Denise Grady - Popular Antibiotic May Raise Risk of Sudden Death

A new study finds that a widely used antibiotic, azithromycin, may increase the likelihood of sudden death in adults, especially those who have heart disease or are at high risk for it.

The increased odds of death are small, but significant enough that the authors of the study say doctors should consider prescribing a different drug, like amoxicillin, for high-risk patients who need antibiotics. People at high risk include those with heart failure, diabetes or a previous heart attack, and those who have undergone bypass surgery or have had stents implanted. In such patients, the drug may cause abnormal heart rhythms that can be fatal. Just how the drug might disrupt heart rhythm is not known, the researchers said.

The concerns do not apply to children, because most have very little risk of heart disease, according to the lead author of the study, Wayne A. Ray, a professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University. The study is being published on Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Azithromycin is used to treat bacterial infections, including bronchitis, pneumonia, sore throats and earaches. It is familiar to many people as the “Z-Pak,” to be taken for five days, and part of its appeal is its convenience; many other antibiotics must be taken for 10 days or longer. Last year, doctors wrote 55. 3 million prescriptions for azithromycin in the United States, and sales were $464.6 million, according to IMS Health, a health care information and services company. Global sales were $1.8 billion.

Read More:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/health/research/popular-antibiotic-may-raise-risk-of-sudden-death.html?_r=2

Matt Stoller - In Greek Humanitarian Crisis, It Will Be Leftists Or Neo-Nazis

Austerity doesn’t just lead to unemployment and misery.  If it goes on long enough, it will inevitably lead to the emergence of “swamp thing” extremists into positions of power.  Take the situation in Greece, a country which until recently was a wealthy Western democracy with a relatively stable political system.  After five years of depression, voters in Greece just fired their equivalent of the Democrats and Republicans, and replaced them with anti-bailout groups, mostly on the left (Syriza and Communists), but also with the neo-Nazi group Golden Dawn on the right.

This should be a wake-up call to political elites globally, because Greece could simply be the start of a trend of collapsing centrist politics and the rise of dangerous political actors.  7% of Greeks, including a substantial number of the police, voted for a fascist anti-immigrant party whose platform is a mixture of economic populism and xenophobic racist lunacy.  21 Golden Dawn members were elected to Parliament.  Golden Dawn political machine includes roving gangs of thugs that routinely beat up immigrants, and its political platform includes placing mines on the border between Greece and Turkey to prevent immigrants from coming into the country.

This is what austerity produces – extremism.  Fortunately, Golden Dawn only got 7% of the vote, and only 21 seats in Parliament.  And mostly, the Greeks voted for parties on the left who reject austerity.  Greeks don’t want neo-Nazi groups running the country, they just don’t want corrupt bankers running it either.  The man who garnered the most power from the election, leftist Alexis Tsipras of Syriza, has called the situation in Greece a “humanitarian crisis”.  That’s just reality.  Greece has a large, untouchable patronage system, a big defense sector, wealthy who escape from taxation – and yet international bankers are demanding radical cuts in wages, pensions, and jobs for honest workers.

Read More:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/05/in-greek-humanitarian-crisis-its-liberals-or-nazis.html

Thomas Magstadt - The Derivative Economy: Can High Finance Get Any Lower?

Here's how it works.  You give your nest egg to a band of Wall Street crooks with a name that starts with initials like "J.P." or perhaps one with the word "Gold" in it.  They play Russian Roulette with your life.  Got it?  That's all you need to know about the sleazy side of corporate capitalism in the New Derivative Economy.  The other side of capitalism, the side that isn't sleazy, is receding faster than you can say "Jamie Dimon".    

Can high finance get any lower?  Stay tuned; if it can, it will.  That's because there's nothing to prevent the same bunch of rogue "risk managers" from pulling the same shenanigans and hijacking the hopes along with the savings and pensions of millions of people.  People who entrust hard-earned money to bankers who pay them less than one percent on cash savings, assess a proliferating variety of fees for dubious services, and foreclose on unemployed homeowners who can't meet the monthly installments on undocumented loans the banks should never have made in the first place.  The very same bandit bankers who have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that they cannot, in fact, be trusted with anybody else's money.

The mythological "free market" is not free.  It is a slave to the stock market which is manipulated and, indeed, exploited by investment bankers, fund managers, and a new breed of free-booting financial con artists.  Remember Enron?  The late Kenneth Lay?  His partner in crime, the convicted co-swindler, Jeffrey Skilling, now serving a very long prison sentence?  How about Bernie Madoff, the Ponzi scheme pirate?  Big time financial fraudsters who were finally brought down.  Now try to name a single profiteering peddler of toxic assets who has been indicted for similar crimes since the massive 2008 financial mudslide?  You can't, but don't feel bad: there aren't any.

Read More:

http://www.nationofchange.org/derivative-economy-can-high-finance-get-any-lower-1337601980

David Rosen - The Terrifying Ways Google Is Destroying Your Privacy

In 1999, Scott McNealy, the former head of Sun MicroSystems, reportedly declared, "You have zero privacy anyway....Get over it." He unintentionally let the proverbial cat out of the bag of the digital age. 

In 2009, McNealy’s assessment was confirmed by Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt. In an interview with NBC's Mario Bartiromo, he proclaimed, "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Schmidt’s words have become Google’s new mantra. Welcome to 21st-century corporate morality. 

Now, a decade-plus later, McNealy’s prophetic words have take on a far more sinister significance than he probably intended. They are increasingly becoming the operating assumption of the digital corporate state. Whether going online, using a PC, smartphone, tablet or digital TV, users can no longer assume they have any privacy. In fact, users should assume they have absolutely no privacy.

McNealy's and Schmidt's words both speak to a fundamental change in the definition of privacy. Once upon a time not so long ago, a sealed letter or a personal telephone conversation was considered private, protected communications. Those days are over. 

Read More:

http://www.alternet.org/story/155479/the_terrifying_ways_google_is_destroying_your_privacy

Haemorrhaging Heartland Institute Still in Denial

Well the old adage is when you are in a hole, stop digging. Someone though hasn’t told Joe Bast, the head of the Heartland Institute.

Poor old Joe is feeling rather sorry that at his time of need his colleagues are deserting him. In a recent blog he criticizes one saying that rather than “speaking up for me and The Heartland Institute” you are “abandoning us in this moment of need.”

Written on the eve of its latest denier-fest in Chicago, Bast’s outrageous blog shows he is still not only in denial about climate change, but he is still trying to denigrate his critics. He is also still trying to twist the truth.

He argues that “for 28 years, The Heartland Institute has tried to stay above the fray,” producing “high-quality research and commentary and staying focused on the issues, even as the political dialogue became more and more polarized and corrosive.”

Read More:

http://ecowatch.org/2012/haemorrhaging-heartland-institute-still-in-denial/

Cameron Salisbury - Heart Attacks Without Heart Disease

Something strange and ominous is happening to young people, especially women but also to lesser numbers of men. They are dying of sudden heart attacks (acute myocardial infarction, AMI) without the classic symptoms of heart disease, chest pain or blocked arteries. They die quickly, as though struck by lightning.

Every year since accounting began, there has been a tiny number of persons in the U.S. who died abruptly for no apparent reason. In fact, the annual list of mortality statistics issued by the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics included ‘unknown cause’ as a category, along with heart disease, cancer, stroke, and so on, until about 10 years ago. It was about that time that I called a statistician at NCHS to ask if the number dying for unknown reasons was going up. His answer was a definite and frustrated ‘Yes!’

Federal biostatisticians go to considerable lengths to determine a cause for every death on U.S. soil. People are simply not allowed to die without a good reason. And yet, despite their best efforts, there was a rising number of deaths that no one could account for.

NCHS appears to have solved the problem and now everyone who dies can be placed in an acceptable category. Since each death involves a heart that stops beating, deaths for ‘unknown’ reasons have become deaths from ‘heart attacks.’

Read More:

http://wakeup-world.com/2012/05/21/heart-attacks-without-heart-disease/

Emily Flitter - Exclusive: U.S. lets China bypass Wall Street for Treasury orders

China can now bypass Wall Street when buying U.S. government debt and go straight to the U.S. Treasury, in what is the Treasury's first-ever direct relationship with a foreign government, according to documents viewed by Reuters.

The relationship means the People's Bank of China buys U.S. debt using a different method than any other central bank in the world. The other central banks, including the Bank of Japan, which has a large appetite for Treasuries, place orders for U.S. debt with major Wall Street banks designated by the government as primary dealers. Those dealers then bid on their behalf at Treasury auctions.

China, which holds $1.17 trillion in U.S. Treasuries, still buys some Treasuries through primary dealers, but since June 2011, that route hasn't been necessary.

The documents viewed by Reuters show the U.S. Treasury Department has given the People's Bank of China a direct computer link to its auction system, which the Chinese first used to buy two-year notes in late June 2011.

Read More:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/21/us-usa-treasuries-china-idUSBRE84K11720120521

Paul Buchheit - How the Ultra-Rich Betray America

The betrayals come in many forms. Here are a few of the more outrageous, and destructive, examples:

Evasion: Corporations suddenly stopped meeting their tax responsibilities

While corporate profits have doubled to $1.9 trillion in less than ten years, the corporate income tax rate, which for thirty years hovered around the 20-25% level, suddenly dropped to 10% after the recession. It has remained there for three years.

We are seeing a manifestation of the Shock Doctrine. Corporations are using the national emergency of the financial collapse to make a statement about taxes, and a traumatized nation is too preoccupied to do anything about it.

Delusion: Technology companies won't admit that much of their 'innovation' is due to public assistance

According to the report Funding a Revolution, government provided almost half of basic research funds into the 1980s. Federal funding still accounted for half of research in the communications industry as late as 1990. Even today, the federal government supports about 60 percent of the research performed at universities.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/21

Doctors Petition White House to Bar Obama, Biden from Eating Junk Food in Public

A physicians nonprofit wants President Barack Obama to stop chowing down on hot dogs in front of news cameras. In a petition being filed on May 10, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine asks the White House to issue an executive order banning staged photo opportunities that show the president, the first family, the vice president, and members of the president’s cabinet eating unhealthy foods—including processed meats—that can cause cancer and obesity.

“The White House would never set up a photo op showing the president buying cigarettes, so why is it okay to show him eating a hot dog?” says PCRM nutrition education director Susan Levin, M.S., R.D. “Processed meats like hot dogs kill more Americans each year than tobacco does, and they cost taxpayers billions of dollars in healthcare. As role model to millions of Americans the president has a responsibility to watch what he eats in public.”

Since taking office, President Obama has posed for the cameras eating a hot dog at a basketball game with British Prime Minister David Cameron, eating cheeseburgers with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, and stopping at a D.C. burger restaurant to share a cheeseburger with a reporter, among other similar instances. His predecessors, including Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan have also been caught on camera eating unhealthy foods, from ice cream to a Big Mac.

Read More:

http://www.pcrm.org/media/news/white-house-bar-obama-biden-junk-food-photos

Richard Black - Arctic melt releasing ancient methane

Scientists have identified thousands of sites in the Arctic where methane that has been stored for many millennia is bubbling into the atmosphere.

The methane has been trapped by ice, but is able to escape as the ice melts.

Writing in the journal Nature Geoscience, the researchers say this ancient gas could have a significant impact on climate change.

Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas after CO2 and levels are rising after a few years of stability.

There are many sources of the gas around the world, some natural and some man-made, such as landfill waste disposal sites and farm animals.

Tracking methane to these various sources is not easy.

But the researchers on the new Arctic project, led by Katey Walter Anthony from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks (UAF), were able to identify long-stored gas by the ratio of different isotopes of carbon in the methane molecules.

Read More:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18120093