Kong [!]. "If you don't play by the local rules, you essentially have to mark yourself out of the market."...
"Whatever happened in China is completely exceptional and it doesn't result in us making any decisions globally," Kesisoglu said....
In many Middle Eastern countries, television programs and films cut out nudity, physical intimacy or homosexual scenes. Internet firewalls are common across the region, particularly in the Persian Gulf, where several countries ban popular websites such as Skype and Flickr. Websites that are critical of Islam or ruling political regimes are often blocked.
In August, Yahoo! Inc. purchased Maktoob.com, providing it with an entry point into a market that includes 22 countries and more than 350 million Arabic speakers. Maktoob is the largest portal in the Arab world with 16 million monthly users. Vodafone Egypt last year purchased Sarmady, a Cairo-based provider of digital content.
"Google [?], Yahoo, help the region and lobby the government for less censorship," said Samih Toukan, founder of Maktoob.com. "We lobby as local people because censorship hurts us, it hurts innovation it hurts growth."
Read more....
NB. crackberry and smackphone exemptions Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
There have been many functional brain-imaging studies involving language, but never before have researchers examined both the speaker's and the listener's brains while they communicate to see what is happening inside each brain. The researchers found that when the two people communicate, neural activity over wide regions of their brains becomes almost synchronous, with the listener's brain activity patterns mirroring those sweeping through the speaker's brain, albeit with a short lag of about one second. If the listener, however, fails to comprehend what the speaker is trying to communicate, their brain patterns decouple.
Personal details of 100m Facebook users have been harvested and published on the net by a security consultant. Ron Bowles used a piece of code to scan Facebook profiles, collecting data not hidden by the user's privacy settings. The list, which has been shared as a downloadable file, contains the URL of every searchable Facebook user's profile, their name and unique ID. Mr Bowles said he published the data to highlight privacy issues, but Facebook said it was already public information. The file has spread rapidly across the net.
Personal details of 100m Facebook users have been harvested and published on the net by a security consultant.
Ron Bowles used a piece of code to scan Facebook profiles, collecting data not hidden by the user's privacy settings.
The list, which has been shared as a downloadable file, contains the URL of every searchable Facebook user's profile, their name and unique ID.
Mr Bowles said he published the data to highlight privacy issues, but Facebook said it was already public information.
The file has spread rapidly across the net.
Facebook's attempts to crowdsource translations have gone awry in Turkey. A group of Turkish pranksters banded together to submit bogus translations so that a Facebook IM error message was rendered in Turkish as "Your message could not be sent because of your tiny penis". The correct version should say the message could not be delivered because the intended recipient was offline.
Facebook's attempts to crowdsource translations have gone awry in Turkey.
A group of Turkish pranksters banded together to submit bogus translations so that a Facebook IM error message was rendered in Turkish as "Your message could not be sent because of your tiny penis". The correct version should say the message could not be delivered because the intended recipient was offline.
There are more than 30 million people left without work at some point during the course of the recession; 14.6 million are currently unemployed. As many as 4 million people have exhausted the maximum weeks of federal and state unemployment benefits. In each case, Jordan is among these millions, and for an uncountable number of people like him, the experience with income insecurity has led to a political awakening. Among the biggest sites in the unemployment netroots is LayoffList, managed by Michael Thornton, a native of Rochester, N.Y. Thornton stared LayoffList in 2008; five months ago, he began writing articles and posting legislators' information on the Rochester Unemployment Examiner. He now receives hundreds of emails and has logged more than a million hits at the Examiner. Thornton is finding that, rather than losing interest in politics since the end of the fight for extended benefits, the unemployed are "energized and motivated" and have started looking forward to the fall. "Even Republicans say they aren't voting Republican anymore," the soft-spoken former technical writer says. "You have millions of unemployed people out there. If even half of them voted, they could swing a nationwide election."
There are more than 30 million people left without work at some point during the course of the recession; 14.6 million are currently unemployed. As many as 4 million people have exhausted the maximum weeks of federal and state unemployment benefits. In each case, Jordan is among these millions, and for an uncountable number of people like him, the experience with income insecurity has led to a political awakening.
Among the biggest sites in the unemployment netroots is LayoffList, managed by Michael Thornton, a native of Rochester, N.Y. Thornton stared LayoffList in 2008; five months ago, he began writing articles and posting legislators' information on the Rochester Unemployment Examiner. He now receives hundreds of emails and has logged more than a million hits at the Examiner. Thornton is finding that, rather than losing interest in politics since the end of the fight for extended benefits, the unemployed are "energized and motivated" and have started looking forward to the fall.
"Even Republicans say they aren't voting Republican anymore," the soft-spoken former technical writer says. "You have millions of unemployed people out there. If even half of them voted, they could swing a nationwide election."
Leading mental health experts gave a briefing on Tuesday to warn that a new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which is being revised now for publication in 2013, could devalue the seriousness of mental illness and label almost everyone as having some kind of disorder. Citing examples of new additions like "mild anxiety depression," "psychosis risk syndrome," and "temper dysregulation disorder," they said many people previously seen as perfectly healthy could in future be told they are ill. "It's leaking into normality. It is shrinking the pool of what is normal to a puddle," said Til Wykes of the Institute of Psychiatry at Kings College London. The DSM is published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and contains descriptions, symptoms, and other criteria for diagnosing mental disorders. It is seen as the global diagnostic bible for the field of mental health medicine. Read more...
Citing examples of new additions like "mild anxiety depression," "psychosis risk syndrome," and "temper dysregulation disorder," they said many people previously seen as perfectly healthy could in future be told they are ill.
"It's leaking into normality. It is shrinking the pool of what is normal to a puddle," said Til Wykes of the Institute of Psychiatry at Kings College London.
The DSM is published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and contains descriptions, symptoms, and other criteria for diagnosing mental disorders. It is seen as the global diagnostic bible for the field of mental health medicine.
AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!!
Now I've gone and done it.
I lost track of the discussions as they got technical and I'm afraid I was never up to speed with them cos they weren't my concern. keep to the Fen Causeway
Thing to keep forefront in mind is the purpose of DSM. That purpose is not primarily standard diagnostic protocol. (Although I would not understate potential "savings," either financial or clinical, arising from automated reference to this particular source and other physiology encyclopedia.) It is standard billing protocol. At this point in the history of medical authority and industry and regardless of motives, nefarious or noble, ascribed to the editors' summary judgments of mental illnesses and pathology, ima point to the code. Each so-called syndrome and named disease catalogued in the DSM has a (alpha)numeric code. The code is the key that unlocks insurer payments for services and treatment rendered by a health care provider. The greater the number of codes, the greater the number of revenue therapeutic plans afforded medical professionals.
Being an American invention, DSM promotion and adoption by medical practice groups around the world is no trivial matter. Adoption and rejection entail acceptance by licensed authorities of social controls. Seeing this report, I immediately thought of DrMarketTrustee of course and also news that marco, iirc, captured some months ago about resistance to American models of mental illness. I cannot as yet relocate the comment. Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
The Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal has jacked up the rate it charges the administration's news clipping service by a jaw-dropping $600,000 per year -- and is steering the White House towards a direct deal with News Corp., according to an administration official.... For the past decade, Democratic and Republican administrations alike have paid a small Virginia-based media company $100,000 or more each year to prepare customized packages of excerpts from print, TV, radio and blog outlets. Bulletin News of Reston performs the labor-intensive searches, which would otherwise require the hiring of government staff, every night starting at 9 p.m., delivering a package of article extracts and Web links to the West Wing by 5 a.m. each morning. The Journal, which sits behind a licensed pay wall, has always been part of the package -- until now.... Dow Jones, the News Corp. subsidiary that publishes the Journal, runs its own aggregation service, Factiva. A spokeswoman told POLITICO the White House could get itself a substantially better deal if they cut out the middleman -- Bulletin News -- and negotiated directly with Dow Jones's sales team. "The prices that have been provided are being quoted by a third-party news aggregator, not the Wall Street Journal," Dow Jones spokeswoman Ashley Huston said. "They do not reflect the true cost to the end-user. We're happy to speak with any party directly to discuss accurate pricing for a subscription."... There are, of course, ways around the logjam. Individual administration officials can subscribe to the Journal personally, and it's pretty unlikely they would be called to account [because...?] for passing stories along to fellow employees. Read more...
For the past decade, Democratic and Republican administrations alike have paid a small Virginia-based media company $100,000 or more each year to prepare customized packages of excerpts from print, TV, radio and blog outlets. Bulletin News of Reston performs the labor-intensive searches, which would otherwise require the hiring of government staff, every night starting at 9 p.m., delivering a package of article extracts and Web links to the West Wing by 5 a.m. each morning.
The Journal, which sits behind a licensed pay wall, has always been part of the package -- until now....
Dow Jones, the News Corp. subsidiary that publishes the Journal, runs its own aggregation service, Factiva. A spokeswoman told POLITICO the White House could get itself a substantially better deal if they cut out the middleman -- Bulletin News -- and negotiated directly with Dow Jones's sales team.
"The prices that have been provided are being quoted by a third-party news aggregator, not the Wall Street Journal," Dow Jones spokeswoman Ashley Huston said. "They do not reflect the true cost to the end-user. We're happy to speak with any party directly to discuss accurate pricing for a subscription."...
There are, of course, ways around the logjam. Individual administration officials can subscribe to the Journal personally, and it's pretty unlikely they would be called to account [because...?] for passing stories along to fellow employees.
based in Scotland and the largest pole school in Lanarkshire for the amount of students we teach weekly. We are based in East Kilbride, Wishaw,Cambuslang & Airdrie. Up Yer Pole have dance studio's in Wishaw & Airdrie locations. Read more...
"you would wear shorts & vest and can keep your trainers on if you wish." Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
