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
AOL News-A Boston lab hired by the United Commercial Fishermen’s Association to analyze coastal fishing waters says findings suggest the government’s claim that Gulf of Mexico seafood is safe to eat may be premature. The lab, Boston Chemical Data Corp., said it found dispersant in a sample taken near Biloxi, Miss., almost a month after BP said it had stopped using the toxic chemical to break up the record amounts of crude spewed by the Gulf oil spill. The leak was finally capped on July 15 -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
Reuters – Widely used anticonvulsant drugs, including Pfizer’s Neurontin and Novartis’ Trileptal, may increase the risk of suicide, attempted suicide and violent death in patients taking them for the first time, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday. Compared with Johnson & Johnson’s generic epilepsy drug topiramate or Topamax, the team found an increased risk for suicide in new users of Neurontin, sold generically as gabapentin, GlaxoSmithKline’s Lamictal or lamotrigine, Novartis’ Trileptal or oxcarbazepine and Cephalon’s Gabitril or tiagabine. [The] team also found an increased risk of suicide with the drug valproate sold by Sanofi-Aventis as Epilim and as Depakine in the United States by Abbott Laboratories Inc. Read article
Daily Telegraph – The Chinese now consume more than twice as much organic food as health-conscious Japan. The market is worth an annual 10billion yuan (£1billion) having quadrupled in the past five years. For comparison, the British organic market is worth roughly £2billion. Interest has been promoted by a series of scares including toxic beans, contaminated milk and pork, pesticide-laced dumplings, chemically-tainted chicken, and the growing presence of what is known as “sewage oil”. Read article
Reuters – Two Iowa egg farms linked to a salmonella outbreak that has sickened thousands failed to follow their own safety plans, allowing rodents and other animals into poultry houses, U.S. Food and Drug Administration inspectors found. The latest details come days after the FDA pinpointed a bacteria found in chicken feed at the two farms as a probable source of the outbreak, which prompted the recall of more than a half billion eggs. During inspections conducted on August 19-26, officials found rodent holes and leaking manure at several locations run by Hillandale Farms of Iowa, and non-chicken feathers and live mice and flies at houses owned by Wright County Egg, according to reports posted on the FDA website. Read article
AllAfrica .Com – A meeting held yesterday in Mendefera town highlighted the need for exerting coordinated endeavors on the part of all government institutions in raising public awareness in introducing renewable energy, as it has vital role to play in preventing deforestation. In the meeting in which the ministers of land, water and environment, as well as agriculture and justice took part, briefings were given regarding the condition of forests and the alarming irresponsible cutting down of trees in the Southern region -Read Article
AP — Andrew White returned from a nine-month tour in Iraq beset with signs of post-traumatic stress disorder: insomnia, nightmares, constant restlessness. Doctors tried to ease his symptoms using three psychiatric drugs, including a potent anti-pyschotic called Seroquel. Thousands of soldiers suffering from PTSD have received the same medication over the last nine years, helping to make Seroquel one of the Veteran Affairs Department’s top drug expenditures and the No. 5 best-selling drug in the nation. Several soldiers and veterans have died while taking the pills, raising concerns among some military families that the government is not being up front about the drug’s risks. Read article
Related article: Advocates see trouble for misdiagnosed soldiers
NY Times-In a remote reach of the Gulf of Mexico, nearly 200 miles from shore, a floating oil platform thrusts its tentacles deep into the ocean like a giant steel octopus. The $3 billion rig, called Perdido, can pump oil from dozens of wells nearly two miles under the sea while simultaneously drilling new ones. It is part of a wave of ultra-deep platforms -Read Article
About Lawsuits – The results of two new studies are raising questions about the value of requiring patients to undergo a genetic test to see whether the blood thinner Plavix will be effective in preventing blood clots that can cause heart attacks and strokes. The studies were introduced last week at the European Society of Cardiologists 2010 Congress in Stockholm, Sweden. One study showed that a proposed AstraZeneca drug, Brilinta (ticagrelor) was more effective than Plavix regardless of the genetics of the patient. Another study that looked at previous research, compared Plavix with a placebo and failed to find a link between a patient’s genetics and whether they received a benefit from the drug. Read article
DailyFinance-The BP (BP) oil spill may be over, but controversy over the company’s use of toxic oil dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico is still going strong. Although BP allegedly stopped using the chemicals more than a month ago, area residents claim it is still spraying Corexit, a chemical dispersant, from airplanes and boats -Read Article
Sydney Morning Herald – BHP Billiton Ltd’s credit rating will remain at desired levels after funding the $US40 billion ($A45.2 billion) takeover of Canadian fertiliser maker Potash Corporation, the mining giant’s chief financial officer says. Alex Vanselow says the miner is committed to maintaining its credit rating above investment grade. “We are not foreseen to go below investment grade, and that’s a commitment that we’ve made in our strategy,” Mr Vanselow told ABC Television on Sunday. Read Article
Columbia Reports – Private military firm Blackwater violated U.S. arms trafficking regulations when training the Colombian military in 2005, a leaked State Department report shows. The controversial firm, renamed Xe Services LLC in 2009, was fined $42 million for violating US export and arms traffic laws on 228 occasions, mostly related to military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Read Article
Irish Times-THE GOVERNMENT must immediately implement its pledge to declare Ireland a GM-free zone outlined in its programme for government, the Irish Organic Farmers and Growers Association has said. It said the recent two-pronged decision by the European Commission granting states and regions more autonomy in banning but also in allowing GM cultivation, made this a matter of urgency -Read Article
Reuters- The Canadian government has voiced concerns about a European Union proposal to allow member states to decide whether to ban genetically modified (GM) crops. The bloc’s executive — the European Commission — submitted the proposal in July in a bid to break a deadlock in EU GM approvals, with just two products authorized for cultivation since 1998 -Read Article
AFP — Blackwater private security firm founder Erik Prince was questioned on Monday in Abu Dhabi in connection with a fraud lawsuit filed by former employees that seeks millions of dollars in damages. Read Article
The Guardian – Mark Thompson, the BBC director general, has launched a scathing attack on Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, warning that BSkyB is too powerful and threatens to “dwarf” the BBC and its competitors. He said that News Corp, in effect controlled by the Murdoch family, now enjoys unprecedented industry power in the UK. News Corp owns 39% of Sky and is in the process of buying the part of the broadcaster it does not already own. Read article
Wall Street Journal – The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation took advantage of sagging stock prices in the second quarter to add Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), one of the most storied names in finance, to its portfolio, according to a 13F regulatory filing. Read Article
Huffington Post – Monsanto in Gates’ Clothing? The Emperor’s New GMO’s – If you had any doubts about where the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is really placing its bets, AGRA Watch’s recent announcement of the Foundation’s investment of $23.1 million in 500,000 shares of Monsanto stock should put them to rest. Genetic engineering: full speed ahead. Read Article
The Australian-THE company behind last year’s Montara oil spill off the Kimberley coast faces a multi-billion-dollar claim from the Indonesian government. Officials from Jakarta have held negotiations in Perth this week with the Australian subsidiary of Thai-owned explorer PTTEP over the spill, in which thousands of barrels of oil and condensate poured into the Timor Sea and spread into Indonesian waters- Read Article
Yes Magazine-April Dávila wondered what it would take to cut the GMO giant out of her family’s life. She found that it was far more entrenched than she’d ever realized. In January of this year, while procrastinating on Facebook, I followed a link to an article reporting on evidence that there may be health effects associated with consuming Monsanto’s genetically modified (GM) corn-Read Article
NPR-Hurricane Katrina, and the destruction it wrought, are often referred to as a natural disaster. Think again, says actor Harry Shearer. In his documentary, The Big Uneasy, Shearer says much of the destruction in New Orleans was man-made and preventable — and largely the fault of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers -Read Article
Reuters – Bacteria found in chicken feed used at two Iowa farms has been linked to a salmonella outbreak that prompted the recall of more than a half billion contaminated eggs, U.S. regulators said on Thursday. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it would keep investigating to determine whether the bacteria originated in the chicken feed or arrived there from another source. Read article
Helsinki Times – The Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) on Tuesday recommended that the use of the Pandemrix vaccine is suspended. The recommendation is a precautionary measure. A possible connection between the swine flu vaccine and narcolepsy is currently being investigated. The THL has stopped the use of Pandemrix until the narcolepsy cases have been studied thoroughly. Read article
Business Week – A diagnosis of AIDS was a death sentence until the advent of drug cocktails in the 1990s allowed patients to suppress the disease indefinitely. Now scientists say a similar combination strategy may change the course of cancer treatment. That’s the bet being made at Roche Holding, AstraZeneca (AZN), and Sanofi-Aventis (SNY), whose latest efforts to develop a new generation of combination treatments are prompting the U.S. Food & Drug Administration to rewrite the rules for drug research. Read article
Physorg – Tobacco companies have always vehemently denied advertising on the Internet. Several of them signed up to a voluntary agreement to restrict direct advertising on websites by the end of 2002. The authors targeted YouTube, because it has the largest market share of the online video market, and searched through the first 20 pages of video clips containing any reference to five tobacco brands. Read Article
