From The Sunday Times October 11, 2009

Daughter saves mother, 80, left by doctors to starve

AN 80-year-old grandmother who doctors identified as terminally ill and left to starve to death has recovered after her outraged daughter intervened.

Hazel Fenton, from East Sussex, is alive nine months after medics ruled she had only days to live, withdrew her antibiotics and denied her artificial feeding. The former school matron had been placed on a controversial care plan intended to ease the last days of dying patients.

Doctors say Fenton is an example of patients who have been condemned to death on the Liverpool care pathway plan. They argue that while it is suitable for patients who do have only days to live, it is being used more widely in the NHS, denying treatment to elderly patients who are not dying.

Fenton’s daughter, Christine Ball, who had been looking after her mother before she was admitted to the Conquest hospital in Hastings, East Sussex, on January 11, says she had to fight hospital staff for weeks before her mother was taken off the plan and given artificial feeding.

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Ball, 42, from Robertsbridge, East Sussex, said: “My mother was going to be left to starve and dehydrate to death. It really is a subterfuge for legalised euthanasia of the elderly on the NHS. ”

Fenton was admitted to hospital suffering from pneumonia. Although Ball acknowledged that her mother was very ill she was astonished when a junior doctor told her she was going to be placed on the plan to “make her more comfortable” in her last days.

Ball insisted that her mother was not dying but her objections were ignored. A nurse even approached her to say: “What do you want done with your mother’s body?”

On January 19, Fenton’s 80th birthday, Ball says her mother was feeling better and chatting to her family, but it took another four days to persuade doctors to give her artificial feeding.

Fenton is now being looked after in a nursing home five minutes from where her daughter lives.

Peter Hargreaves, a consultant in palliative medicine, is concerned that other patients who could recover are left to die. He said: “As they are spreading out across the country, the training is getting probably more and more diluted.”

A spokesman for East Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “Patients’ needs are assessed before they are placed on the [plan]. Daily reviews are undertaken by clinicians whenever possible.”

In a separate case, the family of an 87-year-old woman say the plan is being used as a way of giving minimum care to dying patients.

Susan Budden, whose mother, Iris Griffin, from Norwich, died in a nursing home in July 2008 from a brain tumour, said: “When she was started on the [plan] her medication was withdrawn. As a result she became agitated and distressed.

“It would appear that the [plan] is . . . used purely as a protocol which can be ticked off to justify the management of a patient.”

Deborah Murphy, the national lead nurse for the care pathway, said: “If the education and training is not in place, the [plan] should not be used.” She said 3% of patients placed on the plan recovered.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article6869646.ece

I agree texas should be left alone to decide what ever way they want to rule there country . they should go back and vote there selfs out of the union . I'd vote for that .

"There is no parent who wants to get a phone call where they hear that their child no longer has two good seeing eyes because there was a scuffle and someone pulled out a knife," said George Evans, the school district board's president.

Cub Scout's "Weapon" Earns him Suspension
1st Grader Brings Camping Utensil to School for Lunch, But Zero Tolerance Weapons Policy Leads to 45-Day Suspension

(CBS) A 6-year-old boy's excitement over joining the Cub Scouts may just land him in reform school for 45 days.

Zachary Christie was suspended from his 1st grade class in Delaware's Christina School District after bringing a camping utensil - a combination knife/fork/spoon - to use at lunch, prompting calls to reexamine schools' zero-tolerance policy for bringing weapons to school, according to a New York Times report Monday.

Zero tolerance policies were instituted in many school districts across the country, at least in part due to violence at Columbine and Virginia Tech, the report notes. Their rigid enforcement is designed to eliminate the appearance of bias or discrimination on the part of school officials.

But residents, and some lawmakers, are now wondering why schools can't apply a more common-sense discretion to such instances.

"It just seems unfair," said Zachary, who is being home-schooled while his mother, Debbie Christie, tries to fight the suspension. That involved Zachary appearing before a district disciplinary committee with his karate instructor and mother's fiancé vouching for him as character witnesses.

"Zachary wears a suit and tie some days to school by his own choice because he takes school so seriously," his mother said. "He is not some sort of threat to his classmates."

Christie started a Web site, helpzachary.com, to drum up support for her son.

State Representative Teresa L. Schooley wrote the disciplinary committee, asking each member to "consider the situation, get all the facts, find out about Zach and his family and then act with common sense for the well-being of this child."

But the strict enforcement of the policy has its supporters.

"There is no parent who wants to get a phone call where they hear that their child no longer has two good seeing eyes because there was a scuffle and someone pulled out a knife," said George Evans, the school district board's president.

There has been a move to give school officials more flexibility in "weapon"-related incidents. After a third-grade girl was expelled for a year after bringing in a knife to cut the birthday cake her grandmother sent in to the class, a new law was passed allowing officials to modify punishments on a case-by-case basis. But that was for expulsions, not suspensions as Zachary is faced with. Another revision to the law is being drafted to address suspensions, according to the report.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/12/national/main5378839.shtml

bring on single-payer

From The Times October 10, 2009

Nuclear engineer from Cern lab arrested for al-Qaeda links

Fears that al-Qaeda is planning an attack on the nuclear industry in Europe were renewed yesterday after French secret agents arrested a physicist working at an atomic research centre.

The 32-year-old man, who was detained with his brother, 25, is suspected of providing a list of terrorist targets to North African Islamic radicals. He worked for the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland, according to French police sources.

Agents were said to have intercepted messages in which the physicist, a Frenchman of Algerian origin, had suggested targets in France.

He is believed to have been in contact with members of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, an Algerian-based terror organisation that joined Osama bin Laden’s network in 2007.

“He had expressed a wish or a desire to commit terrorist actions but had not materially prepared them,” an intelligence source said.

After he was identified, during an investigation into a French network that had sent Islamic radicals to Afghanistan, the man was put under surveillance for about 18 months. Last month Judge Christophe Teissier, an investigating magistrate specialising in terrorism, opened a formal inquiry into his activities.

The brothers apparently came to the attention of the secret services when agents monitored the internet as part of the inquiry into the recruitment of extremists to fight in Afghanistan. Several exchanges were recorded between the brothers and suspected al-Qaeda contacts.

The pair were arrested by the Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence (DCRI) at their home in Vienne, eastern France. Police seized two computers, three hard discs and two USB keys.

The men were taken for questioning at the directorate’s headquarters in Levallois-Perret, outside Paris. “Perhaps we have avoided the worst possible scenario,” Brice Hortefeux, the French Interior Minister, said. “We are in a situation of permanent vigilance and we follow the declarations of the leaders of certain organisations day by day. Our vigilance is never lowered. The risk is permanent.”

CERN, the leading European laboratory for the study of sub-atomic physics, said that the suspect had never been in contact with any elements that could be used for terrorist purposes.

The man who was arrested worked on analysis concerning the Large Hadron Collider but was not an employee of CERN and “performed his research under a contract with an outside institute”. None of his research had a potential military application, the organisation added.

In its previous incarnation as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb fought the Algerian authorities in an attempt to install an Islamic state at the cost of tens of thousands of lives in the 1990s.

Since joining al-Qaeda it has spread its activities to countries such as Mali, Niger and Mauritania. In June it claimed responsibility for the killing of Christopher Leggett, an American humanitarian worker, in Mauritania.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6868246.ece

I on the other hand am going to speak and act just like he is no different than anyone else. I have never been mistreated doing it that way.

But we judge incorrectly more often then we do correctly when we prejudge so it is not an accurate science. We unjustly treat people badly based on profiling or prejudice when we are wrong.

Human respect should be utmost in our minds. My opinion of course.

So profiling is right in your eyes??

Profiling is wrong.

I have met dangerous people who, if treated the same as everyone else, will not harm you. I have met meek individuals who are quiet and subdued because they are harboring the desire to harm others and themselves.

We cannot tell by looking at people whether they want to harm us in all situations so it is a disadvantage to assume anything.

You act as though you think I have lived a cushy life in surbanite with no exposure to the "bad" elements in life....lol

You have no clue who I have been around or what I have survived.

That saying is talking about assuming and you know what they makes right? a-s-s of u and me.

I cannot pick because I don't know enough about either person.

Obviously something wasn't right if revocation of illegal enforcement was revoked. He was in trouble before now.

The investigations started of this man in 2008. Obama wasn't in office in 2008

http://news.aol.com/article/sheriff-joe-arpaio-facing-limits-on/711589

Lets discuss it as if it wasn't Obama's idea since it wasn't.