[Al Ahram] The National Elections Monitoring Commission in Algeria says the country's May elections are marred by breaches from the beginning of the operation to the end
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2012 00:00 ||
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[Daily Nation (Kenya)] Senegal ... a nation of about 14 million on the west coast of Africa bordering Mauretania to the north, Mali to the east, and a pair of Guineas to the south, one of them Bissau. It is 90 percent Mohammedan and has more than 80 political parties. Its primary purpose seems to be absorbing refugees... has begun preparations to try Chad's former dictator Hissene Habre for war crimes, crimes against humanity and torture after being accused of dragging its feet for years.
The justice ministry said a working group had met Friday to debate the practical aspects of staging the trial in line with Senegal's international commitments and with the support of the African Union ...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful... The group comprises representatives of the judiciary, the prison system, the foreign ministry and human rights ...which often include carefully measured allowances of freedom at the convenience of the state... groups, the justice ministry said Saturday in a statement.
"The government intends to do everything necessary to enable the working group to carry out its mission, given the great expectations that this matter arouses in Africa and the world," it said.
The statement stressed Dakar's "strong determination to combat all forms of impunity, whoever the accused may be, with a fair and equitable trial."
Chad's former president, now aged 69, fled to Senegal after he was tossed in 1990. A 1992 truth commission report in Chad said he had presided over up to 40,000 political and ethnic-related killings.
Senegal agreed in 2006 to African Union demands that he be put on trial but failed to do anything, arguing that it lacked the resources.
Meanwhile it blocked demands for his extradition from Belgium, which wanted to try him under its "universal jurisdiction" law after a complaint was lodged by a Belgian of Chadian origin.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2012 00:00 ||
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[Bangla Daily Star] Suranjit Sengupta, minister without portfolio, yesterday asked BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia Three-term PM of Bangla, widow of deceased dictator Ziaur Rahman, head of the Bangla Nationalist Party, an apparent magnet for corruption ... to relinquish her post as leader of the opposition owing to her absence at parliament sessions.
"Moudud Ahmed, you along with your party chief (Khaleda Zia) should set an example by stepping down from the posts you hold in parliament," he said at a discussion at the Central Public Library in the capital.
His remark came in response to BNP leader Moudud's statement on Friday that Home Minister Shahara Khatun should resign for failing to discharge her duties properly.
"Police committed excesses. The home minister has regretted recent incidents of police assault on journalists and still they [members of the opposition] want her to step down," he said.
Like the government, the opposition party is also accountable for its action. So Khaleda should take the responsibility for not performing her duties as leader of the opposition in parliament, he added.
Suranjit, a big shot of the ruling party, was speaking as chief guest at a discussion, "Educationist Prof Razia Matin's contributions to materialising ideals of Bangabandhu", organised by Bangamata Gay Pareehad.
Prof Razia Matin along with her husband Prof Abdul Matin Chowdhury were the very first people who had demanded the trial of the killers of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his family members immediately after their brutal murders in 1975.
"The couple were among those who dared to face danger in their efforts to uphold the truth," said AAMS Arefin Siddique, vice-chancellor of Dhaka University.
"Prof Razia Matin and her husband late Prof Matin were respectable members of the Dhaka University family," the VC, also a presidium member of Bangamata Gay Pareehad, added.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2012 00:00 ||
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What? No money in medicine? How could that be a problem? I wonder how this is affecting the second and especially third world countries that can't rely on us because we cannot even rely on ourselves.
At the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, pharmacists are using old-fashioned paper spreadsheets to track their stock of drugs in short supply - a task that takes several hours each day.
Most of the hospital's medicines - with usage estimated at $100 million a year - are tracked by automated systems that allow for quick reorders when the supply runs low. But these automated systems, designed to help the hospital avoid purchases and storage costs of unused pills and vials, do not work if it is uncertain when the next batch of drugs will come in.
A few hundred medicines make the list of drugs in short supply: anesthetics, drugs for nausea and nutrition, infection treatments and diarrhea pills. A separate list has scarce cancer drugs for leukemia or breast cancer.
"Now we have to go through the pharmacy and count those drugs on a daily basis ... to make sure we don't run out," said Ed Szandzik, director of pharmacy services at the hospital for over a decade.
The growing scarcity of sterile, injectable drugs is one of the biggest issues confronting hospitals across the country, and will be a key issue at the annual American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago this weekend.
Health officials blame the shortages on industry consolidation that has left only a handful of generic manufacturers of these drugs, even as the number of drugs going off patent is growing. Some drugmakers have been plagued by manufacturing problems that have shut down multiple plants or production lines, while others have stopped producing a treatment when profit margins erode too far.
Some medicines have been periodically short in the past, doctors and pharmacists say, but the number of drug shortages has escalated in recent years, jumping from 56 in 2006 to 250 last year, according to U.S. Food and Drug Administration figures.
Generic drugmakers like U.S.-based Hospira Inc and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, an Israeli company, say they are building new facilities to prevent future shortages.
But in the meantime, pharmacies around the country are counting pills, begging neighboring hospitals for extra supplies and scouring the Internet for news of additional supply disruptions.
When rumors surface of an impending shortage, some pharmacies rush to buy up more than they need, likely leading to bigger shortages, analysts and other pharmacists said.
All of this requires regular attention from hospitals to manage the crisis. At Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., pharmacists and administrators meet weekly to discuss just how dire the situation is for different medicines.
"Every Wednesday before we have that (meeting), I have a bit of anxiety," said Ursula Tachie-Menson, acting chief of the hospital's pharmacy division. She spends about 30 percent of her time each week addressing shortage-related problems.
"Out of all the (21) years I have been practicing, these drug shortages have been one of the biggest challenges," she said.
EARLY WARNING SYSTEM
The FDA has been acting under an October executive order from President Barack Obama to fill in the gaps. It has had success getting an early warning from drug companies when they foresee a new shortage, allowing the agency to persuade other manufacturers to increase their production or look overseas to guarantee supply.
"I can tell you that there's not a single company I'm aware of out there that isn't talking to the FDA," said David Gaugh, head of regulatory sciences at the Generic Pharmaceutical Association, referring to the trade group's members.
The FDA said early notification has helped prevent shortages of 128 drugs in six months. It also estimates the rate of new shortages is slowing, with half the number of new scarce drugs this year compared with 2011.
There are currently about 130 drugs in short supply listed on the FDA's website.
But surveys and anecdotes keep piling up, showing doctors' efforts to find scarce drugs have not become easier. This month, a website for U.S. oncologists, MDLinx, surveyed 200 doctors and found more than 90 percent of them have experienced shortages of key cancer drugs.
CANCER, ANESTHESIA AND NUTRITION
A clinical nutrition group, the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (ASPEN), found that 70 percent of its 800 members who responded to an online survey, said they had seen shortages of adult injectable multi-vitamins, used for basic nutrition for patients with intestinal issues. ASPEN members responding to the survey included doctors, nurses and pharmacists.
More than a quarter were not giving their patients multi-vitamins because of the shortages, placing them at risk of severe vitamin deficiencies that can lead to issues like anemia, due to a lack of folate, or scurvy, which happens when people do not get vitamin C.
In extreme cases, a deficiency of a type of B vitamin called thiamine can lead to cardiac arrest or death.
"This is an act of daily living for people now," said Jay Mirtallo, president of the group. "How that can be acceptable, I don't understand."
When a drug is not available, doctors have to seek alternatives, which may not work as well or cost more money. Others have to ration limited supplies of a life-saving treatment to only those who need it most.
Dr. Steven Allen, a specialist in blood cancers at North Shore University Hospital in New York, recently treated a young woman who had suffered several relapses of a life-threatening cancer known as acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
Allen found a combination that involved thiotepa, an older drug his patient had not tried and could tolerate.
"When I ordered it, I was informed that there was none available, and it couldn't be obtained," said Allen, also chair of the committee on practice at the American Society of Hematology. He substituted a similar drug, but one that the woman had already taken. "We tried to make up a dose that was equivalent to thiotepa and hoped for the best. ... But I think it may have compromised her care."
On May 14, the FDA announced it would allow temporary imports of thiotepa made by Italian company Adienne Pharma & Biotech, to relieve manufacturing delays at Bedford, Ohio-based Bedford Laboratories, a unit of the private German company Boehringer Ingelheim that is the only approved manufacturer for the United States. Bedford said in April it did not know when further shipments would be available once its supplies ran out.
Imports have not helped anesthesiologists like Dr. Jason Soch, who hears about a new shortage nearly every week during his rotations at several surgical centers in Philadelphia. These are often "workhorse" drugs such as fentanyl, midazolam and propofol, used every day during surgery.
"It seems like as soon as one drug is no longer in shortage, we get an email from the hospital pharmacist that they're on their last box of another," he said.
Every disruption forces doctors to change dosing, or give new drug combinations they may not be as familiar with.
"I didn't envision this when I went to anesthesia," Soch said. "I'd figured we'd have whatever we needed."
SCRAMBLING FOR A FIX
The problem has inspired some creative solutions, like a drug shortages mobile application called RxShortages that allows medical and pharmacy staff to track new drug shortages posted on websites, including the FDA's. Mick Schroeder, a pharmacy resident who created the app, said it has been downloaded about 25,000 times.
Brooke Bernhardt, an oncology pharmacist at Texas Children's Hospital, said she checks RxShortages at least once a day.
"Unfortunately, at any point we expect a drug to go on back order," she said.
Szandzik, the pharmacy director at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, admits he would buy a larger quantity of drugs than usual if it became available.
"If I have to get one or two months' supply, I'll buy it, because our patients need it," he said. "Hoarding is in the eye of the beholder."
Some distributors and manufacturers prevent hoarding by allocating drugs based on historical demand. Other pharmacists say it is natural to want to buy more to ensure supply.
"Why did it ever have to get to this point in the first place?" Szandzik asked. "It takes a lot of hours, a lot of labor, a lot of luck to make sure our patients are safe. ... And I don't see it getting better for a while."
#1
About 12 years ago I designed and implemented a system that created an interface for the two major supply management systems for the Einstein College of Medicine in NYC.
This was a linkage between their new SAP system for logistics (and a lot more) and their automat type vending machines/system that actually dispensed the supplies on the various floors and wards (e.g. drugs, surgical kits, etc.).
As a result I got quite familiar with the complexities of the operation and how a very little glitch in the system can cause major consequences for individual patients.
This sounds VERY scary. Shortly after we went live there was an incident that triggered a mortality review at which I was present. Due to poor training the warehouse staff did not update the SAP system properly and as the lack of supply (supply on demand) worked through the levels of dispensary there came a time when there were no sugical kits available for the scheduled operation. (OOOOOPPS!!) luckily it was not an emergency and was rescheduled but............
#2
No one has mentioned just why it might be that so many different manufacturers have developed industrial-type problems in the last 12 months, as opposed to any other 12 month period in modern history. Some thing else is going on. others have stopped producing a treatment when profit margins erode too far I think they've got it.
#6
It,s not just hospital meds -- commonly prescribed psychiatric drugs have been going short as well. For example, the ADHD drugs that I'm aware of have been in short supply: Ritalin, Adderal, and Vyvance.
#7
Question for somebody who knows about these things: How much of this problem has to do with medicines going off patent? Are companies stopping production of effective but not patented products? Or are there other goblins in the distribution system?
[Daily Nation (Kenya)] US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ... sometimes described as For a good time at 3 a.m. call Hillary and at other times as Mrs. Bill, never as Another Walter Q. Gresham ... took a first-hand look Saturday at the way a warming climate is changing the Arctic, opening the region to competition for vast oil reserves.
Experts here estimate the value of the Arctic's untapped oil alone -- not including natural gas and minerals -- at $900 trillion, making it a huge prize for the five countries that surround the Arctic if they can reach it.
And with climate warming opening up some 46,000 square kilometres (18,000 square miles) a year that had once been bound in ice, the region is expected to burst open, not just with oil exploration but with East-West trade along a more accessible northern route.
Returning from a tour of the Arctic coastline aboard a Norwegian research trawler with scientists and government officials, Clinton told news hounds that she learned "many of the predictions about warming in the Arctic are being surpassed by the actual data."
"That was not necessarily surprising but sobering," she said.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2012 00:00 ||
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#1
Of course, if the entire Arctic ice cap melted, it would not raise sea levels one millimeter (unless the water temperature also rose).
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
06/03/2012 1:21 Comments ||
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#2
unless the water temperature also rose
And then it would go up a few centimeters, at least. Drop everything and run for your lives.
We've had entire civilizations wiped out by climate change from time to time. Maybe it's time for another round, maybe not. But there's no way we're going to stand between mother nature and what she has in mind.
I wonder how fair and balanced Hillary's advisors are on this "expedition".
#3
gorb, the last time I made the general comment about the sea level not rising one millimeter even if the the entire Arctic ice cap melted, someone here pointed out that if the temperature of the ocean rose, the volume would expand and the sea level would rise. As you pointed out, it would only rise a few centimeters.
If the Antarctic and Greenland ice caps melted entirely, it would be different. However, even the infamous IPCC report said that the Greenland ice cap wouldn't melt for a thousand years or so.
Somewhere I saw a map of what the Earth would look like if all the ice caps melted. Despite what people think, the entire world would not be underwater. Sure, Florida might be gone, but there would still be lots of dry land. (Sucks if you are from Florida, of course).
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
06/03/2012 1:55 Comments ||
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#4
Head for the hills, Greenland ice is melting. Oh wait! that was 80 years ago.
#5
If the Antarctic and Greenland ice caps melted entirely, it would be different.
Yeah, because all that water is above sea level, not 90% below it.
However, even the infamous IPCC report said that the Greenland ice cap wouldn't melt for a thousand years or so.
Dang. There went my Lex Luthor get-rich-quick scheme of buying up all the empty land I could find more than 250 miles from the shore.
Somewhere I saw a map of what the Earth would look like if all the ice caps melted. Despite what people think, the entire world would not be underwater. Sure, Florida might be gone, but there would still be lots of dry land. (Sucks if you are from Florida, of course).
Exactly why I didn't buy in FL. In fact, I'm planning to move to Mt. Ararat just in case.
#11
I'm starting to think that all the crap flying around about Global Warming is merely a distraction so the electorate can be diverted from dealing with more important issues that can and should be dealt with by them, e.g., control fraud, illegal immigration, etc., etc.
#12
I remember landing under sniper fire Glacial melting. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting carbon trading ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down swam with our heads just above water to get into the vehicles life rafts to get to our base.
#15
"Clinton in Arctic to see impact of climate change"
Bull. So say her advisers. She's taking the same vacation zillions of mid-60s ladies do, for a little adventure that doesn't require ideal physical fitness.
#19
Is she going to swing by Wasilla to look at Russia?
Posted by: Barbara ||
06/03/2012 20:03 Comments ||
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#20
Hillary better get it done quick because Putin + other are already busting moves to get Mil + Econ Assets, etc. set up in the Arctic.
* ION RENSE, DAILY MAIL.UK > LAST MONTH'S SOLAR FLARECREATED MYSTERIOUS EARTH PULSE | ...PULSE ON EARTH THAT SEEMED TO ANSWER SUN'S BLAST.
* SAME > [Cosmic Convergence] POSITIVE LIGHTNING STRIKES INTENSIFY [strength + frequency] AS COSMIC RAYS INCREASE.
Again, here in Hagatna/Agana I'd observed normal background reality being "bent/warped", something that I would like NASA-JPL + other major Space Perts, Academia to investigate as per changes in Solar EM + ultimately its Dynamo. IMO it also shows the importance of why our future desired OWG-NWO needs proper consensus among its Govts-Perts as per GWCC.
The above never happened like that before, even during Guam, Earth-visible Solar Flares/Storms where long tongues of fire can be visually seen protruding from the Sun.
Put it this way, SIRIUS EVENT + GWCC + 9-11, GWOT = POLITICS IS N-O-T "AS USUAL", + CAN NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN OR AS WE KNEW IT.
[STAR TREK:TNG's "Q" = "ITS DANGEROUS OUT HERE .... SPACE IS NOT FOR THE TIMID"! here].
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Khaleda Zia
US Secretary of State 
Hillary Clinton
