tagged w/ Report
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I'm tired of people telling me that London isn't a friendly place. In fact i've got loads of friends so i thought i'd spend a day filming them!I'm tired of people telling me that London isn't a friendly place. In fact... more
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A report edited by foundations in Europe and America, Transatlantic Trends: immigration, "photographed" the view of Europeans and North Americans, the rich West, about immigration. What emerges is a widespread ignorance, fears unjustified, and few positive news. The most interesting aspect for us is to discover that Italians aren't the only rich country to have had for years anti-immigrant propaganda on newspapers and televisions.
http://www.inaltreparole.net/en/news/immigrazione031209.htmlA report edited by foundations in Europe and America, Transatlantic Trends:... more
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The Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 made it law for schools to report ‘racist incidents’ to local authorities. A growing race relations industry has moved into schools, and even nurseries, to supposedly combat prejudice in children as young as three. In discussion with a studio audience, film-maker and anti-racist campaigner Adrian Hart argues the idea of racist kids is a myth and intervention can in fact create ethnic tensions. Should we leave the kids alone? Let us know what you think.The Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 made it law for schools to report... more
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Vietnam has become the number one source of spam – being responsible for more than 10 per cent of the worlds spam emails – and the UK has entered the virus production charts, being responsible for 2.79 per cent of the world’s viruses. Brazil, the US and Korea still dominate when it comes to virus production.
http://information-security-resources.com/2009/12/07/vietnam-tops-november-spam-report/Vietnam has become the number one source of spam – being responsible for more... more
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Corporate Social Responsibility News: Wal-Mart Canada's CSR Report; Harvard Uni + Accion's Program on Microfinance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DmsYwCFxfcCorporate Social Responsibility News: Wal-Mart Canada's CSR Report; Harvard Uni +... more
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Remote working, or working from home, is becoming increasingly popular as companies seek the economic benefits of moving some of its team out of the office, or having employees that are able to log on at home. But, businesses could be exposing themselves to more risk by using remote workers if the process is not properly thought through and monitored.
http://information-security-resources.com/2009/11/23/telecommuting-and-enterprise-security/Remote working, or working from home, is becoming increasingly popular as companies... more
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Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) was responsible for the kickback fraud that occurred in the US v. Khan case, and has been the focus of many other cases of procurement fraud within the LOGCAP project. Since combat operations began in 2001, DCAA has referred to criminal investigators 32 cases of suspected fraud that were associated with all wartime-support contracts. Of those, the vast majority were related to the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program.
http://information-security-resources.com/2009/11/16/revolving-door-of-abuse-procurement-fraud/Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) was responsible for the kickback fraud that occurred... more
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Treating the complications that result from unsafe abortion costs Africa and Latin America $227–280 million each year, according to a new study from the Guttmacher Institute. These costs (reported in 2006 US$) place a considerable added strain on struggling national health systems in Africa and Latin America, which spend an estimated $490 million annually treating complications from pregnancies and births. Moreover, unsafe abortion costs the developing world at least $341 million when the Asian and Pacific regions are taken into account.
Using two approaches—a World Health Organization model and a comparison of 20 empirical studies—the authors calculated that on average, treating postabortion complications costs an estimated $83 per patient in Africa and $94 in Latin America. When overhead and capital costs are included, these averages jump to $114 for Africa and $130 for Latin America, which are significant burdens for developing country clinics and hospitals.
Globally, 15–25% of women who need hospital-based care for complications from unsafe abortion never receive it. If these women had access to the services they needed, the costs to health care systems would at least double, the authors point out. Currently, an unknown number of women who never receive treatment suffer lifelong consequences or die from their complications, a grave illustration of the social and medical costs of unsafe abortion.
The authors urge governments to take into account the direct system costs of unsafe abortion and to compare them with the much lower costs of measures that could prevent unintended pregnancy and unsafe abortion—namely, providing contraceptive services and ensuring access to safe abortion where it is legal.
Study: http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/3511409.htmlTreating the complications that result from unsafe abortion costs Africa and Latin... more
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Increased contraceptive use has led to fewer abortions worldwide, but deaths from unsafe abortion remain a severe problem, killing 70,000 women a year, a research institute reported Tuesday in a major global survey.
More than half the deaths, about 38,000, are in sub-Saharan Africa, which was singled out as the region with by far the lowest rates of contraceptive use and the highest rates of unintended pregnancies.
The report, three years in the making, was compiled by the New York-based Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights and is a leading source of data on abortion-related trends. Researchers examined data from individual countries and multinational organizations.
The institute's president, Sharon Camp, said she was heartened by the overall trends since Guttmacher conducted a similar survey in 1999, yet expressed concern about the gap revealed in the new report.
Guttmacher estimated previously that the number of abortions worldwide fell from 45.5 million in 1995 to 41.6 million in 2003 -- the latest year for which global figures were available.
A key reason for that drop, the new report said, was that the portion of married women using contraception increased from 54 percent in 1990 to 63 percent in 2003 as availability increased and social mores changed. Guttmacher's researchers said contraceptive use had increased in every major region, but still lagged badly in Africa -- used by only 28 percent of married women there, compared with at least 68 percent in other major regions.
The report notes that abortions worldwide are declining even as more countries liberalize their abortion laws. Since 1997, it said, only three countries -- Poland, Nicaragua and El Salvador -- substantially increased restrictions on abortion, while laws were eased significantly in 19 countries and regions, including Cambodia, Nepal and Mexico City.
Despite this trend, the report said 40 percent of the world's women live in countries with highly restrictive abortion laws, virtually all of them in the developing world. This category includes 92 percent of the women in Africa and 97 percent in Latin America, it said.
In one example, the report told of a Nigerian woman named Victoria who first tried to induce an abortion by drinking an herbal concoction, then consulted a traditional healer who inserted leaves in her vagina that caused internal injuries.
The report estimated that 19.7 million of the 41.6 million abortions in 2003 were unsafe -- either self-induced, performed by unskilled practitioners or carried out in unhygienic surroundings.
The survey concluded that abortion occurs at roughly equal rates in countries where it is legal and where it is highly restricted. The key difference, according to the report, is the high rate of deaths and medical complications from unsafe clandestine abortions in the restrictive countries.
The report makes three major recommendations:
--Expand access to modern contraceptives and improve family planning services.
--Expand access to legal abortion and ensure that safe, legal abortion services are available to women in need.
--Improve the coverage and quality of post-abortion care, which would reduce maternal death and complications from unsafe abortion.
More info @ linkIncreased contraceptive use has led to fewer abortions worldwide, but deaths from... more
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On Today's Corporate Social Responsible News Podcast: Cause Marketing Reports by Performance Research + IEG; Institute of Green Professionals' Honorary Fellows; Michelle Obama's Challenge to the George Washington University + Volunteer MatchOn Today's Corporate Social Responsible News Podcast: Cause Marketing Reports by... more
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In the 13 years since California passed a law allowing for the medical use of marijuana, a dozen more states, including Washington, have followed suit. Today, all the Pacific states allow people to grow or possess marijuana with a doctor’s recommendation, as do several states in the Mountain West, a few in New England and some along the Eastern Seaboard – despite the continued insistence by the federal Food and Drug Administration that the herb is a dangerous drug with no valid medical benefits.
By far, the most widespread support for the move to allow marijuana smoking for medicinal purposes has been on behalf of people with AIDS Wasting Syndrome or on cancer chemotherapy. The chief benefit noted for these patients has had to do with a reduction in nausea and the stimulation of appetite, something anyone who has experienced the “blind raving munchies” can attest to.
Proponents of medical marijuana have not stopped there, however. Advocates cite reports that marijuana can be beneficial in treating a range of illnesses, even though the FDA and the Drug Enforcement Administration provide few, if any, opportunities for researchers to investigate these claims.
One of the least publicized of these claims is that cannabis can be a help for people with Multiple Sclerosis. MS affects the ability of nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord to communicate with each other due to damage of the myelin sheath, an insulating coat around nerve cells that allow them to pass electrical signals. While theories abound for ultimate causes of MS, from genetics to environmental exposure to toxins, it is well understood to be an autoimmune disease. That is, the body’s natural defense systems attack the myelin layers in the brain. In that sense, it is like other chronic conditions, including Rheumatoid Arthritis and Lupus.
Recently, indirect evidence has surfaced which could go a long way in explaining the potential for marijuana to improve the outlook for MS patients. Scientists generally believe that marijuana’s high is a result of cannabinols, the active ingredients in the smoke, binding to a receptor on brain cells called CB1 receptors.
In June, Temple University physiologist Ron Tuma and his team released a report on work they have done studying a related receptor known as CB2. The Microvascular Research report reveals that selectively targeting CB2 receptors reduces injury and tissue death after a certain kind of stroke. Additionally, a New Zealand pharmacologist at the University of Auckland, Michelle Glass, recently noted that activating the CB2 receptors can shield neurons from damage, possibly by stopping immune cells in the brain, known as microglia, from triggering an inflammatory response.
Some drug researchers find this particularly exciting because binding proteins to the CB2 receptors does not result in people getting high. How much attention this gets from pharmaceutical companies may depend on how widespread the CB2 receptors are in the body, a matter of some scientific controversy. In the meantime, patients with MS will just have to put up with getting stoned.In the 13 years since California passed a law allowing for the medical use of... more
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A report released Thursday that shows the number of pot smokers in the world has grown to more than 160 million people has Canadian advocates renewing calls for legalization of the drug.
An Australian study, citing United Nations data from 2006 and published Thursday in the journal Lancet, found that about 166 million people aged 15-64 — or an estimated one in 25 in that age range — reported using cannabis. That's up from about 159 million people in 2005.
"It's not going away. So should one in 25 people be criminalized for smoking pot?" asked Eugene Oscapella, an Ottawa professor and spokesman for the Canadian Foundation For Drug Policy. "What this number says to me is the world is not drug free. Some people prefer alcohol over cannabis and some people prefer cannabis."
The foundation is urging the Canadian government to legalize and regulate marijuana, by allowing people to grow their own and taxing sales the way it regulates alcohol or tobacco.
While the Australian study found pot use was greatest in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand, followed by Europe, another report — from the United Nations — shows marijuana use in this country is actually the highest in the industrialized world.
That 2007 report, by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, found 16.8 per cent of Canadians aged 15 to 64 smoked marijuana or used other cannabis products in 2004. That's the most recent year for which statistics were cited.
"I'd say 70 or 80 per cent of my university students smoke pot and they are perfectly normal people," said Oscapella. "If you've ever tried it you know its no big deal. So why are we using criminal law to deal with this behaviour? That's the real issue."
Other figures — from Statistics Canada — show the number of Canadians using cannabis is on the rise, from 6.5 per cent of Canadians in 1989, to 7.4 per cent in 1994 and then to 12.2 per cent in 2002.
The largest concentration of marijuana use in Canada is in British Columbia, while residents of Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan had lower-than-average rates.
B.C. also leads the country in marijuana production with 40 per cent of Canadian cannabis produced there. That's followed by Ontario at 25 per cent and another 25 per cent in Quebec, the UN report said.
Unlike Canada, in Australia and New Zealand — where eight per cent of the population use cannabis — the numbers there are declining, the Australian study says. It says a similar trend is also happening in western Europe.A report released Thursday that shows the number of pot smokers in the world has grown... more
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Patients with the H1N1 swine flu virus who become severely ill and those who die tend to be relatively young adults without underlying medical conditions, according to a new Canadian study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The average age of 168 patients studied in 38 Canadian adult and pediatric intensive care units was 32.3 years. Thirty-three of the patients died within 90 days of being admitted to the hospital.
The study, released Monday, suggests that H1N1 flu might be more complex than experts had believed. Many had said the virus was most dangerous to people with underlying medical conditions such as asthma, diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and immune system diseases. And experts say regular seasonal flu is most dangerous to the elderly.
``Our data suggest that severe disease and mortality in the current outbreak is concentrated in relatively healthy adolescents and adults between the ages of 10 and 60 years,'' the authors write.
But they go on to say that modern therapies, including breathing assistance from ventilators and antiviral medicines, can prevent most swine flu deaths.
More @ linkPatients with the H1N1 swine flu virus who become severely ill and those who die tend... more
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As part of their storage security strategy, enterprises must understand the value of such intellectual property in combination with the risk tolerance of the organization before they can address how to appropriately secure it and store it. Moreover, because the value of information changes over its lifetime, so should its storage.As part of their storage security strategy, enterprises must understand the value of... more
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Many social media sites are set up so that a participant needs to endorse others in order to gain credibility; however, such endorsements may give the appearance that the company is actually giving the endorsement. Thus, the company has an interest to protect in connection with any social media account used that identifies an employee of the company.Many social media sites are set up so that a participant needs to endorse others in... more
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Today, most of our contracts are jurisdiction-based and mostly relate to the location of data. With cloud computing, this is something which can’t be defined. Until laws evolve to accommodate these technological issues in contractual terms, large corporations will find it difficult to migrate quickly to clouds.Today, most of our contracts are jurisdiction-based and mostly relate to the location... more
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