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1. Police Officer Assaults Woman In Cell Causing Severe Injuries

Pamela Somerville brutally attacked by police
A policeman is facing the sack after he was caught on CCTV throwing a woman into a cell, badly injuring her. The footage also shows Sgt Mark Andrews dragging Pamela Somerville through Melksham police station in Wiltshire. Ms Somerville, 59, was arrested in July 2008 after being found asleep in her car. Her treatment left her with facial injuries and needing hospital care. Ms Somerville said: "I thought I was going to die, by people that you trust. You can't imagine it. They're the people that you trust, so who do you trust after that?" Andrews has been suspended on full pay since his conviction. One Click Note: Watch the video. It's horrific. Certain sections of the British police force are simply taxpayer funded thugs in uniform. Can we all nonetheless please applaud PC Webb who reported her colleague instead of holding his victim down for him.
BBC News
Related Links:
* Disgraced CPS To Review Case Of Man Allegedly Killed By Police At G20 Summit
Owen Bowcott, The Guardian

2. Shield Laws, WikiLeaks & The Public's Right To Know

Underneath the radar screen of the average American citizen, a legislative battle is going on for what is called a "Federal Shield Law." This is legislation that would "protect journalists from having to reveal anonymous sources when challenged by prosecutors in federal court." Those opposed to the bill are using the Wikileaks Affair as a focal point for renewed opposition to the Shield Law. It will be remembered that in July 2010 Wikileaks published on line tens of thousands of Defense Department documents, along with combat videos, concerning the conduct of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is a sign of the superficiality of our politicians and the vested interest orientation of American news organizations and their journalists that they have seriously misinterpreted the importance of the Wikileaks Affair. This is not about who is or who is not a "real" journalist. It is about the status and future of what is suppose to be an "open" society wherein people are accurately informed about decisions and policies that actually or potentially impact their lives. It is about the right to know and the right not to be misled.
Lawrence Davidson, MWC News
Related Links:
* Trying To Exclude WikiLeaks From Shield Law Stinks
Douglas Lee, First Amendment Center

3. Julian Assange/WikiLeaks/CIA: The Smear Campaign

Truth - through source materials - is what WikiLeaks is all about. Truth is what WikiLeaks has been peddling. Truth is what the powers that be want to stop. John Young of Cryptome has a collection of absolutely ludicrous 'forged' 'leaks' supposedly from WikiLeaks that show how clumsy these spooks can be. Tina Brown's Daily Beast is one of three sites conducting a systematic smear campaign against WikiLeaks - and who have now escalated into a smear campaign against Assange himself. Tina Brown's organisation has a number of uncomfortable ties with the Hoover Institution, Condi Rice, Tony Blair, and other war hawks. Daily Beast are also rather notorious at this point for twisting and plagiarising. They obviously can't control their 'rank and file'. What You Do: Stay on track. Don't be naïve. And don't be silent. Do not take mainstream articles at face value. And absolutely do not take mainstream headlines at face value. Do not pass on s purious articles with uncorroborated stories to friends or anyone. Remember: the powers that be are counting on you being stupid. So don't be stupid. Don't worry about Jules Assange. He can take care of himself. Worry instead about the truth.
Information Release, Rixstep
Related Links:
* Peering Into The Fog Of War
John O’Loughlin, Frank D. W. Witmer, Andrew M. Linke & Nancy Thorwardson, Eurasian Geography and Economics
* Afghan War Diary - Multiple Atrocities Exposed
Information Release, WikiLeaks
* Collateral Murder
US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff
Information Release, WikiLeaks

4. Nepal Suspends Swine Flu Vaccine Due To 'Complications'

Nepali government has suspended the import and use of over 2.7 million pandemrix vaccines manufactured by a global company for protecting people from influenza - A/H1N1, generally known as swine flu. According to Sunday's Republica daily, the Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP) decided to immediately suspend import of pandemrix vaccines on the basis of its intra-ministry technical panel's recommendations following reports of complications. Some A/H1N1 flu patients have reportedly suffered symptoms of neurolepsy disease after receiving pandemrix vaccines manufactured by the GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) -- a global pharmaceutical firm -- in some European countries. In the Netherlands, the UK and Sweden, according to Dr Laxmi Raj Pathak, spokesperson at the MoHP, some A/H1N1 flu patients, who received GSK-pandemrix vaccines, have suffered numbness while moving hands, legs and tongues.
Xinhua News Agency
Related Links:
* Finland: Justice Chancellor Conducting Bribery Investigation Into Narcolepsy-Suspect GSK Swine Flu Vaccine Trade
Information Release, Rokotusinfo ry
* Finland Suspends Swine Flu Vaccine As Children Struck Down With Narcolepsy
Helsingin Sanomat
* Sweden: GSK's Swine Flu Vaccine Suspected Of Causing Narcolepsy In Children
AFP

5. Toothless Disgraced European Medicines Agency Puts Us All In Danger

According to a Panorama programme on Avandia a number of experts now believe that the system set up to test all drugs before they come to market and to monitor them afterwards is seriously flawed. Another concern is how little both doctors and patients are told, even when dangers do show up. It's now clear that the drug regulator in Europe (the European Medicines Agency), which licensed Avandia for the UK ten years ago, was worried about a heart attack risk even then. But this was never made clear to patients and the trial requested by the agency to test specifically for heart safety took nine years to report. The first public warning about Avandia came three years ago when American cardiologist Dr Steven Nissen analysed studies that the drug company - GlaxoSmithKline - had carried out but mostly not published. Many critics have concentrated on the way GlaxoSmithKline has not revealed risks when they showed up. "We have a legacy of clinical trials which are flawed because of conflict of interests. Doctors should be sceptical about the evidence base they rely on to treat patients," said Dr Godlee of the BMJ. It's scandalous that the UK's regulatory body, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory-Agency, never went public on a secret decision it made two months ago that Avandia should be withdrawn. And the silence of the European Medicines Agency over its concerns is another example of how patients and doctors are kept in the dark.
Jerome Burne, Daily Mail
Related Links:
* Takeda's Actos & Glaxo's Avandia Are Both Equal Killers, Researchers Find
Kanoko Matsuyama, Bloomberg
* After Avandia: Does The FDA Have A Drug Problem?
Massimo Calabresi with Alice Park, TIME Magazine

6. Is GSK's Deadly Avandia Drug A Risk Worth Taking?

We're in the grip of a diabetes epidemic. The NHS spent more than half a billion pounds on medication for it in 2009. Patients trust that these drugs are safe, but does one come with a hidden cost to health? Shelley Jofre investigates the rise and fall of Avandia, until recently one of the UK's best-selling diabetes drugs, and asks whether the medicines' regulator is putting the interests of the drugs industry before patients. Watch Panorama tonight: BBC1, BST 8:30pm.
Information Release, BBC Panorama

7. NIH Director To Open XMRV Retrovirus Conference

Even bigger news on the XMRV/Murine Leukemia Related Virus front: Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health (overseeing an annual budget of ~$31+ Billion) will be giving the opening workshop at the 1st International XMRV conference. He will be joined by Stuart LeGrice, head of the Center of Excellence in HIV/AIDS and cancer virology at the National Cancer Institutes, who was famously quoted in the Wall St. Journal last October: “NCI is responding (to XMRV) like it did in the early days of HIV.” Given the early prevalence rates in healthy blood donors of 3-7% cited by Dr Harvey Alter (discoverer of the Hep-C virus), this ultra-high-level attention is perhaps not surprising. Plus there is the element of potential scandal, since ME/CFS patients have been complaining of profound viral symptoms (and dropping dead from viral cardiomyopathies and rare lymphomas) for decades – while being derided as hypo chondriacs. With the personal attention of the NIH director, will research funds be prioritized to XMRV/MLV research and clinical trials?
Information Release, XMRV Global Action
Related Links:
* Presence Of Murine Leukemia Virus Found In Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Patients
FDA Press Release
* Detection of MLV-related virus gene sequences in blood of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome and healthy blood donors (FULL TEXT)
Shyh-Ching Lo, Harvey J. Alter et al PNAS
* Detection of an Infectious Retrovirus, XMRV, in Blood Cells of Patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Judy A. Mikovits et al, 10.1126/science.1179052, Science Express

8. ME/CFS Woman Suicidal As In-Home Treatment Refused

Theda's partner Blake Graham, mother Carol Adams
and family dog Maggie keep a vigil at the bedside of
her Willetton house
Perth chronic fatigue syndrome sufferer Theda Myint's health has deteriorated to the point where she was considering suicide but repeated pleas for an in-home pain relief treatment have been knocked back, her mother said. The 34-year-old Willetton woman has been battling a form of myalgic encephalomyelitis, better known as chronic fatigue syndrome, for the past 10 years. Her condition has worsened so dramatically in the past two months that her mother, Carol Adams, fears for her life. "She is so suicidal with these headaches, she has a migrane every day. She can't talk at the moment because it hurts too much, she can't communicate with us, she can't write," Ms Adams said. Theda was admitted to Fremantle Hospital's acute pain clinic for 10 days in late June, where she was put on intravenous therapy and added to a waiting list for the chronic pain clinic on her discharge from hospital. The IV treatment is one Ms Adams has been fight ing for Theda to access from her home for the past three years. It was approved by Theda's current GP. "The pain clinic has offered help but it means going in for a whole morning and being interviewed by four people, but I have to explain that she cannot go into the hospital. She's so sensitive to noise at the moment that her entire room's closed up all the time."In a letter emailed to Health Minister Kim Hames on May 20, Ms Adams explained that trips to hospital were often torturous for Theda and renewed her plea for an IV treatment at home, saying her daughter was "being punished because her very severe illness does not fit into the normal boxes".
Katherine Fenech, WA Today
Related Links:
* Presence Of Murine Leukemia Virus Found In Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Patients
FDA Press Release
* Detection of MLV-related virus gene sequences in blood of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome and healthy blood donors (FULL TEXT)
Shyh-Ching Lo, Harvey J. Alter et al PNAS
* Detection of an Infectious Retrovirus, XMRV, in Blood Cells of Patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Judy A. Mikovits et al, 10.1126/science.1179052, Science Express

9. UK Charities Say Coalition Government Sickness Benefit Reforms Cruel & Unworkable

Charities are being overwhelmed by evidence showing the assessment to be inaccurate and often unfair to the nation's most vulnerable people. The assessment is too focused on physical capability, meaning that people with serious mental health issues, learning disabilities and fluctuating health conditions are often marked as fit to work. Independent assessors have not been sufficiently trained to recognise the full range of disabilities, causing people dealing with serious health conditions to be reported as work ready. Matthew Lester, Work and Learning Director of Papworth Trust says that "While we back the government's aim to sort those who can work from those who can't, it is crucial that those genuinely unable to work continue to get the support they need. The current process causes massive uncertainty and stress for those already struggling with their health." There are twenty two organisations in the coalition including MIND, the M S Society and Remploy. They met in London on 28th July and are now submitting evidence to Professor Harrington's review. For anyone concerned about the Work Capability Assessment, please contact Papworth Trust on 0800 952 5000 option 2, Monday-Friday 9am-4pm.
Information Release, Papworth Trust
Related Links:
* Regressive UK Coalition Government Hits Poor & Disabled Hardest
BBC News

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