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Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Dutch scientists have said in a study that burning your food may lead to certain types of cancer, particularly in women. Scientists also say that more research is needed to make a definite determination and that there are other factors that could be to blame.

“This new study supports our current advice, which already assumes that acrylamide has the potential to be a human carcinogen. Since acrylamide forms naturally in a wide variety of cooked foods, it is not possible to have a healthy, balanced diet that avoids it,” said a Food Standards Agency spokesperson.

According to the study, acrylamides, a chemical produced when cooking foods high in carbohydrates over 120 degrees Celsius (248 degrees Fahrenheit) in the frying, toasting and grilling processes, is a likely cause of some womb and ovarian cancers. Although it was found in 2002 that the chemical may be a cause of some cancers, the new study shows, for the first time, a link between the chemical in a human diet being a cause. To date, there is no evidence to suggest the chemical may cause breast cancer.

Scientists followed and monitored 120,000 people over an 11-year-period, of whom 62,000 were women. Of the women, 300 ended up contracting ovarian cancer with 327 contracting womb cancer.

The study concluded that more than 40 micrograms of the chemical, or one bag of potato chips per day, is twice as likely to cause cancer in women.

“General advice, resulting from this project, is to avoid overcooking when baking, frying or toasting carbohydrate-rich foods,” said a spokesman for the European Union.

Monday, March 12, 2007

24 of 26 Swiss Cantons rejected the proposal for a single health insurance system, in which premiums would be based on income and wealth. The vote on Sunday was the latest in a series of attempts to cut rising costs and ease the financial burden on citizens.

Around 71% of voters rejected the reform. Turnout was at about 46%, slightly above the Swiss average.

As expected, voters in the main German-speaking part of the country turned down the planned reform, which was supported by the centre-left but opposed by the centre-right as well as the business community, parliament and the government.

Opposition in the French and Italian speaking regions was less pronounced. The cantons Jura and Neuchâtel in the French speaking regions voted in favor of the proposed reforms.

Health insurance premiums are higher in southern and western Swiss cantons than in German-speaking areas.

The Swiss Interior Minister Pascal Couchepin said an important part of the Swiss Population appeared to be opposed to “a revolution” in health insurance but he said that he wanted current reforms currently under discussion in the Swiss Parliament to go ahead. He called on all sides, especially health insurers and the cantonal authorities, to make efforts to reduce spending on health insurance and aim for a greater cost efficiency. Currently Switzerland has 87 private insurers providing mandatory basic health care coverage for Swiss residents under a 1996 law. But costs have sky-rocketed. Over 100,000 people are not covered by health insurance due to non payment.

Opponents to the initiative argued that a single insurance system would lead to complacency and create a two-tier system, in which the wealthy would be the only ones available to afford to have additional private insurance coverage.

Supporters of the initiative said a single health insurer would increase the system’s efficiency and allow for annual savings of at least 300 million Swiss Francs (about $245 million) in administrative costs. Currently, the funding system is unbalanced, since many clients on low incomes use state subsidies to pay their premiums, according to the Green Party and the Social Democrats.

The initiative to unite all the insurance companies and introduce premiums based on wealth and income was the most recent in a series of attempts over the past ten years to reduce the public spending on health care. A proposal, similar to this recent proposal, to modify the funding system of the health insurance companies was rejected by 73% of voters in 2003.

Switzerland has the most expensive health system in Europe. Switzerland’s expenditure on health care was 11.6% in 2005, in front of Germany and France but behind the United States.

Sunday, November 20, 2005

One of the most important arguments in the run-up to the Iraq war made by Colin Powell in his United Nations speech and President Bush in his State of the Union address was that Iraq had an active biological weapons program and possessed mobile biological weapons labs. According to an investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee, the main source for this information was an Iraqi defector codenamed Curveball who was a source for the German central intelligence agency BND.

Several German intelligence officials responsible for Curveball have now told the LA Times that the Bush administration and the CIA have repeatedly exaggerated his claims and ignored warnings of the BND that the source was unreliable. Recounting his reaction after seeing Powell’s United Nations speech one German intelligence officer said: “We were shocked. Mein Gott! We had always told them it was not proven…. It was not hard intelligence.” This corroborates reporting by the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit from 2003 and 2004 based on statements of unnamed senior German intelligence officials.

Nine months earlier, in May 2002, a fabricator warning was posted in Curveball’s file in U.S. intelligence databases. Powell was never warned that his United Nations speech contained material that both the DIA and CIA had determined was false, even though several people present at Powell’s CIA meetings were fully aware of this.

At this time German intelligence officers would not let the CIA meet directly with Curveball, but allowed a CIA doctor to draw blood samples. Questioning the validity of Curveball’s information in front of his CIA supervisor, the doctor was advised to “Keep in mind that this war is going to happen regardless of what Curveball said or didn’t say and the Powers That Be probably aren’t terribly interested in whether Curveball knows what he’s talking about.”

Shortly after Powell’s UN speech and several days before the invasion, United Nations weapons inspectors attempted to directly verify several key claims made by Curveball, but concluded that they were unsustainable. The White House insisted on its WMD claims based on Curveball’s information.

Even after the invasion, when more and more of Curveball’s accounts were shown to be pure fabrication, the CIA and the Bush administration relied on Curveball’s information. When U.S. forces discovered trucks with lab equipment and Curveball claimed that these were identical to the ones he has been reporting about, the CIA rushed to publish a White Paper claiming that these trucks were part of Saddam Hussein’s secret biological weapons program and Bush claimed publicly that “We found the weapons of mass destruction.” Several days later, twelve of the thirteen WMD experts who analyzed the trucks agreed that the equipment was not suited for biological weapons production, with the only dissenting voice coming from the author of the original White Paper.

The White Paper remains posted on the CIA website to this date, and President Bush has not yet retracted his statement that Iraq produced “germ warfare agents” made in his State of the Union address or his postwar assertions that “we found the weapons of mass destruction.”

Tuesday, March 29, 2005A team of Australian surgeons yesterday reattached both hands and one foot to 10-year-old Perth boy, Terry Vo, after a brick wall which collapsed during a game of basketball fell on him, severing the limbs. The wall gave way while Terry performed a slam-dunk, during a game at a friend’s birthday party.

The boy was today awake and smiling, still in some pain but in good spirits and expected to make a full recovery, according to plastic surgeon, Mr Robert Love.

“What we have is parts that are very much alive so the reattached limbs are certainly pink, well perfused and are indeed moving,” Mr Love told reporters today.

“The fact that he is moving his fingers, and of course when he wakes up he will move both fingers and toes, is not a surprise,” Mr Love had said yesterday.

“The question is more the sensory return that he will get in the hand itself and the fine movements he will have in the fingers and the toes, and that will come with time, hopefully. We will assess that over the next 18 months to two years.

“I’m sure that he’ll enjoy a game of basketball in the future.”

The weight and force of the collapse, and the sharp brick edges, resulted in the three limbs being cut through about 7cm above the wrists and ankle.

Terry’s father Tan said of his only child, the injuries were terrible, “I was scared to look at him, a horrible thing.”

The hands and foot were placed in an ice-filled Esky and rushed to hospital with the boy, where three teams of medical experts were assembled, and he was given a blood transfusion after experiencing massive blood loss. Eight hours of complex micro-surgery on Saturday night were followed by a further two hours of skin grafts yesterday.

“What he will lose because it was such a large zone of traumatised skin and muscle and so on, he will lose some of the skin so he’ll certainly require lots of further surgery regardless of whether the skin survives,” said Mr Love said today.

The boy was kept unconscious under anaesthetic between the two procedures. In an interview yesterday, Mr Love explained why:

“He could have actually been woken up the next day. Because we were intending to take him back to theatre for a second look, to look at the traumatised skin flaps, to close more of his wounds and to do split skin grafting, it was felt the best thing to do would be to keep him stable and to keep him anaesthetised.”

Professor Wayne Morrison, director of the respected Bernard O’Brien Institute of Microsurgery and head of plastic and hand surgery at Melbourne’s St Vincent’s Hospital, said he believed the operation to be a world first.

A compilation of brief news reports for Sunday, December 14, 2008.

The Indian navy has announced that it has captured 23 Somali and Yemeni pirates in the Gulf of Aden who were attacking an Ethiopian ship named the MV Gibe. The Indian INS Mysore, which was escorting merchant ships near the coast of Somalia, hurried to the MV Gibe after it sent out a distress call, saying that they were being fired upon by two boats.

The pirates, when apprehended, attempted to flee, but were caught by the Indian ship. Arms and equipment were seized from the pirates.

Sources

• Jeremiah Marquez. “Indian navy captures 23 pirates in Gulf of Aden” — Associated Press, December 13, 2008
• “Indian navy ‘captures 23 pirates'” — BBC News, December 13, 2008

Ajmal Kasab, the gunman who was captured in last month’s Mumbai attacks that killed hundreds of people, has told the police that he originally planned to take hostages and make demands from the media, according to his confession statement.

The seven-page confession states that Kasab and another person, who attacked Mumbai’s main train station, were planning to have a standoff atop a roof, but the plan backfired when no access to a roof was found.

They did manage to kill tens of people inside the train station itself, however, it is still not known whether or not they had hostages.

Sources

• “Confession sheds light on Mumbai attacks” — MSNBC, December 13, 2008
• “Mumbai gunman’s chilling confession sheds light” — The Bismarck Tribune, December 13, 2008

A recent fire has hit former Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s church in Wasilla, Alaska. Investigators have deemed the fire “suspicious,” and consider arson as a possible cause.

A group of women and children were in the church when the fire broke out, but no one was injured.

“We have no idea what caused it,” said the Rev. Larry Kroon of the nondenominational Wasilla Bible Church.

Sources

• Celeste Katz. “Suspicious fire burns Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin church in Wasilla” — Daily News, December 13, 2008
• Monte Plott. “Fire hits Palin’s church in Alaska” — CNN, December 13, 2008

Protest rallies were held in Australian capital cities on Saturday to protest against the Rudd government’s proposed internet filtering scheme. Under the scheme, a so-called “clean feed” would be provided to all Australians with content on a list kept by the Australian Communications and Media Authority blocked. A secondary filter, which may be opted out of will block material deemed inappropriate to children.

Hundreds attended the protests in Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra, Perth and Hobart which were organised by the Digital Liberty Coalition.

Sources

• Andrew Ramadge. “Digital Liberty Coalition protests against web filter held across Australia” — news.com.au, December 13, 2008

• Angus Kidman. “IN PICTURES: hundreds protest govt net censorship” — Australian Personal Computer, December 13, 2008

UK Environment Secretary Hilary Benn prompted speculation regarding a possible cabinet split over plans to expand London’s Heathrow airport with comments made in an interview given to the Sunday Times.

Mr Benn warned concerns regarding noise and air-pollution could stall plans to build a third runway and expressed doubts regarding suggestions that a technological solution could be found to the problems.

Heathrow is currently in breach of EU rules governing air pollution, although the UK currently has an opt-out from the rules, this runs out in 2015.

Other senior cabinet members, including Commons Leader Harriet Harman and Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Milliband, are also believed to have serious reservations about the expansion of Heathrow.

Sources

• Jonathan Oliver and Jon Ungoed-Thomas. “Cabinet split over proposed Heathrow third runway” — The Sunday Times, Sunday 14th December 2008
• inthenews.co.uk. “Hilary Benn ‘doubtful’ on Heathrow expansion” — inthenews.co.uk, Sunday 14th December 2008

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Four male members of the paparazzi were arrested and charged on Wednesday with reckless driving in Mission Hills, California after following Britney Spears back to her mansion. At least four others were also stopped by police, but were not arrested.

According to reports, police witnessed the entire incident saying that a fleet of paparazzi were following Spears at a high rate of speed around 11:20 p.m. PST (UTC-8). They also say they followed her too closely and made unsafe lane changes in order to follow her. Police also say that at least one of cars following Spears, who was driving her car, tried to run her off the road, but she was not able to identify the vehicle or the occupants.

Spears was also stopped by police. They are reported to have verified her identity, and released her. TMZ.com reports that police were checking to see if her license was valid, and was surprised that it was. Spears was not charged with anything and despite the paparazzis’ recklessness, Spears did not want the men arrested.

“Britney Spears was part of the group, but was not driving recklessly,” said spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Police Department, Sara Faden.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Pakistani intelligence officials said earlier today that two suspected US drone attacks in Taliban-dominated tribal areas of the country have killed at least a dozen people, although some reports put the number as high as seventeen.

The first attack targeted a vehicle carrying two suspected militants in the town of Dosali, in the North Waziristan tribal area near the Afghan border.

Hours later elsewhere in North Waziristan, officials reported that several drones fired seven missiles into suspected militant compounds. They added that the death toll could rise. However, it was not immediately clear how many Taliban members were killed in the strikes.

“Seven missiles were fired. They hit a cave complex, a compound and a vehicle,” said a Pakistani official, as quoted by the Reuters news agency.