Daily Telegraph – The research shows that mentally stimulating activities such as brain training games, crossword puzzles, reading and listening to the radio protect the brain from memory loss and slowing of thought. But later on, they exacerbate the speed at which conditions such as Alzheimer’s Disease take hold. Dr Robert Wilson, of Rush University Medical Centre in Chicago, said the benefits of an active mind may come at a cost later in life – although he did not know why. Read article
Associated Press – An anti-abortion group plans to air radio ads in three congressional races calling for the defeat of Democratic incumbents, among the first ads to capitalize on a Supreme Court ruling this year that freed corporations to directly influence elections. The group, AUL Action, is targeting Democratic Reps. John Boccieri of Ohio, Christopher Carney of Pennsylvania and Baron Hill of Indiana. AUL Action is the legislative arm of the nonprofit Americans United for Life. Ad spending is on a record pace as outside groups raise more money from corporations, individuals and unions. Read Article
New Scientist – …illegal drugs are not generally associated with the lab bench. Now, for the first time in decades, that is starting to change. For almost 40 years, mainstream research has shied away from investigating the therapeutic benefits of drugs whose recreational use is prohibited by law. But a better understanding of how these drugs work in animal studies, and the advancement of brain-imaging techniques, has sparked a swathe of new research. What’s more, clinical trials of MDMA (ecstasy), LSD and other psychoactive drugs are starting to yield some positive results. Read article
MSNBC-Some evacuated with water, power, bridges, roads out across city of 350,000. About 1,000 residents of a suburb were told to evacuate their homes Saturday after a major earthquake caused extensive damage in Christchurch, New Zealand’s second-largest city, authorities said. Two men were seriously injured and scores of other people suffered less serious injuries in the aftermath of the quake, which registered 7.0 on the Richter scale at 4:35 a.m -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
AP — The number of illegal immigrants living in the U.S. has dropped for the first time in two decades – decreasing by 8 percent since 2007, a new study finds. The reasons range from the sour economy to Mexican violence and increased U.S. enforcement that has made it harder to sneak across the border. Much of the decline comes from a sharp drop-off in illegal immigrants from the Caribbean, Central America and South America attempting to cross the southern border of the U.S., according to the Pew Hispanic Center, which based its report on an analysis of 2009 census data. Read article
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NY Times – The specialty pharmaceutical company Allergan has agreed to pay $600 million to settle civil and criminal accusations that it illegally marketed Botox, the drug used in antiwrinkle injections, for medical uses for which the drug had not been approved. In the settlement with the Justice Department, the company agreed to plead guilty to one misdemeanor charge and pay $375 million to the government for misbranding — making statements about a drug for a use not approved in the product label by the Food and Drug Administration. Read article
NY Times — At 18 months, Kyle Warren started taking a daily antipsychotic drug on the orders of a pediatrician trying to quell the boy’s severe temper tantrums. Thus began a troubled toddler’s journey from one doctor to another, from one diagnosis to another, involving even more drugs. Autism, bipolar disorder, hyperactivity, insomnia, oppositional defiant disorder. The boy’s daily pill regimen multiplied: the antipsychotic Risperdal, the antidepressant Prozac, two sleeping medicines and one for attention-deficit disorder. All by the time he was 3. 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
Wall Street Journal – A top shareholder in Afghanistan’s largest bank called on the U.S. to shore up the lender after depositors withdrew about a third of its cash reserves in two days, while the country sought to avert a destabilizing crisis at a crucial moment in the fight against the Taliban. Mahmood Karzai, brother of Afghanistan’s president and the third-largest shareholder in Kabul Bank, urged the U.S. to calm the situation, saying the lender could keep up with the pace of withdrawals for only a few more days. 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
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
AP-Another oil rig exploded and caught fire Thursday off the Louisiana coast, spreading a mile-long oil sheen in the Gulf of Mexico west of the site of BP’s massive spill. All 13 crew members were rescued. Coast Guard Petty Officer Bill Coklough said the sheen, about 100 feet wide, was spotted near the platform. Firefighting vessels were battling the flames -Read Article
ScienceDaily — While preterm birth is a known risk factor for cerebral palsy, an examination of data for infants born at term or later finds that compared with delivery at 40 weeks, birth at 37 or 38 weeks or at 42 weeks or later was associated with an increased risk of cerebral palsy, according to a study in the September 1 issue of JAMA [Journal of the American Medical Association]. Read article
Rassmussen – Vaccinations are common requirements for children all over the country in order to attend public school and college. However, half of American adults (52%) say they are concerned about the safety of vaccinations for children, including 27% who are Very Concerned. A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds that 44% are not concerned about the safety of vaccines for children. But this includes just 13% whoa re Not At All Concerned. Read article
Bloomberg – The American Civil Liberties Union sued the U.S. government over an alleged policy of killing American citizens who are suspected of terrorism. The lawsuit, filed today in federal court in Washington, argued that such targeted assassinations by the government are unconstitutional. “A program that authorizes killing U.S. citizens, without judicial oversight, due process or disclosed standards is unconstitutional, unlawful and un-American,” ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said in a statement announcing the filing of the case against U.S. President Barack Obama, the Defense Department and the Central Intelligence Agency. Read Article
USA Today – Off-balance-sheet liabilities. Bad mortgage loans. Uncertain growth prospects. These issues, which nearly toppled the U.S. banking industry and triggered the financial meltdown, are increasingly threatening the stability of Chinese banks. Last week, a slew of Chinese banks – including Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, Bank of China and Agricultural Bank of China – reported strong profits. Read Article
ScienceDaily — A new study led by Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) epidemiologists has found that women who took over-the-counter decongestants during their pregnancies are less likely to give birth prematurely. Read article
AFP — The number of US soldiers killed in the Afghan war in 2010 is the highest annual toll since the conflict began almost nine years ago, according to an AFP count Wednesday. A total of 323 US soldiers have been killed in the Afghan war this year, compared to 317 for all of 2009, according to AFP figures based on the independent icasualties.org website. At 490, the overall death toll for foreign troops for the first eight months of the year is rapidly closing in the number registered in all of 2009, which at 521 was a record since the start of the war in late 2001. In all 1,270 American troops have lost their lives, out of 2,058 foreign military fatalities, since the conflict began with the US-led invasion of Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington in 2001. Read Article
ABC – The US government will have unmanned surveillance aircraft monitoring the whole border with Mexico from September 1, as it ramps up border security. Homeland security secretary Janet Napolitano said US Customs and Border Protection would begin flying a Predator B drone out of Corpus Christi, Texas, on Wednesday. That will extend the reach of the the agency’s unmanned surveillance aircraft across the length of the nearly 3,200 km border with Mexico. Read Article
Daily Telegraph – A series of bomb attacks have badly hit US troops in eastern and southern Afghanistan in the past 48 hours, contributing to the toll. Violence is predicted to rise towards the September 18 parliamentary elections and as American troops begin operations west of Kandahar after the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Deaths among the Nato-led coalition have reached 485 this year and are predicted to surpass 2009’s total of 521. Read Article
Reuters – The CIA is making payments to a significant number of officials in Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s administration, The Washington Post reported. Citing current and former U.S. officials, the paper said the payments were long-standing in many cases and intended to help the agency maintain a source of information within the Afghan government. Some Karzai aides were CIA informants and others received payments to ensure their accessibility, the Post said, citing a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity. Read Article
Washington Post – The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a federal lawsuit Monday challenging the U.S. government’s authority to target and kill U.S. citizens outside of war zones when they are suspected of involvement in terrorism. The civil liberties groups sued in U.S. District Court in Washington after being retained by the father of Anwar al-Aulaqi, a radical U.S.-born cleric who is in hiding in Yemen. The CIA placed Aulaqi on its list of suspected terrorists it is authorized to kill earlier this year; the cleric had been on a separate list of individuals targeted by the Joint Special Operations Command. Read Article
Mercury News – Cupertino students could add electronic “tracking devices” to the list of items they carry in their backpacks this fall. The Cupertino Public Safety Commission wants to test a new program that uses a tracking device to count how many students walk and bike to school in the notoriously congested tri-school area near Bubb and McClellan roads. The commission is working on the logistics of bringing the Boltage program to Lincoln Elementary and Kennedy Middle schools this fall. The goal is to get more cars off the road. The Boltage system uses a machine called the Zap, a solar-powered radio frequency identification reader. Students who walk and bike in the program get an RFID tag that attaches to their backpack, and the Zap reads their unique number when they go past it at the school. 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
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