After five days of hard work, firefighters are making good progress against a wildfire raging near Yosemite National Park. The fire—started when a propane tank on a motor home traveling on one the main roads into the park exploded—has burned more than 5,000 acres and forced the…
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The chair of the Resuscitation Council calls for public education on end-of-life decisions after patient’s husband sues hospital NHS training in making “do not resuscitate” orders and communicating them to patients and families must not fall victim to spending cuts, according to a senior doctor who provides professional guidance on the issue. Jasmeet Soar, chair of the Resuscitation Council, said that while the existing framework governing the use of such orders in England did not need changing, there was room for improvement in explaining the issues. The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) also called for a public education drive on the complexities of end-of-life decisions. Alan Dobson, its acute and emergency care adviser, said more should be done to inform society, “let alone patients and their families”, without scaring people. Their pleas came after the Guardian revealed that the husband of a patient had launched legal action against Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge and the health secretary, Andrew Lansley, alleging illegal use of such orders and seeking to force the government in England to follow Scotland by having a national policy on the use of “do not attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation” orders. David Tracey claims doctors twice put such orders in his wife Janet’s medical notes, cancelling the first after she objected to it, only to put in a second three days later without her consent or any discussion with her. The hospital and Lansley are fighting the case. Professional guidance on the issue is provided jointly by the Resuscitation Council, RCN and British Medical Association. This has been reinforced by the General Medical Council, which regulates doctors, and insists doctors’ decisions on treatment are final. The Department of Health says these documents provide a sufficient basis for local policy-making. Soar, a consultant in anaesthetic and critical care at Spire Bristol hospital, said: “Clearly, sometimes there is a lack of consensus on what the best course of action should have been between patient, family and doctors. That is where the problem lies. A form or guidance is not going to sort that out.” He said the picture had improved since 2000 when the health department last had to formally tell trusts they had appropriate policies . The professional framework was in place. “The issue is how this is implemented at local level. If there is anything that should be raised centrally by the Department of Health, it may be a reminder that training of staff in these issues is paramount. “At a time when savings are being demanded, it is vital training continues in this area.” Dobson, of the RCN, said: “The issue is so complex that no matter what guidance or policy you have, ultimately it is going to come down to a judgment call between senior clinicians and patients and relatives. The reason you are going to get variations is because of interpretation. Every situation is very, very different because it is unique to every individual patient and every individual family.” Dobson added there was a need for more information for patients. “It is good practice to inform society, let alone patients and their families, about the complexity of decisions. The more we do proactively the better. This is not to scare people but to let people know we do consider these things and how we do things in the future.” The Janet Tracey case has reignited public interest in the issue. In February, the health service ombudsman in England, Ann Abraham, voiced her concerns over how “do not resuscitate” decisions for older patients were being taken in a report that accused the NHS of failing to meet even the most basic standards of care for older people. In the ten anonymised cases she used to illustrate her general criticisms , she highlighted a failure by medics to involve a woman’s husband in a “do not resuscitate” decision and, in another case, reported how a notice not to resuscitate was included in a patient’s medical records without the knowledge of his family. NHS Health policy Public sector cuts Andrew Lansley Public services policy Public finance Health James Meikle guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …The chair of the Resuscitation Council calls for public education on end-of-life decisions after patient’s husband sues hospital NHS training in making “do not resuscitate” orders and communicating them to patients and families must not fall victim to spending cuts, according to a senior doctor who provides professional guidance on the issue. Jasmeet Soar, chair of the Resuscitation Council, said that while the existing framework governing the use of such orders in England did not need changing, there was room for improvement in explaining the issues. The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) also called for a public education drive on the complexities of end-of-life decisions. Alan Dobson, its acute and emergency care adviser, said more should be done to inform society, “let alone patients and their families”, without scaring people. Their pleas came after the Guardian revealed that the husband of a patient had launched legal action against Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge and the health secretary, Andrew Lansley, alleging illegal use of such orders and seeking to force the government in England to follow Scotland by having a national policy on the use of “do not attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation” orders. David Tracey claims doctors twice put such orders in his wife Janet’s medical notes, cancelling the first after she objected to it, only to put in a second three days later without her consent or any discussion with her. The hospital and Lansley are fighting the case. Professional guidance on the issue is provided jointly by the Resuscitation Council, RCN and British Medical Association. This has been reinforced by the General Medical Council, which regulates doctors, and insists doctors’ decisions on treatment are final. The Department of Health says these documents provide a sufficient basis for local policy-making. Soar, a consultant in anaesthetic and critical care at Spire Bristol hospital, said: “Clearly, sometimes there is a lack of consensus on what the best course of action should have been between patient, family and doctors. That is where the problem lies. A form or guidance is not going to sort that out.” He said the picture had improved since 2000 when the health department last had to formally tell trusts they had appropriate policies . The professional framework was in place. “The issue is how this is implemented at local level. If there is anything that should be raised centrally by the Department of Health, it may be a reminder that training of staff in these issues is paramount. “At a time when savings are being demanded, it is vital training continues in this area.” Dobson, of the RCN, said: “The issue is so complex that no matter what guidance or policy you have, ultimately it is going to come down to a judgment call between senior clinicians and patients and relatives. The reason you are going to get variations is because of interpretation. Every situation is very, very different because it is unique to every individual patient and every individual family.” Dobson added there was a need for more information for patients. “It is good practice to inform society, let alone patients and their families, about the complexity of decisions. The more we do proactively the better. This is not to scare people but to let people know we do consider these things and how we do things in the future.” The Janet Tracey case has reignited public interest in the issue. In February, the health service ombudsman in England, Ann Abraham, voiced her concerns over how “do not resuscitate” decisions for older patients were being taken in a report that accused the NHS of failing to meet even the most basic standards of care for older people. In the ten anonymised cases she used to illustrate her general criticisms , she highlighted a failure by medics to involve a woman’s husband in a “do not resuscitate” decision and, in another case, reported how a notice not to resuscitate was included in a patient’s medical records without the knowledge of his family. NHS Health policy Public sector cuts Andrew Lansley Public services policy Public finance Health James Meikle guardian.co.uk
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New details have emerged on the escape route used by Gaddafi’s family to escape into neighbouring country New details have emerged on the escape route used by Muammar Gaddafi’s family to evade the grasp of the Libyan government and escape into neighbouring Algeria, triggering a diplomatic row over their fate. According to officials in the National Transitional Council, Gaddafi’s second wife, daughter and two sons slipped out of the country along a road through central Libya not yet under NTC control. The escape was made in a convoy of six armoured Mercedes limousines, once part of an extensive government fleet, which departed from the town of Bani Walid, the stronghold of the Libya’s biggest tribe, the Warfallah, where significant remnants of the regime are holding out. Guma al-Gamaty, the NTC’s UK coordinator, said the motorcade was carrying a total of 32 Gaddafi family members, including the ousted leader’s second wife, Safia, daughter Aisha and two sons, Hannibal and Mohammed, and reached the Algerian border on Saturday. “They were kept waiting there for ten to twelve hours while the Algerian government decided what to do. It was the Algerian president himself [Abdelaziz Bouteflika] who authorised their entry,” al-Gamaty said. “We will definitely be seeking their return, and we are cooperating with Interpol to secure their return.” On Monday the Algerian foreign ministry confirmed that the Gaddafi entourage had crossed the border that morning, after denying a report to that effect on Sunday. The crossing is said to have taken place at a remote border post at Tinkarine in the far south east of Algeria, from where the family was taken to the town of Djanet. Aisha – a firebrand defender of the regime throughout the conflict – gave birth to a baby girl in Djanet’s hospital. According to one report, the new baby was named Safiah after her grandmother. An Algerian newspaper, El Watan, said Algerian troops were ordered to seal off the southern border immediately after the crossing. The escape took place while the NTC’s forces were focused on taking Sirte, Gaddafi’s birthplace and last coastal stronghold. The NTC leader, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, has given loyalist forces there until Saturday to surrender or face a military onslaught. But the fact that a conspicuous convoy of six armoured limousines could drive unmolested down the length of the country, from Bani Walid to the pro-Gaddafi bastion at Sebha, on the edge of the Sahara desert, and then west to the Algerian border, indicates that there is a wide swathe of the central Libyan hinterland outside the NTC’s grasp. Al-Gamaty said the NTC now thought that Gaddafi was now “probably” in the Bani Walid area, where the situation was reported fluid but where pro-Gaddafi broadcasts were still being made on the local radio on Tuesday. “He probably thought Bani Walid was a stronger place to be [than Sirte], as it belongs to the Warfallah, the largest tribe in Libya,” he said. The manhunt for Gaddafi and his most powerful sons, Saif al-Islam, Mutassim and Khamis, is moving southwards to the Bani Walid-Sebha desert road. It was being assisted by western intelligence and special forces, including MI6 officers and the SAS. However, they are thin on the ground. Their role is to pick up signals from intercepting equipment not available to the Libyans and identifying their significance with NTC help. Any attempt to detain Gaddafi and his remaining sons would be carried out by Libyans, British sources stressed. The diplomatic row that has blown up in the wake of the family’s escape reflects the tensions caused by the western spread of the Arab spring, as the Algerian government tries to ensure it is not the next domino to fall. It has so far refused to recognise the provisional NTC government in Tripoli. For its part, the NTC is seeking to ensure Algeria does not become a base from which Gaddafi loyalists could mount a counter-revolution. The NTC’s interior minister Ahmed Darrat has reacted angrily to Algeria’s decision to grant members of the Gaddafi family asylum. “From a political point of view this situation is an enemy act,” Darrat told the Guardian. Al-Gamaty said the NTC are particularly anxious to extradite Hannibal and Mohammed Gaddafi for alleged large-scale embezzlement from the shipping and telecommunications industries respectively. An Algerian newspaper, Echorouk, has reported that the government had promised to hand over Muammar Gaddafi should he try to follow his family into Algeria. It quoted President Bouteflika as telling his cabinet that the deposed leader would be handed over to the International Criminal Court, where he faces charges of crimes against humanity for the brutality with which the first Libyan anti-government protests in February and March were suppressed. However, Algiers showed no readiness to hand back the family members taking refuge on its soil. The country’s ambassador to the United Nations, Mourad Benmehidi, told the BBC that in the desert regions there was a “holy rule of hospitality” by which his government had accepted the family on humanitarian grounds. Bouteflika was under heavy international pressure to relent and hand back at least some of the Gaddafi clan. “We would hope that there will be full cooperation from Algeria with any judicial process with regard to members of the Gaddafi family,” a European diplomat said. It has been confirmed that damage caused by retreating regime loyalists to the water lines supplying Tripoli was worse than first thought. The main damage is at a pumping station 160km south of the capital, and fixing it could take at least a week. The news comes as a blow for the NTC’s stabilisation plan, with the Islamic festival to mark the end of Ramadan, Eid al-Fitr, starting in Libya on Tuesday night. However supply lines to Tunisia along the main coastal road were fully open and food and drinking water was entering the capital. Ahead of the Eid festival, many shops opened in the central city for the first time in 10 days, and several shops in the Ben al-Ashura area were this afternoon opening their doors for the first time in six months. “This is what Gaddafi did to me,” said one vendor, Mansour, as he swept out his store which had stood abandoned since 20 February. Muammar Gaddafi Libya Middle East Arab and Middle East unrest Algeria Africa Julian Borger Martin Chulov Richard Norton-Taylor guardian.co.uk
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New details have emerged on the escape route used by Gaddafi’s family to escape into neighbouring country New details have emerged on the escape route used by Muammar Gaddafi’s family to evade the grasp of the Libyan government and escape into neighbouring Algeria, triggering a diplomatic row over their fate. According to officials in the National Transitional Council, Gaddafi’s second wife, daughter and two sons slipped out of the country along a road through central Libya not yet under NTC control. The escape was made in a convoy of six armoured Mercedes limousines, once part of an extensive government fleet, which departed from the town of Bani Walid, the stronghold of the Libya’s biggest tribe, the Warfallah, where significant remnants of the regime are holding out. Guma al-Gamaty, the NTC’s UK coordinator, said the motorcade was carrying a total of 32 Gaddafi family members, including the ousted leader’s second wife, Safia, daughter Aisha and two sons, Hannibal and Mohammed, and reached the Algerian border on Saturday. “They were kept waiting there for ten to twelve hours while the Algerian government decided what to do. It was the Algerian president himself [Abdelaziz Bouteflika] who authorised their entry,” al-Gamaty said. “We will definitely be seeking their return, and we are cooperating with Interpol to secure their return.” On Monday the Algerian foreign ministry confirmed that the Gaddafi entourage had crossed the border that morning, after denying a report to that effect on Sunday. The crossing is said to have taken place at a remote border post at Tinkarine in the far south east of Algeria, from where the family was taken to the town of Djanet. Aisha – a firebrand defender of the regime throughout the conflict – gave birth to a baby girl in Djanet’s hospital. According to one report, the new baby was named Safiah after her grandmother. An Algerian newspaper, El Watan, said Algerian troops were ordered to seal off the southern border immediately after the crossing. The escape took place while the NTC’s forces were focused on taking Sirte, Gaddafi’s birthplace and last coastal stronghold. The NTC leader, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, has given loyalist forces there until Saturday to surrender or face a military onslaught. But the fact that a conspicuous convoy of six armoured limousines could drive unmolested down the length of the country, from Bani Walid to the pro-Gaddafi bastion at Sebha, on the edge of the Sahara desert, and then west to the Algerian border, indicates that there is a wide swathe of the central Libyan hinterland outside the NTC’s grasp. Al-Gamaty said the NTC now thought that Gaddafi was now “probably” in the Bani Walid area, where the situation was reported fluid but where pro-Gaddafi broadcasts were still being made on the local radio on Tuesday. “He probably thought Bani Walid was a stronger place to be [than Sirte], as it belongs to the Warfallah, the largest tribe in Libya,” he said. The manhunt for Gaddafi and his most powerful sons, Saif al-Islam, Mutassim and Khamis, is moving southwards to the Bani Walid-Sebha desert road. It was being assisted by western intelligence and special forces, including MI6 officers and the SAS. However, they are thin on the ground. Their role is to pick up signals from intercepting equipment not available to the Libyans and identifying their significance with NTC help. Any attempt to detain Gaddafi and his remaining sons would be carried out by Libyans, British sources stressed. The diplomatic row that has blown up in the wake of the family’s escape reflects the tensions caused by the western spread of the Arab spring, as the Algerian government tries to ensure it is not the next domino to fall. It has so far refused to recognise the provisional NTC government in Tripoli. For its part, the NTC is seeking to ensure Algeria does not become a base from which Gaddafi loyalists could mount a counter-revolution. The NTC’s interior minister Ahmed Darrat has reacted angrily to Algeria’s decision to grant members of the Gaddafi family asylum. “From a political point of view this situation is an enemy act,” Darrat told the Guardian. Al-Gamaty said the NTC are particularly anxious to extradite Hannibal and Mohammed Gaddafi for alleged large-scale embezzlement from the shipping and telecommunications industries respectively. An Algerian newspaper, Echorouk, has reported that the government had promised to hand over Muammar Gaddafi should he try to follow his family into Algeria. It quoted President Bouteflika as telling his cabinet that the deposed leader would be handed over to the International Criminal Court, where he faces charges of crimes against humanity for the brutality with which the first Libyan anti-government protests in February and March were suppressed. However, Algiers showed no readiness to hand back the family members taking refuge on its soil. The country’s ambassador to the United Nations, Mourad Benmehidi, told the BBC that in the desert regions there was a “holy rule of hospitality” by which his government had accepted the family on humanitarian grounds. Bouteflika was under heavy international pressure to relent and hand back at least some of the Gaddafi clan. “We would hope that there will be full cooperation from Algeria with any judicial process with regard to members of the Gaddafi family,” a European diplomat said. It has been confirmed that damage caused by retreating regime loyalists to the water lines supplying Tripoli was worse than first thought. The main damage is at a pumping station 160km south of the capital, and fixing it could take at least a week. The news comes as a blow for the NTC’s stabilisation plan, with the Islamic festival to mark the end of Ramadan, Eid al-Fitr, starting in Libya on Tuesday night. However supply lines to Tunisia along the main coastal road were fully open and food and drinking water was entering the capital. Ahead of the Eid festival, many shops opened in the central city for the first time in 10 days, and several shops in the Ben al-Ashura area were this afternoon opening their doors for the first time in six months. “This is what Gaddafi did to me,” said one vendor, Mansour, as he swept out his store which had stood abandoned since 20 February. Muammar Gaddafi Libya Middle East Arab and Middle East unrest Algeria Africa Julian Borger Martin Chulov Richard Norton-Taylor guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Rick Perry attracts a lot of euphemisms—lightweight, incurious, instinctual. “Gov. Goodhair” goes one nickname. “He’s like Bush only without the brains,” jokes another Texas Republican. So Jonathan Martin, in a lengthy profile of the Texas governor on Politico , just comes out and asks the big question: “Is Rick Perry…
Continue reading …The headline birthers dream of—”Illegal Kenyan Immigrant Obama Busted”—has become reality with the arrest of a relative of President Obama’s in Massachusetts. Obama Onyango, a half-brother of Obama’s father, was charged last week with drunk driving after nearly slamming his SUV into a police car. Onyango, who told…
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Watchdog says there is no evidence that Conservative party breached electoral law by failing to declare payments The Conservative party will not face an official inquiry into allegations that it broke electoral law by failing to declare News International’s payments to its former head of communications, Andy Coulson, after the elections watchdog concluded that there was insufficient evidence of a breach. The Electoral Commission had been asked to investigate a series of payments amounting to a six-figure sum made to Coulson by News International in the months after he arrived at Conservative campaign headquarters in 2007, as well as a company car and health insurance he received for three years. Tom Watson, the Labour MP and member of the Commons culture select committee, had raised concerns that the money could have amounted to an undeclared donation to the party. The revelation that Coulson received the severance payments from News International while working for the Conservatives put renewed pressure on the party, which had previously denied that he was paid by anyone else while employed by them. The Electoral Commission said there was no evidence that the payments related to his political activity with the Conservative party in any way. Specifically, they had not received evidence that the payments had subsidised Coulson’s wage, or that the health insurance had saved the party money. Watson has separately written to the parliamentary standards commissioner asking him to investigate why the payments were not declared in a register of passholders for 2007. Conservatives Andy Coulson News International Newspapers & magazines National newspapers Newspapers Polly Curtis guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …The last survivor of the original Mississippi Delta bluesmen has died at the age of 96. David “Honeyboy” Edwards, whose sharecropper parents taught him the guitar as a child, played with all the genre’s big names during his 80-year career, including “King of the Delta Blues” Robert Johnson, the New…
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Scotland Yard expected to have spent more on riots than it spent on all major public order events in the capital last year Scotland Yard is expected to have spent more on policing the riots than it spent on policing all major public order events in the capital last year, officials have said. The disturbances will cost the force more than £34m, with the total expected to rise even further as the final bills from other forces called in to help is settled, according to the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA). This compares with a total of £34.8m spent by Scotland Yard on policing 42 major public order events between April 2010 and March 2011. Policing the student fees protests in London cost Scotland Yard £7.5m, while another £2.1m was spent providing security at the TUC anti-cuts demonstration in March, £1.9m on the Pope’s visit to Britain, and £2.2m around last year’s general election campaign. UK riots Metropolitan police London Police guardian.co.uk
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