Author: Paul Martin

Waste of money? Private hospitals have been paid around 3.6 billion pounds so far this year, but have treated very few public patients.

1 December 2020 By Paul Martin

This under-use came despite rocketing long waits for operations, according to internal documents leaked to HSJ. Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the NHS has had unprecedented block contracts in place for almost all the private hospital capacity in England. The total cost has never been revealed, although public contract notices suggest they are worth around […]

Insight Latest News Talking Points

Who do Republicans want to be their candidate in the 2024 US Presidential elections? Donald Trump, or possibly his son, says a national poll.

30 November 2020 By Paul Martin

A super-majority — 68% of Republicans and those who voted independently in the Republican primaries — want President Donald Trump to run again in 2024, according to a new Newsmax/McLaughlin Associates poll. Here are highlights from the Newsmax/McLaughlin poll: In all, 53% of Republican primary voters say they would favor Trump in a field of 13 […]

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EXCLUSIVE: Labour leader will not oppose any deal achieved between UK government and the European Union.

29 November 2020 By Paul Martin

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has revealed that Labour will not oppose any deal with the European Union over post-Brexit rules when the final result of the ongoing talks is brought to Parliament. “We cannot vote against, because we do not want a no-deal, which would be far worse than any other scenario,” Starmer today told […]

Corona and Covid Media Blunders or Media Brilliance

How unwell South African children found their voices — and others around the world. During the pandemic, they’re running their own internet radio station from a Cape Town hospital studio.

28 November 2020 By Paul Martin

RX Radio has given children the opportunity to voice their opinions and understand others By Luzuko Sonkapu. This article was submitted to the Media Monitoring Africa Isu Elihle Awards. I’m an 18-year-old with a chronic illness, spinal muscular atrophy, and at the start of lockdown in March it was better for me to move to […]

Corona and Covid Latest News

The American vaccine trials prove a lot. The British one is far from satisfactory.

28 November 2020 By Paul Martin

Oxford University – AstraZenica’s vaccine work was trumpeted as a huge success by the scientists involved and by the British government. Its apparent errors emerged in this article and were not picked up by the mainstream media until days later. We did. Here is the key paragraph: “So here we are at the end of […]

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South African cricketers refuse to bend the knee.

23 November 2020 By Paul Martin

South Africa’s cricket team, due to start a series of six limited-over matches against England later this week, have decided not to take a knee before any of these matches. A team decision was made that it’s ‘not something we need continue to do’, according to its coach Mark Boucher, a near-mythical top performer for […]

Analysis

New evidence emerges over whether a Libyan convicted of bombing PanAm flight over Scotland in 1989 was wrongly convicted.

23 November 2020 By Paul Martin

Who blew up the Pan Am plane that was destroyed over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988? A new court case is underway – launched by the son of the only man convicted of this mass-murder. His guilt and jailing are now coming under increasing scrutiny — with documents originating with Jordanian intelligence apparently […]

Analysis Corona and Covid

Russia will provide a huge ‘guinea-pig’ experiment as it secures its first foreign purchaser for a vaccine against Covid-19.

21 November 2020 By Paul Martin

Russia claims its own vaccine is just as effective as the two American-developed vaccines that Pfizer and Moderna have been testing. No-one outside Russia has taken them seriously — except for a top hospital in, of all places, Israel. The Hadassah Medical Centre in Jerusalem is willing to take a gamble on buying – so […]

Analysis Corona and Covid Insight

After getting Covid, your immunity may last for years. That overcomes a major drawback to effective vaccination.

18 November 2020 By Paul Martin

People who have recovered from Covid-19 may lose their antibodies, but they will usually still have strong protective killer cells to give them continuing immunity. So immunity to the coronavirus could last years, or even decades, according to a new study. That may apply, too to how long a vaccine will remain an effective bar […]

Strange as It Seems

Has the US Air Force gone to the dogs?

15 November 2020 By Paul Martin

Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla., this week tested robotic dogs on a security patrol operation. Photo from U.S. Air Force The US Air Force has unveiled an addition to its war effort: computerized, four-legged robot dogs to be used for security patrols. The Philadelphia-based technology company Ghost Robotics worked with the base’s 325th Security Squadron […]