Two More Women Die After Abortion Pills
WASHINGTON,
July
19 - Two
more California women have died after taking abortion pills,
and federal drug regulators say they suspect bacterial infections as
the cause. As a result, the drug's label will be changed to warn women
and doctors to watch out for signs of an unusual infection that is not
always accompanied by fever, the Food and Drug Administration announced
Tuesday.
Five
women in the
United States have now died after taking abortion pills; four
of them most likely suffered lethal bacterial infections, said Dr.
Steven Galson, director of the agency's center for drugs.
Dr. Galson
emphasized that the
agency did not know whether these infections were caused by the use of
Mifeprex, the abortion medicine also known as misoprostol or RU-486.
The latest
warnings about
Mifeprex will be included in a "black box" warning that is already on
the drug's label. Such warnings are the highest level of
alert by the drug agency.
Wendy Wright,
senior policy
director for Concerned Women of America, a conservative women's group,
said news of the latest death proved that label changes would
not make the drug safe.
"Changing the
label the last
time clearly didn't help the latest woman who died," Ms. Wright said. "Sadly,
people who support RU-486 apparently believe the risk of death is
preferable to having a child."
nytimes.com 7/20/05
Sharon Invites New Pope To Visit Israel
Israel's
ambassador to the
Vatican today said Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has invited Pope
Benedict to visit Israel, and the pontiff responded that such a trip
was a "priority."
Ambassador Oded
Ben-Hur said
Sharon extended the invitation in a letter presented today to Benedict
by Israeli Communications Minister Dalia Itzik and Israeli Government
Secretary Israel Maimon.
Ben-Hur said
that when the
content of the letter was explained, Benedict responded by saying in
English that he would be delighted to visit Israel.
rferl.org 7/6/05
Benedict XVI Welcomes A Torch Of Peace
VATICAN
CITYBenedict XVI welcomed
the Benedictine Torch of Peace in St. Peters Square and expressed hope
that the pilgrimage of this flame will remind Europe of its Christian
values.
In its 30th
annual pilgrimage,
the torch arrived Tuesday night in Rome from Moscow. The torch
symbolizes St. Benedict of Norcias message of solidarity and
fraternity.
The torch was
brought to the
Vatican today by Bishop Riccardo Fontano of Spoleto-Norcia, accompanied
by pilgrims.
As the Pope
himself explained at
the end of the general audience, the torch "made a stop in Germany, in
the monastery of Ottobeuren, and in Marktl am Inn, where I was born."
"As a symbolic
sign of peace,
today it pauses before the tombs of the apostles, and will then proceed
to Norcia," he added. "May this evocative initiative inspire an ever
more generous commitment to witness Christian values in Europe."
zenit.org 7/6/05
Antibiotics Can Lead To Resistant Bacteria Increase
Using
antibiotics can
lead to an increase in the chances of a patient carrying antibiotic
resistant bacteria, a study revealed today.
The study tested
urine samples
from 3,000 healthy adults registered with GPs in the Bristol and
Gloucester areas.
The
researchers found
samples taken from people who had been prescribed antibiotics within
two months of the test were almost twice as likely to carry antibiotic
resistant E.coli bacteria.
Dr. Alastair
Hay, from Bristol
University, who is also a GP in the city, said the resistant
strains had been given an advantage by the antibiotics.
The E.coli
bacteria, naturally
found in the human gut, were tested for resistance to the common
antibiotics Amoxicillin and Trimethoprim.
Patients who had
taken
antibiotics 12 months before the test did not have increased levels of
resistant bacteria because the time period was too long and
non-resistant bacteria had returned.
Dr. Hay said GPs
would not be
too concerned when it came to prescribing antibiotics in the future.
Dr. Hay said: "We know that the use of antibiotics in the last
50 or 60 years has led to the development of antibiotic resistant
bacteria on a population level..."
The research,
funded by the
British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy is published in the July
2005 edition of the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy.
rense.com 7/19/05
Israel Parliament Rejects Gaza Pullout Delay
JERUSALEM—Israel's
parliament today voted against delaying a withdrawal from the occupied
Gaza Strip, squashing a late attempt by settler allies to stall the
plan due to start next month.
Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon's
allies easily rejected three bills proposing delays of between three
months and one year, but the vote again exposed the division in Israel
over the plan to "disengage'' from conflict with the Palestinians.
Keeping up the pressure, thousands of rightist
protesters in southern
Israel vowed to force their way past a police blockade and march to the
main settlement bloc.
Internal
rivalries heightened by
the pullout plan also flared on the other side of the lines. Gunmen
from President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction clashed with Hamas
militants hours after they agreed to end the worst domestic violence in
years.
Most Israelis
support the
withdrawal of the 8,500 Gaza settlers and a few hundred of the more
than 230,000 in the West Bank, but opponents do not want to give up any
land captured in the 1967 war and which they see as God's gift.
PROTESTERS VOW
TO MARCH
Camped
in desert heat at a village near the Gaza Strip, thousands of
protesters said the defeat in parliament made no difference to their
campaign to march to the main settlement bloc of Gush Katif and hamper
the withdrawal.
To stop any
possible breakout,
police set coils of razor wire around the three-day-old encampment at
Kfar Maimon that has become a symbol of settler resistance.
Washington
hopes the
first withdrawal from land Palestinians want for a state will spur
stalled negotiations on a "road map'' for peace.
To try to ensure
that all goes
smoothly, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is due in the region
on Thursday on a visit that was arranged hastily last week when a
five-month-old truce looked in danger of collapse.
Tension remained
high in the
Gaza Strip despite an overnight deal between Abbas's Fatah and Hamas
militants to stop fighting each other. At least five fighters were
wounded in pre-dawn clashes before the intervention of leaders from
both groups.
deepikaglobal.com 7/20/05
Suicide Bomber Kills 6 Army Recruits In Baghdad
BAGHDAD, July 20
(Reuters) A
man strapped with explosives blew himself up among a group of Iraqi
army recruits in Baghdad today, killing six people and wounding 25,
police and hospital officials said.
Police sources
said the bomber
mingled with a crowd outside the recruiting center at an abandoned
airfield in the Muthana district of central Baghdad before detonating
an explosive belt.
Officials at
Yarmouk hospital,
nearest to the site of the attack, said they had received six dead and
25 wounded.
Insurgents in
Iraq are
increasingly using bombers strapped with explosives to carry out
attacks. On Saturday, a suicide bomber blew himself up next to a fuel
truck in a town south of Baghdad, killing 98 people in a mass
conflagration.
The US
military has
described suicide bombers as the insurgents' form of precision-guided
weapons and has made targeting them a priority.
deepikaglobal.com 7/20/05
Mother Implicated Herself, D.C. Police Say
The
mother of a
6-year-old boy who was found dead in a bathtub with his wrists and
ankles bound was undergoing psychiatric tests last night after emerging
as a suspect in her child's slaying, D.C. police officials
said.
In interviews
with detectives
Monday and again yesterday, Julia Barber, 27, gave several rambling
statements that detectives believe implicate her in the killing of
Donmiguel Nathaniel Wilson Jr., police officials said. Police
videotaped the interviews, including a conversation between Barber and
her mother in which she discussed her son's death, police officials
said.
Barber, who also
has an
11-month-old son, complained in the interviews about the stress of
being a parent and said she had been having problems with
Donmiguel because he was not accepting her current boyfriend, police
said.
Donmiguel, known
as D.J., was
scheduled to start second grade at M.C. Terrell Elementary School in
September. His body, bound with cloth at the wrists and ankles and
lying in a foot and a half of water, was discovered Monday morning by
his grandmother when she arrived at the apartment in the 3200 block of
Wheeler Road to take him to camp.
washingstonpost.com 7/20/05
N.
Korea
To Resume
Nuclear Disarmament Talks July 26, S. Korea Says
SEOUL, South
Korea—South Korea said yesterday that North Korea will resume
nuclear disarmament talks July 26 after a 13-month boycott, with
diplomats from five nations stepping up pressure on Pyongyang to scrap
its nuclear weapons program.
North
Korea agreed
this month to return to the Beijing talks after being assured by the
top U.S. nuclear envoy that Washington recognizes its sovereignty.
South Korea's Foreign Ministry said the talks would convene July 26. No
closing date was given.
The previous
three rounds, which
started in 2003, lasted several days and failed to lead to a
breakthrough. South Korea is pressing for this round of six-nation
talks to be more flexible and last longer - possibly a month or more.
South Korea
plans to "play a
progressive and active role in making substantial progress at this
round of six-party talks for resolution of the North Korean nuclear
problem," the Foreign Ministry said.
China,
Japan, Russia,
South Korea and the United States have tried to persuade North Korea to
abandon its nuclear effort. The nuclear crisis began in late 2002 when
U.S. officials accused the North of running a secret uranium enrichment
program.
In
February, North
Korea claimed publicly for the first time that it has nuclear weapons,
and it has said since then that it has made other moves that would
enable production of weapons-grade plutonium from its main nuclear
reactor. Experts believe North Korea has enough plutonium to
make at least six bombs, but it has never tested any weapons that would
confirm its arsenal.
nytimes.com 7/20/05
Philippine Opposition Sharpens Impeachment Charges
MANILA—Philippine
opposition politicians said today they were hardening up an impeachment
case against President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and intended
to file at least 10 charges against her within days.
Arroyo,
whose second
term is due to run until 2010, is battling a crisis centred on
allegations she cheated her way back into office during last year's
presidential election and that members of her family took kickbacks
from illegal gambling.
"We are planning
to file at
least 10 charges against the president,'' opposition congressman Rolex
Suplico said.
Suplico declined
to elaborate on
the charges but Francis Escudero, who leads the opposition in the lower
house, said earlier this week that the offences being documented
focused on corruption, cheating and betrayal of public trust.
While the
opposition initially
shied away from impeachment, wary of Arroyo's majorities in both houses
of Congress, shifting loyalities have emboldened their efforts.
The president,
who apologised
for speaking to an election official last year but denied any
wrong-doing, has agreed to set up a "truth commission'' to look into
the allegations of vote-rigging in the May 2004 poll.
Influential
former president
Fidel Ramos, who has put forth a proposal to transform the political
landscape by changing the constitution, said the U.S.-style
presidential system had failed and the nation needed to switch to a
parliamentary system.
"Ms Arroyo's
impeachment or
resignation would be a bitter and contentious process and the divisions
between hardliners on both sides would take a long time to heal,''
Ramos wrote in Wednesday's Asian Wall Street Journal.
A parliamentary
system would
enable people to throw out a government in a peaceful manner, he said.
Arroyo's aides
have said she is
seriously looking at the Ramos plan, which includes her staying on as
caretaker until fresh elections next year.
deepikaglobal.com 7/20/05
Bystanders Recount Deadly London Attacks
LONDON—The roof of the
red double-decker bus flew 30 feet into the air. Flames shot down the
side of one subway and train cars went dark after a loud bang. Trapped
passengers threw themselves to the floor, smashed windows with
umbrellas or wept in terror.
The
four coordinated
explosions hit London commuter routes in the middle of morning rush
hour, killing dozens of people and wounding hundreds more. In
the aftermath, rescue workers, police and ordinary people streamed into
blood-splattered streets to help. Buses ferried the wounded. Medics
used a hotel as a hospital.
The first subway
blast hit at
8:51 a.m., the others at 8:56 a.m. and 9:17 a.m. The bus exploded a
half-hour later.
Passengers
emerged from the
London Underground covered with blood and soot.
Raj Mattoo, 35,
said the
explosion seemed to occur at the back of the bus. "The roof flew off
and went up about (30 feet). It then floated back down."
Just a day
before, London basked
in the glory of winning the 2012 Olympic Games, with wild celebrations
on Trafalgar Square. Now, the Union Jack at Buckingham Palace flew at
half-staff in respect for the dead and injured.
An eerie quiet
took hold in
parts of the city.
Police went on
emergency alert
code amber as soon as they understood what was happening, shutting down
all subways and buses and evacuating passengers, said Brian Paddick of
London Metro Police.
washingtonpost.com 7/7/05
Pentagon Wants U.S. Ready For 2 Wars At Same Time
The
Pentagon is considering a change in its military strategy that
requires U.S. soldiers to be ready to fight two major wars at the same
time, The New York times reported.
The newspaper
said that the
changes are aimed at freeing more resources for the defense of U.S.
territory and the fight against terrorism.
In their
Qadrennial Defense
Review mandated by Congress, top military officials are concerned that
the concentration of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq is limiting
the armys ability to deal with other potential armed conflicts, The
Times said.
"The two-war
model provides
enough people and weapons to mount a major campaign, like the Persian
Gulf war of 1991 or the invasion of Iraq in 2003, while maintaining
enough reserves to respond in a similar manner elsewhere," the daily
said.
The
Pentagon is now
questioning the concept of the two-war strategy, the daily said, adding
that a prolonged military commitment, like the one in Iraq, can prevent
the military from engaging in full-scale campaigns elsewhere.
Military
officials are also
considering in detail what would happen if the U.S. decided
to attack China, North Korea or Iran.
"The war in Iraq
requires a very
large ground-force presence… War with China or
North Korea or Iran… would require a much more capable Navy
and Air Force," said Loren Thompson, an analyst at the
Lexington Institute, a policy research center in Arlington, Virginia.
"What we need
for conventional
victory is different from what we need for fighting insurgents, and
fighting insurgents has relatively little connection to stopping the
spread of nuclear weapons. We can't afford it all," he added.
rense.com 7/6/05
Court Backs Some Ten Commandments Displays
WASHINGTON,
D.C.—In a
pair of cases dealing with church-state separation, the U.S. Supreme
Court allowed the Ten Commandments to be displayed outside the Texas
state capital but not inside Kentucky courthouses.
The
court today said
that displays of the Ten Commandments on government property are not
inherently unconstitutional.
But each exhibit
must be
reviewed to determine if it amounts to a governmental promotion of
religion, the court said in a case involving the Kentucky courthouses.
zenit.org 6/27/05
Tattooed Fruit Is On Way
A pear is just a
pear, except
when it is also a laser-coded information delivery system with advanced
security clearance.
And that is what
pears—not to mention organic apples, waxy cucumbers and
delicate peaches—are becoming in some supermarkets around the
country. A new technology being used by produce distributors
employs lasers to tattoo fruits and vegetables with their names,
identifying numbers, countries of origin and other information that
helps speed distribution. The marks are burned onto the outer
layer of the skin and are visible to discerning consumers and befuddled
cashiers alike.
A new laser
technology for
labeling fruits and vegetables, designed by Durand-Wayland, Inc., is
being put to work at Southern Oregon Sales, a pear distributor in
Medford, Ore.
The process,
government approved
and called safe by the industry, may sound sinister. But it was
designed with the consumer in mind: laser coding could mean the end of
those tiny stubborn stickers that have to be picked, scraped or yanked
off produce.
The
stickerless
technology has a broader purpose, too: it is part of the produce
industry's latest effort to identify and track, whether for profit or
for security, everything Americans eat. Since 9/11, the
industry has been encouraged to develop "track and trace" technology to
allow protection of the food supply at various stages of distribution.
In addition, next year federal regulations will require all imported
produce to be labeled with the country of origin.
The
tattooed fruit is
being sold in stores nationwide as other tracing methods are also being
tested, like miniaturized bar coding and cameras with
advanced recognition technology that can identify fruits and vegetables
at the checkout counter. In Japan, apples have been sold with scannable
bar coding etched into the wax on their skin. No one knows exactly when
every piece of fruit will be traceable, but the trend is clear:
Wal-Mart is already requiring all pallets delivered to its headquarters
in Bentonville, Ark., to be fitted with radio frequency identification
tags, so that they can be tracked by a satellite.
But the carrier
of information
about fruits and vegetables in America remains the tiny sticker called
the P.L.U., for "price look-up." It is unpopular not just with
consumers but with the industry itself.
In 2002
Durand-Wayland, a fruit
grower and distributor in Georgia, bought the patent for a process that
etches the price look-up number and any other information the retailer
or customer might desire directly into the skin of the fruit. Greg
Drouillard, who originally patented laser coding for produce and who
now works for Durand-Wayland, said the process permanently tattoos each
piece of fruit, removing only the outer pigment to reveal a contrasting
layer underneath and make the tattoo readable, even scannable.
nytimes.com 7/19/05
Six-way nuclear talks may head to overtime-S.Korea
SEOUL—Negotiators
at talks next week in Beijing to end North Korea's nuclear weapons
ambitions are ready to work beyond the four days of previous sessions
in order to reach a deal, South Korea's foreign minister said
today.
Ban Ki-moon said
Seoul had
received assurances from parties to the six-country talks that they can
extend the sessions, allow for breaks in order for consultations with
their home countries and change the format to allow for more time for
hard bargaining.
The
talks involving
the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and host China open on
July 26 after a break of more than a year. Three previous
rounds since August 2003 lasted around four days each and produced
little real progress.
All of the
parties, including
North Korea, have said they want to make progress at the fourth round.
Seoul has offered North Korea a sweetener, pledging to supply Pyongyang
with 2,000 megawatts of power—almost the equivalent of its
present electricity output—if it scraps its weapons
programmes.
Analysts
have warned
that North Korea may try to turn the discussions into mutual
disarmament talks, where it is treated on a par with Washington as a
nuclear weapons state.
They said that
if Pyongyang
pressed this point, it could scuttle the talks because patience is
wearing thin among the other parties, who would see this as an unwanted
diversion.
A North Korean
diplomat in Hong
Kong told Russia's Interfax news agency that Pyongyang would call on
Washington to remove its nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula at
the next round of talks. Washington has steadfastly said it has no such
weapons deployed on the peninsula.
North Korea
declared in February
that it was a nuclear weapons state and in March called for the
six-party talks to become discussions on mutual nuclear disarmament.
It agreed
earlier this month to
return to the talks after South Korea offered it the electricity aid.
North Korea
reaffirmed on
Wednesday its commitment to tackle the nuclear issue at the talks. But
it said Japan had no role to play because Tokyo was complicating an
already difficult process by seeking to raise the issue of Japanese
citizens abducted by North Korea decades ago.
"Japan will find
nothing to do
at the future six-party talks even if it attends them unless it drops
its crooked viewpoint and way of thinking,'' the official KCNA news
agency said in a commentary.
U.S. Secretary
of State
Condoleezza Rice said last week the issue of Japanese abductees was a
valid subject for the six-party talks. But South Korea sees the issue
as a strictly bilateral matter between North Korea and Japan, to be
discussed on the sidelines of the nuclear talks.
"Our basic
position is that the
purpose of the six-party talks is to resolve the North Korean nuclear
issue, and so discussions should focus on that,'' a Seoul official
said.
U.S. Ambassador
to Japan Thomas
Schieffer said the nuclear issue was the top priority for the upcoming
nuclear talks.
"That issue has
to be addressed
and if that issue is not resolved, then it seems to me that
nothing else is achievable,'' Schieffer told reporters on
Wednesday.
deepikaglobal.com 7/20/05