In a downtown Manhattan courtroom, where the lawyers and clients up front outnumbered the observers seated in the back, where a forgotten Jewish Egyptian victim challenged an omnipresent multibillion-dollar multinational corporation; in a case where history itself was both on trial and being made, the Coca-Cola Company was publicly accused of being criminally enriched following the Nasser regime's Nazi-style expropriation of Jewish property. More than that, Coca-Cola was accused of obstructing, belittling and stonewalling a decades-long effort to obtain justice, and indeed trying to create a new revisionism that questions whether anti-Jewish persecution actually took place in Egypt in the 1950s and 1960s.

On November 10, 2009, Egyptian exile Refael Bigio drove down from Montreal, his attorneys Nathan Lewin and Sherrie Savett trained in from Washington DC and Philadelphia, Coca-Cola's chief of litigation John Lewis flew up from Atlanta and the company's defense counsel Richard Cirillo only needed to make a short trip from midtown to argue whether the Coca-Cola Company quietly but consciously benefited when the Nasser regime nationalized Jewish property. The Bigios' property had long been leased by Coca-Cola and their bottle-cap factory made the caps for Coke's products. This factory, the property and related business ultimately became a multimillion dollar asset in the giant Atlanta beverage conglomerate's overseas portfolio.

The Egyptian government takeover of the Bigio family bottle-cap and tin plating factory occurred in 1962, during the openly anti-Jewish regime of president Gamal Abdel Nasser. Egypt's government subsequently ruled its Nasser-era seizure of the Bigio property was indeed illegal. Later, however, over the Bigios' objections, Coca-Cola entered into a joint venture to operate what is now the Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Egypt on the Bigios' seized property, without compensating the Bigios, according to court papers. The Bigios claim that Coke is and has been trespassing on stolen property.

Now, after years of litigation and fruitless negotiation, Bigio's attorneys have fired a stinging motion for summary judgment, asserting that the uncontradicted facts surrounding Coca-Cola's actions were so blatant that the court should immediately find the corporation liable.

"Coca-Cola is not," wrote attorney Nathan Lewin in his motion, "as it likes to portray itself, a trusting and guileless American corporation that in 1994 innocently purchased a 'minority interest' in some remote business entity that utilizes the Bigios' property. The undisputed evidence establishes that Coca-Cola witnessed how the Bigio family - with which it was intimately bound in a mutually profitable business relationship between the 1940s and 1962 - was victimized by Nasser's ethnic-cleansing policy of taking Jewish property and expelling Jews from Egypt."

Much more at:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?apa...

ScienceDaily (Nov. 17, 2009) — Despite advances in treatment regimens and the best efforts of nurses and doctors, about 70% of all people with severe burns die from related infections. But a revolutionary new wound dressing developed at Tel Aviv University could cut that number dramatically.

Prof. Meital Zilberman of TAU's Department of Biomedical Engineering has developed a new wound dressing based on fibers she engineered -- fibers that can be loaded with drugs like antibiotics to speed up the healing process, and then dissolve when they've done their job. A study published in the Journal of Biomedical Materials Research -- Applied Biomaterials demonstrates that, after only two days, this dressing can eradicate infection-causing bacteria.

The new dressing protects the wound until it is no longer needed, after which it melts away. "We've developed the first wound dressing that both releases antibiotic drugs and biodegrades in a controlled manner," says Prof. Zilberman. "It solves current mechanical and physical limitations in wound-dressing techniques and gives physicians a new and more effective platform for treating burns and bedsores."

While the concept is simple, the technology is not. Skin, Prof. Zilberman explains, serves a number of vastly different purposes. "Wound dressings must maintain a certain level of moisture while acting as a shield," she says. "Like skin, they must also enable fluids from the wound to leave the infected tissue at a certain rate. It can't be too fast or too slow. If too fast, the wound will dry out and it won't heal properly. If too slow, there's a real risk of increased contamination."

sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily Latest+Science+News%29" target="_blank">http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/...

I don't know what's up with the link but it works.

By Erich Follath and Holger Stark

In September 2007, Israeli fighter jets destroyed a mysterious complex in the Syrian desert. The incident could have led to war, but it was hushed up by all sides. Was it a nuclear plant and who gave the orders for the strike?

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/...

snip

The new case making the rounds, however, appears to have some legs. It is getting international news attention, and I am being flooded with e-mail requests to analyze the case.

This is the story of Desiree Jennings, who is a 28 year old cheerleader who was apparently healthy until August when she received the seasonal flu vaccine. Ten days later she developed a severe respiratory illness, probably the flu, requiring hospitalization. She then developed an apparent neurological reaction in which she has difficulty speaking and walking, with involuntary muscle contractions and contortions. Her symptoms (including speech) are relieved, however, by walking backwards or by running. She also seems to have attacks of muscle contortions.

News reports are presenting her story as a rare vaccine reaction. Take a look at the video of her movements on this news report also.

This case, of course, has been immediately picked up by the anti-vaccine crowd. Generation Rescue, Jenny McCarthy’s anti-vaccine organization, wasted no time in exploiting this poor girl for their own agenda. She is now the latest poster child in the war against vaccines.

http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=...