Flu: NHS laid low as 18,000 staff call in sick | Mail Online

Flu: NHS laid low as 18,000 staff call in sick

By SOPHIE BORLAND
Last updated at 11:41 AM on 5th January 2011

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More than 18,000 National Health Service staff were off sick with flu yesterday as hospitals and GPs’ surgeries battle one of the worst outbreaks of the virus in more than a decade.

The proportion of doctors, nurses and other NHS staff too ill to come to work was almost 50 per cent higher than the proportion of all other employees in the public and private sector.

Figures show that almost one in every 65 NHS workers called in sick yesterday with flu symptoms.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1344144/Flu-NHS-laid-low-18-000-staff-sick.html#ixzz1AD4FobU1

GMA January 5, 2011

John Wheeler murder: Last sighting of top White House aide found dumped in landfill | Mail Online

John Wheeler murder: Last sighting of top White House aide found dumped in landfill

By DANIEL BATES
Last updated at 9:21 PM on 5th January 2011

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• Victim seen in car park booth looking disorientated

• Smoke bomb found under home of one of his neighbours

• Police pull up floorboards of victim's home

• Detectives also search his Manhattan home

• Revealed: Wife's sister was stabbed to death in 1995

The top Pentagon aide found dead at a landfill site was seen in a confused state 48 hours before his death wandering around the wrong car park and wearing only one shoe.

John Wheeler was ‘disorientated’ and not wearing a coat despite the freezing temperature, according to the car park attendant in Wilmington, Delaware.

Asked if he felt OK, the 66-year-old simply responded: ‘No’.

The following day he was also seen wandering around the town in the last sighting before his body was discovered dumped at the tip.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1344347/John-Wheeler-murder-Last-sighting-White-House-aide-dumped-landfill.html#ixzz1ACyHNudJ

Video Released In Murder Mystery Of Delaware War Vet « CBS Philly – News, Sports, Weather, Traffic and the Best of Philadelphia

Video Released In Murder Mystery Of Delaware War Vet « CBS Philly – News, Sports, Weather, Traffic and the Best of Philadelphia

The American Dream

The American Dream

The Debt Ceiling Debate Really Doesn’t Matter – Either Way U.S. Government Finances Are Going To Crash

World Food Prices Rise to Record on Sugar, Meat Costs - Bloomberg

World Food Prices Rise to Record on Sugar, Meat Costs

World food prices rose to a record in December on higher sugar, grain and oilseed costs, the United Nations said, exceeding levels reached in 2008 that sparked deadly riots from Haiti to Egypt.

An index of 55 food commodities tracked by the Food and Agriculture Organization gained for a sixth month to 214.7 points, above the previous all-time high of 213.5 in June 2008, the Rome-based UN agency said in a monthly report. The gauges for sugar and meat prices advanced to records.

Sugar climbed for a third year in a row in 2010, and corn jumped the most in four years in Chicago. Food prices may rise more unless the world grain crop increases “significantly” in 2011, the FAO said Nov. 17. At least 13 people died last year inMozambique in protests against plans to lift bread prices.

“There is still, unfortunately, the potential for grain prices to strengthen on the back of a lot of uncertainty,” Abdolreza Abbassian, senior economist at the FAO, said by phone fromRome today. “If anything goes wrong with the South American crop, there is plenty of room for them to increase.”

White, or refined, sugar traded at $752.70 a metric ton at 11:53 a.m. on NYSE Liffe in London, compared with $383.70 at the end of June 2008. Corn, which added 52 percent last year on the Chicago Board of Trade, was at $6.01 a bushel, down from $7.57 in June 2008. Soybeans were at $13.6325 a bushel, against $15.74 at the close of June 2008.

Demand From China

The cost of food climbed 25 percent from a year earlier in December, based on the FAO figures, after Chinese demand strengthened and Russia’s worst drought in a half-century devastated grain crops. The agency’s food-price indicator rose from 206 points in November.

The American Dream

Court OKs searches of cell phones without warrant

Court OKs searches of cell phones without warrant

The California Supreme Court allowed police Monday to search arrestees' cell phones without a warrant, saying defendants lose their privacy rights for any items they're carrying when taken into custody.

Under U.S. Supreme Court precedents, "this loss of privacy allows police not only to seize anything of importance they find on the arrestee's body ... but also to open and examine what they find," the state court said in a 5-2 ruling.

The majority, led by Justice Ming Chin, relied on decisions in the 1970s by the nation's high court upholding searches of cigarette packages and clothing that officers seized during an arrest and examined later without seeking a warrant from a judge.

The dissenting justices said those rulings shouldn't be extended to modern cell phones that can store huge amounts of data.

Monday's decision allows police "to rummage at leisure through the wealth of personal and business information that can be carried on a mobile phone or handheld computer merely because the device was taken from an arrestee's person," said Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar, joined in dissent by Justice Carlos Moreno.

They argued that police should obtain a warrant - by convincing a judge that they will probably find incriminating evidence - before searching a cell phone.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/01/03/BA5N1H3G12.DTL#ixzz1A8Hd7iov

David Icke - PNAC Neocons and 911

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EndTimeWatchman

EndTimeWatchman

Mystery surrounding murder of former Bush aide John Wheeler deepens with clues of his last moves

Mystery surrounding murder of former Bush aide John Wheeler deepens with clues of his last moves

The mystery of the murdered former Pentagon official found in a Delaware landfill on New Year's Eve deepened on Tuesday as cops zeroed in on his final movements - but failed to locate a crime scene.

John Parsons Wheeler, 66, best known for helping to get the Vietnam Veterans Memorial built in Washington, was last seen publicly the day before his body tumbled into a Wilmington landfill on Friday.

A passerby spotted Wheeler, who lived six miles away in New Castle, Del., at 3:30 p.m. Thursday in downtown Wilmington.

Sometime after that, his body was put into a commercial Dumpster in Newark, Del. - about 12 miles from his home and 15 miles from Wilmington. It fell into the landfill from a truck that picked up trash in Newark on Friday morning.

Police won't say how he died.

* In Harlem, cops - with Wheeler's distraught wife, Katherine Klyce, in tow - searched their W. 124th St. condo Monday night but left empty-handed, according to staff at the luxury building. Klyce, who runs a Cambodian textile business from the ninth-floor apartment, was traveling when her husband went missing.

This is the second time Klyce has been hit by a high-profile murder mystery. Her sister, Emily Klyce Fisher, a wealthy society woman in Memphis, was stabbed 50 times in her home in 1995. The killing was unsolved until 2003, when a TV show led to a friend of Fisher's druggie son.

The family issued a statement asking for privacy.

* At Klyce and Wheeler's New Castle home, reporters saw kitchen floorboards pried up while cops were searching. It wasn't clear who pried them up - or why.

Cops said the house was not the murder scene. "We don't have a crime scene," said Newark Police Lt. Mark Farrall.

* Neighbor Ron Roark told The (Wilmington) News Journal that for four days over Christmas, he heard a TV blaring night and day inside Wheeler's house, even though no one seemed to be home.

"It was so loud, we could hear it through the walls, and we found that strange," Roark told the newspaper.

* Wheeler had an ongoing lawsuit against another neighbor, Frank Marini, who is building a home that would block Wheeler's view.

On Tuesday, Dec. 28, a smoke bomb was thrown into the Marinis' unfinished house. Cops say they don't know if it is connected to Wheeler's murder.

Wheeler, a defense contractor, was special assistant to the secretary of the Air Force from 2005 to 2008.

With Jennifer Cunningham

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2011/01/04/2011-01-04_mystery_surrounding_murder_of_former_bush_aide_john_wheeler_deepens_with_clues_o.html#ixzz1A7w3WMkV

Pardoned Sex Offender charged again with raping daughter

Pardoned Sex Offender charged again with raping daughter

Jeremy Giefer, 37, of Vernon Center was released on a $350,000 bail yesterday.

Giefer was originally charged in 1993 and convicted in 1994 on charges of statutory rape after having sex with a 14 year old girl. Giefer was 19 years old at the time. Giefer impregnated the girl, and later married her, after serving 45 days in jail for the crime.

Fast forward to 2008, when Giefer sent a petition to representatives asking that he be pardonned of the charges. In his letter, Giefer attempted to separate himself from the average sex-offender by stating that he had a long-term, monogamous relationship with this woman, that he was only four years older than her, and that he had married her and raised a family with her, including the daughter they conceived in 1994.

Giefer further stated that his wife wished to start a daycare business on their property, and this could only be done once his record was clear.

Giefer was pardonned of the charges in 2008 by a panel of three people, including Governor Tim Pawlenty, Attorney General Lori Swanson and former state supreme court justice Eric Magnuson.

New charges were filed against Giefer in 2010. Initially, reports stated only that "a girl," who wished to be anonymous, had filed charges that Giefer had sexually assaulted her more than 250 times from when she was 9 years old to 16 years old, both before and after the pardon.

Now it has come to light that this victim was his own daughter, the same one conceived by the statutory rape in 1994. She is known only by her initials, "C.G." C.G. alleges that Giefer raped her repeatedly, forcing her to engage in various sexual acts, and that these events occurred after her mother left the home with her brother, presumably to work in the daycare which she ran next door. C.G. also states that her father had her put on a the birth- control pill when she was 15.

Giefer has been prohibited from seeing the victim or coming within 100 yards from her. He was recently accused of breaking this condition of his release when he was in a vehicle next to hers at a location where both cars were dropping someone off. Giefer's attorney has stated that this was a mere coincedence, and Geifer did not know that she would be there at the same time he was.

Euro zone inflation accelerates to defy expectations - The Irish Times

Euro zone inflation accelerates to defy expectations

LAURA SLATTERY and DEREK SCALLY

EURO ZONE inflation accelerated faster than expected in December, taking price rises above the European Central Bank (ECB) target for the first time in two years and prompting speculation about when the central bank will need to consider interest rate increases.

Consumer prices in the euro zone rose by 2.2 per cent last month compared to a year earlier, after increasing 1.9 per cent in the year to November, according to the European Union’s statistics office, Eurostat. This is the highest rate since October 2008.

The jump can be explained by an 8.6 per cent surge in the price of crude oil in December, which took the annual rise in crude oil prices above 15 per cent.

There has also been recent upward pressure on food prices.

The ECB, which aims to keep annual consumer price rises at or just below 2 per cent, forecast last month that euro zone inflation would average about 1.8 per cent in 2011 and 1.5 per cent in 2012.

Most economists do not expect the above-target rate of inflation to trigger price stability actions, such as interest rate increases, in the near future.

Analysts reported a calm market reaction to the data, pointing to the continued low core rate, which is the inflation rate stripped of price rises in energy, food and other categories.

“The core rate is still very weak at 1 per cent ahead of new data next week,” said Antje Praefcke, senior FX analyst with Commerzbank in Frankfurt. She sees no dramatic change likely in the coming year as long as the euro zone capacity rate remains low and jobless rates steady.

Obama Is Sending Border Officers from DHS--Which Has Failed to Secure U.S.-Mexico Border--to Help Secure Afghan-Pakistan Border | CNSnews.com

Obama Is Sending Border Officers from DHS--Which Has Failed to Secure U.S.-Mexico Border--to Help Secure Afghan-Pakistan Border

CNSNews.com) – The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which by its own admission has thus far failed to control even half of America's nearly 2,000-mile-long border with Mexico, is now sending personnel to Afghanistan to help that country secure its border with Pakistan.

On a New Year’s visit to Afghanistan, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said there are now 25 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CPB) personnel on the ground in Afghanistan. That number could reach 65 or more by the end of 2011, she said.

“We’re going to contribute numbers,” Napolitano said, in explaining her department’s role in helping Afghanistan transition from military to civilian control.

Napolitano said she hoped to leave Afghanistan with an appreciation of what “skill sets” are most needed there – “and to make sure that’s included in the next wave of individuals that we (Department of Homeland Security) send over.”

In July 2002, when the George W. Bush White House released the first national strategy for the Department of Homeland Security, it identified the new agency’s three objectives as preventing terrorist attacks within the United States; reducing America’s vulnerability to terrorism; and minimizing the damage from attacks that do occur.

When asked by CNSNews.com if ICE and CBP personnel have been deployed elsewhere in the world to help secure borders, a DHS spokesperson said that they had, but that security issues prevented the department from providing details on those deployments. Such secrecy apparently does not extend to the deployments of CPB and ICE personnel to Afghanistan, however.

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