PhysOrg.com — Large scale, cost-effective stem cell factories able to keep up with demand for new therapies to treat a range of human illnesses are a step closer to reality, thanks to a scientific breakthrough involving researchers at The University of Nottingham. Read article
Financial Times – Wheat prices rose further on Friday morning in the wake of Russia’s decision to extend its grain export ban by 12 month, raising fears about a return to the food shortages and riots of 2007-08. In Mozambique, where a 30 per cent rise in bread prices triggered riots on Wednesday and Thursday, the government said seven people had been killed along with 288 wounded. The announcement by Vladimir Putin on Thursday extended an export ban first announced last month until late December 2011, sending wheat and other cereals prices to near a two-year high. Read Article
Guardian – The total number of British jobs axed by RBS and Lloyds TSB, both of which were bailed out by the taxpayer and are still part owned by the government, reached almost 45,000 today. RBS announced that it was axing 3,500 back-office jobs as a result of the sale of 318 of its branches to Santander, a move demanded by EU regulators in return for the bank’s £54bn government bailout almost two years ago. That takes the total number of posts lost since Stephen Hester took over as chief executive two years ago to almost 27,000. Read Article
Guardian – Constant ID checks in supermarkets and off-licences are “infantilising” young adults and confusing shoppers about legal age limits, a report by a civil liberties group claims today. The survey by the Manifesto Club suggests that cashiers’ over-zealous questioning of customers in their 20s is “penalising thousands of innocent” people and forcing them to carry their passports all the time. Read Article
BBC – House prices fell for the second month in a row in August, according to the Nationwide building society. Prices fell 0.9% last month, following a 0.5% decline in July, Nationwide said, adding that it was the first time that prices had fallen for two consecutive months since February 2009. The average house price now stands at just over £166,500. Nationwide said house prices had “essentially stagnated over the summer”. Read Article
Daily Telegraph – Winston Churchill ordered the assassination of Benito Mussolini as part of a plot to destroy potentially compromising secret letters he had sent the Italian dictator, a leading French historian has suggested. Pierre Milza, an expert on fascist Italy, theorizes that the wartime prime minister may have wanted Mussolini dead to prevent the letters, in which Churchill expressed his admiration for his Italian counterpart before the outbreak of the Second World War, coming to light. “There is no doubt, judging by his public declarations back in the 1920s and early 1930s, that Churchill was a fan of Mussolini. Roosevelt too,” Mr Milza said. Read Article
CNBC – September and October hold bad news for stock markets and banks remain overleveraged as we head into the second leg of the financial crisis according to Pedro De Noronha, the managing partner at Noster Capital in London. “We are seeing one of the most challenging years for investors ever,” De Noronha told CNBC Tuesday. “Major investors are simply leaving the market. When it looks like markets are about to fall off the cliff they rally and vice versa. Read Article
Daily Telegraph – Julian Assange, the founder of the Wikileaks whistleblower website, admitted that he had sexual relations with one of two Swedish women who accused him of sex crimes. Mr Assange said that he had consensual sex more than once with a woman who has accused him of molestation. Sweden’s top prosecutor reopened investigations into allegations of molestation from the woman and of rape by another Swedish female on Tuesday. Read Article
Financial Times – Alistair Darling admitted on Wednesday that Britain’s controversial supertax on bankers’ bonuses had failed to change the industry’s behaviour over pay as “imaginative” financiers devised ways to avoid it. The former Labour chancellor of the exchequer, who introduced the levy last year amid an unprecedented outcry over bank pay, said he thought it was unlikely that the tax would be reinstated by the current Con-Lib coalition government. Read Article
BBC – Four of the “big six” UK energy suppliers are to be investigated amid concerns of mis-selling to customers, the regulator has announced. Npower, Scottish Power, Scottish and Southern Energy, and EDF Energy all face questions over face-to-face and telephone sales of energy contracts. Ofgem said it had received information from a variety of sources suggesting they could have breached new rules. The quartet said they would work with Ofgem on the investigation. Read Article
Daily Times – Former British premier Tony Blair warned in an interview on Wednesday that the international community may have ‘no alternative’ to taking military action against Iran if it develops a nuclear weapon. “I am saying that I think it is wholly unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapons capability and I think we have got to be prepared to confront them, if necessary militarily,” he said in extracts pre-released by the BBC from an interview to publicise his memoirs. “I think there is no alternative to that if they continue to develop nuclear weapons. They need to get that message loud and clear.” Read Article
Daily Telegraph – Dominic Grieve, the Attorney General, has asked to examine files on the death of David Kelly, the former weapons inspector, it was reported. Mr Grieve, the senior law officer to the Government, has requested reports relating to the post-mortem examination carried out on Dr Kelly following his death in 2003, it was claimed. His alleged request followed comments earlier this month in which Mr Grieve indicated he would need to see new evidence before an application for a full inquest into Dr Kelly’s death could be considered. Read Article
Daily Mail – TV should be banned for toddlers and severely rationed for other youngsters to protect their health and family life, a leading psychologist will tell MEPs today. Dr Aric Sigman claims that millions of children spending hours slumped in front of TVs and computers is ‘the greatest unacknowledged health scandal of our time’. He says it is linked to ills ranging from obesity and heart disease to poor grades and lack of empathy. Read article
Telegraph – The extension of existing laws to the internet, which will come into effect from next March, has “the protection of children and consumers at its heart”, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said. Currently the ASA’s remit only extends to advertisements in paid-for space and all sales promotions. But the change will see its rules on misleading advertising, social responsibility and the protection of children will be applied in full to all online marketing by all sectors, businesses and organisations, regardless of size. Read Article
BBC – A £235m government database containing the records of England’s 11 million children has been switched off. ContactPoint was established in the wake of the Victoria Climbie child abuse case to aid child protection. The report into her death highlighted the need to improve the exchange of information between different agencies working with vulnerable children. The government argued the system was disproportionate to the problem, so is looking at developing other solutions. Read Article
Guardian – The Home Office pathologist criticised for his autopsy on the body of the newspaper seller who died at the G20 protests in London was found guilty of misconduct and “deficient professional performance” today. Dr Freddy Patel’s fitness to practise is impaired, a disciplinary panel of the General Medical Council ruled. He is now likely to face an application that he should be struck off or suspended from the medical register. Patel’s examination of the newspaper vendor, Ian Tomlinson, when he said Tomlinson had died of a heart attack, was later contradicted after a second examination and his role has become pivotal to the controversy surrounding the case. Read Article
The Guardian – Following a firestorm of criticism from civil society groups in Italy and abroad, and a slap on the wrist by the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, the Italian government’s draft “gag law” has been amended. The original bill restricted the use of wiretaps as an investigative tool and imposed an outright ban on publishing transcripts of telephone conversations and other evidence obtained covertly without permission from a judge. The new bill removes the publishers’ liability, but leaves journalists liable if they publish transcripts leaked to them by investigators – something that happens frequently in Italy. Read article
Reuters – France has sent detailed proposals to the European Commission calling for common action to regulate volatile commodities markets before it is due to head the Group of 20 economic powers, ministry officials said. President Nicolas Sarkozy said last week that regulating commodity derivatives would be one of the priorities of France’s presidency of the G20 starting in November for a year. France’s economy, energy and agriculture ministers sent a letter to three European commissioners on August 27 stressing that current European regulation was not enough and calling for coordinated and cross-sector EU action. Read Article
Daily Telegraph – Research published today has discovered that a third of television viewers now watch their favourite programmes online, on computers and mobile phones.
The joint study by the Radio Times and SeeSaw.com has highlighted changes in the way people now view programmes. Read article
Bloomberg – Wheat prices rose the most in a week on speculation that dry weather will reduce output more than forecast in Argentina and Russia. Argentina is “too dry,” and more rain is needed to boost yields in Russia and Ukraine, where growers are preparing to plant winter wheat, according to T-Storm Weather in Chicago. Wheat futures have jumped 47 percent since the end of June as adverse weather reduced harvests and crop prospects. Read Article
Daily Telegraph – Last month was the coldest August for 17 years, recording the chilliest average temperatures since 1993 without a single “hot day”, figures show. Read Article
Daily Mail – Unemployment is set to soar past 10 per cent in the next five years across large parts of the country, a leading economic think tank has warned. A combination of government spending cuts, sluggish growth in the private sector and weak demand for British exports will push up the jobless rate in the north and in Wales, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research. But workers in London and the South-East will escape relatively unscathed as the economy slows. Read Article
EUOBSERVER – People’s confidence in the the European Union has dropped to record lows in most countries amid a placid response to the rising unemployment and the troubles of the eurozone, a Eurobarometer published on Thursday (26 August) shows. Fewer than half of Europe’s citizens (49 percent) think that their country’s membership of the EU is a “good thing” – a seven-year low – while trust in the bloc’s institutions has dropped to 42 percent, six points down compared to autumn 2009. Read Article
Wall Street Journal – An agreement signed by the administration of the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan in Iraq with German utility RWE AG (RWE.XE) to source gas from the area to feed the planned Nabucco pipeline is illegal, the federal Iraqi oil ministry said. Read Article
The Independent – Tony Blair secretly courted Robert Mugabe in an effort to win lucrative trade deals for Britain, it has emerged in correspondence released to The Independent under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents show that the relationship between New Labour and the Zimbabwean President blossomed soon after Tony Blair took office in Downing Street. Just weeks after the Government unveiled its ethical foreign policy in May 1997, the British PM wrote a personal letter to Mr Mugabe congratulating him on his role in unifying Africa and helping to improve relations between the continent and Britain. Read Article
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