BARTELLA, Iraq - A member of the Iraqi army scrambles up the stairs of a heavily damaged orthodox church in this old Christian town. He tugs at a rope, causing the bells above to ring out – bells which had remained dormant for the two years and three months of the Islamic State's reign.
Bartella, a small Christian town that is 2,000 years old, holds a special place in the hearts of most Middle Eastern Christians. It suffered greatly under the grip of IS, whose treatment of Christians has been widely documented - enslavement, ethnic cleansing and murder among their crimes and atrocities.
It is once again under the control of a government that promises religious freedoms. Christian militias were involved in its recapture, as were Shia and Kurdish forces.
But to believe with any confidence that Bartella and its surrounding villages have been fully liberated would be premature to say the least, and potentially deadly.
As they entered the church's vestibule, the Iraqi soldier's comrades yelled for everyone to duck, as bullets whistled and cracked above their heads.
It seems Islamic State militants refuse to acknowledge their defeat. Most of the IS contingent had pulled out, but snipers and suicide squads are often left behind to prowl the battlefields. These men clearly had no intention of going back.
The countryside east of Mosul, and certainly the town of Bartella as well, are riddled with IS tunnels - where militants can seemingly emerge at any time to deal death.
Over the course of its nearly 28-month reign, IS managed to thoroughly ransack Bartella. A large portion of the Christian town has been mined. The Iraqi soldiers fear that, despite an intensive clean-up, a number of explosive devices may have remained in place.
The soldiers, however, seemed unconcerned about the incoming fire, or the potential for booby traps. Instead, they rushed in where angels had for months feared to tread - taking photographs, dance and ringing the bells in euphoria.
They had the look of men who had been through so much worse. For at least some of the younger ones, the war is virtually the only thing life has had to offer so far.
Desecrated church
The orthodox church in Bartella was heavily damaged during the reign of IS.
Some of its walls and eaves were burned, and the church tower and main gate wrecked. A statue sits on a plinth with most of its head removed - due to IS rulings on idolatry or during battle, it is difficult to say.
The church's interior is dusty and scarred, its once-ornate windows smashed and its walls desecrated with IS graffiti. The rooms have been stripped of all their worth.
Iraqi soldiers walk through a wrecked church in Bartella, near Mosul (Reuters)
When Father John, a grey-haired orthodox priest, returned to his home town last Sunday morning, accompanied by Iraqi soldiers and some of the faithful, he was quick to notice how many things were missing, especially books and documents.
Before leaving, the father took with him most of what had been left behind - just in case. In one of his rooms, he had somehow overlooked a painting of the Last Supper. An Iraqi army recruit picked it up and moved it somewhere safe.
The militants have also desecrated the local cemetery. Most of the antique and medieval artefacts were destroyed. From the look of things, the oldest houses got the worst of it.
Three days after its official liberation, Bartella looked like some Normandy village on a grey and dusty summer day in 1944. Rubble lay wherever people dared to walk.
And the church is far from a haven of peace. A mere 200m from the church, Iraqi soldiers set up heavy artillery to pummel nearby IS positions. Officers yelled, smoke billowed and planes roared overhead.
A damage statue stands outside an orthodox church in Bartella (Bostjan Videmsek)
“The battle was hard. The dangers are still everywhere. We are still fighting in nearby town of Hamdaniya. Booby-traps are everywhere. Suicide attacks can happen at any time,” said Ahmed Buhari, an officer in the elite Golden Brigade, who fought and defeated IS in Ramadi and Fallujah.
Bartella has mostly been stripped of civilians. Most residents had long fled the city, and so far, only about a dozen have returned. None were to be found inside the town, but dozens of civilians were seen fleeing the front line in trucks, crammed with all kinds of possessions, heading for Erbil and refugee camps.
And not only because of what you can see in Bartella.
In the wider surrounding area, the devastation is even worse. Coalition bombing, Kurdish artillery and the "defensive" action of the Islamic State have razed a large chunk of the eastern front to the ground.
What used to be exceptionally fertile fields on the Nineveh plains have all turned to dust, untilled by human hand for at least two years. The roads are riddled with bomb craters. The factories have been turned to little more than dust and rubble. Even the birds have flown away.
Here in this place, not only the past is dying. Here – in present tense – the future is dying as well.
James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence speaks at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City, U.S., October 25, 2016.REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
By David Brunnstrom| WASHINGTON-Wed Oct 26, 2016
The U.S. policy of trying to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons "is probably a lost cause" and the best that could be hoped for is a cap on the country's nuclear capability, the Director of U.S. National Intelligence James Clapper said on Tuesday.
However, underscoring conflicting views in the Obama administration, the State Department said U.S. policy was unchanged and continued to be to seek the "verifiable denuclearisation" of the Korean peninsula.
President Barack Obama has repeatedly stated that the United States will never accept North Korean as a nuclear-armed state.
Clapper made clear at an event at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank in New York he did not think that the policy the administration has stuck to, in spite of repeated North Korean nuclear tests, was realistic.
"I think the notion of getting the North Koreans to denuclearize is probably a lost cause," Clapper said at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank in New York. "They are not going to do that - that is their ticket to survival."
Pyongyang has persisted with its missile and nuclear weapons programs, including a Sept. 9 nuclear explosion, despite strong international sanctions.
Clapper said he got a good taste of how the world looks from North Korea's viewpoint when he went to Pyongyang on a mission in 2014 to secure the release of two Americans held there.
"They are under siege and they are very paranoid, so the notion of giving up their nuclear capability, whatever it is, is a non-starter with them," he said.
"The best we could probably hope for is some sort of a cap, but they are not going to do that just because we ask them. There’s going to have to be some significant inducements."
U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said he had not seen Clapper's remarks but told a regular news briefing in Washington that the administration did not believe denuclearisation was a lost cause.
"No, nothing’s changed … that’s not our position. Our policy objective is to seek to obtain a verifiable denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. That is the policy; that is both the goal and what we want to see and there is a way to do that."
Clapper also said it bothered him that the United States was not capitalizing on using information as a weapon against North Korea.
"That's something they worry about a lot ... That is a great vulnerability I don't think we have exploited. Right now, we are kind of stuck on our narrative and they are kind of stuck on theirs."
'WORST CASE' SCENARIO
Clapper was asked if he thought North Korea could mount a nuclear warhead on a missile that can reach the West Coast of the United States and reiterated the intelligence assessment that this had to be a "worst-case assumption."
He said North Korea had yet to test its KN08 intercontinental ballistic missile, so neither North Korea nor the United States knew whether it worked.
"Nevertheless, we ascribe to them the capability to launch a missile that would have a weapon on it to reach parts of the United States, certainly including Alaska and Hawaii," he said.
"They could do it. We have to make the worst-case assumption here.”
(Reporting by David Brunnstrom, Eric Walsh and David Alexander; Editing by James Dalgleish and Cynthia Osterman)
On August 31, the Supreme People’s Court of China approved the death sentence of a young man named Jia Jinglong (贾敬龙). The decision wasn’t conveyed to Jia’s lawyers until October 18. Since then, legal scholars, lawyers, journalists, writers, and netizens from all walks of life have spoken out on Chinese social media about the injustice in sentencing Jia Jinglong to death. Readers can seek out the lawyers’ written defense and discussions about the legality of the forced demolition of Jia’s home and the larger issue of social justice, but here is the story of Jia Jinglong. – The Editors , China Change
( October 24, 2016, Beijing, Sri Lanka Guardian) Jia Jinglong is a young man from the North Gaoying Village, Chang’an District, Shijiazhuang (石家庄市长安区北高营村), a capital city of Hubei Province. In 2013 his girlfriend of four years agreed to his marriage proposal, and the wedding date was set for May 25 that year. In preparation, he went about renovating and refurbishing his old family home for their new life together. Every day as he went about the construction work, no matter how busy he was, he kept a smile on his face and never fatigued. As his sister remarked: “He often works late into the night to renovate and decorate the new home for his bride.”
Jia Jinglong stands on the second story of his home attempting to stop the demolition.
Jia loved the house so much that he cleaned out the dust between cracks in the floor with a moist rag. As part of the interior decoration, he framed the words “I Love My Home” made out of one-cent coins that he had painstakingly collected, and hung it in the living room.
In the early hours of May 6, 2013, black sedans swarmed on Jia’s home, and the men who got out of them began pelting bricks at it.
The following day, at 5 p.m., the head of the village He Jianhua (何建华) ordered a demolition team to destroy Jia’s house, while he stood on the second floor and tried to hold them at bay. But the men abducted his father, then beat bloody two of his cousins, forcing him to surrender. When he came down from the second floor, the thugs held him to the ground and began smashing his head, resulting in profuse bleeding. After his sister called the police, he was brought to the Gaoying police station and gave oral testimony until 3 a.m., May 8. His home was demolished in its entirety, and everything in it, including all that was to be part of Jia and his bride’s new life together, was buried in the rubble.
Two months after the destruction, Jia’s fiance relented to the demands of her father and broke up with him. Jia Jingyuan (贾敬媛), his sister, said: “The home that was demolished had been carefully, lovingly renovated. Every decoration in it was his hand work. New furniture was bought for the approaching wedding. Who would have thought that the ending would be so cruel.”
In the time that followed Jia Jinglong wrote numerous letters of complaint to the Chang’an District Procuratorate and the Office of Letters and Appeals — to no result. After having his home demolished, and being held down and beaten and humiliated, his efforts to discuss compensation with the village head He Jianhua also came to naught.
A new high-rise apartment building in place of where Jia Jinglong’s home once stood.
On February 19, 2015, New Year’s Day on the Chinese lunar calendar, Jia Jinglong approached He Jianhua at close range and killed him with a modified nail gun.
On August 31, 2016, the Supreme People’s Court authorized Jia’s death sentence. Jia Jinglong, a mere 29-years-old, is to be put to death, any day now, for killing the village chief who had ordered the destruction of the new home for him and his bride, beating and humiliating him and his family, and refusing to give any compensation.
Many people, out of a sense of righteous indignation, have called for Jia Jinglong’s life to be spared — and some are even suggesting that the abolition of the death penalty might begin from Jia’s case. But the root of all this isn’t a “legal” matter: the communist authorities are simply using the name of the law, and legal mechanisms, to tell the Chinese people: The conspiracy of interests represented by He Jianhua and his like, and their ability to do whatever they please, will be protected, and those who oppose them and threaten those interests must be punished.
Tang Yinghong (唐映红) is a psychologist and writer living in China. This is an unauthorized translation of an excerpt of his essay “Signs of our time: Jia Jinglong, a victim of forced demolition, and the accountant who sells sex to pay mortgage” ( 《被强拆的贾敬龙与卖淫的女会计，代表了我们生活的时代》).
After the June 2, 1995 State guest house incident, when she was allegedly accosted by SP MLAs, she severed all political ties with the SP, the BSP chief says.
Omar Rashid-OCTOBER 26, 2016
Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) national president Mayawati on Wednesday attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for ''spreading lies and myths" about Samajwadi Party-BSP relations, saying it is matter of laughter.
Ms. Mayawati said that after the State guest house incident of June 2, 1995, when she was allegedly accosted by SP MLAs, she severed all political ties with that party.
Ms. Mayawati was responding to Mr. Modi’s allegation made at a rally in Mahoba in Bundelkhand on October 24 that the SP and BSP shared friendly relations. If they criticised each other while in opposition, once in power they hardly acted against corruption and criminals.
Since the guest house incident, the BSP has been staunchly opposing the criminal character and working ways of the SP. The BSP did not give any consideration to electoral or political benefit or loss in its opposition to the SP. While in power, the BSP took strong steps against corruption and crime by the SP, she said.
"Even then the Primr Minister is hell bent on raising this false idea of a SP-BSP understanding. It is highly unfortunate and reminds us of the popular saying, ulta chor kotwal ko daante [The thief is scolding the police],” she said.
The BJP and its parent body, the Jan Sangh, were in direct touch with Mr. Mulayam Singh since 1967. And they fought elections together in 1967, 1977 and 1989. “Recently too, the SP and BJP openly fought against the secular Mahagathbandhan in Bihar, only to lose badly," she said.
“As far as U.P. goes, people here have seen many times how the SP and the BJP go soft on each other, and help each other by flaring up communal tension in the State through a tacit understanding. Both collude to engage in politics of communalism and riots," she alleged.
Without naming Muzaffarnagar, Ms. Mayawati said this was clearly at display in the 2013 riots. “There was heavy loss of life and displacement of people. But even today, the SP government has not acted against the culprits. The prime accused are still roaming free and continuing with their communal activities. As a return favour, the BJP government at the Centre has not sent a single notice to the SP government over the goondaraj prevailing in U.P."
“The BJP has not even sought a single report from the U.P. Governor through clauses of the Constitution.
The BJP and the SP have also been engaged in dirty politics on Ayodhya. It is common perception that the SP and the BJP have an understanding in the coming elections will work together against the BSP and and its leadership. That is why nobody can even imagine there is a SP-BSP understanding. If Modi says so it is laced with politics and a major cause is his government's failure to fulfill the promises made to people. It is to divert attention and save him from criticism by people.That is why Mr. Modi is making baseless and pointless allegations, which nobody will believe," she said.
Apparently, Colin Powell is over Hillary Clinton trying to drag him into her email scandal.
On Tuesday, Powell, the former secretary of state under President George W. Bush, broke ranks with his Republican Party and said he’s backing Clinton, a Democrat, over GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump. Speaking at the Long Island Association Fall Luncheon, the former top diplomat and four-star general condemned Trump and praised the stamina of the former New York senator and secretary of state under President Barack Obama, according to reporters who were there.
Powell got sucked into the scandal surrounding Clinton’s use of private email while at the State Department when her camp pointed out that he had done the same as the nation’s top diplomat. Clinton told the FBI that Powell had advised her to use a private server.
In August, Powell denied this, telling People magazine, “Her people have been trying to pin it on me. The truth is she was using [her email setup] for a year before I sent her a memo telling her what I did.”
In September, hacked emails showed that the retired Army general had reservations about both candidates, but saved his more colorful language for Trump. Powell described Trump as a “national disgrace” and an “international pariah” and called conspiracy theories Obama was not born in the United States racist. Powell also called Clinton “greedy.”
Still, Powell is the latest Republican to defect from his party’s nominee and back Clinton. This list includes former President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board Chairman Brent Scowcroft, former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.
(File) Novice Buddhist monks play with a balloon at a monastic school in Yangon, Myanmar, Monday, June 15, 2015. Pic: AP.
26th October 2016
ALTHOUGH categorized a lower-middle income nation by the World Bank, Burma (Myanmar) is the world’s “most giving” country, according to the World Giving Index 2015 released this week by the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF).
It is also the first country in six years to win in two of three categories measuring generosity, scoring the highest marks of 145 nations for donating money and “volunteering time”.
The index measures the overall generosity of a country by calculating the average of their scores on the three categories, namely giving money, giving (volunteering) time and helping a stranger.
According to CAF’s report, Burma achieved an overall score of 66 percent – the highest on record – beating the United States and New Zealand to take pole position on the index. Both the U.S. and New Zealand shared second place with a score of 61 percent, while Canada, Australia, United Kingdom came in third, fourth and fifth place with scores of 60, 59 and 57 percent respectively.
In the three categories, Burma scored an impressive 92 percent for donating money; 50 percent for volunteering time; and 55 percent for helping a stranger.
CAF credited Burma’s high score for donations to the fact that most Burmese are staunch followers of Buddhism.
“The majority of Myanmarese people are highly devout Theravada Buddhists, regularly giving money and time to ordained monks and nuns, and for the upkeep of temples.
“Such charitable giving is integral to religious observance among Theravada Buddhists and whilst, in many cases, the amounts given will be very small, they still have significant religious meaning and so individuals give regularly, sometimes even on a daily basis,” the foundation said.
It said Burma’s 92 percent score for donations equates to 37 million individuals having donated money.
CAF also said Burma’s performance on the index would likely earn it some attention, not because of its ranking as a lower-middle income nation, but because it confounds assumptions about the association between wealth and generosity.
The group also noted that some might question the accuracy of the rankings, and contrast it with reports on the suffering of the Muslim Rohingya, who are dubbed the world’s most persecuted minority by the United Nations.
“At this point, it is important to remember that the World Giving Index measures only the charitable activities of the general population within a country, and does not take wider issues affecting society into account.
“As such, we make no attempt to rationalise negative or mitigating factors in the World Giving Index ranking,” CAF said.
Apart from Burma, other Southeast Asian nations to earn spots on the index’s top 20 ranking were Malaysia at 10th place with a score of 52 percent and Thailand at 19th place with 48 percent.
Malaysia earned 62 percent in the “helping a stranger” category; 58 percent for donating money and 37 percent for volunteering time. Thailand, on the other hand, scored 44 percent in the first category, and 87 percent and 14 percent in the subsequent two categories respectively.
According to CAF, Malaysia and Kenya are among the most improved countries after the last 2014 ranking was released.
In a summary of its findings, the group said at a global level, the number of those donating money increased in 2015.
“Almost a third (31.5 percent) gave money to a charity in the month prior to interview – a rise of 3.2 percentage points since 2013.
“Encouragingly, participation levels for donating money have increased across all world economy types, where previously developed and developing economies had experienced marginal declines in giving money between 2012 and 2013,” it said.
To promote generosity among nations, the group offered some advice to governments around to world.
Among others, it urged governments to make sure not-for-profit organisations are regulated in a fair, consistent and open way; make it easy for people to give and offer incentives for giving where possible; and promote civil society as an independent voice in public life and respect the right of not-for-profit organisations to campaign.
It also said governments should ensure not-for-profit organisations are transparent and inform the public about their work and encourage charitable giving as nations develop their economies, taking advantage of the world’s growing middle classes.
Tatiane holds her nephew Arthur Conceicao, who was born last year with microcephaly, during his birthday party in Recife, Pernambuco state, Brazil. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana) (Felipe Dana/AP)-Lucas Matheus, who was born with microcephaly, during his physical therapy session at the UPAE hospital in Caruaru, Pernambuco state, Brazil. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana) (Felipe Dana/AP)
RIO DE JANEIRO — Nearly nine months after Zika was declared a global health emergency, the virus has infected at least 650,000 people in Latin America and the Caribbean, including tens of thousands of expectant mothers.
But to the great bewilderment of scientists, the epidemic has not produced the wave of fetal deformities so widely feared when the images of misshapen infants first emerged from Brazil.
Instead, Zika has left a puzzling and distinctly uneven pattern of damage across the Americas. According to the latest U.N. figures, of the 2,175 babies born in the past year with undersize heads or other congenital neurological damage linked to Zika, more than 75 percent have been clustered in a single region: northeastern Brazil.
The pattern is so confounding that health officials and scientists have turned their attention back to northeastern Brazil to understand why Zika’s toll has been so much heavier there. They suspect other, underlying causes may be to blame, such as the presence of another mosquito-borne virus like chikungunya or dengue. Or that environmental, genetic or immunological factors combined with Zika to put mothers in the area at greater risk.
“We don’t believe that Zika is the only cause,” Fatima Marinho, director of the non-communicable disease department at Brazil’s Ministry of Health, said in an interview.
Brazilian officials were bracing for a flood of fetal deformities as Zika spread this year to other regions of the country, Marinho said. However, “we are not seeing a big increase.”
Researchers and health officials remain cautious about the lower-than-expected numbers. The latest studies have found more evidence than ever that the virus can inflict severe damage on the developing infant brain, some of which may not be evident until later in childhood.
But researchers so far have learned a lot more about Zika’s potential to do harm than its likelihood of doing so.
Scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are closely watching Puerto Rico, which has reported more than 26,800 cases of Zika. More than 7,000 pregnant women could be infected by the end of the year, according to the CDC.
But although the outbreak has spread this year to more than 50 nations and territories across the Western Hemisphere, U.N. data shows just 142 cases of congenital birth defects linked to Zika so far outside Brazil.
In Colombia, a country praised for some of the most rigorous standards for detecting and monitoring Zika, the government has tallied more than 104,000 Zika cases, including nearly 20,000 pregnant women. It has the second-highest number of Zika infections in the world after Brazil.
But so far, Colombia has had just 46 babies born with congenital nervous system damage linked to Zika. And the number of new Zika cases in Colombia has fallen so sharply that the government in July declared the epidemic over, saying the virus will remain a threat but no longer spread rampantly.
Colombia is investigating 332 more cases of birth defects for a possible Zika link, but health officials there had been prepared for many more.
“Our focus on Zika has changed,” said Ernesto Marques, an epidemiologist at the University of Pittsburgh who is working on a project to develop a vaccine for the virus.
Marques is from Recife, the city in northern Brazil hardest-hit by the Zika outbreak, and he was part of the team that first identified the virus as a possible culprit when deformed infants began showing up “almost every day” in Recife’s maternity wards at this time last year.
At the time, Marques said scientists were focused on identifying Zika as a “causal agent” for the sudden increase in birth defects, especially microcephaly, in which babies are born with undersize heads and often calcified brain tissue.
“Now we’ve settled on Zika as the smoking gun, but we don’t know who pulled the trigger,” said Marques, speaking from Recife, where he is working with government researchers.
One of the leading theories, said Marques, is that northeastern Brazil’s last dengue outbreak was in 2003 — relatively long ago — so perhaps mothers in the area had relatively fewer antibodies to cope with Zika, which is spread by the same mosquito.
“Sexual habits and hygiene may also play a role,” he said, explaining that researchers are looking at whether sexual transmission can infect the uterus and placenta with the virus, potentially exposing the fetus to elevated risk.
“We suspect the villain has an accomplice, but we don’t know who it is,” Marques said.
Many question marks
Researchers caution that it will take years to fully identify the dangers Zika poses to babies’ brains, and microcephaly is just one threat from the virus. A Zika infection poses the greatest danger toward the end of the mother’s first trimester of pregnancy, and its harmful effects on fetal development may not be apparent at birth or manifest themselves until later in childhood.
Marcos Espinal, the director of communicable diseases and health analysis at the Pan American Health Organization, said U.N. health officials were right to put the world on high alert earlier this year because so little was known about Zika.
“If you don’t know about something, you better take preventative measures to minimize the risks,” Espinal said. “So maybe the fact that we don’t have a lot of microcephaly means that we were doing our jobs” and helped women avoid infection.
At the peak of Zika alarm earlier this year, several Latin American countries urged women to delay pregnancy. El Salvador’s government recommended waiting two years. The widespread anxieties produced by the outbreak may have led to an increase in abortions in Latin America, a region where the procedure is widely banned. Anecdotal evidence suggests more women have been quietly terminating pregnancies over worries that their babies might be deformed.
This may also help explain the relatively low number of babies born with Zika-related birth defects outside northeast Brazil.
“It is very difficult to work out truly what is going on,” said Oliver Brady, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who has been working with the Brazilian government on Zika.
Until last year, Brazil reported about 150 cases annually of microcephaly, a condition that can also be caused by diseases like herpes and syphilis. Claudio Maierovitch, a former senior Brazilian health official responsible for monitoring Zika when the epidemic started, said the figure was probably an undercount, and around 500 cases of microcephaly a year pre-Zika would be a more accurate number.
When the microcephaly outbreak was first identified in Brazil, spooked health officials erred in the other direction and overdiagnosed the condition. Eventually, nearly 5,000 newborns that had been diagnosed with possible microcephaly turned out to be fine, according to Marinho, the Brazilian health official.
But that still leaves at least 2,000 instances of Zika-related birth defects in the country, with an additional 3,000 cases under investigation.
A big problem in determining whether Brazil has a higher rate of Zika-related birth defects is that no one is sure how many people caught the virus in 2015, when it was little known and widely confused with dengue.
“The fact is we don’t have any idea how many cases there were,” said Maierovitch, meaning it’s possible Brazil’s birth-defect totals could simply be a reflection of a Zika outbreak that was far more pervasive than anywhere else.
An eye on U.S. territory
Puerto Rico is the next laboratory for understanding Zika. CDC researchers are watching for Zika-related birth defects on the island, but the mainland United States appears to have averted a major outbreak so far.
The vast majority of cases the CDC has counted were attributed to infections acquired abroad or through sexual transmission, though mosquitoes have spread the virus in a few neighborhoods in and around Miami. Experts have warned, however, that local mosquito-driven outbreaks may be occurring in other parts of the country, particularly in states along the Gulf of Mexico. An estimated 80 percent of people infected with the virus don’t have symptoms and don’t realize they have Zika.
Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, said Congress’s failure to approve Zika funding this year means there was no effective way to accurately count how many people were infected.
“We’ll have to hold our breath to see what happens in labor and delivery suites in a few months,” he said. “That’s the only way we’ll know whether we’ve dodged a bullet.”
How many lives could have been saved if she had heeded AG Blumenthal's petition?
In 2000-2013 the rate for heroin-related overdose deaths was highest among adults aged 25-44.
(MYRTLE BEACH, S.C.) - Janet
Oct-24-2016
Woodcock, MD, is the director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The center makes sure that safe and effective drugs are available to improve the health of people in the United States.
In view of the prescription opioid epidemic evolving into a Tsunami of deaths and addictions, did Dr. Woodcock contribute to the volcanic eruption of the epidemic by violating rules of the FDA?
On January 24, 2004 then Attorney General (AG) Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut (now US Senator of Connecticut) submitted a Citizen Petition (CP) to the FDA entitled "Petition to Require Purdue Pharma L.P. to Revise the Labeling of OxyContin Tablets to Strengthen Warnings of the Greater Potential for Developing Side Effects and Adverse Drug Reactions Due to Prescribing Dosing Frequencies in Excess of the Recommended Guidelines".
AG Blumenthal's Citizen Petition is linked below. (The definition of a Citizen Petition off the FDA website -- including the time frame for response to the Citizen Petition by the FDA -- is shown below this article).
Although the FDA has two conflicting dates on their website as to the time frame to respond to a Citizen Petition of 5 months or 6 months, Janet Woodcock, MD did not respond to Blumenthal's 2004 CP until 2008.
Way beyond the 5 to 6 months the FDA is required to respond. Provided below is a link to Woodcock's response to Blumenthal -- all 18 pages of it.
One of the comments Dr. Woodcock stated in her reply was that ".....although higher total daily dosages were associated with fatal outcomes, it cannot be concluded that the higher total daily dosages are causally associated with fatalities given the other variables have not been measured."
Further she writes "...there is no maximum dose for opioids."
Recently the Center for Disease Control (CDC) recommendations on prescribing opioids for chronic pain stated as follows "Benefits of high-dose opioids for chronic pain are not established."
The complete opposite of Woodcock's 2008 quotation of "no maximum dose".
What do you think? Hundreds? Thousands? Tens of Thousands? Do you believe that you are responsible for this out of control prescription opioid epidemic by your inaction? Or worse, could you be guilty of medical malpractice?
In Blumenthal's CP to the FDA, he references an interview he conducted with a woman in Iowa. She agreed to have her name used in his petition.
In 1999, the woman's physician prescribed her OxyContin 20 mgs twice a day. She complained to her doctor of many side effects and he treated what she called "addiction" to OxyContin by increasing her dosage.
In May 2002 acting on the advice of her orthopedic surgeon, she attempted "to wean herself from the drug." This attempt was short-lived and in September 2002, she voluntarily admitted herself into a drug treatment facility in Illinois where she spent two and one half days before leaving the program.
Later that month she spent one week going "cold turkey" in the basement of her parents' home before she was finally successful in coming off OxyContin.
I know this story first hand Dr. Woodcock, because I put this woman who was "addicted" to OxyContin in contact with AG Blumenthal and I knew her story quite well. So what I would like to know from you, Dr. Woodcock, is this:
How could you say in your September 9, 2008 reply to AG Blumenthal's CP -- almost 5 years after the deadline indicated on the FDA website to respond to a Citizen Petition -- that the woman referenced in the CP who had been interviewed by Blumenthal "ultimately weaned herself from the medication."
Really? Maybe you should look up the medical definition of "weaning". Going cold turkey on a basement floor for a week is not weaning. We both know that.
As a medical doctor, how could you state how this woman was treated or ceased to take OxyContin? You never interviewed her or examined her. Careless on your part Dr. Woodcock or a clear case of medical malpractice?
Citizen Petition
________________________________________________ Date:____________ The undersigned submits this petition under __ (relevant statutory sections, if known) of the __ (Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act or the Public Health Service Act or any other statutory provision for which authority has been delegated to the Commissioner of Food and Drugs) to request the Commissioner of Food and Drugs to__ (issue, amend, or revoke a regulation or order or take or refrain from taking any other form of administrative action).
Off the FDA website - Section 505(q)(1)(F) governs the timeframe for final Agency action on a petition. Under this provision, FDA shall take final Agency action on a petition not later than 150 days after the date on which the petition is submitted. The 150-day period is not to be extended for any reason, including any determination made under section 505(q)(1)(A) regarding delay of approval of an application, the submission of comments or supplemental information, or the consent of the petitioner.
Next in a series: How Dr. Woodcock's statements in her 2008 reply to AG Blumenthal's Citizen Petition furthered the prescription opioid epidemic leading to an unprecedented rise in heroin deaths.
-High rung police officer who served in Jaffna reveals with evidence
(Lanka-e-News -24.Oct.2016, 4.00PM) The killing of two Jaffna
university students yesterday , and the subsequent attack launched yesterday (23) causing injuries to two police officers of the intelligence division is a result of a conspiracy of the pro Rajapakses , a high ranking police officer who was serving in the Jaffna police for a long time revealed with supporting evidence to Lanka e news inside information division.
The shooting down of the University students yesterday was the first incident of killing of civilians by the police after 1983 in Jaffna . Even during the war though civilians were killed by the forces , the police did not. Hence , suddenly the students who travelled on a motor bike being killed by shooting allegedly for not halting when ordered by the police is most suspicious and is an absolute conspiratorial killing , the officer further pointed out.
Usually what the police do in the event of a motor cyclist not heeding the police signal to stop is , the registration number of the vehicle is noted , and investigation conducted after obtaining the details of that vehicle from the motor vehicle registration department .
Unlike in the days gone by , now the registration number can be faxed and details collected within an hour . Under such circumstances , just because a motor cycle rider does not stop for a police signal , shooting is uncalled for and unnecessary , implying that this shooting is based on a conspiracy , the high rung police officer explained.
Besides when the emergency regulations are not in operation , the cop cannot fire a T 56 weapon unless he has been given prior orders by a superior officer to shoot . The high ranking police officer therefore said , this shooting is not just an accident , and there is more to it than eyes and ears meet- that is a calculated conspiracy.
The same high ranking police officer therefore said, the defense secretary an ace pro Rajapakse lackey cum lickspittle at once claiming even before the shooting sound has died down that the police are innocent is part of that conspiracy . What the defense secretary and the IGP ought to have done is , instead of adding fuel to the fire of the already prevailing volatile situation , made a careful probe into the history of the police officers involved, he pinpointed.
On the orders given by DIG Ajith Rohana (in charge of legal division) who is another pro Rajapakse stooge in Colombo , this shooting incident was recorded as a vehicle accident in the police registers. However when the situation turned dangerously controversial and began to boomerang , the records in the three registers were withdrawn, the high ranking police officer exposed.
At the same time , last noon (23), two officers, a sergeant and a police constable in civil attire of the police intelligence division who were traveling on a motorbike were cut and injured in Chunnakam Town , Jaffna . This was to incite a ‘war’ in Jaffna by the pro Rajapakse conspirators , the high rung police officer added.
The assailants who came in three motorcycles sans registration numbers had attacked the two cops , and fled away. These violent actions are being carried out by pro Rajapakse army intelligence division members to capitalize on the deaths of the University students and to make a false show that the attack was to avenge the death of the Tamil students with a view to stoke racial hatred, the high ranking police officer went on to elucidate.
This attack on the two cops was launched about a mile away from the funeral house of the murdered student . What’s more ? it is only a restricted group and those of the intelligence division that are close to the cops Navaratne and Herath (who were in civil attire) who can identify them . In addition , in that area , no ordinary resident travels in vehicles without registration numbers. This is therefore a calculated pro Rajapakse diabolic aim and ruthless conspiracy to kindle a war that is now non existent and resuscitate what is long dead and buried, the high rung police officer pointed out .
While the moronic leaders of the good governance are digging their own graves by still keeping back the chief of the army intelligence division of the Rajapakse era ,and though the Jaffna commander Mahinda Haturusinghe , a lackey and lickspittle of Rajapakses was removed, Colonels who are his bootlicking henchmen are still in Jaffna , and they are creating unnecessary murders and mayhem in Jaffna after enlisting about 200 individuals wearing black Tee shirts carrying weapons (concealed) , the same high rung police officer regretted.
Apart from these two incidents ,it is after the speech of the president on the 12 th with the aim of safeguarding ex defense secretary Gotabaya Rajapakse , Edirisinghe Jayamanne committed suicide on the 14 th after leaving a note that he killed Lasantha .If these incidents are pieced together , it is clear the Rajapakses have risen after dusting themselves off the ashes . Yet , as long as good governance government cannot perceive these dangerous portents , it is headed for a holocaust , the high rung officer lamented with profound concern.
--------------------------- by (2016-10-24 10:31:54)
BARTELLA, Iraq - A member of the Iraqi army scrambles up the stairs of a heavily damaged orthodox church in this old Christian town. He tugs at a rope, causing the bells above to ring out – bells which had remained dormant for the two years and three months of the Islamic State's reign.
Iraqi soldiers walk through a wrecked church in Bartella, near Mosul (Reuters)
A damage statue stands outside an orthodox church in Bartella (Bostjan Videmsek)
