Suicide Bomber Hits Moscow

March 29, 2010

BBC News

At least 38 people have been killed after two female suicide bombers blew themselves up on Moscow Metro trains in the morning rush hour, officials say.

Twenty-four died in the first blast at 0756 (0356 GMT) as a train stood at the central Lubyanka station, beneath the offices of the FSB intelligence agency.

About 40 minutes later, a second explosion ripped through a train at Park Kultury, leaving another 14 dead.

The FSB said it was likely a group from the North Caucasus was responsible.

The BBC’s Richard Galpin in Moscow says no group has yet said it carried out the attacks, but past suicide bombings in the capital have been carried out by or blamed on Islamist rebels fighting for independence in Chechnya.

In February, Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov said “the zone of military operations will be extended to the territory of Russia… the war is coming to their cities”.

At an emergency meeting with senior officials, President Dmitry Medvedev vowed to uphold the “policy of suppressing terror and the fight against terrorism”.

“We will continue operations against terrorists without compromises and to the end,” he said.

Federal security forces have scored a series of successes against militants in the North Caucasus in recent weeks. In February, at least 20 insurgents were killed in an operation by troops in Ingushetia.

‘Panic’

Emergency services ministry spokeswoman Irina Andrianova said the first explosion tore through the second carriage of a train as it stood at Lubyanka at the peak of the rush hour.

The station, on both the busy Sokolnicheskaya and Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya lines, lies beneath the headquarters of the Federal Security Service (FSB).

“I was moving up on the escalator when I heard a loud bang, a blast. A door near the passage way arched, was ripped out and a cloud of dust came down on the escalator,” an eyewitness named Alexei told Rossiya 24 TV channel.

“People started running, panicking, falling on each other,” he said.

The second blast at Park Kultury, which is six stops away from Lubyanka on the Sokolnicheskaya line, came at 0838 (0438 GMT). It struck at the back of the train as people were getting on board.

“I was in the middle of the train when somewhere in the first or second carriage there was a loud blast. I felt the vibrations reverberate through my body,” one passenger told the RIA news agency.

“People were yelling like hell,” he said. “There was a lot of smoke and within about two minutes everything was covered in smoke.”

More than 60 people were injured in the two attacks, 30 of them badly, officials said.

In a meeting with President Medvedev, FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov said its investigators believed the attacks had been carried out by “terrorist groups related to the North Caucasus”.
“This is likely to be our main conclusion, because fragments of the bodies of two female suicide bombers were found earlier at the scene of the incident and examinations show that these individuals came from the North Caucasus region,” he said.

Citing a preliminary forensic report, Mr Bortnikov added that the devices had been made with the powerful explosive, hexogen, which is more commonly known as RDX.

The bomb that went off at Lubyanka station had an equivalent force of up to 4kg of TNT, while the bomb at Park Kultury was equivalent to 1.5-2kg of TNT, he said. The devices were filled with chipped iron rods and screws for shrapnel.

Federal prosecutors said they had opened an investigation into “suspected acts of terrorism”.

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Citibank Gets Special Bailout

March 29, 2010

Washington Post

By David Cho

Among the banks that rule Wall Street, Citigroup got a bailout that was bigger than the rest. Now the company is about to pay a king’s ransom for its federal rescue.

The Obama administration is making final preparations to sell its stake in the New York bank, according to industry and federal sources. At today’s prices, the sale would net more than $8 billion, by far the largest profit returned from any firm that accepted bailout funds, and the transaction would be the second-largest stock sale in history.

On paper, the government’s 27 percent stake has grown in value to $33 billion. The size of the deal in the works has Wall Street buzzing. Only the stock offering by Japan’s Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, which raised $36.8 billion in 1987, was larger, according to Thomson Reuters.

Leading financial firms, including J.P. Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, are vying to be chosen as the deal’s underwriters to gain the prestige of managing a historic stock sale as well as the fees from investors who buy the shares. To improve their chances, some banks, such as Goldman Sachs, are offering their services to the Treasury Department at almost no cost, industry officials familiar with the matter said.

The windfall expected from the stock sale would amount to a validation of the rescue plan adopted by government officials during the height of the financial panic, when the banking system neared the brink of collapse. A year ago, Citigroup’s stock hovered around a dollar a share, and the bank’s future seemed in doubt. On Friday, the stock closed at $4.31.

If the sale proceeds as planned, Citigroup would be able to cut nearly all of its ties to the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program. Meanwhile, the administration could highlight the profit generated from the rescue of big banks.

“It’s unprecedented to do [a stock sale] of this size right after the financial industry has been so battered,” said an industry official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly. “It’s just a very bullish sign.”

The Treasury, as well as the Wall Street firms, declined to comment on the stock sale.

Citigroup’s performance has lagged behind its rivals in Lower Manhattan. In January, the company announced a $1.6 billion loss for 2009. By comparison, J.P. Morgan Chase earned $11.7 billion. But Citigroup’s executives said at the time that they saw its business stabilizing, allowing the company to set aside less money in the last three months of 2009 to cover losses than it did for the same period of 2008.

Citigroup was among nine major banks that were the first to take bailout funds in October 2008, and all have returned their federal loans. In addition to these repayments, the Treasury has received interest, dividends and about $3.5 billion from the sale of warrants, which are contracts allowing a holder to buy a company’s stock in the future.

The true cost of rescuing the financial system, however, is not yet known. Senior Treasury officials have said that they expect the ultimate cost of TARP to be less than $100 billion. Besides TARP programs, mortgage financiers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have received more than $125 billion in federal aid. There is no indication that either firm will be able to repay the government anytime soon.

Yet many economists say that rescuing large Wall Street firms has come at a much lower cost than expected.

During the height of the financial crisis in October and November of 2008, Citigroup got more than $45 billion in federal aid in exchange for preferred shares. The government later restructured that package. Officials converted $20 billion into a loan, and the remaining $25 billion was converted in September into common stock at the price of $3.25 a share.

Citigroup was the only bank that gave common shares to the government, because the firm was in worse shape than its rivals and couldn’t promise to repay its aid entirely in cash.

In December, the bank announced it would raise money from investors to repay the $20 billion loan. The Treasury said at that time that it would sell its Citigroup shares in phases this year, beginning with a $5 billion deal.

The value of the government’s stake had grown to $33.1 billion at the end of regular trading Friday.

By issuing stock and giving it to the government last year, Citigroup had diluted the value of stock held by existing shareholders. The company could ratify a reverse stock split to enhance the value of shares.

Last fall, the bank’s shareholders approved a proposal by the company’s board of directors to speed a reverse stock split before June 30.

Click here for the full report.

Soldiers Take Psychiatric Meds for Stress

March 26, 2010

ABC News

By: Martha Raddatz and Michael Murray

After years on the battlefield or in the trenches, many American soldiers are showing signs of psychological distress. An increasing number of soldiers are turning to medication to alleviate their symptoms.

From the isolated outposts of Afghanistan to the bloody streets of Fallujah in Iraq, U.S. troops have been fighting, dying and suffering unbearable emotional scars. A 2008 Rand Corporation study found under 20 percent of soldiers reported psychological distress in some form.

Some have unfortunately committed suicide, but ABC News has been told that an increasing number — at least 8 percent of the force — are now using pills to treat themselves. Some are turning to antidepressants, such as Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil, which are prescribed right on the front lines.

“We are sending soldiers into the field, into combat missions, who are suicidal,” said former Air Force psychologist Jason Prinster. “And we are prescribing medication that has significant side effects.”

He also told ABC News that the Army’s culture of treating physical injuries as more serious than psychological ones can lead to bad operating procedure, in his opinion. “If your leg is broken, if you have a physical problem, you can stay inside the wire. If you are anxious, afraid, hopeless, it’s not OK,” he said.

Soldiers say the side effects can affect their combat readiness; some medications cause sluggishness and disorientation. Army Sgt. Chuck Luther told ABC News that “some would make me more depressed, some would make me jittery.”

Soldier Said He Was Given Prescriptions, No Therapy

Luther was an Army sergeant based in Taji, Iraq. He told ABC News he didn’t get therapy for his emotional problems, just drugs to help him make it through his deployment.

“Mortars would come in & suicide bombers. It was taking a toll on me and then seeing fellow soldiers being killed in front of you.”

ABC News asked Col. John Looper, an Army psychologist stationed in Iraq, what he thought of the prescriptions. “If the treating clinician feels that a given service member might be restored to full functioning with a course of antidepressant medication or anti-anxiety medication, we have the wherewithal to do that,” he told us.

The military is making an effort to provide therapy to service members having mental health issues, but given the remoteness of some bases, it is not always possible, and remains a real concern.

Click here for the full report.

Women Greater Hypochondriacs Than Men

March 26, 2010

Telegraph

A report from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) revealed that women are more likely to report illness than men, but are less likely to die from bad health.

According to information provided by more than 750,000 people on national census forms completed in 2001, “Women were more likely than men to report that they were in “not good” or “fairly good” health, but they were less likely to die during the follow-up period.”

The data also revealed that certain social groups, including people who have never married, are divorced or are seperated from their partners, are both more likely to report ill health and more likely to die in the following five years.

Other groups who were more susceptible to illness included people living in council or association homes, people who had no educational qualifications, people who were unemployed and people who did not own a car, the Daily Mail reported.

The report claimed that Scotland had the lowest proportion of hypochondriacs – not because they were less likely to report ill health, but because they were statistically more likely to die within five years of doing so due to high rates of mortality in a number of Scottish towns and cities.

The findings followed the announcement by scientists earlier this week that ‘man flu’ could be a genuine result of differences in men’s and women’s immune systems due to evolution, rather than a fictitious affliction dreamt up by men.

Men, whose primary job was to hunt for food, developed weaker immune systems due to the risks involved, while women’s immunity from illness was stronger because of their childbearing role, the researchers from Cambridge University found.

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Losing Breast May Not Be Best for Cancer Patients

March 26, 2010

Breitbart

By: Maria Cheng

For some women, having a breast removed once they’re diagnosed with cancer doesn’t always mean they’ll live longer, a new study says.

Researchers said that in women with breast cancer who also have genetic mutations that make them more susceptible to the disease, women appear to live just as long whether they choose treatment that preserves their breast or have a breast removal, or mastectomy.

The study results were presented in Barcelona at a European breast cancer conference on Friday.

Dr. Lori Pierce, a professor of radiation oncology at the University of Michigan, and her colleagues observed 655 breast cancer patients in Australia, Israel, Spain and the United States, all of whom had genetic mutations that gave them a much higher chance of getting the disease. After 15 years, women who had a breast removed had about a 6 percent chance of a cancer relapse, compared with 24 percent of women who kept their breasts. If the latter group added chemotherapy, their risk dropped to about 12 percent.

But when it came to survival, there was almost no difference whether the cancer patients had decided to keep their breast or have it removed. Women who kept their breasts had a survival rate of 87 percent after 15 years, and women who had mastectomies had a survival rate of 89 percent.

“This will be useful for patients who are bombarded with a lot of information at once,” said Pierce. “Being diagnosed with breast cancer and finding out (they have a genetic susceptibility) is a lot to process, and women may not want to think about a mastectomy right then,” she said. “Breast conservation therapy…with chemotherapy and hormonal therapy is a very reasonable alternative.”

She said the study results probably wouldn’t apply to women who have the genetic mutations but haven’t yet gotten cancer. “Their thinking is very different because they’ve often seen multiple family members die and they are much more likely to undergo a preventive mastectomy,” she said.

Doctors said Pierce’s findings should buy some recently diagnosed breast cancer patients a bit of breathing room.

“These are convincing data that show women can keep their breast and not be worse off,” said Dr. Alain Fourquet, head of radiation and oncology at the Institut Curie in Paris. Fourquet is the chair of the European breast cancer conference and was not linked to Pierce’s study.

Fourquet said that being genetically predisposed to breast cancer may be less important in determining a course of action once women actually get the disease, and that decisions to remove a breast should not be based on genes.

Maria Leadbeater, a clinical nurse specialist at Breast Cancer Care, a British charity, said the findings should change the discussions doctors have with breast cancer patients.

“Surgeons may be able to give more weight to patients’ thoughts and wishes,” she said. “If both options are equally effective, then what the patient wants may become more important.”

Click here for the full report.

Processed Food Leads to Depression

March 26, 2010

Natural News

By: David Gutierrez

People who eat more processed foods are significantly more likely to suffer from depression, while those who eat more fruits and vegetables are significantly less likely to be depressed, according to a study conducted by researchers from University College London and published in the British Journal of Psychiatry.

“This study adds to an existing body of solid research that shows the strong links between what we eat and our mental health,” said Andrew McCulloch of the Mental Health Foundation. “The U.K. population is consuming less nutritious, fresh produce and more saturated fats and sugars. We are particularly concerned about those who cannot access fresh produce easily or live in areas where there are a high number of fast food restaurants and takeaways.”

Researchers collected diet and lifestyle data on 3,500 middle-aged civil servants, then ranked them according to two different measures: how much of their diet was composed of whole foods, and how much was composed of processed foods. Whole foods included fruits and vegetables, while processed foods included high-fat dairy, processed meats, refined grains, fried food and sweetened desserts.

After adjusting for other depression risk factors such as age, education, gender, physical activity and smoking, the researchers found that those who consumed the most processed foods were 58 percent more likely to suffer from depression five years later than those who ate the least. Similarly, those who ate the most whole foods were 26 percent less likely to suffer from depression in five years than those who ate the least.

Because the study was based on correlation, the researchers could not prove that poor diet was actually a cause of depression rather than the other way around. However, the researchers found no association between a history of depression and a poor diet.

“Physical and mental health are closely related, so we should not be too surprised by these results, but we hope there will be further research which may help us to understand more fully the relationship between diet and mental health,” said Margaret Edwards of the mental health nonprofit SANE.

Click here for the full report.

Mediterranean Diet May Protect Against Stomach Cancer

March 26, 2010

Natural News

By: E. Huff

A study conducted by the Catalan Institute for Oncology in Barcelona has concluded that eating a “Mediterranean” diet significantly reduces the risk of developing stomach cancer. Published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the study focused specifically on gastric cancer which is the second most common cause of cancer death in the world.

Dr. Carlos Gonzalez and his colleagues evaluated a European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) study of over 485,000 people from ten European countries. In the study, participants were evaluated based on how closely their diets aligned with the traditional Mediterranean diet. Such a diet is rich in fruits, vegetables, legumes, and fish, as opposed to the Western diet which is rich in meat and dairy products.

What they found was that those whose diets most closely matched the traditional Mediterranean diet were 33 percent less likely to develop stomach cancer than those who fell on the opposite end of the diet spectrum. Developed on an 18-point scale, the study revealed that for each point gained on the Mediterranean diet spectrum, a person’s risk of developing stomach cancer drops by 5 percent.

Since stomach cancer is extremely deadly, claiming the lives of over 75 percent of people who have it in just five years, researchers are aiming to pinpoint the ideal dietary composition for preventing its onset. According to them, the Mediterranean diet is an excellent start in helping to stave off stomach cancer.

Similar studies have found other benefits that can be derived from eating a Mediterranean diet, including reducing inflammation, preventing heart disease, and preventing obesity and diabetes.

A 2009 study published in Cancer Prevention Research found that a compound in broccoli called isothiocyanate sulforaphane (SF) works to prevent gastritis, ulcers, and ultimately stomach cancer. Conducted using broccoli sprouts, the study revealed that SF increases the activity of certain enzymes that protect the stomach from oxidative damage, effectively guarding it from developing disease.

Broccoli, as well as Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, and Chinese “bok choy” also contains indole-3-carbinols (I3Cs) which is another powerful anti-cancer molecule. Not only do these compounds prevent precancerous cells from turning into malignant tumors, they effectively detoxify the body and help to maintain alkalinity. I3Cs are also capable of killing existing cancer cells and stopping tumors from growing.

Other anti-cancer foods include garlic, onions, turmeric, ginger, pomegranates, citrus fruits, berries, and cacao, just to name a few.

Click here for the full report.

Medicated Bath Products Worsening Water Pollution

March 26, 2010

Fox News

Bracing morning showers and soothing bedtime soaks were blamed late Wednesday for increased water pollution due to medicated soaps and shampoos.

In a study unveiled at a National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Francisco, scientists said they have zeroed in on a major source of the active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) that are an ever-worsening environmental concern.

“We’ve long assumed that the active ingredients from medications enter the environment primarily as a result of their excretion via urine and feces,” said Dr. Ilene Ruhoy.

“However, for the first time, we have identified potential alternative routes for the entry into the environment by way of bathing, showering, and laundering.”

Ruhoy said lotions, creams, gels and skin patches are to blame for a significant amount of the APIs in ground water.

She encouraged consumers to use their medicated products sparingly and doctors to prescribe lower-dosage levels to cut down APIs.

“We need to be more aware of how our use of pharmaceuticals can have unwanted environmental effects,” Ruhoy said. “Identifying the major pathways in which APIs enter the environment is an important step toward the goal of minimizing their environmental impact.”

Click here for the full report.

Researchers Find Corn Syrup Worse Than Sugar for Weight

March 26, 2010

CNN

By: Hanna Raskin

Acolytes of “Food Rules” guru Michael Pollan and other well-meaning foodies who’ve made corn a scapegoat for the nation’s health crises have welcomed a new study from Princeton University that suggests high-fructose corn syrup causes more significant weight gain than table sugar.

But the findings have been criticized by food science experts and industry veterans, who say the study unfairly demonizes corn syrup and implicitly absolves cane sugar of responsibility for making Americans fat.

“The debate about which one is better for you is a false debate, because neither of them is good for you,” says Elizabeth Abbott, author of the forthcoming “Sugar: A Bittersweet History.”

Researcher Miriam Bocarsly counters that the study wasn’t designed to demonstrate “what sugar does for the body.” Instead, her team set out to uncover what happens when rats subsist on a diet rich in high-fructose corn syrup for six months. They reported that rats fed water sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup developed more belly fat and had an increased level of circulating triglycerides, fat’s chemical form in the body.

“As far as we’re aware, this is the first long-term study of high-fructose corn syrup in animals,” Bocarsly says. “That’s important, because you don’t eat high-fructose corn syrup once; you eat it every day, probably since you were a child. But you don’t see too many studies with humans because you can’t keep someone in the lab for 10 years and make them eat high fructose corn syrup.”

According to Bocarsly, scientific results embraced by the refined corn crowd, including a 2008 statement by the American Medical Association that high-fructose syrups do not contribute more to obesity than other caloric sweeteners, used data drawn from short-term studies.

Detractors point out what they say are even more devastating flaws in the Princeton study, including the decision to examine male and female rats in separate experiments and to attribute significance to statistically indistinguishable weights.

“I’m skeptical,” leading food policy scholar Marion Nestle writes in a blog post. “I don’t think the study produces convincing evidence of a difference between the effects of HFCS and sucrose on the body weight of rats.”

Bocarsly responds: “What we did in the lab was what was most interesting scientifically. We’re a behavioral neuroscience lab, so what we’re interested in finding is how these foods affect your brain chemistry. We hope this is the first step in a long series of research.”

Makers of high-fructose corn syrup were not pleased by Bocarsly going public with admittedly preliminary findings, which they suspect some consumers will interpret as another reason to avoid high-fructose corn syrup.

Audrae Erickson, president of the Corn Refiners Association, characterizes the study as an example of “efforts to disparage high-fructose corn syrup and perhaps drive it out of the marketplace.”

“No one ingredient could possibly be responsible for all the diseases attributed to this natural sweetener,” Erickson says. “We believe consumers are being misled into thinking there’s something different about this sweetener.”

Pepsi recently tried to capitalize on the anxiety surrounding high-fructose corn syrup, stoked partly by food policy critics such as Eric Schlosser and lifestyle gurus including Andrew Weil.

The company late last year debuted throwback versions of Pepsi and Mountain Dew featuring “real sugar.”

But Abbott, who’s chronicled the Western world’s obsession with sweetness, says the distinction between sugars from different sources is being overplayed.

Eaters just want to have their cakes and eat them without worrying about wellness too. Depicting cane sugar as a healthy sweetener creates an appealing solution to that bugaboo, she says.

“By having cane sugar, you’re not doing yourself a great big favor,” she says. “Not so much sugar is what we should be striving for.”

Click here for the full report.

FDA Panel Advises No Tanning Beds for Minors

March 26, 2010

WebMD

By: Daniel J. DeNoon

The FDA should keep children and teens from using tanning beds — or at least make sure their parents have signed a consent form warning of tanning-bed dangers, an FDA advisory panel today recommended.

The panel also appeared likely to recommend that the FDA further restrict tanning beds and tanning lamps. At press time — 10 hours after the meeting began — panel deliberations continued.

Tanning beds and tanning lamps are listed as FDA Class 1 devices — those least likely to cause harm. Elastic bandages are an example of Class 1 devices.

The 16-member panel seemed likely to advise the FDA to list tanning beds as Class 2 devices, which require special assurances, such as labeling requirements or mandatory performance standards, that they will not cause harm. Class 2 devices include X-ray machines and powered wheelchairs.

The panel did not directly vote on its recommendations, but instead will present a consensus opinion to the federal regulatory agency.

Tannings Beds: No Benefit, Small to Moderate Risk

Getting a tan, whether from a tanning bed or the sun, raises cancer risk. Last year, tanning beds were declared “carcinogenic to humans” by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).

In its presentation to its panel of experts, the FDA relied heavily on the IARC’s analysis of tanning-bed research. However, the FDA noted that the IARC’s report, added to previous research, suggests only “a small to moderate risk of skin cancer independently due to the use of tanning beds or lamps.”

However, the FDA stressed that the risk appears greater when tanning bed use begins in childhood.

On the other hand, the FDA told the panel that tanning beds offer no credible medical benefit.

Medical groups have weighed in on the issue. The American Academy of DermatologyAssociation (AADA) opposes indoor tanning and supports a ban on the sale of indoor tanning equipment for nonmedical purposes. Short of a ban, the AADA would like the FDA at least to restrict tanning facilities and equipment from being marketed as safe.

And the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) would like to see a ban on the use of tanning beds by children. The AAP advises anyone under age 21 to avoid indoor tanning.

The advisory panel’s actions are not binding, but the FDA relies heavily on its outside experts in reaching regulatory decisions.

The Indoor Tanning Association (ITA) opposes further regulation of tanning beds. The ITA was not able to comment before the panel finished its deliberations.

Click here for the full report.

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