27 février 2010
Cuba dissidents 'to refuse food'
Several Cuban dissidents say they will refuse food in protest at the death earlier this week of a jailed government opponent.
Opposition group the Cuban Commission for Human Rights said four jailed dissidents would reject solid food.
Another anti-government activist, who is not in jail, has said he is also giving up food and drink.
Orlando Zapata Tamayo died on Tuesday in a hospital in the capital Havana after a hunger strike of 85 days.
His death triggered international protests and Cuban President Raul Castro issued an expression of regret.
The four jailed dissidents planning to begin a hunger strike are Eduardo Diaz Fleitas, Diosdado Gonzalez Marrero, Nelson Molinet Espino and Fidel Suarez Cruz, the commission said.
Guillermo Farinas, an activist and journalist who lives in the city of Santa Clara, has said he is already refusing food and is experiencing headaches as a result.
'Tribute'
"The reason for my [hunger] strike is so that the government will not cause the murders of political prisoners as it happened with Zapata," Mr Farinas told Spanish news agency Efe by telephone.
"It is also a tribute to him," he added.
Mr Farinas has held more than 20 hunger strikes since 1995.
Zapata, who was 42, was arrested in 2003 in a crackdown on opposition activists and was initially jailed for three years.
However, this was increased to 25 years in subsequent trials after he was charged with disobedience and disorder in a penal establishment, London-based rights group Amnesty International said.
Amnesty, which considered Zapata a "prisoner of conscience", said "a full investigation must be carried out to establish whether ill-treatment may have played a part" in his death.
President Castro said he "lamented" Zapata's death but insisted no-one on the island had been tortured.
The US said it highlighted "the injustice of Cuba's holding more than 200 political prisoners" and said they should be released "without delay".
The Cuban government says it holds no political prisoners.
Can the Tories deliver 'real change'?
The Conservatives will fight the general election under the slogan 'vote for change'. Can they deliver on their promise?
Banquets of gods 'killed priests'
Lavish banquets offered to ancient Egyptian gods blocked the arteries of priests who took the food home to their families, say UK researchers.
An analysis of the foods listed in hieroglyphic inscriptions on temple walls showed the meals offered to the gods were laden with saturated fat.
And scans of priests' mummified remains showed many had blocked arteries.
The research, published in The Lancet, shows atherosclerosis is not just a modern disease, say the authors.
Ritual offerings
Professor Rosalie David, an egyptologist from the University of Manchester, said: "There couldn't be a more evocative message: live like a god and you will pay with your health."
The translations of inscriptions on the walls of Egyptian temples showed that priests would offer the gods meals of beef, goose, bread, fruit, vegetables, cake, wine and beer three times a day.
After the ritual offering, they would take home the food for themselves and their families.
"Live like a God and you will pay with your health"
Professor Rosalie David, egyptologist
A dietary analysis showed a very high fat content in the food offered. For example, goose meat is 63% fat, with 20% of it saturated.
The bread was richer than modern bread, often being enriched with fat, milk, and eggs.
The researchers say salt intake was also likely to have been high because it was often used as a preservative.
The food offered to the gods was much richer than the more frugal, mainly vegetarian, diet that most Egyptians ate.
Clear evidence
The authors surveyed evidence from over 60 mummies which had been analysed over the past 30 years using X-rays or rehydrated tissue samples.
They found clear evidence of blocked arteries and arterial damage among priests and their families.
"There is unequivocal evidence to show that atherosclerosis is a disease of ancient times"
Professor Tony Heagerty, Cardiovascular Research Group, Manchester University
Among 16 mummies whose hearts and arteries could be identified by CT scans, nine had evidence of hardened arteries.
"There was a marked incidence of blocked arteries among priests and their families," said Professor David.
"We have been able to show how temple inscriptions, which recorded daily rituals, can be combined with investigation of mummies to provide additional evidence about the priests and their diet.
"Inscriptions on coffins associated with individual mummies provide the owner's names and titles and this information can be used to associate the diseases discovered in these mummies with specific social groups, in this case the priests and their families."
Co-author Professor Tony Heagerty, from the Cardiovascular Research Group at Manchester University, added: "There is unequivocal evidence to show that atherosclerosis is a disease of ancient times, induced by diet, and that the epidemic of atherosclerosis which began in the 20th Century is nothing more than history revisiting us."
15 novembre 2009
A car parts company, which went into administration in September, has been bought by members of its former management team.
Administrators from KPMG said 109 jobs would be saved as a result of the sale of John McGavigan Ltd.
New owners David Taylor and Steve Mathers said they had been "determined" to save the business.
McGavigan, based in East Dunbarton produces dashboards and other interior products for the car industry.
It has a turnover of about £9m a year.
A total of 135 people were employed by the company when it went into administration as a result of declining demand in the car industry.
Existing customers
Joint administrator Blair Nimmo, of KPMG in Scotland, said: "I am delighted that after eight weeks of trading the business during which, the prospect of a sale often looked bleak, we have eventually managed to secure the sale of the business as a going concern.
"Not only has this saved 109 jobs in Scotland, but the sale also ensures that existing customers will continue to be serviced and that suppliers will have ongoing business."
The new owners said in a statement: "The manufacturing sector and especially the automotive market has gone through an extremely difficult time over the past year, however, we were determined to ensure the survival of the McGavigan business.
"Through the determination of our customers, our workforce, many of our suppliers and the added support of the Scottish government agencies, we have managed not only to save the business, but to put in motion steps which will allow the business to grow from strength to strength.
"We are confident in the future of the business, even in challenging economic conditions," they added.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has urged his armed forces to be prepared for possible war with Colombia amid growing diplomatic and border tensions.
He said the best way to avoid war was to prepare for it. In response, Colombia said it would seek help from the United Nations.
Venezuela blames the tension on closer military ties between Colombia and the United States.
Colombia says US forces are only there to battle rebels and drug traffickers.
Mr Chavez ordered 15,000 troops to the border last week in response to increased violence by Colombian paramilitary groups.
Stroke campaign boosts awareness
The number of 999 calls about symptoms of a possible stroke has increased by 70% in England since the launch of an awareness campaign in February.
The Department of Health campaign promoted a simple test to recognise the signs of a stroke and act quickly.
Stroke accounts for 9% of deaths in men and 13% of deaths in women in the UK.
But swift emergency action can limit damage in the brain and dramatically increase a person's chances of surviving.
FAST STROKE TEST- FACE - Has their face fallen on one side Can they smile
- ARMS - Can they raise both arms and keep them there
- SPEECH - Is their speech slurred
- TIME - Time to call 999 if you see any single one of these signs
- Department of Health
The Face, Arm, Speech, Time (FAST) test was developed by leading stroke physicians.
It is used by the emergency services to help them detect warning signs of a stroke at the earliest possible stage.
Posters and leaflets promoting the test under the slogan Act FAST were placed in GP surgeries, village halls and libraries, while adverts ran in newspapers and on TV and radio.
It is part of the government's three-year £100m stroke strategy in England, published two years ago.
Ministers acted after criticisms that the standard of stroke care was lagging behind other European nations.
'Big impact'
Health minister Ann Keen said: "Stroke is still one of the biggest causes of death and disability in England.
"It's important that everyone recognises the signs and realises the importance of dialling 999 as quickly as possible.
"The faster treatment begins the more we can limit damage caused to the brain.
LIFE SAVED- Owain Wyn-Jones, 30, from Shropshire, believes the campaign saved his life
- His fiancee Laraine Adams identified his face dropping and slurred speech as a sign of a stroke, having seen the campaign adverts
- He said: "My fiancee recognised the symptoms in me, called an ambulance and subsequently saved my life."
"The Act FAST campaign has clearly had a big impact already and I hope more people will now see it and learn when to act fast and save lives."
Joe Korner of the Stroke Association said the campaign appeared to have a real impact.
He said: "The more people that recognise stroke symptoms and get emergency treatment the better.
"Calling an ambulance and getting to hospital immediately can make all the difference for stroke survivors.
"For many, this prompt action will substantially improve their quality of life."
Blocked artery
Strokes cost the NHS around £2.8bn a year - nearly £1bn more than heart disease.
Every year in the UK, an estimated 150,000 people have a stroke. Around 300,000 people are living with moderate to severe disabilities as a result of a stroke.
Around one in four strokes occurs in people who are under the age of 65.
The National Stroke Strategy says patients with a suspected stroke should have a brain scan as soon as possible to determine if it was caused by a blocked artery or a burst blood vessel.
They should also be given clot-busting drugs where appropriate.
But only a small minority of UK stroke patients reach hospital and undergo CT scanning within three hours, which is necessary if these drugs are to be given.
The data was taken from a comparison of nearly four months' calls to seven ambulance trust regions between 2008 and 2009.
29 septembre 2009
Farm E.coli cases increase to 64
The number of cases of E.coli in an outbreak linked to a children's petting farm in Surrey has risen to 64.
The Health Protection Agency said seven more people had been affected by the O157 strain of the bacteria connected to Godstone Farm.
There are now nine children in hospital, all of whom are described as stable and improving.
The results of tests carried out at Godstone Farm are expected to be announced on Monday.
Four farms across England have now closed or partially closed in the wake of the outbreak.
Kidney failure
Godstone Farm closed last Saturday and its sister farm, Horton Park Children's Farm in Epsom, is also shut because of "unsatisfactory" hygiene arrangements.
No cases of E.coli O157 have been linked to the Epsom site.
White Post Farm at Farnsfield, near Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, was also closed after two visitors were confirmed to be suffering from the same strain of E.coli.
The World of Country Life in Exmouth, Devon, closed its petting farm and deer ride on Friday on the advice of the Health Protection Agency (HPA).
Three children who visited the farm while on holiday in Devon last month have the E.coli O157 infection.
E.coli - which caused symptoms include diarrhoea and vomiting - can be especially dangerous in young children because they cannot tolerate much fluid loss. It can lead to kidney failure.
The HPA has said the outbreak was "possibly the largest in the UK" to be transmitted by animals.
The closure of the farms has prompted an expert in microbiology to urge parents not to allow under-fives to touch animals at petting farms.
The Department of Health said a committee was looking into the possibility of changing future guidance on whether young children should have contact with animals at petting farms.
Currently it does not advise against contact but advocates thorough hand washing.
Are you or is someone you know affected by the issues in this story Send us your comments and experiences using the form below.
Downloading is not enough
Young people's attitudes to music may be too complicated and fast-changing to measure, says Bill Thompson
Peer-to-peer (p2p) download services are still popular with music-loving kids, it seems. The second annual survey of young people's music consumption by pressure group UK Music found among 1,808 respondents aged 18 to 24 that three-fifths of them used p2p services, and four-fifths of those did so at least once a week.
This is almost the same as last year's result, and would seem to indicate that the efforts by the music industry to offer a range of licensed alternatives to Limewire and other p2p services have failed to have any real impact.
The survey was carried out by academic researchers in the Music and Entertainment Industry Management research group at the University of Hertfordshire, and the picture it presents is a complex one that will surely give the music industry many sleepless nights.
Mixed messages
Feargal Sharkey, the former pop star who now heads the group, hinted at the possibility of failure in his introduction to the survey results, where he notes that "the shape of our entire business will continue to evolve".
"However, we will achieve nothing if we do not work with music fans, and young music fans in particular," he continued. "They are hugely demanding in their needs, but collectively we must rise to that challenge."
But even if they want to rise to the challenge, it's not clear that the survey tells them what do to next. Kids, it seems, like unlicensed services because they are free. But the report also acknowledges their usefulness in finding more obscure music and letting them listen to a band before they buy, so closing them down may actually make it harder for new artists to break through.
"The survey offers no coherent picture of the state of young people's consumption of and attitude to music"
Bill Thompson
They are willing to abandon p2p in favour of licensed services that they have to pay for, but they wouldn't pay for a streaming service like Spotify. They apparently want to own their music, or rather they want to have the music files on their hard drives rather than rely on streaming.
They happily spend as much money on live concerts as on recorded music, and over half would not object to a levy on copying music from one device to another.
Overall the picture seems full of contradictions, perhaps reflecting a wide range of attitudes among young people themselves.
The unwillingness to use streaming services is interesting, especially since I've seen every one of my son's friends sign up to Spotify recently. While is is possible that kids really do value "ownership" of music, I suspect it has more to do with the limitations of their online lives.
Here today
Young people are less likely to have fast, reliable net connections at home, or laptops to carry around from place to place, or they probably value the ability to transfer a track from computer to MP3 player to USB stick to mobile phone.
Another aspect may relate to the music industry's own record when it comes to online services. It might be that young people have no faith that the streaming services are going to stay around since they operate at the discretion of the record labels, which have clamped down on many services that are popular with young music fans in the past.
Spotify has already had to remove a large number of tracks from its catalogue because rights to use them were removed, and internet radio firms have lurched from crisis to crisis because the record companies have demanded such large license fees from even the smallest of them.
Evidence to support this view comes from elsewhere in the report, in responses to the questions about CDs. The average size of CD collections was 70 (for 14-17 year olds) and 98 (for 18-24 year olds), and a massive 77% of respondents said that they would still buy original albums even if they subscribed to a music download service.
The reasons for wanting CDs include a desire to have sleeve notes, the sound quality and the desire to own a physical object. But 44% of respondents said that one reason for wanting a CD was that it "cannot be deleted", an indication that young people have taken note of the problems that have occurred in the past when access to rights-managed music files has been withdrawn because services have been shut down.
Overall, the survey offers no coherent picture of the state of young people's consumption of and attitude to music, perhaps because things are changing so fast and young people are so quick to adapt to new technological realities that there simply is no single coherent model that will explain it all.
But it is also necessary to be cautious with the data and its interpretation. The problem with a survey commissioned by a group with a significant interest in the outcome is that no matter how independent and objective the organisation that actually does the polling is, the questions asked may subtly shape the responses.
For example, one of the "key findings" that UK Music draws out in its press release on the survey is that "music remains the most valued form of entertainment". Indeed, this is seen as so important that it tops the list of talking points, above the finding that three-fifths of young people download music from p2p services.
This is a remarkable finding in the age of the PS3, the Wii and the Xbox.
Except that the question that was actually asked was "what entertainment would you miss most on a desert island"and the three options offered were mobile phone, internet and music - they weren't asked about videogames, and so could not rank them.
Bill Thompson is an independent journalist and regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet.
England avoid one-day whitewash
Seventh one-day international, The Riverside: England v Australia
Date: Sunday, 20 September Start: 1015 BST
Coverage: Live Test Match Special commentary from 1400 BST on BBC Radio 4 LW, 5 Live sports extra, the Red Button and BBC Sport website. Live text commentary on BBC Sport website and mobile phones. Also live on Sky Sports.
James Anderson has urged his England team-mates to treat the final one-day match against Australia as a one-off warm-up match for the Champions Trophy.
England will become the first team to lose a series 7-0 if they do not win in Chester-le-Street on Sunday.
"Obviously we don't want to lose 7-0. There'll be a lot of pride to play for," said fast bowler Anderson.
"We've got the Champions Trophy to look forward as a fresh start. We need to use this as a warm-up game for that."
He added: "We have to try to forget as much as possible that we're 6-0 down and make sure we put in the performances we're capable of."
Both teams travel to South Africa on Monday for the fifth edition of the Champions Trophy, but they will not play each other in the group stages of the tournament.
606: DEBATE
"It's going to be very embarrassing if we lose 0-7"
hokeye
Holders Australia regained their place at the top of the world one-day rankings following their emphatic 111-run victory at Trent Bridge on Thursday.
And all-rounder James Hopes said Australia are relishing the prospect of becoming the first country to register a 7-0 whitewash in one-day internationals.
"We heard after the game that 7-0 has never been done before so that's a bit more of a motivation," said the Queenslander.
"We don't want to go to the Champions Trophy losing the last game before that.
"We are in quite a tough pool against Pakistan, India and the West Indies so we have to go there winning and 7-0 against England - there's nothing better than that."
England (from): A Strauss (capt), J Anderson, R Bopara, T Bresnan, P Collingwood, J Denly, D Mascarenhas, E Morgan, G Onions, M Prior, A Rashid, O Shah, R Sidebottom, G Swann.
Australia (from): R Ponting (capt), N Bracken, M Clarke, C Ferguson, N Hauritz, B Hilfenhaus, J Hopes, M Hussey, M Johnson, B Lee, T Paine, P Siddle, A Voges, S Watson, C White.
Umpires: Asad Rauf (Pkn), N Llong.
Google brand value 'on the rise'
In these uncertain economic times, people want answers - one reason perhaps why Google's brand value is soaring and bank brands are plunging.
Google's brand value rose 25% to $31.9bn (£19.5bn) from the year before according to Interbrand's survey of global brands, the year's biggest rise.
This is the first time that the total value of the world's top 100 brands - down 4.6% at $1.15 trillion - fell.
The world's two most valuable brands remained Coca Cola and IBM.
World's most valuable brands
- Coca Cola $68.7bn
- IBM $60.2bn
- Microsoft $56.6bn
- GE $47.7bn
- Nokia $34.8bn
- McDonald's $32.2bn
- Google $31.9bn
- Toyota $31.3bn
- Intel $30.6bn
- Disney $28.4bn
In a year when some banks were taken under government control and others fought off collapse, the value of financial brands plunged.
Citi's brand value fell 49% to $10.2bn, while that of UBS fell 50% to $4.3bn. The value of American Express's brand fell 32% to £14.9bn and that of Morgan Stanley fell 26% to $6.39bn.
Car companies, struggling to make cars that people want to buy in these straitened times, were also hard hit. Toyota, Mercedes Benz, BMW, Volkswagen and Porsche all saw their brand values fall.
"Some historically valuable brands normally associated with scale and stability, experienced a very bad year," Interbrand said, alluding to the poor performance of bank and car brands.
Brands that performed poorly were those perceived to have "fundamentally broken" businesses, a category which included UBS, it said.
Tougher economic times can lead to people re-evaluating "the nature of the relationships that we have with brands and indeed how confident we feel in brands to live up to the promises they make," Jez Frampton, Interbrand chief executive, said.
"Brands are promises which we value and are prepared to pay for and if we feel those promises have been broken, we're less likely to trust."
But some brands are resistant to recession. While consumers may have less cash for big-ticket items such as cars, and their distrust of banks has increased, they still have enough coins in their pocket for Coca Cola, McDonalds, Gillette and H&M.
"Brands that are day-to-day staples and are easy to purchase and experience have done well," Interbrand said.
The very top-end brands - those which speak of luxury for the very few, with names such as Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton and Hermes - held their own, falling less than the average drop of 5%.
