Surgical patients who are given blood pressure drugs known as beta-blockers around the time of surgery are four times more likely to suffer heart attacks and death than patients who are not given such drugs, according to a study conducted by researchers from the Veterans Affairs (VA) Boston Health Care System and published in the journal Archives of Surgery.
IG Report links Bush Initiative to Work Fatalities
A special government program to improve worker safety in hazardous industries rarely fulfilled its promise, a Labor Department audit concluded yesterday, and over the past six years, dozens of deaths occurred at firms that should have been subjected to much tighter federal safety enforcement.
The study found that officials failed to gather needed data, conducted uneven inspections and enforcement, and sometimes failed to discern repeat fatalities because records misspelled the companies' names or failed to notice when two subsidiaries with the same owner were involved.
Leahy Bails on 'Truth Commission' Plan
Those of you following the George W. Bush prosecution trail will be interested to know that Patrick Leahy’s “truth commission” is a no-go. I was in a meeting with Leahy and four other Vermonters on Monday when he broke the news to us.
We had asked for the meeting to learn why he supported a truth commission over the appointment of a special prosecutor.
Halfway through the allotted 30 minute meeting (with him taking up much of the time explaining why he was not generally opposed to prosecution, since he had been a DA for eight years and had the highest conviction rate in Vermont), he told us that his truth commission had failed to get the broad support it needed in Congress, and since he couldn’t get one Republican to come behind the plan, “it’s not going to happen.”
TVNL Comment: Told you so....
Inmates at Afghan prison can challenge detention: US judge
A federal judge on Thursday ruled that some inmates held at a US military base in Afghanistan have the legal right to challenge their detention in US courts.
The Supreme Court has previously ruled that detainees held at the US prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba have the right to challenge their detention. But the government had argued that inmates at the US air base in Bagram, Afghanistan did not have such a constitutional right.
Army lied about how my son died in Iraq: Friendly-fire victim was 'misidentified' as enemy gunman
Army brass in Iraq whitewashed an incident of a soldier killed by his own lieutenant by blaming the dead hero, stonewalling his family and promoting his killer, the Daily News has learned.
For four months after the Army knew the truth, it still insisted to Sharrett's father that he was killed by enemy fire - and gave only atemporary wrist slap to Hanson under pressure from the families of Sharrett and two other G.I.s killed in the clash.
FROM P.N.A.C. TO F.P.I.: THE REINVENTING OF NEOCONSERVATISM FOR THE ERA OF OBAMA.
And reinvent themselves they indeed have attempted to do, though their aims and rhetoric have the same old familiar warmongering ring about them as they had during the Bush years. The recently launched and far less grand-sounding Foreign Policy Initiative headed up by arch-neoconservatives William Kristol and Robert Kagan, has taken a different tack from the old PNAC. In there Mission Statement for the new FPI the neocons renew their old animosities toward those they considered past threats.
The New McCarthyism
Today we are seeing once again the heavy hand of the war profiteers trying to reshape the film industry into a tool to propagandize the public into a high war-fever such that they will gladly trade their own blood for gold to line the pockets of the defense establishment. And those individuals who have the courage to speak out are attacked, and once again they are smeared to silence them. In the 1940s it was "Communist", today it is "Anti-Semite", but aside from the particular label used, the methods, goals, and morality are little changed from the days of Joseph McCarthy.
US soldier jailed for 'execution' murders in Iraq
A second US soldier was convicted of murder in the summary executions of four bound and blindfolded Iraqi detainees in 2007 after entering a guilty plea at his court-martial.
Sgt Joseph Mayo, 27, was sentenced to 35 years in prison, along with a reduction in rank to private, forfeiture of all pay and a dishonourable discharge.
He pleaded guilty to charges of premeditated murder and conspiracy to commit premeditated murder at the proceeding at the US army's Rose Barracks in Vilseck, southern Germany. His lawyer said Mayo would testify against another soldier involved in the incident and could be eligible for parole in about 10 years.
UFOs captured on Google Street View hovering over East End bookies
Nine mystery silver discs can be seen above a bookmaker's shop in an image of Bethnal Green, east London, taken last year.
They appear to be flying in neat formation in three rows, attracting the attention of several passers-by, in the photograph of Wolverley Street.
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