World newzzz

I am going to start a thread just for “World News Events”. Instead of making a whole shit load of thread that I know some don’t like. Right!

My rule (Ok Mig) is that the News Updates must be quoted. :open_mouth:

[quote]LONDON - A new theory proposes that mad cow disease may have come from feeding British cattle meal contaminated with human remains infected with a variation of the disease.

The hypothesis, outlined this week in The Lancet medical journal, suggests the infected cattle feed came from the Indian subcontinent, where bodies sometimes are ceremonially thrown into the Ganges River.

Indian experts not connected with the research pointed out weaknesses in the theory but agreed it should be investigated.

The cause of the original case or cases of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is unknown, but it belongs to a class of illnesses called transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, or TSEs.

Such illnesses exist in several species. Scrapie is a TSE that affects sheep and goats, while chronic wasting disease afflicts elk and deer. A handful of TSEs are found in humans, including Kuru, Alper’s disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or CJD.

All TSEs are fatal, untreatable and undiagnosable until after death. They are called spongiform encephalopathies because the diseases involve spongy degeneration of the brain.

The disease was not known to infect cows until 1986, when the first cases were noticed in Britain. About a decade later, a new permutation of CJD, which scientists dubbed variant CJD, started showing up in people there. Experts believe this new variant came from eating beef products infected with mad cow disease.

But where the cows got the disease remains a mystery.

The most popular theory is that cattle, which are vegetarian, were fed meal containing sheep remains, passing scrapie from sheep to cows, where it eventually evolved into a cow-specific disease. Another theory is that cows just developed the disease spontaneously, without catching it from another species.

However, a pair of British scientists now proposes the origin may be the bones of people infected with classical CJD, which they theorize ended up in cattle feed imported from South Asia.

Britain imported hundreds of thousands of tons of whole bones, crushed bones and carcass parts to be used for fertilizer and animal feed during the 1960s and 1970s. Nearly half of that came from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, said the scientists, led by Alan Colchester, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Kent in England.

“In India and Pakistan, gathering large bones and carcasses from the land and from rivers has long been an important local trade for peasants,” the scientists wrote. “Collectors encounter considerable quantities of human as well as animal remains as a result of religious customs.”

Hindus believe remains should be disposed of in a river, preferably the Ganges.

“The ideal is for the body to be burned, but most people cannot afford enough wood for a full cremation. … Many complete corpses are thrown into the river,” the scientists said, adding that the inclusion of human remains in animal bone material exported from the Indian subcontinent has been documented.

Britain was the main recipient of animal byproducts exported from India and Pakistan during the relevant period and was also a leader in feeding meat and bone meal to calves, they noted.

Finally, the similarities between the strains — mad cow disease, classical CJD and variant CJD — are sufficiently close to support the theory of a link among them, the authors argued.

“We do not claim that our theory is proved, but it unquestionably warrants further investigation,” the scientists wrote.

Indian neuroscientists Susarla Shankar and P. Satishchandra of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences in Bangalore, India, agreed the theory needs to be followed up, but urged caution.

“Scientists must proceed cautiously when hypothesizing about a disease that has such wide geographical, cultural and religious implications,” they wrote in a critique published in the journal.

Relatives of people who die of suspected CJD are persuaded to bury their dead or cremate them, the two said. In most hospital-related deaths, bodies are not taken to Varanasi, the holy city on the banks of the Ganges, but cremated or buried nearer to home.

“Even in Varanasi, most Hindus do not put half-burnt bodies into the river,” they wrote, adding that if bodies found in the Ganges did have CJD, there should have been a major epidemic of the disease in north India.

“Facts to support or refute their hypothesis now need to be gathered with urgency and great care,” the Indian scientists said.

[/quote]

Than they could stop Blaming Canada. And we don’t have to do that Southpark thing.


[size=18]World stunned as US struggles with Katrina [/size]

(You know, I was just thinking about this last night watching all stuff going on in N.O. Boy they are NOT ready for a terrorist attack what so ever.)

[quote]LONDON (Reuters) - The world has watched amazed as the planet’s only superpower struggles with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, with some saying the chaos has exposed flaws and deep divisions in American society.

World leaders and ordinary citizens have expressed sympathy with the people of the southern United States whose lives were devastated by the hurricane and the flooding that followed.

But many have also been shocked by the images of disorder beamed around the world – looters roaming the debris-strewn streets and thousands of people gathered in New Orleans waiting for the authorities to provide food, water and other aid.

“Anarchy in the USA” declared Britain’s best-selling newspaper The Sun.

“Apocalypse Now” headlined Germany’s Handelsblatt daily.

The pictures of the catastrophe – which has killed hundreds and possibly thousands – have evoked memories of crises in the world’s poorest nations such as last year’s tsunami in Asia, which left more than 230,000 people dead or missing.

But some view the response to those disasters more favorably than the lawless aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

“I am absolutely disgusted. After the tsunami our people, even the ones who lost everything, wanted to help the others who were suffering,” said Sajeewa Chinthaka, 36, as he watched a cricket match in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

“Not a single tourist caught in the tsunami was mugged. Now with all this happening in the U.S. we can easily see where the civilized part of the world’s population is.”

SINKING INTO ANARCHY

Many newspapers highlighted criticism of local and state authorities and of President Bush. Some compared the sputtering relief effort with the massive amounts of money and resources poured into the war in Iraq.

“A modern metropolis sinking in water and into anarchy – it is a really cruel spectacle for a champion of security like Bush,” France’s left-leaning Liberation newspaper said.

“(Al Qaeda leader Osama) bin Laden, nice and dry in his hideaway, must be killing himself laughing.”

A female employee at a multinational firm in South Korea said it may have been no accident the U.S. was hit.

“Maybe it was punishment for what it did to Iraq, which has a man-made disaster, not a natural disaster,” said the woman, who did not want to be named as she has an American manager.

“A lot of the people I work with think this way. We spoke about it just the other day,” she said.

Commentators noted the victims of the hurricane were overwhelmingly African Americans, too poor to flee the region as the hurricane loomed unlike some of their white neighbors.

New Orleans ranks fifth in the United States in terms of African American population and 67 percent of the city’s residents are black.

“In one of the poorest states in the country, where black people earn half as much as white people, this has taken on a racial dimension,” said a report in Britain’s Guardian daily.

Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, in a veiled criticism of U.S. political thought, said the disaster showed the need for a strong state that could help poor people.

“You see in this example that even in the 21st century you need the state, a good functioning state, and I hope that for all these people, these poor people, that the Americans will do their best,” he told reporters at a European Union meeting in Newport, Wales.

David Fordham, 33, a hospital anesthetist speaking at a London underground rail station, said he had spent time in America and was not surprised the country had struggled to cope.

“Maybe they just thought they could sit it out and everything would be okay,” he said.

“It’s unbelievable though – the TV images – and your heart goes out to them.”

(With reporting by Reuters bureaux around the world)
[/quote]


Survey Finds More Women Try Bisexuality

More women — particularly those in their late teens and 20s — are experimenting with bisexuality or at least feel more comfortable reporting same-sex encounters, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention :open_mouth: :open_mouth: :open_mouth: :open_mouth: :open_mouth:

The survey, released Thursday by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, found that 11.5 percent of women, ages 18 to 44, said they’ve had at least one sexual experience with another woman in their lifetimes, compared with about 4 percent of women, ages 18 to 59, who said the same in a comparable survey a decade earlier.

For women in their late teens and 20s, the percentage rose to 14 percent in the more recent survey. About 6 percent of men in their teens and 20s said they’d had at least one same-sex encounter

While those who conducted the survey took measures to protect respondents’ privacy, researchers say it’s unclear whether the figure for men was lower because they’re are more likely to avoid same-sex experiences or whether they’re not reporting them.

It wouldn’t surprise Kat Fowler, a 27-year-old art student who dates both women and men, if men were less likely to talk about their experiences.

“There’s a certain higher level of discrimination (for men). It’s a lot easier for women to have these kinds of experiences and be open about it because it’s more accepted,” said Fowler, who attends the University of Florida.

The findings on bisexuality and other aspects of Americans’ sexual habits were taken from the National Survey of Family Growth, which included 12,571 in-person interviews, done from March 2002 to March 2003. Overall, researchers said the report shows that most people have relatively few partners and are at a low risk for sexually transmitted diseases.

“Instead of just anecdotes and stories that raise people’s anxieties, I think it’s best to have real numbers,” said William Mosher, the statistician who oversaw the report. “And now we have those.”

When it comes to women and same-sex relationships, Mosher said it would be worth studying why young women seek such relationships, and whether they may be trying to avoid diseases more commonly spread through sex with men.

But some experts who study sexuality say it’s even more likely that many college students simply see experimentation as a rite of passage.

“It’s very safe in the academic community; no one thinks anything of it,” said Elayne Rapping, a professor of American studies at the University of Buffalo who has written about sexuality.

“But to some extent there’s more talk than action,” she added, noting that the bisexuality label has become a “badge of courage” for some college women, even those who only date men. Meanwhile, she said, men who have same-sex experiences are often less likely to talk about it publicly.

The trend among college women has prompted some sexual behavior experts to light-heartedly refer to the term “LUG,” or “lesbian until graduation,” said Craig Kinsley, a neuroscientist at the University of Richmond who studies the biology of sexual orientation and gender.

In other findings, the survey said that about 10 percent of females, ages 15 to 19, and 12 percent of males had experienced heterosexual oral sex but not vaginal intercourse. While no earlier data were available for young women, percentages for young men in 1992 were about the same, researchers said.

Those numbers dropped substantially for people in their 20s, who were more likely to have had vaginal intercourse.

The survey also revealed that 39 percent of men, ages 15 to 44, who’d had at least one sexual partner in the last year said they used a condom during their most recent sexual encounter. That figure rose to 65 percent for men who’d never been married — and 91 percent for men who’d ever had sexual contact with another man.

Mosher said it was likely that men in higher-risk categories were heeding campaigns that encourage them to use condoms.

“Whether the levels (of condom use) are high enough is for others to judge,” Mosher said. “But I think it’s at least encouraging.”

The survey of adults has a margin of error of 1 percentage point and 3 percentage points for the teen data.

:smiley: