Thousands of kidney cancer patients are likely to lose out on life-prolonging drugs. The NHS rationing body, NICE, has confirmed a ban on three out of four new treatments. It has reversed its position on just one, Sutent, which will now be allowed for patients with advanced cancer. But campaigners who fought NICE’s original blanket ban said this was not enough. They said some patients with heart problems cannot tolerate Sutent.
Moroccan national television reports that Saudi Crown Prince Sultan has arrived in the north African kingdom after undergoing surgery in the United States. The crown prince, who is also Saudi Arabia’s defense minister, left for treatment in New York in February. In his 80s, he is the half brother of King Abdullah and one of the most powerful figures in oil-rich Saudi Arabia.
The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz has let the cat out of the bag in the Post’s April 27 issue about a regularly scheduled secret media dinner attended by some of the top left-wing journalists in the country. But it isn’t just the lefty scribblers that have attended these secret, off-the-record dinners for these gatherings have each featured a guest. Rahm Emanuel, Sec. of the Treasury Tim Geithner, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke have all recently had their chance to schmooze the press and guide them with the spin desired by the White House.
Senators voted 53-43 to pass a 3.5 trillion dollar five year budget plan proposed by President Obama. The U.S. House of Representatives passed the same measure earlier in the day. All Republicans opposed the bill. Democrats Evan Bayh of Indiana, Robert Byrd of West Virginia and Ben Nelson of Nebraska opposed the resolution. Sen. Arlen Specter, who is in the purgatory between parties as he trades in his GOP card for a Democratic one, voted against it too.
Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday that he would not recommend taking any commercial flight or riding in a subway car “at this point” because swine flu virus can spread “in confined places.” A little more than one hour later, Biden rushed out a statement backing off. “I would tell members of my family — and I have — I wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places now,” Biden said on NBC’s “Today” show.. “It’s not that it’s going to Mexico. It’s [that] you’re in a confined aircraft. When one person sneezes, it goes all the way through the aircraft. That’s me. …
“That wasn’t me,” President Barack Obama said on his 100th day in office, disclaiming responsibility for the huge budget deficit waiting for him on Day One. It actually was him — and the other Democrats controlling Congress the previous two years — who shaped a budget so out of balance. And as a presidential candidate and president-elect, he backed the twilight Bush-era stimulus plan that made the deficit deeper, all before he took over and promoted spending plans that have made it much deeper still.
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Celebrations of Queen’s Day in the Dutch city of Apeldoorn took a tragic turn around midday on Thursday. Four people were killed and 13 injured when a car ploughed through a crowd of spectators watching the Queen’s Day parade. The queen may have escaped an attack. The car broke through the barriers, hitting people and crashing into a monumental column as the open-topped coach carrying the Royal Family passed.
Chrysler LLC is going to file for bankruptcy, an administration official confirmed to CNN Thursday. The filing comes after some of the company’s smaller lenders refused a Treasury Department demand to reduce the amount of money the troubled automaker owed them. Chrysler officials had no comment on the bankruptcy report. The company faces a Thursday deadline from the Treasury Department to reach deals with creditors who had loaned the company about $7 billion.
Math matters. Incorrect weight entered into airplane’s computers nearly causing a catastrophe.
A jetliner struggled to liftoff and only took flight after slamming its tail into the runway in March because someone entered the wrong weight for the plane into the flight’s computer, Australian investigators said Thursday. As the Airbus 340, carrying 275 people, reached takeoff speed, the Emirates airline captain called for his co-pilot to begin liftoff, but the plane’s nose did not rise off the ground, the Transport Safety Bureau said. With the end of the runway approaching, the captain again called for liftoff, and the co-pilot tried again — this time raising the nose but leaving the tail dragging on the ground.
Internet users face regular “brownouts” that will freeze their computers as capacity runs out in cyberspace, according to research to be published later this year. Experts predict that consumer demand, already growing at 60 percent a year, will start to exceed supply as early as 2010 because of more people working online and the soaring popularity of bandwidth-hungry Web sites such as YouTube and services such as the BBC’s iPlayer.
A senior British Army officer and six other military personnel survived attack when a tethered donkey laden with explosives was detonated as their armoured vehicle passed in southern Afghanistan. The huge explosion showered the soldier standing on “top cover” out of the Mastiff’s turret with donkey entrails and blood, and the sight was so gruesome that the rest of those in the vehicle thought he had been mortally wounded in the blast, south of Garmsir in southern Helmand province.
Don’t mess with the marching band. That’s what California authorities are saying after a 17-year-old girl used her marching band baton to beat back two would-be muggers. Los Angeles County sheriff’s Deputy Michael Rust says the Quartz Hill girl was walking to school April 24 when two men approached her from behind, tried to grab her coat and demanded money.
Baytown police are investigating whether charges should be filed against a mother in connection with the death of her 1-year-old son who fell from her moving F-150 Ford truck Wednesday after not being restrained in a car seat. The child, whose name was not released, was pronounced dead Wednesday at San Jacinto Methodist Hospital in Baytown. His mother is being treated at Ben Taub Hospital in Houston for injuries from being dragged along the pavement, police said.
Quote of the day.
I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
-James Madison