News Updates from CLG
11 Apr 2014
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Previous edition: FBI called to scene of Pittsburgh area high school stabbing spree; twenty people injured (Google subscribers: Google Filter Instructions for CLG Newsletter.)

Governments wasting billions of dollars stockpiling flu drug Tamiflu –Medicines had few if any beneficial effects, but did have adverse side effects previously dismissed or overlooked 10 Apr 2014 Researchers who have fought for years to get full data on Roche’s flu medicine Tamiflu said on Thursday that governments who stockpile it are wasting billions of dollars on a drug whose effectiveness is in doubt. In a review of trial data on Tamiflu, and on GlaxoSmithKline’s flu drug Relenza, scientists from the respected research network the Cochrane Review said that…there is no good evidence behind claims they cut hospital admissions or lessen complications of the disease. “There is no credible way these drugs could prevent a pandemic,” said Carl Heneghan, one of the lead investigators of the review and a professor of evidence-based medicine at Britain’s Oxford University. [Want to know why the US government stockpiles that garbage in the first place? See: Rumsfeld’s growing stake in Tamiflu –Defense Secretary, ex-chairman of flu treatment rights holder, sees portfolio value growing. 31 Oct 2005 The prospect of a bird flu outbreak is proving to be very good news for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other politically connected inv-stors in Gilead Sciences, the California biotech company that owns the rights to Tamiflu, the influenza remedy that’s now the most-sought after drug in the world. Rumsfeld served as Gilead’s chairman from 1997 until he joined the Bush regime in 2001, and he still holds a Gilead stake valued at between 5 million and 25 million, according to federal financial disclosures filed by Rumsfeld. The forms don’t reveal the exact number of shares Rumsfeld owns, but in the past six months fears of a pandemic and the ensuing scramble for Tamiflu have sent Gilead’s stock from 35 to 47.]

Dead banker number 16? Banking: The world’s most dangerous profession since Bush had a bunch of microbiologists deep-sixed who had been working on flu pandemics. Former top Dutch banker found dead at home with wife and child 06 Apr 2014 A Dutch former top banker who came under fire for taking a large pay-off after the nationalisation of his troubled bank was found dead along with his wife and daughter on Saturday in what police called a family tragedy. Jan Peter Schmittmann, 57, ran the domestic operations of Dutch bank ABN Amro between 2003 and 2007…

A hit list with 40 bankers to assassinate 07 Apr 2014 In a short time, 16 people around the world who were affiliated to banking services, mysteriously died. Last Saturday, April 5, former Dutch ABN AMRO banker Peter Schmittman allegedly took his own life, together with the lives of his wife and one of his daughters…Juergen Frick, the 48-year-old CEO of the Liechtenstein Bank Frick & Co AG, has been killed in broad daylight in the parking garage of his bank in Balzers on April 7. Let’s take a look at which people it concerns in its entirety.

British gave ‘full co-operation’ for CIA black jail on Diego Garcia, report claims –Fresh claims emerge of high-level British government involvement in the programme 10 Apr 2014 The British government allowed the CIA to run a “black” jail for Al-Qaeda [al-CIAduh] suspects on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, it was claimed last night. The report, based on leaked accounts of a US Senate investigation into the CIA’s kidnap and torture programme after 9/11, contradicts years of British government denials that it allowed the US to use Diego Garcia for its “extraordinary rendition” programme. The alleged Diego Garcia black site was used to hold some “high-value” detainees and was made with the “full co-operation” of the British government, according to Al Jazeera America, quoting US officials familiar with the Senate report.

Speaking of Diego Garcia: MH370: ‘Confidence’ Over Black Box Search 11 Apr 2014 Searchers are “very confident” that signals detected in the hunt for missing flight MH370 are from the plane’s black box, Australia’s prime minister says. Tony Abbott told reporters during a visit to China that authorities have “very much narrowed down the search area” in the southern Indian Ocean. “We are very confident that the signals that we are detecting are from the black box,” Mr Abbott said.

Angela Merkel denied access to her NSA file 10 Apr 2014 The US government is refusing to grant Angela Merkel access to her NSA file or answer formal questions from Germany about its surveillance activities, raising the stakes before a crucial visit by the German chancellor to Washington. Merkel will meet Barack Obama in three weeks, on her first visit to the US capital since documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA had been monitoring her phone. The face-to-face meeting between the two world leaders had been intended as an effort to publicly heal wounds after the controversy, but Germany remains frustrated by the White House’s refusal to come clean about its surveillance activities in the country.

NATO to triple its Baltic ‘air policing’ mission next month 08 Apr 2014 NATO will triple its usual number of fighter jets patrolling over the Baltics next month to beef up its eastern European defenses due to tension with Russia over Ukraine, a NATO military official said on Tuesday. Four NATO fighters are usually based in the Baltics but the United States, which currently has responsibility for patrolling the skies there, increased that to 10 F-15s. The number of fighters assigned to the Baltic “air policing” mission is now set to increase further to 12, three times the normal complement, when the next four-month period starts in May, the NATO military official said.

Judge criticizes State Department over Blackwater shooting case 08 Apr 2014 A federal judge on Tuesday harshly criticized the U.S. State Department over its ‘handling’ of a 2007 shooting in Baghdad involving Blackwater Worldwide security guards and asked the agency’s watchdog to investigate problems that helped delay a related criminal case. The prosecution of the former guards, who were charged with manslaughter in the killing of 14 unarmed civilians, has dragged on for years amid problems with evidence. “If the Department of State and Diplomatic Security Service had tried deliberately to sabotage this prosecution, they could hardly have done a better job,” U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who is overseeing the criminal case against the former guards, said in an opinion dated March 26 but made public on Tuesday.

U.S. explosives litter Afghan land, killing and maiming a rising number of Afghan children 10 Apr 2014 As the U.S. military withdraws from Afghanistan, it is leaving behind a deadly legacy: about 800 square miles of land littered with undetonated grenades, rockets and mortar shells. The military has vacated scores of firing ranges pocked with the explosives. Dozens of children have been killed or wounded as they have stumbled upon the ordnance at the sites, which are often poorly marked. Casualties are likely to increase sharply; the U.S. military has removed the munitions from only 3 percent of the territory covered by its sprawling ranges, officials said. Clearing the rest of the contaminated land