exciting photo.

Read both the stories.We are in for another Afghanistan.
ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN – The imminent expiration of a controversial decree that provides amnesty against criminal charges to top Pakistani politicians could further weaken the country’s embattled civilian government, according to analysts here.

The National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) was passed by former President Pervez Musharraf in 2007 as part of a political deal, brokered with the assistance of the United States, that allowed the late Benazir Bhutto back into the country to contest 2008 elections without having to face charges related to money-laundering and kickbacks on government contracts. More than 8,000 individuals, mainly bureaucrats, are currently protected by the decree.

The NRO was ostensibly aimed at putting an end to politically motivated corruption cases that had led to bitter fighting between the two major parties during the 1990s, Pakistan’s so-called “decade of democracy.” But a sustained political campaign led by the main opposition PML-N party and backed by the right-wing media has meant that the NRO “has now become a byword for corruption,” according to Cyril Almeida, assistant editor of Dawn, a leading English daily.

KEY OFFICIALS COULD BE LIABLE TO PROSECUTION

If the Supreme Court allows the NRO’s expiration on Saturday and rules that old cases are automatically reactivated, key officials could be liable to prosecution.

Among the officials who could be affected are Interior Minister Rehman Malik, Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar, and senior diplomats, including Hussain Haqqani, the ambassador to the United States; and Wajid Shamsul Hassan, the ambassador to Britain.

Presidential immunity means no cases may be brought against President Zardari, even after the NRO’s expiration. The president is now “politically vulnerable, but constitutionally impregnable,” says Mr.Almeida.

Almeida points out that “no civilian government in Pakistan lasts long after the drumroll of corruption begins,” though it is unclear what form the government’s downfall could take.

For the time being, at least, the resignation of the president, as demanded by some of his foes, seems unlikely, as does a parliamentary vote of no confidence. The possibility of a military takeover is also low.

The ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) last month attempted to formalize the decree through parliament, but withdrew it amid fears that its coalition allies would not back the bill.

Ayaz Sadiq, a member of the parliamentary accounts committee for the opposition PML-N, told the Monitor: “All these cases should have been decided by the court, not by the stroke of pen of a dictator who was supported by the West on all issues.” He added that those ministers who are named as beneficiaries of the NRO should resign to clear their names.

Zardari himself should be “held accountable” for alleged misdeeds, he says.

The government, on the other hand, denies the NRO was ever controversial.

“It is understood by the people of Pakistan as a way to bring the leadership back into Pakistan,” says Farahnaz Ispahani, a spokesperson for Zardari. She instead blames “antidemocratic elements” for waging a propaganda campaign aimed undermining the moral authority of Zardari, a thinly-veiled reference to Pakistan’s shadowy intelligence agencies and elements within the Army.

That point of view is partly backed by Almeida, who says that, while levels of corruption haven’t spiked recently, the attention paid to it by the opposition and the media has.

US WATCHING CLOSELY

The United States will be keeping a watchful eye on proceedings. Nawaz Sharif, leader of the PML-N and the country’s most popular politician, according to international polling, is widely seen as the man most likely to emerge as a possible future leader.

His traditional ties to the religious right, as well as his party’s relatively unenthusiastic response in the US-led war on terrorism (he was, for instance, slow to back Pakistan’s recent military offensive in Swat), may signal “a more independent and less subservient stance vis-á-vis the United States,” according to Rifaat Hussain, a defense analyst at the Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/1127/p06s10-wosc.html
(news one day ago)
******
AP Top News at 5:22 a.m. EST9To day-29/11/09)
ISLAMABAD — A powerful opposition leader has called on President Asif Ali Zardari to relinquish wide-ranging powers immediately. Sunday’s statement by Shahbaz Sharif comes a day after the expiration of an amnesty protecting Zardari and several allies from graft prosecution. Zardari enjoys general immunity from prosecution as president, but the Supreme Court could challenge that.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g8-DEMtAE9q4i4ySQ0eV_qZefmRQD9C94MU03

The stead fast blinkers on attitude of so called moderate and secular Muslims should own up responsibility for having allowed things to come to such a pass because of their refusal to rein in their terrorist brethren.One shudders to think of the clash of Christian world and the Muslim world, which unfortunately the current situation id heading for.
Story:
Swiss voters have supported a referendum proposal to ban the building of minarets, official results show.
More than 57% of voters from 26 cantons – or provinces – voted in favour of the ban, Swiss news agency ATS reported.
The proposal had been put forward by the Swiss People’s Party, (SVP), the largest party in parliament, which says minarets are a sign of Islamisation.
Opponents say a ban would amount to discrimination and that the ballot has stirred hatred.
The BBC’s Imogen Foulkes, in Bern, says the surprise result is very bad news for the Swiss government which had urged voters to reject a ban on minarets, fearing unrest among the Muslim community and damage to Switzerland’s relations with Islamic countries.
Switzerland is home to some 400,000 Muslims and has just four minarets.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8385069.stm

Names do not matter.Patients beware.
Story:
The three hospitals with the highest patient death rates in the country can be named, amid a deepening crisis over the standard of care in the NHS.
Bolton, Greater Manchester and Basildon NHS trusts have elite “foundation status”. However, The Sunday Telegraph has learned that statistics to be published this week will show a higher percentage of patients died while in their care in 2008-09 than in any other trusts in the country.
With the average mortality rate set at a score of 100, Basildon scored 131, Royal Bolton 122 and Tameside Hospital, in Greater Manchester, 119.

Basildon hospital apologises to patient
Chief Executive of ‘appalling care’ hospital has affair with safety manager
The disclosures have cast further doubt on Labour’s flagship foundation hospitals’ policy, which has been under attack since appalling standards of care at Mid Staffordshire Hospital were exposed in March.
Last night patients’ groups demanded that ministers carry out a “total overhaul” of the system, which they said was “failing” patients. Investigations by this paper have found:
- Eight foundation hospitals are failing so badly that they have breached the terms of their licence to operate and are being placed under close supervision by the NHS watchdog, Monitor.
- The leading children’s hospital Alder Hey has been issued with a “warning notice” for breaching basic infection standards and putting vulnerable young patients at risk of killer infections – just two weeks after the trust declared itself “the best in the country”.
- Three ambulance services have also been issued with the same notices after failing to properly decontaminate equipment, or provide clean services for the most high-risk patients.
- Bosses of foundation trusts with high death rates have awarded themselves bumper pay rises. Chief executives at the eight foundation trusts with the highest death rates in 2007-08 had average salary rises of 15 per cent when their institutions took on the coveted status.
Last week Basildon was condemned by inspectors who found “blood-spattered” walls and filthy conditions.
The hospital has the worst patient death rate in the country, according to the health care information analysts Dr Foster.
Hospitals were also rated for overall patient care. Again, Basildon came off worst; followed by Scarborough and North East Yorkshire and Lewisham Hospital trust, in South London, respectively.
Katherine Murphy, from the Patients Association, said the foundation hospital system had reached crisis point. “Foundation hospitals claim to be in a premier league, but yet more evidence is coming out that many of them are failing their patients,’’ she said.
There are also question marks over the way ratings given to hospitals rely on their own assessment of their performance. At Basildon Hospital, managers gave themselves 13 out of a 14 possible marks for safety and cleanliness. The ratings were published just weeks before the damning inspection report was drawn up.
At Alder Hey, hospital managers awarded themselves the maximum score for cleanliness. When its self-assessments were added up, it was awarded an overall rating of “excellent” for its services.
On October 15, the hospital sent out a press release, titled “best in class, best in country”, describing how it had achieved the most successful result of any children’s hospital.
Twelve days later, when inspectors from regulators the Care Quality Commission (CQC) arrived unannounced, they found filthy conditions, with brown running water, mouldy bathrooms and soiled furniture and commodes. Toys were stored on top of equipment to clean bedpans.
The inspectors also found that trays used to carry sterile equipment were dirty. Domestic staff said the parts of the wards they could not reach were cleaned just once a year, by outside contractors. The hospital was told it was failing to protect patients from infections, and ordered to make urgent changes. Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary said: “We have to move away from the flawed system of self-assessment to one where inspectors really understand what is going on in our hospitals.
”We need more spot inspections which focus on the results of treatment, the experiences of patients and their feedback.”
Dr Steve Ryan, medical director at Alder Hey, said the trust apologised for the failings found by CQC during its inspection, but insisted that the faults found on the wards visited last month were not typical of the hospital. Ambulance services in the North East, East of England, and East Midlands have all been issued with warnings by the CQC about their basic hygiene.
The regulator for foundation trusts, Monitor, is scrutinising eight trusts which are failing to meet basic standards.
The Sunday Telegraph’s campaign, Heal our Hospitals, has received 1,200 signatures backing its calls for an independent inquiry into the way hospitals are regulated and run.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/heal-our-hospitals/6680330/Shamed-the-top-hospitals-with-the-worst-death-rates.html

The ideal that journalists are impartial is followed in the breach.True, there are some who are above partisan reporting.Again it is not the journalists alone to take the blame;publishers are equally responsible .In fact proprietors dictate editorial and news policy,
The premise that Indian news papers are impartial is a myth.Only difference from other countries is that the Fourth Estate is more subtle.For instance a popular National News Channel, which also has a very good market share is so parochial and slanted in reporting that it would even attack the ruling paty at the centre, but send a comment about Sonia Gandhi,it will be promptly removed.So much for Free Media in India.(This is not to say that there are no impartial press in India).
This issue apart, the presumption that Zardari government is not corrupt and the press is out to embarrass the Govt. is so blatantly untrue even from the eyes of Indians, that it is laughable..
At times Pakistani Media seems to go overboard,anchor and participants for they have ir is the only forum to discuss, to give vent to their feelings and views.
The flip flap of Zardari on Indian planes intruding into Pak air space;Gilani’s faux paus on Kasab’s nativity and you can go on.You can not take the blame from them and pin it on the media.
Taliban is true,terrorism is true,corruption is true, Geo TV attack is true,gagging the press is true,double talk on Kashmir is true,same double talk on Us true,economic mess is true, Pakistan as a country is in danger of sliding into anarchy is true.
When the media reports it,it becomes untrue!?
Where is democracy in Pakistan to destabilize it?
Story:

Bilal Qureshi has contributed this piece for PTH. We do not necessarily agree with all the contents of this article but the issue is important enough to be debated. (RR – ed PTH)

Journalism 101, that is, the very first lesson of journalism is impartiality. In other words, journalists, at least in civilized societies don’t take any position on issues. And editors make sure that personal opinion don’t seep into the work that the journalists are assigned. This is common practice, and even in India, if you read the papers or watch their talk shows, it is impossible to associate journalists with any particular political party. So, in this light, it is utterly nauseating to see media in Pakistan, both electronic and print (especially Urdu media) engage in efforts to destabilize a democratically elected government. Especially, a channel backed up a by large paper is maliciously attacking everything that the government does day after day in print, and night after night on television.

This must be stopped.

No, this level of journalistic activism can never be defended or worse, tolerated. Zardari did the right thing when he spoke clearly and aggressively against the conspiracy theorists when he addressed a rally in Karachi.

Now, the government must come out swinging against the types of immoral, unethical, and extremely biased anchors that we see in Pakistan today.

I am not suggesting censorship, and neither am I asking the government to exert pressure on any media group with one exception. And we all know that particular channel responsible for spreading, fear and hatred and I want the government to confront the lies that this particular channel is presenting as facts.

Media, as I understand is not the answer for everything. Yes, no doubt that the media can play a very constructive role in helping societies progress and move in the right direction. However, it is with great regret that I note that the media in Pakistan, as I have observed during my extended stay in Pakistan, has become a mouth piece for those who were decisively rejected by the electorate in the last election. Worse yet, the media in Pakistan has become an apologist and an unofficial spokesmen for the Taliban. Therefore, in this extremely poisonous political environment, it is the duty of the government to strike back hard, demand explanation for the derogatory remarks and corruptions charges casually thrown around by these so-called journalists, both in print and on television.

Today, the elected government, a government that is full of people who fought not one, but two dictators, a government full of people who rejected of the offers of signing confessions and in return moving to plush ‘exiles’ in foreign countries. Today, this government is made to look like a corrupt and incompetent government, thanks to the right wing pro Taliban anchors and ‘experts and analysts’. This is simply unacceptable, period. So, on behalf of progressive, objective and non-conspiracy theorists, I ask the government to fight back, and fight back really hard, fight for your political life. Otherwise, the constant drip drip of corruption is going to stick and the people in Pakistan are going to buy into this notion that the government is actually corrupt and incompetent. I ask the government in Pakistan to take on the militant and pro Taliban right wing anti democracy, anti progress and hateful people who are trying to destroy the country by presenting the horrible Taliban as heroic fighters, which they certainly are not. And there are plenty of people in the media across Pakistan who can be persuaded to join the government in this effort to root out useless talking heads from the television. But first, the government has to aggressively hit back.

Mr. Gilllani, are you ready to save the future of Pakistan? Are you ready to stop kissing up to Nawaz Sharif and take a bold stand to defend your party, your president and your people? Are you?
http://pakteahouse.wordpress.com/2009/11/29/are-sections-of-pakistani-media-destabilising-democracy/#comment-21909

Solemn occasion turned into a party.Is this how we respects to the departed?
http://www.cracked.com/video_18114_weirdest-wake-ever.html occasion turned into a party.Is this how we respects to the departed?

When you decide to have a baby, better be sure that you can take are of it.You must not delegate the responsibility of raising children to people who want to make money.Do not rue when your child turns out to asocial and anti social. , Children are also given sedatives to make them sleep.
(CNN) — Think your children are getting hours of playtime, story readings and stimulating lessons at day care? Maybe they are, but they could also be spending a chunk of their day watching TV or DVDs.
New research published in the December issue of the journal Pediatrics found that kids in child care settings could be watching as much as 2.4 hours of television on an average day.
A study from the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children’s Research Institute examined 168 child care programs and found that 70 percent of home-based and 36 percent of center-based programs showed television to preschool kids.
“Most parents don’t know what happens at their children’s preschool,” said author Dr. Dimitri Christakis, who directs the Center for Child Health in Seattle, Washington. “They really want to believe that they leave their children there, it’s preparing them for school, it’s a stimulating, enriching environment. And I don’t know that they’re aware that in fact, a lot of time is spent watching TV.”
Researchers surveyed licensed home-based and center-based day cares in Michigan, Florida, Washington and Massachusetts, that took care of children under the age of 5.
Christakis and co-author Michelle Garrison reported that on an average day, home-based programs showed about 1.6 hours to toddlers, compared with 0.1 hours for center-based programs, and 2.4 hours to preschool children compared with 0.4 hours.
Previous estimates that children spend about two to three hours a day watching television are inaccurate, because those numbers relied on parents to calculate the number, Christakis said. Many pre-school children spend their days away from their parents.
“Prior studies quantify TV that children watch at home, but no one quantified the amount they watch at day care,” Christakis said.
Since previous studies reported that children watch about two to three hours of TV at home, and this recent study indicated that some day care centers show about 2.4 hours of screen time, some American preschool children could be watching as much as five hours a day, Christakis said.
“When you consider they’re only awake 12 hours a day, they’re spending almost half their waking hours in front of the screen,” he said. “At that level of viewing, it really begs the question of what are these children not doing? What are they missing out on during the five hours they’re passively watching TV?”
Face-to-face interactions such as engaging with the children with toys or reading books are more stimulating, experts said. Extensive TV watching for young children has been associated with shorter attention span, childhood obesity and developmental issues such as knowing fewer words and being less prepared for school, doctors said.
When you consider they’re only awake 12 hours a day, they’re spending almost half their waking hours in front of the screen.
–Dr. Dimitri Christakis

“In terms of rapid brain development, TV is a relatively impoverished environment for stimulating optimal brain development,” said Dr. Michael Rich, a pediatrician and director of Center on Media and Child Health at the Children’s Hospital Boston, who is not associated with the latest study. “The kids are never forced to stimulate or use their own imaginations. They’re used to pre-processed fictional worlds. They often don’t develop the habit of imaginary play.”
Some day cares could be operating under the misconception that TV is beneficial, said Christakis, who is also a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Ninety percent of the surveyed centers reported that they used TV for educational or entertainment reasons.
“We as a culture still believe that TV time is benign, that it’s OK,” said Rich, an associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. “I think it shows how much we as a society need to learn about the effects of TV.”
Although it’s unclear why the home-based day cares showed more TV, possible factors include less staffing and lower education levels of owners who run home-based centers, Christakis said. The report found that 70 percent of center-based program owners had a college degree compared with 51 percent of home-based owners.
Since home-based day care typically cost less than center-based programs, this disproportionately affects children from lower income households, experts said.
While children could be watching educational programs like “Sesame Street,” pediatricians say TV viewing takes time away from more critical and interactive abilities that are more conducive to development.

Rehabilitation is crucial for people who have suffered heart attacks or stroke leaving them without the powers of movement, speech and thought they had previously.
Attendance at rehabilitation programmes run by a hospital or another centre usually start four to six weeks after a heart attack or stroke and last for around six to eight weeks. Programmes can also be followed at home.
The aim is to improve fitness and aid recovery at the same time as improving confidence and quality of life. This is done through exercise, relaxation and information on lifestyles, including diet and risk factors, and treatment.
An exercise programme is worked out by a physiotherapist or exercise physiologist tailored to the abilities of the patient. Aerobic exercises, which help improve blood circulation, are used.
A team approach will often be used, combining doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, occupational and speech therapists and counsellors, among others.
Patients can draw strength from their knowledge and from seeing other patients at the same unit making progress.
Basics
The first stage for many patients may be to be re-taught the basics of washing, feeding and toileting, which are essential if they are to get their lives back as close to normal as possible.
Each individual is encouraged to set their own goals, whether it is a housewife looking to take charge again of running the household, or someone hoping to get back to work in some capacity.
Professor Anne Chamberlain, professor of rehabilitation medicine at the University of Leeds, said the process can be “very, very hard”.
“It is very frustrating. It requires a huge amount of energy, particularly when you can’t speak and you can’t get your thoughts in order.
“The first thing patients always say is ‘I want to walk’.
“That is definitely a good aim but it goes on a basis of first sitting safely, then moving from the bed to a chair, then standing, then walking.”
And she added: “Some people may feel the energy required to go back to work is so high that they would prefer to put their energy into something else.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/medical_notes/g-i/764049.stm

Operations available to treat heart disease and stroke range from relatively minor procedures such as angioplasties and the fitting of pacemakers, to heart transplants.
Pacemakers – Implantable defibrillators
An artificial pacemaker may be needed by patients with heart block or who have irregular heart rates or heart rhythms.
A pacemaking system has a pulse generator and one (single chamber) or two (dual chamber) electrode leads.
The pacemaker has a power supply or batteries and electronic circuitry, weighs about 20 to 50g and is almost completely hidden.
They last on average between six and 10 years.
Electrical impulses are conducted down the electrode lead to the heart, stimulating heartbeats.
Some pacemakers discharge electrical impulses at a fixed rate, but most work on demand.
The pacemaker may be fitted under local anaesthetic when an electrode lead is inserted into a vein at the shoulder or the base of the neck and guided into the correct chamber of the heart using an X-ray screen.
The electrode may alternatively be attached directly onto the outer surface of the heart. The pacemaker box is positioned under the skin of the abdomen.
There is a small danger of infection where the pacemaker is fitted.
Heart transplants
There are around 300 heart transplants carried out in the UK each year.
Heart transplants are usually carried out on people with severe heart failure caused by coronary heart disease or cardiomyopathy.
They can also be carried out for patients with severe abnormalities of the heart valves, congenital heart defects or an uncontrollable fast heart rhythm.
The average wait for a transplant once on the waiting list in the UK is six months. About 15% of patients die while on the waiting list.
The heart is stopped and a machine takes over the function of the heart and lungs. The diseased heart is removed and the donor organ sewn in and connected to the main blood vessels.
After the operation, immunosuppressant drugs are given to ensure the body does not try to reject the new heart. They must be taken for the rest of the patient’s life.
Rehabilitation programmes, including physiotherapy, begin shortly after the operation. Life should return to normal within six to eight weeks.
Between 50% and 60% of heart transplant patients are alive after 10 years.
Coronary angioplasty, and stents
There are 23,500 angioplasties performed on patients with angina in the UK each year. Nine out of 10 operations are successful.
Fatty tissue – atheroma – responsible for narrowing arteries, is squashed, allowing blood to flow more easily.
A catheter is inserted into an artery under local anaesthetic in either the groin or the arm and guided using an X-ray screen to a coronary artery until its tip reaches the narrowed or blocked section.
A balloon mounted on the end of the catheter is then gently inflated to a diameter of about 3mm, flattening the atheroma.
A short tube of stainless steel mesh – a stent – may be inserted into the part of the artery to be widened to prevent re-narrowing after angioplasty.
Ultrasound and laser angioplasty can also be used but are rare.
Coronary bypass surgery
Coronary bypass surgery is used to bypass the narrowed sections of coronary arteries by grafting a blood vessel between the aorta – the main artery leaving the heart – and a point in the coronary artery beyond the narrowed or blocked area.
More than 21,000 patients have coronary artery surgery in the UK each year. The risk of death within a month of the operation is 2%.
The graft to be used comes from another blood vessel within the patient’s body.
An incision is usually made in the middle of the chest and the breastbone split lengthways.
Keyhole surgery, which involves less opening of the chest, remains rare and is currently being evaluated.
During the operation, a heart lung bypass machine takes over the pumping of blood and breathing.
Around eight in 10 patients experience immediate and lasting relief from angina. Most of the others find the bypass improves their angina, says the British Heart Foundation.
Atherectomy
Atherectomy uses a rotating shaver on the end of a catheter, introduced through a blood vessel in the leg or arm, which is fed through to the blocked coronary artery.
The high-speed rotating device at the tip of the catheter grinds the plaque into minute particles, clearing the artery. Balloon angioplasty may then be used on the artery.
Heart valve replacement
Heart valve surgery may be required if drugs are unable to control the problem.
Valve replacement – Diseased valves are usually replaced by manufactured valves (artificial/mechanical valves), or animal valves (tissue valves/biological valves).
The valves open and close around 40m times a year. They can make a clicking sound.
Anticoagulants are taken with artificial valves because there is a risk of blood clots developing on the surface, but are not usually necessary with tissue valves.
Long-term survival rates for patients with either type of valve are similar. Eight out of 10 tissue valves are still working after 10 to 12 years.
Valve repair – Usually done only for the mitral valve – between the left atrium and left ventricle.
Congenital heart disease treatments
Arterial Switch – Where babies are born with the major arteries switched round, an operation is carried out to reverse the defect.
Balloon atrial sepostomy – The atrial opening is enlarged using a catheter to improve the oxygen supply in babies whose major arteries are transposed.
Balloon valvuloplasty – A catheter is inserted into the opening of a narrowed heart valve and a balloon opened to stretch the valve.
Fontan procedure or operation – The right atrium is connected to the pulmonary artery directly or with a conduit, allowing blood to bypass an incomplete or under-developed right ventricle.
The atrial defect is also closed to relieve blueness – cyanosis.
Pulmonary artery banding – A band is placed around the pulmonary artery to narrow it and reduce blood flow and high pressure in the lungs.
Band can later be removed and the defect fixed with open heart surgery.
Shunt or shunting procedure – A passage is formed between blood vessels to divert blood from one part of the body to another and reduce blueness in infants with severe Tetralogy of Fallot.
Venous switch or intra-atrial baffle – A tunnel is created inside the atria to help correct transposition of the major arteries.
Carotid endarterectomy
Build up of plaque in the carotid arteries – major blood vessels in the neck, taking blood from the heart to the brain – can be surgically removed by carotid endareterctomy to prevent a stroke.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/medical_notes/g-i/764043.stm

Tests to establish whether people are at risk of, or have suffered, heart disease or stroke can involve chemicals being injected into the body – invasive – or readings taken externally only – non-invasive.
Non-invasive
Electrocardiography
An electrocardiogram (ECG) measures the rhythm and electrical activity of the heart.
Small metal patches, called electrodes and set in sticky plaster, are put on the arms, legs and chest and connected by wires to a recording machine.
The test can detect abnormalities of heart rhythm and can tell whether the patient has had a heart attack in the past.
The test has limitations – abnormal readings can have an innocent explanation and some patients with serious heart problems can have a normal ECG.
Exercise ECG, otherwise known as exercise stress testing, is an ECG taken while exercising on a treadmill or stationary bicycle.
It is often more accurate than a resting ECG and is used to test whether there is a lack of blood supply through the arteries that go to the heart.
The exercise is made increasingly difficult and blood pressure and breathing are monitored at the same time.
Holter monitoring, also known as 24-hour ECG, involves electrocardiogram recordings taken over 24 hours and can help diagnose palpitations, which occur infrequently and can easily be missed in a short test.
The electrodes are placed on the chest and attached with wires to a small portable tape recorder which is worn on a belt around the waist.
The recorder – the Holter monitor – takes constant or intermittent readings.
Echocardiography
A pulse of high frequency, inaudible sound is transmitted through the skin by placing a recorder or probe on the chest wall.
The probe picks up the echoes reflected from various parts of the heart and displays them as an echocardiogram – a picture on a screen.
The recorded waves show the shape, texture and movement of the valves and the size and function of the heart muscle and chambers.
The test can take up to an hour and is painless.
It provides information about disease of the heart muscle for those who have suffered a heart attack or heart failure and to assess people with disease of the heart valves.
Doppler echocardiography measures the speed of the flow of blood in different parts of the heart.
Occasionally, echocardiography is carried out after the heart is put under stress either with exercise or a drug – stress echocardiography.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI scan)
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) produces detailed pictures of internal organs, including the heart and brain.
Patients lie in a short tunnel-like machine which contains a cylindrical magnet. Short bursts of magnetic fields and radio waves create images of parts of the body as required.
MRI can measure the flow of blood through some of the major arteries and can detect abnormal heart function in disorders such as cardiomyopathy (heart muscle disease), coronary heart disease, congenital heart defects and help define the location and extent of brain injury in stroke patients.
CT or CAT scan
High resolution images of the heart, brain and blood vessels are given by X-ray computed tomography (CT) or computerised axial tomographic (CAT) scans.
It is useful to evaluate disease of the aorta – the largest artery in the body and involves little potential risk to patients. In stroke patients, it gives valuable information about the location and extent of brain injury.
Blood tests – cardiac enzyme tests
Blood samples taken over a series of days can reveal the level of enzymes – proteins that help with chemical actions in the body and are released after a heart attack – in the blood.
Invasive
Coronary angiogram – cardiac catheterisation
Cardiac catheterisation is often used to assess whether people with angina require surgery.
The test gives vital information about blood pressure within the heart, how much oxygen is in the blood, the function of the pumping chambers and valves, and the exact severity and positioning of any narrowings in the coronary arteries.
A coronary angiogram – a picture of the coronary arteries – is produced.
The catheter – a long, flexible, plastic tube – is inserted into a vein or artery in the groin or the arm after a local anaesthetic is given.
The catheter is used to inject dye into the coronary arteries – this is called coronary angiography or coronary arteriograpy.
High speed X-ray “films” record the course of the liquid as it flows through the heart and arteries. Obstructions in the arteries can be identified by tracing the liquid’s passage.
Cerebral arteriography is used to show the extent and location of hardening of the arteries in the brain in order to diagnose patients at risk of stroke.
The test takes between 20 minutes and an hour and is often done as day case, though some patients may have a short stay in hospital.
There is a very small risk – one in 700 – that the test will cause a heart attack.
Nuclear imaging
A very small and harmless quantity of radioactive substance, called an isotope, is injected into the blood, often while exercising.
Gamma rays emitted by the isotope – usually technetium or thallium – are picked up by a “camera” positioned close to the chest.
Technetium is used to test the size and pumping function of the heart chambers, taking pictures of the inside of the heart as it empties and fills.
Thallium is used to study the blood flow to the heart muscle, by taking pictures of the flow of blood to the muscular walls of the heart, and to provide more detailed information than the exercise ECG test.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/medical_notes/g-i/764038.stm

Heart disease and stroke may be inherited, but often they are the result of lifestyle. Changing eating, exercise and smoking habits can play a significant part in prevention.
Risk Factors
Age
Four out of five people who die from coronary heart disease are aged 65 or older. The risk of stroke doubles with each decade after the age of 55.
Sex
Men are more at risk than women and have attacks earlier in life. But death rates from heart disease and stroke for women are twice as high as those for all forms of cancer.
The risk for women increases as they approach menopause and continues to rise a they get older, possibly because of the loss of the natural hormone oestrogen.
Family history (heredity)
Children of parents with heart disease are more likely to suffer from the disease. Some races, such as Afro-Caribbeans, are more prone to coronary heart disease and stroke than others.
Smoking
Smokers are twice as likely to suffer heart attacks as non-smokers, and they are more likely to die as a result. Smoking is also linked to increased risk of stroke.
The nicotine and carbon monoxide in tobacco smoke damages the cardiovascular system. Passive smoking may also be a danger.
Women who smoke and take the oral contraceptive pill are at high risk of heart disease and stroke.
Alcohol
Drinking an average of more than one drink a day for women or more than two drinks a day for men increases the risk of heart disease and stroke because of the effect on blood pressure, weight and levels of triglycerides – a type of fat carried in the blood.
Binge drinking is particularly dangerous.
Drug abuse
The use of certain drugs, particularly cocaine and those taken intravenously, has been linked to heart disease and stroke.
Cocaine can cause abnormal heartbeat, which can be fatal, while heroin and opiates can cause lung failure. Injecting drugs can cause an infection of the heart or blood vessels.
Cholesterol
The higher the blood cholesterol level, the higher the risk of coronary heart disease, particularly if it is combined with any of the other risk factors. Diet is one cause of high cholesterol – others are age, sex and family history.
High levels of LDL (low-density lipoprotein), or “bad cholesterol”, are dangerous, while high levels of HDL (high-density lipoprotein), or “good cholesterol” lower the risk of heart disease and stroke.
Blood pressure
High blood pressure increases the heart’s workload, causing it to enlarge and weaken over time. When combined with obesity, smoking, high cholesterol or diabetes, the risk increases several times.
High blood pressure can be a problem in women who are pregnant or are taking high-dose types of oral contraceptive pill.
Physical inactivity
Failure to exercise is a cause of coronary heart disease as physical activity helps control cholesterol levels, diabetes and, in some cases, can help lower blood pressure.
Obesity
People who are overweight are more likely to develop heart disease and stroke, even if they have none of the other risk factors.
Excess weight causes extra strain on the heart, influences blood pressure, cholesterol and levels of other blood fats – including triglycerides – and increases the risk of developing diabetes.
Diabetes
The condition seriously increases the risk of developing cardiovascular disease, even if glucose levels are under control. More than 80% of diabetes sufferers die of some form of heart or blood vessel disease.
Previous medical history
People who have had a previous heart attack or stroke are more likely than others to suffer further events.
Stress
Some links have been made between stress and coronary artery disease. This could be because it encourages people to eat more, start smoking or smoke more than they would otherwise have done.
Prevention
Education
Educating people about the risk factors of heart disease and stroke and attempting to persuade them to adopt a healthier lifestyle can have an impact on the number of people dying from heart disease and stroke.
Encouraging people to stop smoking, drink less, eat better and exercise regularly are particularly important.
Doctors can help by asking about smoking habits and encouraging patients to use nicotine replacement treatment, such as nicotine patches.
Regular monitoring
People should also have regular blood pressure readings, height and weight monitoring, and tests for cholesterol levels.
Those with high levels should be encouraged to improve their diet and can be treated for poor cholesterol levels with drugs – usually, statins or niacins.
The American Heart Association recommends that blood pressure should be no more than 140 over 90 Hg.
The association recommends a series of diets, with no more than 30% of calories coming in the form of fats, and limiting calories in the form of saturated fats to between 7 and 10%.
People at risk should have less than 200mg dietary cholesterol per day.
Sodium intake, most commonly found in salt, should also be controlled.
Exercise
Between three and four sessions of moderate intensity exercise, lasting around 30 minutes a time, are recommended as the minimum for physical activity each week.
Ideal body mass index (BMI) – calculated by dividing weight in kilograms by the square of height in metres – is between 21 and 25, and the preferable waist circumference is no more than 88cm (35 inches) for women, 102cm (40 inches) for men.
For people already suffering from cardiovascular disease, the use of aspirin or warfarin, both of which prevent blood clotting, is recommended.
Other drugs, including ACE (angiotensin-converting enzyme) inhibitors to manage blood pressure, beta-blockers to control angina, heart rhythm or blood pressure, and oestrogen replacement in post-menopausal women, may also be used to prevent repeat incidents.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/medical_notes/g-i/764037.stm

In around 20% of cases, strokes are caused by ruptured blood vessels leaking blood into the brain – haemorrhagic strokes.
Both types of stroke – those caused by blood clots and those caused by burst blood vessels – interrupt the supply of blood to the brain, depriving the cells of oxygen and other nutrients. The cells are then damaged or die.
Strokes caused by the breakage or “blow-out” of a blood vessel in the brain are the result of a cerebral aneurysm – ballooning of a weakened blood vessel in the brain – which is left untreated, high blood pressure, or a cluster of abnormally formed blood vessels (arteriovenous malformation).
Aneurysms develop over a number of years and do not usually cause detectable problems until they break.
Types of haemorrhagic stroke
There are two types of haemorrhagic stroke – subarachnoid and intracerebral.
In an intracerebral haemorrhage bleeding occurs from vessels within the brain itself. Hypertension, or high blood pressure, is the primary cause of this type of haemorrhage.
In subarachnoid haemorrhage, an aneurysm bursts in a large artery on or near the delicate membrane surrounding the brain. Blood spills into the area around the brain which is filled with a protective fluid, causing the brain to be surrounded by blood-contaminated fluid.
The symptoms of stroke:
Sudden numbness or weakness of the face, arm or leg, particularly if it is on one side of the body
Sudden confusion, trouble speaking or understanding. Sudden difficulty with walking, dizziness, loss of balance or co-ordination
Sudden trouble seeing in one or both eyes
Sudden severe headache with no known cause
Anyone identifying themselves or friends or family as having a stroke should call emergency services, not a GP, as any delay reduces the chance of a full recovery.
Treatment
The speed of treatment after a stroke is extremely important as the longer the brain cells are deprived of oxygen, the more damage they will suffer.
Clot-busting drugs and aspirin must not be given to patients who have suffered a haemorrhagic stroke. A CT scan or MRI scan will identify the type of stroke suffered.
Treatment of haemorrhagic stroke is less developed than that of ischaemic stroke.
A Medical Research Council trial is currently underway into treatment to remove blood clots surgically and drugs which prevent damage to brain cells during haemorrhages are being tested.
Survival rates are better for patients in specialist stroke units, because of the expert nature of staff and early use of rehabilitation, but such units are not always available.
Rehabilitation programmes will be given to most stroke patients to help them recover lost mobility and speech.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/medical_notes/g-i/764071.stm

Stroke caused by blood clots or other obstructions – ischaemic stroke – accounts for 80% of all cases.
A blockage is called a cerebral thrombus or cerebral embolism and can be caused by atherosclerosis – hardening of the arteries.
In both types of stroke – those caused by blood clots and those caused by burst blood vessels – blood supply to the brain is interrupted, depriving the cells of oxygen and other nutrients. The cells are then damaged or die.
Mini-strokes, or transient ischaemic attacks (TIAs), may be a warning sign of an imminent full-blown stroke.
Embolic
In an embolic stroke, a blood clot – or embolus – forms somewhere in the body, usually the heart, and travels through the bloodstream to the brain.
Once in the brain, the clot eventually travels to a blood vessel small enough to block its passage. The clot lodges there, blocking the blood vessel and causing a stroke.
Thrombotic
In the other form of blood-clot stroke, blood flow is impaired because of a blockage to one or more of the arteries supplying blood to the brain – a thrombus.
The process leading to this blockage is known as thrombosis and strokes caused in this way are called thrombotic strokes.
In atrial fibrillation, where the two upper chambers of the heart – the atria – quiver instead of beating properly, blood is not properly pumped out of the heart. As a result it may form clots and if the clot becomes lodged in an artery in the brain, a stroke may result.
The American Heart Association says arond 15% of strokes are caused in this way.
Blood clot strokes can also happen as the result of unhealthy blood vessels clogged with a build up of fatty deposits and cholesterol.
The body regards these build ups as multiple, tiny and repeated injuries to the blood vessel wall and reacts as it would to bleeding from a wound, by forming clots.
The symptoms of stroke:
Sudden numbness or weakness of the face, arm or leg, particularly if it is on one side of the body
Sudden confusion, trouble speaking or understanding. Sudden difficulty with walking, dizziness, loss of balance or co-ordination
Sudden trouble seeing in one or both eyes
Sudden severe headache with no known cause
Anyone identifying themselves or friends or family as having a stroke should call emergency services, not a GP, as any delay reduces the chance of a full recovery.
The speed of treatment after a stroke is extremely important as the longer the brain cells are deprived of oxygen, the more damage they will suffer.
Treatment
Clot-busting drugs can be used in the first minutes or hours – up to a maximum of three hours – after an ischaemic stroke to dissolve the clot.
After this time aspirin, which is not as powerful, may be given.
Survival rates are better for patients in specialist stroke units, because of the expert nature of staff and early use of rehabilitation, but such units are not always available.
Rehabilitation programmes will be given to most stroke patients to help them recover lost mobility and speech.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/medical_notes/g-i/764070.stm

On stroke.
STROKE
There are two types of stroke – those caused by blood clots in the brain and those that occur when blood vessels burst. In both cases, the brain is starved of oxygen, damaging or killing cells.
Sufferers are often left with difficulty talking, walking and performing other basic tasks. The chance of suffering a stroke is cut by eating healthily, quitting smoking and drinking less alcohol. People at risk of stroke are often treated with aspirin.
After a stroke, various drug treatments are available and rehabilitation is commonly used to improve patients’ speech and movement.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/health/2000/heart_disease/stroke.stm

Stroke details.
HEART DISEASE
The heart pumps blood around the body carrying oxygen and other nutrients to the areas that need it. When this process is interrupted, or does not work properly, serious illness and even death can result.
The risk of heart disease is greater for people with poor diet, who smoke and do not exercise, and men are more likely to suffer from it than women.
A range of tests and treatments, including drugs, heart bypass surgery and transplants, exist to alleviate symptoms or save the lives of sufferers.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/health/2000/heart_disease/heart_disease.stm

Series of articles in BBC ;very useful.
INTRODUCTION
The UK has one of the highest rates of death from heart disease in the world – one British adult dies from the disease every three minutes – and stroke is the country’s third biggest killer, claiming 70,000 lives each year.
Heart attacks occur when blood flow is blocked, often by a blood clot, while strokes are caused either by blocked or burst blood vessels in the brain. A range of other conditions, including heart failure, when blood is not pumped properly around the body, and congenital heart defects can also cause long term problems, and even death, for sufferers.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/health/2000/heart_disease/default.stm

When things seem to be looking up disclosures of this nature crops up.Intended leaks by vested interests?
Story:
KABUL, Afghanistan — An American military detention camp in Afghanistan is still holding inmates, sometimes for weeks at a time, without access to the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to human rights researchers and former detainees held at the site on the Bagram Air Base.

Notes from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and other areas of conflict in the post-9/11 era.
The site, known to detainees as the black jail, consists of individual windowless concrete cells, each illuminated by a single light bulb glowing 24 hours a day. In interviews, former detainees said that their only human contact was at twice-daily interrogation sessions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/world/asia/29bagram.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=a1

Breathtaking.
http://digg.com/d31BEAE

Funny and unusual.
Story;
Suicide Cures Depression.

Boob Job Saves Life

Obesity Crushes Virus

Fistfight Corrects Vision

Lightning Fixes Everything
http://www.cracked.com/article/149_5-self-destructive-ways-people-accidentally-cured-themselves/

Why not appoint murderers as Homicide Chief? Skewered logic ,which will screw up Afghanistan further.
Story:
JALALABAD, Afghanistan — The American-backed campaign to persuade legions of Taliban gunmen to stop fighting got under way here recently, in an ornate palace filled with Afghan tribal leaders and one very large former warlord leading the way.

Enlarge This Image

Majid/Getty Images
Guns laid down by former Taliban fighters lined a wall at a reconciliation meeting. Many were promised paid work.

The New York Times
“O.K., I want you guys to go out there and persuade the Taliban to sit down and talk,” Gul Agha Shirzai, the governor of Nangarhar Province, told a group of 25 tribal leaders from four eastern provinces. In a previous incarnation, Mr. Shirzai was the American-picked governor of Kandahar Province after the Taliban fell in 2001.

“Do whatever you have to do,” the rotund Mr. Shirzai told the assembled elders. “I’ll back you up.”

After about two hours of talking, Mr. Shirzai and the tribal elders rose, left for their respective provinces and promised to start turning the enemy.

The meeting is part of a battlefield push to lure local fighters and commanders away from the Taliban by offering them jobs in development projects that Afghan tribal leaders help select, paid by the American military and the Afghan government.

By enlisting the tribal leaders to help choose the development projects, the Americans also hope to help strengthen both the Afghan government and the Pashtun tribal networks.

These efforts are focusing on rank-and-file Taliban; while there are some efforts under way to negotiate with the leaders of the main insurgent groups, neither American nor Afghan officials have much faith that those talks will succeed soon.

Afghanistan has a long history of fighters switching sides — sometimes more than once. Still, efforts so far to persuade large numbers of Taliban fighters to give up have been less than a complete success. To date, about 9,000 insurgents have turned in their weapons and agreed to abide by the Afghan Constitution, said Muhammad Akram Khapalwak, the chief administrator for the Peace and Reconciliation Commission in Kabul.

But in an impoverished country ruined by 30 years of war, tribal leaders said that many more insurgents would happily put down their guns if there was something more worthwhile to do.

“Most of the Taliban in my area are young men who need jobs,” said Hajji Fazul Rahim, a leader of the Abdulrahimzai tribe, which spans three eastern provinces. “We just need to make them busy. If we give them work, we can weaken the Taliban.”

In the Jalalabad program, tribal elders would reach out to Taliban commanders to press them to change sides. The commanders and their fighters then would be offered jobs created by local development programs.

The Pashtuns, who form the core of the Taliban, make up a largely tribal society, with families connected to one another by kinship and led by groups of elders. Over the years, the Pashtun tribes have been substantially weakened, with elders singled out by three groups: Taliban fighters, the rebels who fought the former Soviet Union and the soldiers of the former Soviet Union itself. The decimation of the tribes has left Afghan society largely atomized.

Afghan and American officials hope that the plan to make peace with groups of Taliban fighters will complement an American-led effort to set up anti-Taliban militias in many parts of the country: the Pashtun tribes will help fight the Taliban, and they will make deals with the Taliban. And, by so doing, Afghan tribal society can be reinvigorated.

“We’re trying to put pressure on the leaders, and at the same time peel away their young fighters,” said an American military official in Kabul involved in the reconciliation effort. “This is not about handing bags of money to an insurgent.”

The Afghan reconciliation plan is intended to duplicate the Awakening movement in Iraq, where Sunni tribal leaders, many of them insurgents, agreed to stop fighting and in many cases were paid to do so. The Awakening contributed to the remarkable decline in violence in Iraq.

In the autumn of 2001, during the opening phase of the American-led war in Afghanistan, dozens of warlords fighting for the Taliban agreed to defect to the American-backed rebels. As in Iraq, the defectors were often enticed by cash, sometimes handed out by American Army Special Forces officers.

At a ceremony earlier this month in Kabul, about 70 insurgents laid down their guns before the commissioners and agreed to accept the Afghan Constitution. Some of the men had fought for the Taliban, some for Hezb-i-Islami, another insurgent group. The fighters’ motives ranged from disillusion to exhaustion.

“How long should we fight the government? How many more years?” said Molawi Fazullah, a Taliban lieutenant who surrendered with nine others. “Our leaders misled us, and we destroyed our country.”

Like many fighters who gave up at the ceremony, he shrouded his face with a scarf and sunglasses, for fear of being identified by his erstwhile comrades.

The Americans say they have no plans to give cash to local Taliban commanders. They say they would rather give them jobs.

In a defense appropriations bill recently approved by Congress, lawmakers set aside $1.3 billion for a program known by its acronym, CERP, a discretionary fund for American officers. Ordinarily, CERP money is used for development projects, but the language in the bill says officers can use the money to support the “reintegration into Afghan society” of those who have given up fighting.

For all the efforts under way to entice Taliban fighters to change sides, there will always be the old-fashioned approach: deadly force. American commanders also want to squeeze them; such is the rationale behind Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s request for tens of thousands of additional American troops.

Indeed, sometimes force alone does the trick. On Oct. 9, American Special Forces soldiers killed Ghulam Yahia, an insurgent commander believed responsible for, among other things, sending several suicide bombers into the western city of Herat. Mr. Yahia had changed sides himself in the past: earlier in the decade, he was Herat’s mayor.

When the Americans killed Mr. Yahia, in a mountain village called Bedak, 120 of his fighters defected to the Afghan government. Others went into hiding. Abdul Wahab, a former lieutenant of Mr. Yahia’s who led the defectors, said that the Afghan government had so far done nothing to protect them or offer them jobs. But he said he was glad he had made the jump anyway.

“We are tired of war,” he said. “We don’t want it anymore.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/28/world/asia/28militias.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

Depression and anxiety can be tackled only by the individual concerned.Medicines and counseling can go only thus far.What is needed is understanding of some facts.
Out of desire comes attachment,from attachment expectations,expectations lead to lead to frustration,it leads to depression.
We have had many desires during our life time.If we sit down and ponder what was interesting and pleasurable at one point of time , no longer excites us, at times repugnant right now..The things we desired for retain their nature then and now.Then why we do not get the same pleasure out of it?Reason is that pleasure does not lie in things per se.They are our attitudes towards them. When the attitude changes, the whole picture changes.Therefore accept things in life as they are and not attach value to it.Do not carry it forward for our attitude may change and we may even be unhappy about the the things we liked.This is the truth.
Anxiety arises when we feel what we have done or achieved is not enough or things do not happen the way we want them to happen.If we are sure we have done our best, that is it.We can do no more.Accept your limitations.Do not set your goals too high.Remember,whatever you achieve is naught when you depart.
Things happen, controlled by various factors ,us being only a factor and not THE factor.As said earlier do your best and leave it at that.
Another reason for depression and anxiety is comparisons .No two things in the world are identical ;at best they are similar.Never try to be other than what you are.You too have a function and a purpose in the scheme of the Universe.
These are few tips to beat anxiety and depression

ScienceDaily (Nov. 18, 2009) — A study by researchers at the University of Bergen, Norway, and the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP) at King’s College London has found that depression is as much of a risk factor for mortality as smoking.

Utilising a unique link between a survey of over 60,000 people and a comprehensive mortality database, the researchers found that over the four years following the survey, the mortality risk was increased to a similar extent in people who were depressed as in people who were smokers.
Dr Robert Stewart, who led the research team at the IoP, explains the possible reasons that may underlie these surprising findings: ‘Unlike smoking, we don’t know how causal the association with depression is but it does suggest that more attention should be paid to this link because the association persisted after adjusting for many other factors.’
The study also shows that patients with depression face an overall increased risk of mortality, while a combination of depression and anxiety in patients lowers mortality compared with depression alone. Dr Stewart explains: ‘One of the main messages from this research is that ‘a little anxiety may be good for you’.
‘It appears that we’re talking about two risk groups here. People with very high levels of anxiety symptoms may be naturally more vulnerable due to stress, for example through the effects stress has on cardiovascular outcomes. On the other hand, people who score very low on anxiety measures, i.e. those who deny any symptoms at all, may be people who also tend not to seek help for physical conditions, or they may be people who tend to take risks. This would explain the higher mortality.’
In terms of the relationship between mortality and anxiety with depression as a risk factor, the research suggests that help-seeking behaviour may explain the pattern of outcomes. People with depression may not seek help or may fail to receive help when they do seek it, whereas the opposite may be true for people with anxiety.
Dr Stewart comments: ‘It would certainly not surprise me at all to find that doctors are less likely to investigate physical symptoms in people with depression because they think that depression is the explanation, but may be more likely to investigate if someone is anxious because they think it will reassure them. These are conjectures but they would fit with the data.’
The researchers point out that the results should be considered in conjunction with other evidence suggesting a variety of adverse physical health outcomes and poor health associated with mental disorders such as depression and psychotic disorders.
In light of the findings, Dr Stewart makes suggestions on the focus of future developments in the treatment of depression and anxiety: ‘The physical health of people with current or previous mental disorder needs a lot more attention than it gets at the moment.
‘This applies to primary care, secondary mental health care and general hospital care in the sense that there should be more active screening for physical disorders and risk factors, such as blood pressure, cholesterol, adverse diet, smoking, lack of exercise, in people with mental disorders. This should be done in addition to more active treatment of disorders when present, and more effective general health promotion
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091117094933.htm

If made durable and repairable, where is the profit?
Story:
The way to lower the quantity of energy required to make and distribute short-lived consumer goods is to make them durable, repairable and upgradeable.

As the middle-class daughter of a refugee mother and a Depression-era father, I grew up straddling two worlds. My parents could afford much more than they were willing to buy. Most things that broke could be and were repaired. My German grandmother’s aphorisms lingered in the air: “Waste not, want not,” “A penny saved is a penny earned,” “A stitch in time saves nine.”

By the time my own children were born, America was flooded with cheap and cheaply made goods. So while my parents continued working at the sturdy antique desks they inherited from my grandparents and sleeping beneath a hand-crocheted bedspread, my children and their friends became the first and last owners of a seemingly endless supply of plastic toys and particle-board furniture.

I was part of the transitional generation. Building blocks were still made of wood. Comforters were still filled with down. I recall the meticulously machined pencil sharpeners with “made in West Germany” stamped on their sides that lasted until I lost them. Even the cheap items—the ones “made in Japan”—tended to hold up pretty well.

Now nearly everything is produced in China and made to be discarded. According to a 2008 report by the Economic Policy Institute, the United States imported $320 billion in Chinese goods in 2007. In that year alone, this country imported $26.3 billion in apparel and accessories, $108.5 billion in computers and electronic products, and $15.3 billion in furniture and fixtures from China.

The manufacture, distribution and disposal of an ever-growing mountain of short-lived consumer goods has taken an enormous environmental toll. Annie Leonard’s website “The Story of Stuff,” which has garnered more than 7 million views in less than two years, has helped spread awareness of that cost far beyond the usual environmentalist circles.

We can’t, however, only blame the quantity and quality of Chinese goods for the environmental and other consequences of this transoceanic factory-to-waste stream. For that we can blame the two horsemen of the modern consumer apocalypse: functional obsolescence and fashion obsolescence.

Functional, or planned obsolescence is the purposeful decision by designers and manufacturers to ensure things don’t last, so that consumers must buy new ones. Fashion obsolescence is the related decision to offer new features and aesthetic changes to entice consumers to discard their old items in favor of updated and supposedly better ones.

Ironically, product obsolescence was once seen as the remedy for what ailed our country. Lizabeth Cohen, chair of the History Department at Harvard University and author of A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (Vintage, 2003), traces the origins of mass consumption to the period immediately before and after World War II, when a demand-driven economy was seen as the key to our nation’s recovery and prosperity.

“In the 1940s and ’50s, there was a much closer connection between consumer demand and factories and jobs,” Cohen says. “That was a completed circle more than it is today. When people were buying things, they were buying things that were made by American workers.”

The only way to guarantee continued demand was to ensure that people would keep replacing the things they owned. The literature on planned obsolescence makes frequent reference to statements by industry analysts and strategists of that era. “Our enormously productive economy … demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption,” retailing analyst Victor Lebow said in 1948. “We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever increasing rate.”

This applied to male as well as female consumers, and to styling lines on cars as well as hemlines on skirts. Allied Stores Corporation’s Chairman B. Earl Puckett, speaking to fashion industry leaders in 1950, said, “Basic utility cannot be the foundation of a prosperous apparel industry. We must accelerate obsolescence.” And General Motors’ design chief Harley Earl said in 1955, “The creation of a desire on the part of millions of car buyers each year to trade in last year’s car on a new one is highly important to the automobile industry.”

Business people and politicians weren’t the only ones pushing this idea, Cohen says. “Labor really bought into this package. Purchasing power was the answer to how people would be employed and have a better life. Consumers would fuel the powers of factories that would provide jobs that would put money in peoples’ pockets.”

http://www.alternet.org/story/144204/our_lives_are_filled_with_worthless_crap_that’s_destroying_the_earth:_here’s_what_you_can_do

Couple of points.It is naive to believe that there is’Change’ in Pakistan.What change?Army and ISI are calling the shots with no accountability.Elected representatives(?) have been forced or allow themselves to be forced to rubber stamp a predetermined deal involving two corrupt and exiled politicians.The only change is the perception that there is an illusion of change.The only change is the guilty and corrupt are allowed to rule the mute and simple people of Pakistan with out their consent.
Secondly,the statement that there can be a transition through ‘negotiated terms’, a very polite way of expressing wheeling and dealing.Is this the way to run a democracy?
Thirdly, the obsession with foreign approval or censure.You run your country as your people want it.When you are undecided, foreign powers interfere;you accept their help ;now there is nothing as free lunch;you have to accept their terms because of your unwillingness or inability to govern yourself.;suddenly you wake up and find you are under foreign dictates when it is too late.
Either people in general and intelligentsia in particular should decide the course of action to restore real democracy.Where are the lawyers who have forced Musharaff to climb down?Run out of steam?Take the action to its logical conclusion of restoring real democracy,sans deals and foreign interference.
If allowed to drift, there seems to be no other option excepting revolution with inevitable bloodshed.Also history has many examples of dictatorship passing into democracy with blood shed,French Revolution being the prime example.(the difference was it was from Dictatorial Monarchs)
Story:

By Ahmed Nadeem Gahla

A study of transformation from military dictatorship to democracy around the world would reveal that there are two possible ways. Either it is achieved through a popular revolution or by negotiations between political forces and dictators.

The former invariably demolishes the entire system and mostly involves bloodshed putting a new system in place while the later allows the change to happen within the prevailing system based upon certain negotiated terms.

These terms might not necessarily meet the international laws and judicial norms as it is always a middle path.

The return of democracy in Pakistan after a long period of military dictatorship is a unique example of such ‘negotiated change’. The terms reached with the help of international power brokers and guarantors ensured withdrawal of politically motivated cases, return of exiled leadership and shedding of uniform by Parvez Musharraf in return for re-election. After assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the international and domestic pressure became so immense that Parvez Musharraf not only have to accept the condition of fair elections but also have to negotiate for an exit in return for protection from prosecution for unconstitutional actions. A civilian dictator might not get such a deal.

Another option available to political forces at that time was to over through dictatorship by a popular revolution. Let us not forgets that the world community would not allow a nuclear armed nation to reach the point of bloody revolution. Especially, when there are more chances of falling in to a civil war hijacked by religious extremists than overthrowing a dictator. Without a negotiated change, how popular a movement might, it is not possible to remove a military backed dictator without bloodshed. We have witnessed the return of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from exile, who came back in violation of deal reached on guarantees of our ‘friends’ in Middle East and was sent back by next flight. Despite the promises of a million people’s reception by right wing parties, not a dozen were able to break the security arrangements and show up at airport to receive their leader. Even after Nawaz Sharif was forcibly deported to Saudi Arabia, establishment successfully countered public reaction avoiding any law and order situation. Obviously, possibilities of overthrowing dictator’s thorough protests are not that bright.

Unable to fight the powerful military establishment which has far more guns and tanks on their disposal, negotiating was the only option available to Benazir Bhutto. Much debated and controversial National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) promulgated by former dictator Parvez Musharraf paved way for return of Benazir Bhutto and later for Mian Nawaz Sharif, without the fear of being arrested or deported. The cases withdrawn against Benazir Bhutto and her husband Asif Ali Zardari under NRO were registered during regime of former prime minister Mian Nawaz Sharif and remained unproved during lengthy trial and detention of Asif Ali Zardari for eleven years. Both Mian Nawaz Sharif and Saif ur Rehman, the former head of National Accountability Bureau appointed by him have repeatedly confessed that these cases were false and cooked on pressure of establishment which wanted to malign the name of Benazir Bhutto and her family. How big price it is to move towards a democratic process by withdrawing these fabricated cases?

This fact alone leaves no space for political leadership to avoid its responsibility of revoking these politically motivated cases through parliamentary legislation. Mr Sharif and MQM should have taken a bolder stand in parliament while they have repeatedly expressed in public that these cases are false. However, the political leadership is trying to avoid their responsibility to please the establishment, thus pushing the matter of NRO to superior judiciary to decide. Superior courts around the world avoid interfering in to political matters despite having jurisdiction over such issues under the ‘political question doctrine.’ The purpose of this self imposed restriction is to distinguish the role of judiciary from those of the legislature and the executive. Political questions include the ratification of constitutional amendments, conduct of foreign policy and administrative actions of governments. However there is no ridged rule and a court might choose to go ahead in case the ‘demands for a fair trial and criminal justice outweighed the political question doctrine’ as ruled by a US Federal Court in case of President Richards Nixon.

The exception set in Richard Nixon case is widely referred to and abused to neutralize the political rivals in dictatorships and developing democracies where establishments use superior judiciary as a tool to further their own agendas.

The superior judiciary in Pakistan has been a victim of this power game by dictators and political leadership on cost of its integrity and reputation. Judiciary has lost a lot in terms of legitimacy of its decisions while playing power game, from the death sentence of ZA Bhutto being the worst and unrecoverable stigma on its face to providing cover to unconstitutional takeover of Parvez Musharraf. The same superior judiciary in offices today miserably failed to dispense justice to Asif Ali Zardari in eleven long years and convicted Mian Nawaz Sharif under establishment’s pressure. With restoration of Chief Justice and sacked judges through a popular movement, the judiciary has won its independence but its impartiality is still to be tested. Should judiciary once again be dragged to deliver political decisions while political leadership lacks the courage to take bold stand on its publically confessed mistakes of past?

It might not be out of context to mention that first Prime Minister of Pakistan from Sindh was assassinated in Punjab and those in establishment involved in cover up of his murder were blessed with huge estates. ZA Bhutto, the second Prime Minister from same province, was assassinated through a judicial verdict. The third and fourth Prime Ministers Muhammad Khan Junejo and Benazir Bhutto respectively, were unconstitutionally sacked and could not get justice from superior judiciary. Once again the superior judiciary is being dragged in to power game to remove President Zardari from the office for which he has been elected with overwhelming majority from four Provincial Assemblies, the National Assembly and the Senate. The plan to extract a political decision on technical grounds to remove an elected President is not going to strengthen the institution of judiciary or democracy. Especially when the necessary link of ‘demands for a fair trial and criminal justice outweighed the political question doctrine’ as set in Richard Nixon’s case is missing in NRO after confessions of Mr. Sharif and Saif ur Rehman. Will court call Mr Sharif and record his statement while deciding the NRO, and if not, what would be the legitimacy of such decision?

Apart from the outcome of political circus to be staged in superior judiciary, those advising President Zardari to face courts have to realize the fact that he was in continuous imprisonment for eleven years.

His detention is longer than the period of life imprisonment in Pakistan. Even if convicted in cases against him the sentence would have been lesser than imprisonment already undergone by Mr Zardari.

Although according to the judgments of superior judiciary under section 497 of CRPC, any person who is under detention for more than two years and whose trial is not concluded would become entitled to bail. The very same relief of bail was not extended to President Zardari for eleven long years by the superior judiciary. Under the Criminal Laws of Pakistan, if prosecution fails to bring sufficient evidence against accused for a reasonably long period of time, the accused has a right to request the court to drop charges. Mr Zardari’s applications before superior courts for that relief also failed to earn him justice in eleven year. Should not people have reservations that Mr. Zardari will get justice this time from judiciary while even today most of the judges in chair are the same who were unable to dispense justice to him in past?

Even after restoration of Judges, several questions are being raised about its performance even by leadership of the lawyer’s movement. While Mr. Sharif and Altaf Hussain has advised President Zardari to face the courts, both leaders are reluctant to welcome the decision in Roedad Khan’s petition for ISI’s money politics and a judicial enquiry in to 12th May’s massacre respectively. There is a prescribed process for removal of elected President in constitution, if political leadership thinks that Mr. Zardari is either ineligible or unfit for the job, it should resort to constitutional remedy through impeachment motion. Once again, dragging judiciary in to power game would be an unpleasant and undesired burden for institution which still has to go through the test of impartiality and establish its lost credibility. While all other institutions have been deteriorated to core during long dictatorships, the only hope left for people is institution of judiciary, restored after long and tough struggle.

If political leadership once again falls in to establishment’s trap to extract political decision from court, the scars on national unity and institutional integrity might be deeper than we do afford as a nation state.
http://pakteahouse.wordpress.com/2009/11/28/extracting-political-decisions-from-the-judiciary-in-pakistan/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+teahouse+(Pak+Tea+House)

Is this not questioning the fundamentals of vaccine?
Story:
The notion of exposing young children to infections in a bid to protect them from later allergies is wrong, latest research suggests.
The decades-old “hygiene hypothesis” holds that early exposure to microbes somehow challenges the immune system and strengthens it against allergies.
Studies have shown children exposed to bugs by older siblings or attending nursery cut their future allergy risk.
But new work published by the American Thoracic Society casts doubt on this.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8241774.stm

Very true.Our obsession with cleanliness and rushing to Doctor even for small ailments is not healthy.Our system’s defense mechanism gets weakened to fight disease and use of antibiotics help the the disease inducing agents to become immune, they mutate and more violent forms are created for which we need to go in for still heavier dosage of medicine and these medicines more than curing disease creates serious side effects.
Best is to wait for sometime excepting in the case of high fever and allow the system to take care.
Story:
Children should be allowed to get dirty, according to scientists who have found being too clean can impair the skin’s ability to heal.
Normal bacteria living on the skin trigger a pathway that helps prevent inflammation when we get hurt, the US team discovered.
The bugs dampen down overactive immune responses that can cause cuts and grazes to swell, they say.
Their work is published in the online edition of Nature Medicine.
Experts said the findings provided an explanation for the “hygiene hypothesis”, which holds that exposure to germs during early childhood primes the body against allergies.
Many believe our obsession with cleanliness is to blame for the recent boom in allergies in developed countries.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8373690.stm