cryptogon.com

When the new vaccine for swine flu arrives in Britain, regulators said this weekend, it could be approved for use in just five days.

Regulators at the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) said the fast-tracked procedure has involved clinical trials of a “mock-up” vaccine similar to the one that will be used for the biggest mass vaccination programme in generations. It will be introduced into the general population while regulators continue to carry out simultaneous clinical trials.

The first patients in the queue for the jab – being supplied to the UK by GSK and Baxter Healthcare – may understandably be a little nervous at any possible side effects. A mass vaccination campaign against swine flu in America was halted in the 1970s after some people suffered Guillain-Barré syndrome, a disorder of the nervous system.

However, regulators said fast-tracking would not be at the expense of patient safety. “The vaccines are authorised with a detailed risk management plan,” the EMEA said. “There is quite a body of evidence regarding safety on the trials of the mock-up, and the actual vaccine could be assessed in five days.”

The UK government has ordered enough vaccine to cover the entire population. GPs are being told to prepare for a nationwide vaccination campaign.

Dr Peter Holden, the British Medical Association’s lead negotiator on swine flu, who has been attending Department of Health meetings on the outbreak, said GPs’ surgeries were prepared for one of the biggest vaccination campaigns in almost 50 years.

He said although swine flu was not causing serious illness in patients, health officials were eager to start a mass vaccination campaign, starting first on priority groups. First, the jabs would reduce the chances of a shortage of hospital beds because of people suffering from swine flu. Second, it would reduce the effect on the economy by ensuring workers were protected from the virus.

“The high-risk groups will be done at GPs’ surgeries. People are still making decisions over this, but we want to get cracking before we get a second wave, which is traditionally far more virulent.”

Holden said it was likely the elderly would be given their seasonal flu jab as well as the swine flu vaccination. The new vaccine is likely to require two doses.

Details of the inoculation plans emerged after the death of a patient, reportedly a middle-aged man, at a hospital in the Basildon area of Essex. The victim had no underlying health problems, but officials say there is no evidence the swine flu virus had mutated into a more dangerous strain.

Holden said it would be the biggest campaign in response to an outbreak since mass vaccination against smallpox in 1962. He said surgeries would be aiming to inoculate about 30 people an hour in a “military-style operation”.

The Department of Health said it had still not finalised which groups would be vaccinated first, but children, frontline health workers, people with underlying illnesses and the elderly are likely to take priority.

The European Commission is also identifying population groups which it believes should get priority. It is keen to ensure that countries such as the UK, which had ordered supplies of the vaccine in advance, do not cause inequities in treatment elsewhere in Europe.

It warned health ministers in a note circulated last month that if the vaccines were more readily available in some countries it could cause “vaccine tourism/shopping in other member states”.

The Foreign Ministry intends to hire young people who speak at least one language and who study communication, political science, or law – or alternately, Israelis with military experience gained at units dealing with information analysis.

Beyond the fact that these job requirements reveal a basic lack of understanding in respect to the dynamics of the online discourse – the project’s manager argued that “adults don’t know how to blog” – they are not too relevant either. An effective talkbacker does not need a law degree or military experience. He merely needs to care about the subject he writes about.

The sad truth is that had Israeli citizens believed that their State is doing the right thing, they would have made sure to explain it out of their own accord. Without being paid.

Foreign Ministry officials are fighting what they see as a terrible and scary monster: the Palestinian public relations monster. Yet nothing can be done to defeat it, regardless of how many foolish inventions will be introduced and how many bright communication students will be hired.

That’s because experiments have shown that the e-passport begins transmitting some data when opened even a half inch, and chipped passport cards and EDLs can be read from varying distances depending on reader techonology.

The cover of the e-passport booklet contains a metallic sheathing that can diminish the distances radio waves travel, presumably hindering unwanted interceptions. Alloy envelopes that come with the PASS cards and driver’s licenses do the same, the government says.

The State Department asserts that hackers won’t find any practical use for data skimmed from RFID chips embedded in the cards, but “if you don’t want the cards read, put them in an attenuation sleeve,” says John Brennan, a senior policy adviser at the Office of Consular Affairs.

Gigi Zenk, a spokeswoman for the Washington state Department of Licensing, says the envelope her state offers with the enhanced driver’s license “ensures that nothing can scan it at all.”

But that wasn’t what researchers from the University of Washington and RSA Laboratories, a data security company in Bedford, Mass., found last year while testing the data security of the cards.

The PASS card “is readable under certain circumstances in a crumpled sleeve,” though not in a well maintained sleeve, the researchers wrote in a report.

Another test on the enhanced driver’s license demonstrated that even when the sleeve was in pristine condition, a clandestine reader could skim data from the license at a distance of a half yard.

Will Americans consistently keep their enhanced driver’s licenses in the protective sleeves and maintain those sleeves in perfect shape – even as driver’s licenses are pulled out for countless tasks, from registering in hotels to buying alcohol?

The report’s answer: “It is uncertain … ”

And when the sleeves come off, “you’re essentially saying to the world, ‘Come and read what’s in my wallet,'” says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C.

Dr Kelly’s body was found six years ago this week in woods close to his Oxfordshire home, shortly after he was exposed as the source of a BBC news report questioning the grounds for war in Iraq.

Unusually, no coroner’s inquest was held into his death.

The only official verdict has come from the Hutton Inquiry, commissioned by Tony Blair, which concluded that Dr Kelly, 59, died from loss of blood after cutting his wrist with a blunt gardening knife.

Critics regarded the report as a ‘whitewash’, and Mr Blair remains acutely sensitive to the accusation that he has ‘blood on his hands’ over the scientist’s death.

But now a team of 13 specialist doctors has compiled a detailed medical dossier that rejects the Hutton conclusion on the grounds that a cut to the ulnar artery, which is small and difficult to access, could not have caused death.

It will be used by their lawyers to demand a formal inquest and the release of Dr Kelly’s autopsy report, which has never been published. It will also be sent to Sir John Chilcot’s forthcoming inquiry into the Iraq War.

The 12-page opinion, a copy of which has been seen by The Mail on Sunday, concludes: ‘The bleeding from Dr Kelly’s ulnar artery is highly unlikely to have been so voluminous and rapid that it was the cause of death.

‘We advise the instructing solicitors to obtain the autopsy reports so that the concerns of a group of properly interested medical specialists can be answered.’

The doctors do not say how, or why, they believe Dr Kelly did die but they have worked closely with campaigning Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker, who believes that the scientist was murdered by enemies he made in the course of his work as a weapons inspector.

…

They intend to use the Coroners Act to challenge Lord Falconer’s suspension of the inquest.

One of the doctors, David Halpin, told The Mail on Sunday that they had argued their case in the legal document in ‘microscopic’ detail.

Fed Vice Chairman Donald Kohn said opening up some of the U.S. central bank’s most sensitive decisions to political scrutiny could result in higher long-term interest rates and hurt the United States’ credit rating. Kohn was speaking before a Congressional panel where he was seeking to beat back a proposal that would open policy decisions by the U.S. central bank to audits by a federal watchdog agency.

“Any substantial erosion of the Federal Reserve’s monetary independence likely would lead to higher long-term interest rates as investors begin to fear future inflation,” he said in testimony prepared for delivery to a House of Representatives Financial Services subcommittee.

Kohn’s testimony comes as Congress debates President Barack Obama’s plan for regulatory reform, which envisions the Fed taking on an expanded role monitoring risks across the entire financial system to help ward off future financial crises.

The proposal has increased calls for greater accountability at the central bank, which was already facing heavy scrutiny from lawmakers angered by its role in bailing out Wall Street.

Public anger over last year’s financial crisis and Fed-backed bailouts of investment bank Bear Stearns and insurer American International Group has created a popular backlash that could gain momentum in Congress.

A bill put forward by Representative Ron Paul, a Texas Republican, would expose the Fed’s decisions on monetary policy and emergency lending to audits by the Government Accountability Office. It has won support from a majority in the House of Representatives.

The GAO is currently prohibited from auditing these areas. Kohn said removing this exclusion would be highly detrimental and could lead investors to worry politics — not economics — would guide the Fed’s decisions.

“The Federal Reserve strongly believes that removing the statutory limits on GAO audits of monetary policy matters would be contrary to the public interest by tending to undermine the independence and efficacy of monetary policy,” he said.

He also said it could “cast a chill” on monetary policy deliberations by making officials nervous ideas they throw around behind closed doors could become public.

Paul’s bill has 250 co-sponsors, including 78 Democrats. But it has not been promoted by the Democratic majority leadership in the House, where it has yet to face even a committee-level vote.

If it were to emerge from the House, to become law it would also need to clear the Senate, where support may be more scarce.

Kohn warned that congressional meddling in the Fed’s affairs could exact a high cost.

Nearly 80 percent of homeless services providers and advocacy agencies say at least some clients became homeless as a result of a foreclosure, according to a joint report by four of the largest U.S. homeless advocacy groups.

Staying with family or friends and in emergency shelters were the most common post-foreclosure living conditions, followed by hotels or motels, according to the June report.

“In many areas shelters are now completely full, so the only option to keep their families together is to rent a motel room for $200 a week. That’s pretty standard for many who lost their homes to foreclosure,” said Michael Stoops, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless.