SUPERMODEL'S BRITISH PHONE HACK LEADS TO LIFE SAVING KIDNEY TRANSPLANT 

 

 

Mary-Ellen Field was a business adviser to the supermodel Elle Macpherson before being unfairly sacked.

A victim of the British phone hacking scandal , Field was sacked by Macpherson who wrongly believed that Field was leaking intimate details to the media. Over time it transpired that Macpherson's phone had been hacked by Murdoch Press interests in Great Britain and that Field had been wrongfully dismissed.

Fast forward to present day where Australian ABC presenter, Mark Colvin has identified Mary-Ellen Field as the mystery donor who gave him his new kidney.

Field met Mark Colvin on Twitter after suspicion she had leaked information about celebrity Elle Macpherson to Britain's News of World newspaper.

But it later emerged that Macpherson's phone had been hacked.

Field met Colvin in person in Australia and saw the toll regular kidney dialysis had taken on his health

After talking about the hacking scandal on-air two years ago, the two struck up an email friendship.

Mark Colvin approached her for an interview on his Australian ABC radio program PM.

Colvin's kidney function had originally began declining after he acquired a virus while working as a foreign correspondent in Africa.

"I really can't explain it," Mrs Field told ABC's 7.30 program, "I didn't want him to die".

Colvin said he initially refused the offer.

"It seemed too far fetched," he said. "I didn't want to put somebody through that".

But following the discovery that Colvin's and Field's kidneys were a match, he accepted, and in March, Colvin successfully received her kidney in a transplant operation.

She identified herself on last night's ABC 7.30 program, saying she hoped other donors would come forward.

"I think I owe her a debt of gratitude for the rest of my life," Colvin said. ‘‘We were tossing up the idea of calling the kidney Rupert.

Postscript: Documents submitted to a court claim that Elle Macpherson received £800,000 in a secret agreement with Rupert Murdoch's News International over her phone being hacked.

 She has was given a key presenting role on Sky TV where she's the host of Britain and Ireland's Next Top Model.

It has been reported that prior to the settlement Elle Macpherson had accused an adviser of leaking stories.

In a statement from Elle Macpherson made to Britain's High Court. .....Elle Macpherson said she did not sack her former adviser Mary-Ellen Field because she believed she was leaking stories to the press.
 
 To date, Mary-Ellen Field is still fighting for compensation. Her claim is being contested by News International, which has made an application to have her case struck out.






 

TRAPPING LARGE CROCODILES FOR HUMAN SAFETY, FALSE SECURITY - STUDY

 

Darwin, Far Northern Australia: Trapping and removing large crocodiles from urban areas of Australia could simply leave a gap for other large crocodiles to move into, a new study suggests.

A new study shows large crocodiles are far more mobile than previously thought, with some travelling over 1000km in a six-month period.

Even crocodiles that were thought to have lived in a distinct location actually moved large distances, although they tended to move back and forth in the same area.

Report Author, Hamish Campbell from the University of Queensland, stated that it is doubtfull that zero-tolerance zones, where crocodiles are trapped and removed, are effective.

"In zero tolerance zones you in fact get increasing numbers of animals," Dr Campbell said.

This may be one of many examples where intervention is counterproductive.

Crocodiles move so far so quickly that trapping a large dominant male crocodile and taking it away just leaves a gap for a more troublesome crocodile to move into.

The study involved monitoring the movements of 12 large crocodiles.

Last year 314 saltwater crocodiles were captured and moved as part of an Australian Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife Commission management plan.

Crocodile interventions in Australia are understandable.

In 2012, a 12-year-old boy was killed by a crocodile which swam off with the child in its mouth in Australia’s tropical Northern Territory. Less than two weeks previously, a seven-year-old girl was killed by a crocodile. Police shot the10ft crocodile and an examination of the reptile revealed remains of the child in its stomach. Saltwater crocodiles, can grow up to 25ft and weigh more than a ton and are plentiful in Australia's Northern Territory. The crocodiles are protected and their numbers have increased steadily, resulting in a number of attacks on people.


 

EU DEBT CRISIS - WILL HOLLAND BE NEXT IN LINE TO FAIL?

 

 

Yesterday's euphoria of Holland's first King in one hundred years (King Alex, pictured), has given way to a hangover in the cold hard light of today.

The Dutch Government is committed to a further €4.3bn in budget austerity to meet EU deficit targets but has attracted harsh criticism from Holland's Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB), which said Dutch leaders did not seem to understand how private credit busts interact with fiscal cuts to create havoc.

The Bureau says that the Dutch government is not acknowledging the damage done by austerity.

Yet this is not just a case of botched fiscal policy, the CPB says. It is a case of misaligned monetary policy. Holland has been a rich sophisticated economy caught in a post-bubble crunch, having lost control of its currency and central bank and monetary levers. This would have happened to Britain without the Bank of England, and the US without the Fed.

The Dutch crisis has crept up quietly. Most people used to place Holland in with Germany, Finland and Austria, the hardline AAAs who dictate terms.

Unemployment was very low until the dam broke. It is now soaring as fast as in Cyprus. The rate has doubled over the past two years, jumping from 7.7pc to 8.1pc in the single month of March.

The economy has been in recession since early 2011.

Holland's Liberal Prime Minister Mark Rutte now says that austerity will be reigned in to stimulate growth.

That move is likely to anger Germany's Angela Merkel, who has hailed austerity measures as the solution to a financial crisis that left the fate of the euro hanging in the balance. Bailouts for Greece, Ireland, Portugal and now Cyprus have all been agreed in return for massive cuts.

Last month Holland announced it would slash its 2014 budget by a further €4.3bn to respect a 3pc of GDP European Union deficit limit.

Mr Rutte said that commitment would be re-evaluated in September to decide if the austerity measures should in fact be implemented, in part or in whole.

"When we finalise the 2014 budget in September, the government will evaluate whether economic growth will be sufficient, not to have to apply extra austerity measures," he said in a statement.

Mr Rutte's announcement follows an agreement with social partners, including unions, which includes postponing a planned reduction in the amount and duration of unemployment benefits until 2016.

Holland is one of just four eurozone countries still to have a triple-A rating from the three major agencies.

 

GUANTANAMO INMATES FORCE-FED AGAINST THEIR WILL

Despite statements from President Obama yesterday that Guantanamo should be closed, twenty-three detainees are still dangerously malnourished and under-weight and are being force-fed. Another one hundred say they are prepared to die rather than stay longer at the detention centre.

Most Gitmo inmates have never been charged with any crime.

The UN Human Rights Commission regards force-feeding at Guantanamo as torture. The World Medical Association prohibited force-feeding in the Declaration of Tokyo. The Tokyo declaration states that: "Where a prisoner refuses nourishment and is considered by the physician as capable of forming an unimpaired and rational judgement concerning the consequences of such a voluntary refusal of nourishment, he or she shall not be fed artificially."

Doctors from all over the world including the US have condemned the US military for force-feeding hunger strikers at Guantanamo Bay. They urged the US government to ensure that detainees are assessed by independent physicians and that techniques such as force-feeding and restraint chairs are abandoned. A patient has a right to say no to all medical treatments, they say. At the very least, don't treat them when they say ‘no’ and respect their right to refuse.

In 2006, the military acknowledged use of "restraint chairs" for feeding hunger-striking prisoners to prevent them from vomiting up forced nutrition.

Frequently, civilian patients in hospitals, who dont wish to eat have been known to try to pull out a feeding tube, they don't like it, it's not comfortable.

We in the U.S. may argue that we don’t allow people to kill themselves through starvation, but it has been known to be a statement by prisoners, which goes all the way back to the Irish hunger strikers against the British, saying ‘I can't live in these conditions. I don't accept the terms of my sentence that I'm under here. This is inhumane to me. This is the only way I have to speak up.'

Force feeding is known to be a rough procedure, at best, but one that feels much worse for someone who’s not complying. It's a sensation like drowning as the fluid is poured down your throat. If the food is vomited back up inmates can be bound and gagged forcing them to breathe fluid into their lungs.

Force feeding prisoners in Guantanamo Bay goes back to 2002 when two hunger strikers were hospitalized for malnutrition. The pair were holdouts from a hunger strike which was begun as a response to Guantanamo guards removing a makeshift turban from one of the prisoners.

In 2005, prisoners were sedated as opposed to being restrained prior to being given nutrition. Some restraints were used in force feeding in response to another hunger strike by prisoners to protest prison conditions. In this case, 105 prisoners were refusing food, although to varying extents. The military acknowledged that twenty prisoners were being force fed. In these cases, many prisoners passively accepted nasal feeding, though others were restrained with leg shackles and handcuffs.