Archive for July 24th, 2009

Obama sort-of apol­o­gizes for ‘acted stu­pidly’ remark on Gates arrest

July 24th, 2009

In the media’s equa­tion, health insur­ance is not as excit­ing as race rela­tions, which may explain why Pres­i­dent Barack Obama felt com­pelled to fur­ther address on Fri­day his assess­ment that Cam­bridge police “acted stu­pidly” in arrest­ing a famed black his­to­rian in his own home.

Speak­ing directly to the White House press corps, Obama said he has spo­ken to Cam­bridge offi­cer Jim Crow­ley and explained that his word choice at his recent prime time press con­fer­ence was per­haps not the best one.

How­ever, “I con­tinue to believe there was an over­re­ac­tion” in the arrest of Har­vard pro­fes­sor Henry Louis Gates, the pres­i­dent said.

Fol­low­ing Obama’s com­ments, White House Press Sec­re­tary Robert Gibbs refused to char­ac­ter­ize the president’s con­ver­sa­tion as an “apology.”

Call­ing the Crow­ley “an out­stand­ing police offi­cer and a good man,” Obama explained that he could have “cal­i­brated those words dif­fer­ently” when he said the offi­cer had “acted stu­pidly.” He added that both Crow­ley and Gates over­re­acted in the sit­u­a­tion, based on what he had heard.

“The fact that it has gar­nered so much atten­tion, I think, is a tes­ti­mony to the fact that these are issues that are still very sen­si­tive here in Amer­ica,” he said. [ … ]

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Neu­ro­logic Com­pli­ca­tions Asso­ci­ated with Novel Influenza A (H1N1) Virus Infec­tion in Children

July 24th, 2009

Zombies

From the CDC:

Neu­ro­logic com­pli­ca­tions, includ­ing seizures, encephali­tis, encephalopa­thy, Reye syn­drome, and other neu­ro­logic dis­or­ders, have been described pre­vi­ously in asso­ci­a­tion with res­pi­ra­tory tract infec­tion with sea­sonal influenza A or B viruses (1 – 2), but not with novel influenza A (H1N1) virus. On May 28, 2009, the Dal­las County Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices (DCHHS) noti­fied CDC of four chil­dren with neu­ro­logic com­pli­ca­tions asso­ci­ated with novel influenza A (H1N1) virus infec­tion admit­ted to hos­pi­tals in Dal­las County, Texas, dur­ing May 18 – 28. This report sum­ma­rizes the clin­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics of those four cases. Patients were aged 7 – 17 years and were admit­ted with signs of influenza-like ill­ness (ILI) and seizures or altered men­tal sta­tus. Three of the four patients had abnor­mal elec­troen­cephalo­grams (EEGs). In all four patients, novel influenza A (H1N1) viral RNA was detected in nasopha­ryn­geal spec­i­mens but not in cere­brospinal fluid (CSF). Antivi­ral ther­apy included oseltamivir (four patients) and riman­ta­dine (three patients). All four patients recov­ered fully and had no neu­ro­logic seque­lae at dis­charge. These find­ings indi­cate that, as with sea­sonal influenza, neu­ro­logic com­pli­ca­tions can occur after res­pi­ra­tory tract infec­tion with novel influenza A (H1N1) virus. For chil­dren who have ILI accom­pa­nied by unex­plained seizures or men­tal sta­tus changes, clin­i­cians should con­sider acute sea­sonal influenza or novel influenza A (H1N1) virus infec­tion in the dif­fer­en­tial diag­no­sis, send res­pi­ra­tory spec­i­mens for appro­pri­ate diag­nos­tic test­ing, and promptly ini­ti­ate empir­i­cal antivi­ral treat­ment, espe­cially in hos­pi­tal­ized patients. [ … ]

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Dotopen Opens For Busi­ness — It’s Like Friend­Feed For Companies

July 24th, 2009

Barcelona-based dotopen has launched its B2B com­mu­ni­ca­tion plat­form in pub­lic beta today in another attempt to cre­ate a suc­cess­ful match­mak­ing ser­vice for busi­nesses where deci­sion mak­ers could come to col­lab­o­rate and con­nect with each other.

We’ve heard that a mil­lion times before, but I got an early peak of the plat­form when I was in Spain for the Mobile 2.0 Europe con­fer­ence last month and there is one thing that I think dif­fer­en­ti­ates dotopen from the likes of LinkedIn, XING, etc.: it’s not so much focused on con­nect­ing peo­ple in com­pa­nies than it is to pro­vide an up-to-date, stream of infor­ma­tion on the com­pany itself and start from there.

When I got the demo, I imme­di­ately thought of it like some sort of ‘Friend­Feed for com­pa­nies’, and the startup’s founders Rudy De Waele and Car­les Fer­reiro said there are effec­tively some com­par­isons to be made in that regard. [ … ]

» Read more: Dotopen Opens For Busi­ness  —  It’s Like Friend­Feed For Companies

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Obama’s drug czar: Mar­i­juana ‘has no med­ical benefit’

July 24th, 2009

When Pres­i­dent Barack Obama appointed for­mer Seat­tle, Wash­ing­ton police chief Gil Ker­likowske to lead the Office of National Drug Con­trol Pol­icy, activists sup­port­ing mar­i­juana pol­icy reform were cheered by the news, how­ever briefly.

Kerlikowske’s appoint­ment came on the heels of Attor­ney Gen­eral Eric Holder’s announce­ment that Amer­ica would not longer pros­e­cute patients who are legally pre­scribed the herb in states that have passed laws allow­ing med­i­c­i­nal mar­i­juana. Holder’s announce­ment fell in-line with Obama’s repeated-yet-quiet endorse­ment of mar­i­juana for med­ical use as “entirely appro­pri­ate” for states in which a major­ity of vot­ers approve.

Activists were given even more rea­son to hope when Ker­likowske adver­tised the end of America’s “drug war,” say­ing he would seek to empha­size harm reduc­tion poli­cies over jail­ing those afflicted with drug addictions.

How­ever, that hope was soon to fade.

Even though Kerlikowske’s for­mer city is famously tol­er­ant of mar­i­juana — which is less harm­ful and less addic­tive than America’s most pop­u­lar, legal intox­i­cant, alco­hol — that did not stop America’s new drug czar from demean­ing the president’s posi­tion on med­i­c­i­nal use, telling a crowd in Fresno, Cal­i­for­nia on Wednes­day that mar­i­juana is “dan­ger­ous” and “has no med­ical ben­e­fit,” accord­ing to The Fresno Bee.

He has no med­ical train­ing and did not qual­ify his state­ments with any opin­ions from med­ical pro­fes­sion­als. [ … ]

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