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The TRUTH will set you FREE.
Saturday, September 6, 2014
NEWSLETTERS ...SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 6, 2014
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The TRUTH will set you FREE.
Friday, September 5, 2014
Ebola situation in Port Harcourt, Nigeria
This article is of great concern to Shell employees in Nigeria
Ebola situation in Port Harcourt, Nigeria:
Issued by World Health Organization
Situation assessment – 3 September 2014
The Commissioner of Health, Rivers State, Nigeria, has now reported 3 confirmed cases of Ebola virus disease in Port Harcourt, the country’s oil hub. Additional suspected cases are being investigated.
Background on the Port Harcourt index case
Ebola virus was imported into Nigeria via an infected air traveller, who entered Lagos on 20 July and died 5 days later. One close contact of the Lagos case fled the city, where he was under quarantine, to seek treatment in Port Harcourt.
The close contact was treated, from 1 to 3 August, at a Port Harcourt hotel, by what would turn out to be the city’s index case. This case was a male physician who developed symptoms of weakness and fever on 11 August and died of Ebola on 22 August. His infection was confirmed on 27 August by the virology laboratory at Lagos University Teaching Hospital.
The male physician in Port Harcourt is therefore indirectly linked to Nigeria’s first case.
The case history of the index case in Port Harcourt is important, as it reveals multiple high-risk opportunities for transmission of the virus to others.
After onset of symptoms, on 11 August, and until 13 August, the physician continued to treat patients at his private clinic, and operated on at least two. On 13 August, his symptoms worsened; he stayed at home and was hospitalized on 16 August.
Prior to hospitalization, the physician had numerous contacts with the community, as relatives and friends visited his home to celebrate the birth of a baby.
Once hospitalized, he again had numerous contacts with the community, as members of his church visited to perform a healing ritual said to involve the laying on of hands. During his 6 day period of hospitalization, he was attended by the majority of the hospital’s health care staff.
On 21 August, he was taken to an ultrasound clinic, where 2 physicians performed an abdominal scan. He died the next day.
The additional 2 confirmed cases are his wife, also a doctor, and a patient at the same hospital where he was treated. Additional staff at the hospital are undergoing tests.
Given these multiple high-risk exposure opportunities, the outbreak of Ebola virus disease in Port Harcourt has the potential to grow larger and spread faster than the one in Lagos.
The response
Nigerian health workers and WHO epidemiologists are monitoring more than 200 contacts. Of these, around 60 are considered to have had high-risk or very high-risk exposure.
The highest-risk exposures occurred in family members and in health care workers and patients at the facility where the index case was hospitalized. Church members who visited the index case while he was hospitalized are also considered at high risk.
The government, supported by WHO, UNICEF, and MSF (Doctors without Borders), has introduced a number of emergency measures. More will be introduced later this week.
An Ebola Emergency Operations Centre has been activated, with support from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A mobile laboratory, with RT-PCR diagnostic capacity, is set up and functional.
A 26-bed isolation facility for the management of Ebola cases is in place, with plans for possible expansion. WHO has 15 technical experts on the ground.
Twenty-one contact-tracing teams are at work; they have good training, provided by WHO, and adequate transportation, thanks to government support. Two decontamination teams are equipped and operational, as is a burial team.
Port Harcourt is the capital of Rivers State. WHO, together with the Rivers State Port Health Service, has assessed public health measures at airport gates and other points of entry. Screening is under way at domestic and international airport gates.
Social mobilization efforts have been stepped up, initially targeting key community and religious leaders.
However, civil unrest, security issues, and public fear of Ebola create serious problems that could hamper response operations. Military escorts are needed for movements into the isolation and treatment centre.
WHO media contacts:
Fadéla Chaib
Telephone: + 41 22 791 3228
Mobile:+ 41 79 475 55 56
Email: chaibf@who.int
Fadéla Chaib
Telephone: + 41 22 791 3228
Mobile:+ 41 79 475 55 56
Email: chaibf@who.int
Tarik Jasarevic
Mobile: +41 793 676 214
Tel: +41 22 791 5099
E-mail: jasarevict@who.int
Mobile: +41 793 676 214
Tel: +41 22 791 5099
E-mail: jasarevict@who.int
The TRUTH will set you FREE.
Thursday, September 4, 2014
HARRY ROQUE SEPTEMBER 4, 2014 ARTICLE
Harry Roque's Blog |  |
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The future of the Internet
I am in Istanbul, Turkey to attend the 9th Internet Governance Forum (IGF). This is an initiative of the United Nations General Assembly to bring together stakeholders to discuss the future of the Internet.
On top of the agenda is how governments should treat the net. The majority view still is what is referred to as the “multi-stakeholderism approach”, which believes that as the Internet is the technological realization of a free market place of ideas, it should be allowed to flourish with minimal governmental interference. On the other end of the spectrum is the view that the Internet should be subject to the full exercise of state sovereignty and jurisdiction exemplified perhaps by China’s decision to build the counterpart of its great wall on the Internet.
But beyond the debate on how much control government should exercise over the net, the conference also deals with a host of other controversial topics. I would think that given the archipelagic nature of the Philippines and the fact that we have one of the slowest and most expensive Internet service in the world — a topic that should have prompted our government to at least send an official delegate to the forum would be the issue of access to the Internet. But reflective of the lack of political will and/ or lack of appreciation that access to the internet is fast developing into a human right, the Philippines did not bother to send anyone, even a third secretary from our embassy in Ankara, to the forum. A fellow Filipino civil society delegate, Liza Garcia of Gender and ICT, cynically observed that if the international community put a price tag on the Internet, our government would most definitely have sent an official delegate to the forum.
In any case, it is strange that the Philippines, as the country that has most recently implemented a draconian law that infringes on freedom of expression on the net through the Cybercrimes Prevention Act, would choose to ignore the UN-sponsored forum on the future of the Internet.
Other interesting topics for discussion include: content creation, dissemination and use, the Internet as an engine for growth, enhancing digital security, human rights and other emerging issues.
I have thus far attended two interesting panels. The first is on the future of the data privacy in a post-Snowden world. The other is on human rights principles and the Internet.
Apparently, the concern today arising from the Snowden incident is the privacy of data, which governments have been accessing. This is why most governments insist on “in-country data storage”, referred in techie language as “localization”, which many Internet servers object to as being uneconomical and violate their clients’ rights to privacy. Unfortunately, a theme that arose from the panel discussion is that it is start-up companies that have the balls to stand up to government in resisting localization. The big guys, apparently driven by potential loss of revenues, have been more than happy to comply with both localization and requests for data. All that Big Brother has to do is to ask.
Closer to my interest are human rights principles, which have been codified into the Charter of Human Rights for the Internet. While this remains lex ferenda, meaning this is still aspirational; the panel observed that countries have been moving, albeit slowly, to enact enabling legislation to transform the Charter into lex lata, or what the law is. New Zealand and Brazil are two such countries. I do recall that Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago has a pending bill, the Magna Carta for the Internet, which I hope will be enacted into law soon so that the Philippines can help in making the aspirational Charter into law. Some of the rights included in the Charter include the right to access and the right against government surveillance without due process of law. Thank goodness that while we lost in our challenge against cyber libel and cybersex in the Cyberprevention Act, we at least succeeded in nullifying real time data gathering without a court warrant and the take-down clause which would have enabled the Justice Secretary to act as investigator, prosecutor, judge and executioner in taking down Internet sites.
Today, my hosts, Freedom House and the American Bar Association, have arranged a series of bilateral meetings with donors and tech companies. In a few minutes there will be a bilateral meeting with the European Commission, followed by bilateral meetings with the State Department, the Director for Advocacy of Human Rights Watch, and meetings with companies such as Twitter and Facebook. At issue with the techie companies is the procedure by which they comply with government requests to take down materials. Early in our pre-conference planning, we agreed that we would attempt to persuade these companies to adapt an administrative procedure by which civil society and other interested parties may challenge any such request to take down content. Prima facie, these requests constitute prior restraint and infringe on freedom of expression.
It’s my first time to attend the IGF. I do concede that three days can make a world of a difference. I started on Day 1 when I was still pessimistic that a forum where nothing is adopted might be a waste of time. Today, and because I have been teaching international law for 15 years, I realize that a forum such as this facilitates the formation of customary norms. This is because civil society and other stakeholders are allowed to persuade governments to adopt uniform state practice on the basis that these practices have become law.
It’s not such a waste of time after all.
My profuse thanks to the American Bar Association for sponsoring me to this event, and to Freedom House for including me in their delegation. This means I win the prize for social media, right?
This post first appeared in http://manilastandardtoday.com/2014/09/04/the-future-of-the-internet/
The TRUTH will set you FREE.
Wednesday, September 3, 2014
Leonardo DiCaprio CHALLENGES Shell CEO Ben van Beurden
ROYAL DUTCH SHELL: Ice buckets, rust buckets and superbuckets
By John Donovan
According to the the Vancouver Observer, Shell CEO Ben van Beurden, has accepted the ice bucket challengefrom Leonardo DiCaprio to oil sands executives.
The reputation of his predecessor as Shell CEO, Peter Voser, sunk after he faced and failed a challenge in the Arctic.
Voser came spectacularly unstuck as a result of sending a couple of refurbished old rust buckets into Alaskan waters in an ill-fated tax dodging scandal resulting in ship board fire, explosions, pollution, groundings and public humiliation.
Since its in a good cause, lets hope Mr van Beurden fares rather better.
And we won’t dwell on the leaked superbucket motivational message from Peter Voser, described by one of our contributors as platitudinous nonsense and by one recipient, as “Bullshit of Olympic proportions”.
Shell not abandoning its US shale ambitions
By John Donovan
Shell CEO Ben van Beurden claims that despite a series of asset sales and costly write-downs, the oil giant is not abandoning the prospect of North American oil and gas shales.
Shell’s recent reappraisal resulted in a $2bn write-down in book value and plans for Shell to sell hundreds of thousand of US acres.
Related quotes from Ben van Beurden:
“Asset sales have helped the company narrow its focus on fewer projects where Shell can better compete with the smaller oil and gas companies that have dominated US shale development.”
“It’s a different type of game but it’s not best left to the independents. We can play and win at it as well.”
Time will tell.
During a conference speech at Columbia University yesterday, Mr van Beurden also proposed that the US should resume exporting oil and embrace global markets.
Any such resumption would require lifting the longstanding US crude oil export ban in force since the Arab oil embargo in the 1970′s.
The TRUTH will set you FREE.
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