Concerns raised on China's global health disclosures
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/07/news/pigs.php
The international and Hong Kong authorities said Monday that they had received little information from mainland Chinese officials about a mysterious ailment killing pigs in southeastern China or about Chinese wheat gluten contaminated with plastic scrap, raising questions again about whether Beijing is willing to share data on global health issues. The Chinese government, and particularly the government of Guangdong Province, next to Hong Kong, suffered heavy criticism in 2003 after concealing the SARS virus for the first four months after it first emerged in Foshan, 150 kilometers, or 95 miles, northwest of Hong Kong. After SARS spread to Hong Kong and around the world, top Chinese officials promised to improve disclosure. But officials in Hong Kong as well as at the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization said Monday that they had received practically no information about the latest pig deaths and limited details about wheat gluten contamination. Because pigs can catch many of the same diseases as people, notably bird flu, the WHO and the Food and Agriculture Organization maintain global networks to track and investigate unexplained patterns of pig deaths. State-controlled media in China have carried a few reports on the wheat gluten problem but almost nothing on the pig deaths. Hong Kong media were full of lurid accounts Monday of pigs staggering around with blood pouring from their bodies in Gaoyao and neighboring Yunfu, both in Guangdong Province. Apple, a daily newspaper here, said that up to 80 percent of the pigs had died in the area, that peasants were engaged in panic selling of ailing animals at deep discounts and that pig carcasses were floating down the river. Medical experts said that the extent of the reported bleeding from the pigs, including bloody skin lesions, did not sound like common symptoms of bird flu, but added that the pig deaths needed to be investigated. Because pigs can be infected with many avian and human influenza viruses, the most popular scientific model for how avian influenza viruses cause pandemics in humans is that human and avian influenza viruses exchange genetic material when they infect a pig at the same time.
Venezuela criticizes DEA as 'new cartel'
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/4782872.html
Venezuela on Monday said it will not allow U.S. agents to carry out counter-drug operations in the country, accusing the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration of being a "new cartel" that aids traffickers. Justice Minister Pedro Carreno said the South American nation suspended cooperation with the agency in 2005 after determining that "they were moving a large amount of drugs." President Hugo Chavez at the time also accused the DEA of spying. Washington has repeatedly accused Venezuela of not cooperating in counter-drug efforts and says cocaine shipments are increasingly passing through the country from neighboring Colombia. U.S. officials say about 10 DEA agents have remained in Venezuela working with law enforcement contacts even after the Chavez government suspended formal cooperation. Carreno was responding to comments by John Walters, the U.S. director of National Drug Control Policy, who told the Colombian magazine Semana in an interview published last week: "Chavez has refused to cooperate. It's a shame. Venezuela is gaining in importance for the drug traffickers." Carreno said Venezuela is making important strides in fighting drug trafficking.
Ecuador will not renew investment agreement with United States http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20070507-1502-ecuador-us.html
Ecuador's new leftist president has decided not to renew a bilateral investment treaty with the United States, the country's foreign minister said Monday, just days before a senior U.S. official is due to visit. Maria Fernanda Espinosa said President Rafael Correa, a U.S.-trained economist, will not renew the agreement that expires this week, but is “totally open” to discussing “an alternative that mutually guarantees the investments of each country.” The announcement came less than a week before U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte is scheduled to visit the country. The treaty, signed in 1993, is meant to encourage and protect investments. Michael Greenwald, a U.S. embassy spokesman in Quito, said Ambassador Linda Jewell has not yet commented on Correa's decision. Last year, Occidental Petroleum Corp. cited the treaty when it sought $1 billion in damages over Ecuador's cancellation of the California-based company's oil-production contract. The arbitration claim before the World Bank's International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes in Washington has not been resolved. Espinosa said Sunday the treaty “has really caused many problems for our country” and “does not respect national interests,” although she did not elaborate. Some Ecuadorean executives worry that Correa's decision will cause the U.S. to deny Ecuador another extension of the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act, a package of trade benefits offered in exchange for cooperation in counter-drug activities. The act expired Dec. 31, but was extended for six months.
World Bank says Wolfowitz broke rules
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21691983-1702,00.html
A WORLD Bank panel has found that bank President Paul Wolfowitz's handling of a promotion and pay increase for his companion represented a conflict of interest and broke staff rules. According to board sources, the panel made no recommendation on how he should be reprimanded. The former US deputy defence minister, who has faced calls by staff to resign over the lucrative deal for his companion, Shaha Riza, a World Bank Middle East expert, has been given time to respond to the report, but senior bank officials repeated that he would not step down. One source close to the World Bank board said the panel found Mr Wolfowitz's actions amounted to conflict of interest, while another source said the panel found he broke governance rules. A meeting of the 24-nation World Bank board of shareholder governments, which will determine whether Mr Wolfowitz should be fired for his actions, is now scheduled for later in the week, possibly on Friday. According to board sources, there is "widespread feeling" among member countries that it is virtually impossible for Mr Wolfowitz to finish his term because of the damage to the bank's credibility and its ability to be effective.
Its official: Norway thinks Wal-Mart sucks
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/02/business/norway.php
Norway has amassed a fortune in excess of $300 billion over the past decade, thanks to a geyser of profits from its oil exports. Yet few countries are more ambivalent about their vast wealth than this modest, socially conscious Scandinavian society of fewer than five million people. So rather than managing this monstrous nest egg simply for the best returns, the reluctant billionaires of Norway are using the fund to advance an ambitious ethical code that they established in 2004 for their oil reserve, known as the Government Pension Fund. Among the first companies to run afoul of Norway's standards were makers of cluster bombs and nuclear weapons or related components - a list that includes Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. Then last June, Norway added Wal-Mart Stores to its blacklist, alleging that the retailer was guilty of tolerating child-labor violations by its suppliers in the developing world and obstructing unions at home. The fund sold off more than $400 million worth of Wal-Mart shares. Norway is the world's No. 3 oil exporter after Saudi Arabia and Russia.
Protest Halts Major Chevron Oil Plant in Nigeria
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/41768/story.htm
Villagers with sticks and machetes staged a protest at a major Chevron oil production facility in Nigeria on Monday, forcing the company to shut it down as a precaution, security sources said. The protest at the gates of the Ebite flow station in the western Niger Delta, which is a primary feed point for the 160,000 barrel per day Escravos export terminal, was triggered by alleged delays in compensation for an oil spill. "There is a community protest. They are carrying sticks and machetes, but the place is full of government security forces who were drafted in over the weekend. The company has not lost control of the facility," a security source said. Another source said the plant had been shut down as a precaution and talks had started to resolve the dispute. Oil spills are one source of constant friction between oil companies and communities in the Niger Delta, a vast wetlands region which is home to all of Nigeria's crude. Companies blame spills on criminal gangs illegally tapping oil from their pipelines, while communities blame the companies and often demand substantial compensation. Unrest and militant attacks on oil facilities in other parts of the delta have already shut down a quarter of Nigerian oil production, helping lift world oil prices.
Annie Lennox's home destroyed in MySpace party http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=453293&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source=
Eurythmics singer Annie Lennox might well be feeling, as in the words of her hit song, just like she's walking on broken glass today. The popstar, 52, has been hit with a hefty repair bill after her 16-year-old daughter became the latest victim of gatecrashers who get wind of a party on the internet. The mayhem happened after Annie's teenaged daughter Lola innocently let slip she was having a get-together at home while her film producer father Uri Fruchtmann was away. But the email which was meant to get to just 30 close school friends ended up frenziedly circulating to hundreds of others. It is understood that the information about the party spread on websites like MySpace. Their £2 million family home in north London was trashed when more than a hundred youngsters forced entry. Party-goers daubed graffiti on walls, broke pictures and lampshades, tore apart books, urinated and vomited on carpets, flooded the kitchen and had a pitch battle in the garden. It was not long before it was standing room only at the house and in its grounds and the party quickly got out of hand. Her singer mother, who divorced from her father Uri in 2000 after 12 years of marriage and also lives in north London, is not understood to have heard about the party at the former marital home until the damage had been done.
Embryonic stem cells can repair eyes, company says
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSN0735624120070507?feedType=RSS&rpc=22
Stem cells made from human embryos can home in on damaged eyes, hearts and arteries of mice and rats, and appear to start repairs, a U.S. company said on Monday. Massachusetts-based Advanced Cell Technology said it had devised a straightforward way to make blood vessel precursor cells out of the stem cells and plans to test them in humans. Embryonic stem cells are the ultimate master cell of the body, giving rise to all of the tissues and organs. The use of human embryonic stem cells is controversial because many people oppose destroying the embryo. The U.S. Congress has passed several bills that would expand federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research but President George W. Bush vetoed one and has said he will veto any more. However, companies working with private funding, such as the over-the-counter listed ACT, may do as they please.
Red Cross steps up Iraq missions in face of "crisis"
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L07358280.htm
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Monday it was stepping up its relief operations in Iraq in the face of what an official called "an ever-deepening humanitarian crisis." The Swiss-based ICRC said it was upping its Iraqi budget for this year by over 60 percent -- from some $47 million to $75.2 million -- and was appealing to international donors to come up with the extra $29 million as soon as possible. The additional funds would be partly used to help the most vulnerable among the growing numbers of internally displaced people -- now estimated at totalling 850,000 across the country -- and the poorest in communities sheltering them
Despite warnings, most U.S. babies watch TV, DVDs http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N07340982.htm
About 90 percent of U.S. children under age 2 and as many as 40 percent of infants under three months are regular watchers of television, DVDs and videos, researchers said on Monday. They said the number of young kids watching TV is much greater than expected. The American Academy of Pediatrics estimates that children in the United States watch about four hours of television every day. They recommend that children under age 2 should not watch any and older children should watch no more than 2 hours a day of quality programming. A second study in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine found that teens who watch three to four hours of television a day are more likely to have attention or learning problems and are less likely to get a college degree. Just 12 percent of the parents whose children watched less than an hour of television a day said their child "hardly ever does homework," compared to 21 percent of those who watched one to three hours a day and 27 percent of those who watched more than three hours a day. Parents said 22 percent of teens who watched less than an hour a day were often bored at school, compared to 35 percent of the moderate watchers and 42 percent of those who watched three hours or more. The result was the same regardless of socioeconomic status.
Popcorn can kill you http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Science/2007/05/07/lung_disease_linked_to_flavoring_chemical/
The Washington Post is reporting that since 2001, academic studies have linked bronchiolitis obliterans, a rare and life-threatening form of fixed obstructive lung disease, with an artificial butter flavoring called diacetyl,. Diacetyl is often used in microwave popcorn flavoring plants. Flavoring manufacturers have paid out more than $100 million in lawsuits during the past five years. One death from popcorn workers lung has been confirmed. Politicians and health care workers are pushing for a ban on diacetyl. The Occupational Health and Safety Administration has been criticized for being slow in acting on the issue. Because of this, California Assemblywoman Sally Lieber has introduced a bill to ban the use of diacetyl. The Post reported that most people infected with popcorn workers lung are young Latinos with no history of smoking.
Bee disorder hasn't impacted Kansas http://www.kansas.com/113/story/63825.html
Kansas has so far been spared from the mysterious problem that is killing honeybees across the nation, according to a report from Kansas State University entomologist Sharon Dobesh. Dobesh said that the state has probably been spared because most of the states hives are owned by individuals who keep bees as a hobby. Most of the populations that have been killed by the problem, which has been called "colony collapse disorder" have been commercial migratory hives, which are trucked from state to state to pollinate orchards and fields. Kansas has fewer than a dozen beekeepers who would quality as commercial operators. Dobesh said there is no known cause for colony collapse disorder, which causes bees to die or abandon their hives. Speculation has included new diseases, pesticides or parasites. Bees are vital to the pollination of about 30 percent of the crops grown nationwide. Domestic hives have become extremely important in recent years because many of the country's wild bees have been killed by infestation with the varroa mite.
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