Archive for March 26th, 2008
- In: breast | cancer | Hormone | recurrence | risk | study | therapy
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Hormone replacement therapy, which is known to increase the risk of breast cancer, also appears to make it more likely a tumor will return in women who have had the disease, researchers said on Tuesday.
Women who had earlier had breast cancer were 14 percent more likely to get it again if they used hormone replacement therapy, or HRT, researchers said in the U.S. Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
“The results … indicate a substantial risk for a new breast cancer event among breast cancer survivors using hormone-replacement therapy,” wrote researcher Lars Holmberg and colleagues at Kings College London.
They followed for four years or longer 442 mostly Scandinavian women who had had breast cancer, half of whom had received HRT.
The women were part of a trial stopped in 2003 after concerns about the increased risk of breast cancer recurring for women on hormone therapy.
Volunteers who had received HRT got breast cancer again more than twice as often as women in the other group, amounting to an overall increased risk of 14 percent, the researchers said.
“Our results further suggest that hormone therapy not only induces and promotes breast cancer but may also stimulate the growth of tumor microdeposits in breast cancer survivors,” they wrote.
HRT was popular among menopausal women until 2002, when a major study found that it could raise the risk not only of breast and ovarian cancer, but also strokes and other serious conditions. Continued…
Satellite images show that a large hunk of Antarctica’s Wilkins Ice Shelf has started to collapse in a fast-warming region of the continent, scientists said on Tuesday.
The area of collapse measured about 160 square miles of the Wilkins Ice Shelf, according to satellite imagery from the University of Colorado’s National Snow and Ice Data Center.
The Wilkins Ice Shelf is a broad sheet of permanent floating ice that spans about 5,000 square miles (13,000 square km) and is located on the southwest Antarctic Peninsula about 1,000 miles south of South America.
“Block after block of ice is just tumbling and crumbling into the ocean,” Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said in a telephone interview.
“The shelf is not just cracking off and a piece goes drifting away, but totally shattering. These kinds of events, we don’t see them very often. But we want to understand them better because these are the things that lead to a complete loss of the ice shelf,” Scambos added.
Scambos said a large part of the ice shelf is now supported by only a thin strip of ice. This last “ice buttress” could collapse and about half the total ice shelf area could be lost in the next few years, Scambos added.
British Antarctic Survey scientist David Vaughan said in a statement: “This shelf is hanging by a thread.”
“One corner of it that’s exposed to the ocean is shattering in a pattern that we’ve seen in a few places over the past 10 or 15 years. In every case, we’ve eventually concluded that it’s a result of climate warming,” Scambos added. Continued…
- In: as cleaner | bingo | Record | to keep working | winner
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A Scottish cleaner who won a record bingo jackpot over the Easter weekend said she would return to work as normal on Tuesday.
Soraya Lowell, 38, won the national jackpot of 1,167,795 pounds ($2.3 million) at a bingo hall in Coatbridge, north Lanarkshire.
“I don’t intend to give up my job. I like the girls I work with, and they have already said to me ‘don’t pack it in,'” she said. “I haven’t slept at all but I will be back at work on Tuesday as usual.”
The mother-of-four from Hamilton, Lanarkshire, said her husband Frankie didn’t believe her when she called home with the news. Her oldest children have already asked her to buy them cars.
Steve Baldwin, of the National Bingo Game, said Sunday’s win was the biggest ever.
“We are thrilled for Soraya and look forward to presenting her with her record-breaking check,” he said.
- In: entertainment | global | industry | merges | Sport
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An unprecedented auction at the Hilton Towers hotel in Mumbai on February 20 illustrated just how dramatically sport is spreading beyond traditional boundaries and merging into the global entertainment industry.
At the conclusion, India’s one-day cricket captain Mahendra Dhoni was richer by $1.5 million for approximately six weeks’ work. Dhoni was the biggest winner after eight franchises had bid around $20 million for players to take part in the Indian Premier League (IPL) Twenty20 tournament starting on April 18.
The sums in themselves were eye catching, if nothing outlandish compared to the purses commanded by leading prize fighters.
But they were paid for a form of cricket specifically designed to appeal to a worldwide television audience and featuring players chosen not by selectors but in a marketplace for a competition sanctioned, but not organized, by the game’s traditional authorities.
“A hundred years ago your community was your local town and village,” Mark Waller, a senior vice-president with the National Football League (NFL), told Reuters. “Two thousand of you wandered down to the stadium or the church or whatever and that was your focal point. Then it became your county or your country and now it is a global community. There are no boundaries now.
“The world is a global one. Brands, entertainment and sports properties operate at a global level and our job is to make sure that we cater to these people.”
EXPANSION PLANS
Last October, the NFL staged its first regular-season game outside the United States, a sellout meeting between eventual Super Bowl champions the New York Giants and the Miami Dolphins at London’s Wembley stadium, home of the English national soccer team. Continued…
- In: censorship | Google | holders | human rights | review | seek
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Shareholders of Google Inc will propose that the Web search company take steps to ensure freedom of Internet access and establish a review of its operations’ effect on human rights, according to a regulatory filing on Tuesday.
In one proposal expected to be submitted at the company’s 2008 annual meeting on May 8, shareholders will ask Google to commit to certain standards, including a pledge not to engage in proactive censorship or host user data in countries that restrict political speech.
The proposal will be raised by the New York City comptroller’s office, which oversees the New York City Employees Retirement System as well as retirement funds for city teachers, police and firefighters, Google said in its proxy filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
A second proposal put forward by Harrington Investments requests that the company create a board committee on human rights to review the implications of its policies on a worldwide basis.
Google said its board recommends that investors vote against both proposals.
The Web search leader will ask investors to keep its slate of 10 directors in office for another year.
- In: battery | confronting | Dell | HP | laptop | shortage
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Dell Inc (DELL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Tuesday the personal-computer industry was experiencing a shortage of laptop batteries partly because of a recent fire at a major supplier, but the company was working with other suppliers to limit any price increases.
Dell, the world’s second-largest PC maker after Hewlett-Packard Co (HPQ.N: Quote, Profile, Research), also said prices of its separately sold batteries used as replacements or for surplus power had gone up because of the shortage caused partly by the March 3 fire at LG Chem’s (051910.KS: Quote, Profile, Research) Ochang plant.
LG Chem is the second biggest South Korean battery maker. The fire contributed to a worldwide battery shortage that could affect up to 40 percent of second-quarter shipments at Asustek Computer (2357.TW: Quote, Profile, Research), Taiwan’s No. 2 PC maker, an Asustek executive told Reuters earlier on Tuesday.
A spokesman for Round Rock, Texas-based Dell declined to give the percentage of total Dell sales attributable to separately sold battery packs, but the amount is likely to be minimal as Dell’s main products are fully assembled desktop and laptop PCs and business server computers.
“We sell battery packs. The prices of those battery packs for people ordering extra batteries have gone up,” Dell spokesman Jess Blackburn said, declining to say by how much.
He added that Dell is “not commenting on what impact, if any, that this is having on the prices of our products,” referring to notebook PCs.
“The industry is experiencing battery supply constraints because of these problems,” Blackburn added. “Therefore, pricing is being impacted by current availability. But we are working with our partners throughout our supply chain to reduce the impact on our customers.
LG Chem competes in the notebook battery business with Samsung SDI (006400.KS: Quote, Profile, Research) and Japan’s Sony Corp (SNE.N: Quote, Profile, Research) (6758.T: Quote, Profile, Research), among others. LG Chem has said it expected the Ochang plant to start production again in two to three months. Continued…
State media said one police officer was killed and the exiled Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy reported one Tibetan protester shot dead and another critically hurt after unrest in Sichuan’s Ganzi (Garze) Tibetan Prefecture.
“The police were forced to fire warning shots, and dispersed the lawless mobsters,” the brief Xinhua news agency report said, without mentioning any deaths of protesters, who it said attacked with rocks and knives.
The latest news of unrest and arrests comes after protesters seeking to put pressure on China tried to disrupt the Beijing Olympic Games torch-lighting ceremony in Greece, an act that Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang called “disgraceful”.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged China on Tuesday to show responsibility over the unrest and refused to rule out a possible boycott of the Beijing Olympic Games.
“I don’t close the door to any option, but I think it’s more prudent to reserve my responses to concrete developments in the situation,” Sarkozy said, when asked about a possible boycott.
In Washington, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, reacting to Sarkozy’s remarks on the Olympics, said there was no change in Bush’s plans to attend the Games.
“We believe that China should respect minority cultures — particularly in this case, the Tibetan culture — and we want to make sure that there is freedom of the press and international access to the area,” Perino said. Continued…
Obama’s tax returns from 2000 to 2006 were posted on his Web site as his campaign pushed to portray Clinton, the New York senator and former first lady, as secretive and unwilling to be open with voters.
Obama, an Illinois senator, has repeatedly asked Clinton to release tax returns for the years since she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, left the White House in 2001.
“Releasing tax returns is a matter of routine. We believe the Clinton campaign should meet that routine standard and meet that routine standard now,” Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters.
Clinton, in Pennsylvania campaigning for the state’s primary on April 22, told reporters she hoped her returns would be released within the next week. But she and campaign aides pressed Obama to release records from his days in the Illinois legislature and his earlier tax returns.
“I am pleased that Senator Obama has released his tax returns. I think that’s a good first step,” Clinton said in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. “Now he should release his records from being in the state Senate and any other information that the public and the press need to know.”
Clinton spokesman Phil Singer said she already had released more than 20 years of tax returns and hundreds of thousands of pages of documents from the White House.
Obama and Clinton are in a hard-fought battle for the Democratic presidential nomination and the right to face Republican John McCain in November’s election. Continued…
- In: airports | fingerprints | IDs | increases | U.S
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The upgraded system, part of the U.S. government’s Homeland Security program and its war on terror, increases the chances of catching illegal or potentially dangerous entrants into the country, officials said at a media briefing at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Tuesday.
The system expands the digital fingerprinting of international visitors to ten fingers from two.
“Quite simply, this change gives our officers a more accurate idea of who is in front of them,” said Paul Morris, an executive director at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency. “For those who may pose a risk, we will have greater insight into who they are.”
The added measure came under fire from critics who claim it is not only ineffective but could violate passengers’ privacy.
“As near as I can tell, there has been absolutely no success from this in catching terrorists,” said Bruce Schneier, chief security technology officer at BT Counterpane in Santa Clara, California, who has studied the system.
“The real question of these programs is, are they the best use of our terrorism dollar,” Schneier said.
Officials announced on Tuesday the system has been added to several entry points at Kennedy and is already in use at airports in Washington, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago and other major U.S. cities. Continued…
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