Thursday 31 March 2011
US: Medical Marijuana Lobbying Debuts in D.C.
Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/03/31/MN6S1IMQE4.DTL
Dance dimensions
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/entertainment-arts-12891882
Giant cousin of T. rex identified
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9442000/9442126.stm
Sluggish housing market predicted
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/business-12917122
China eyes US military expansion
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/world-asia-pacific-12917338
Wednesday 30 March 2011
Namibia declares floods emergency
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/world-africa-12913487
17 years for baby son murderer
Ryan Leslie was found guilty of murder and causing grievous bodily harm County Antrim man Ryan Leslie has been told he must serve 17 years in prison for the murder of his baby son Cameron.
In February, Leslie, 26, of Ballyvesey Green, Newtownabbey, was found guilty of murdering his 14-week old son and causing him grievous bodily harm.
Cameron Jay Leslie died in hospital in September 2008 after suffering severe injuries to several parts of his body.
On Wednesday, a High Court judge set a minimum tariff for the mandatory life term given to Leslie in February.
Mr Justice Stephens said that Leslie had shown no insight or remorse for his actions and had shown himself to be a violent individual unable to control his temper.
He also considered that the lies Leslie told the police in his attempts to avoid detection were "preposterous and farcical" and described him as a "dishonest and deeply manipulative individual".
During the trial, the court heard evidence that Cameron's death was due to his brain swelling up so much that it cut off the oxygen supply to his brain stem.
Mr Justice Stevens“You have problems controlling your temper and had sought assistance from your general practitioner and a psychiatrist”
This injury had been caused by a severe blow to the back of his head inflicted by his father.
Deputy State Pathologist for Northern Ireland, Dr Peter Ingram told the jury that he had uncovered numerous bruises to both of Cameron's arms, his legs, torso, throat and chin.
The doctor also uncovered a total of 14 rib fractures, all of which were "typical of injuries seen in cases of child abuse".
These had been inflicted by Leslie days before the fatal assault and did not contribute to Cameron's death.
The baby had been staying with his father for two days before being rushed to hospital on 4 September 2008. He died two days later.
Leslie had split with Cameron's mother, Sheree Black, in August, but she allowed him to have overnight visits with his son at his flat.
14-week-old Cameron died in 2008 The judge said his relationship with Ms Black was marked by physical and verbal violence.
"You stated in evidence that you had physically assaulted her on seven occasions including kicking her on the upper leg when she was pregnant, throwing a TV remote control at her striking her on her face causing her a bruise and pulling and dragging her by the hair.
"You have problems controlling your temper and had sought assistance from your general practitioner
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/education-12880840
Test tube miracles
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/health-11442887
Berlusconi visits migrant island
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/world-europe-12903771
Charlie Sheen
Charlie Sheen's recent behaviour has led to media and medical speculation about his health The recent behaviour of actor Charlie Sheen has led to some - including US TV doctor Dr Drew Pinsky and a number of bloggers - to suggest he has bipolar disorder.
In this week's Scrubbing Up column, mood disorders expert Dr Paul Keedwell suggests why many commentators tend to condemn or stigmatise celebrities who behave in this way.
Charlie Sheen has been flying the flag for the alpha male and the spirit of adventure with more than a little wit and bravura; something that has led to intense speculation about his mental health.
Whether or not Sheen does have a mental illness, the media coverage has told us important things about the way society sees mental health problems.
Articles on Sheen's behaviour have ranged from the judgmental - decrying his hedonistic lifestyle - to the celebratory - he has a right to behave like this and we should stop psychologising.
But there are also compassionate voices emerging: serious attempts to understand his behaviour.
Only a psychiatrist who fully assesses an individual face-to-face and takes a history from all possible sources is well placed to come up with a diagnosis and consider treatment options for mental illness.
Often more than one problem is identified, requiring a complex set of psychological, social and medical interventions.
“In judging him, we can all feel a bit better about our own transgressions”
However, many doctors in the media, and mental health discussion forums, have drawn parallels between Sheen's behaviour and the signs and symptoms of bipolar disorder.
These include increased rate of speech, speeding thoughts, increased sexual drive and reckless sexual behaviour, increased drug or alcohol misuse, profligate spending, irritability, thoughts of being especially powerful or gifted, thoughts rapidly jumping from one subject to another (known as "flight of ideas"), distractibility, paranoia, boundless energy and reduced need for sleep.
Discussions around the subject of bipolar disorder have generally been a good thing, highlighting the difficulties inherent in both diagnosing the disorder in the context of a hedonistic culture and drug misuse, and the difficulties in persuading the sufferer to accept treatment when they are feeling so elated and expansive.
However, it is worth considering the less charitable interpretations of Sheen's behaviour.
For example, we might take the line that he has brought his problems on himself by making a bad moral choice.
Drug use can certainly trigger and destabilise an underlying predisposition to mental illness.
However, even if mental illness runs in the family, predicting which of us will become ill is difficult.
To condemn someone with mental illness for using drugs is like condemning the smoker who has lung cancer.
“Mental illness is still treated differently to medical disease”
Also, the more considered commentators realise that mental illness can lead to excessive drug misuse, as well as the other way round.
I believe that there are three basic motivations underlying such negative judgements.
Firstly, they provide us with what we think is a neat cause for his mental imbalance - a lifestyle so extreme that we can distance ourselves from it, satisfy ourselves that what he is experiencing would never happen to us.
Secondly, in judging him, we can all feel a bit better about our own transgressions. Finally, because we envy celebrity as much as we covet it, we have a morbid fascination with witnessing the downfall of those who we admired.
Another angle from commentators is that Sheen's behaviour is merely on a spectrum of normality and that he should be free to express himself.
The behaviour of someone with a mental health problem may be infectious and seductive: many of us are naturally attracted to someone who is happy, energetic, expansive and creative.
Superficially, behaviours expressed by individuals with a mental illness do not have a clear cut off from more common variation.
Bipolar disorder, for example, merges into cyclothymia - the moody personality.
This "bipolar spectrum" has expressed itself in our great poets, artists, scientists and novelists.
At the sharp end, though, there is a real risk of suicide (over 500 times the average population risk) or death through excessive risk taking, not to mention the long term social consequences of marriage break up, career meltdown or a prison sentence.
I once assessed a man in clinic who had rapidly descended from IT entrepreneur with a loving family to a divorced, unemployed ex-con living in a hostel in a deprived part of London, wondering how he could have been arrested two years earlier in a South London brothel, threatening a prostitute with a replica hand gun.
Mental illness is still treated differently to medical disease, even though at the extremes the disorder it is no less biological, and no more controllable through human will alone.
It can be remedied with a combination of medication, talking therapies and lifestyle changes.
We still cannot speak its name, in the same way as we could not talk about having cancer just a few decades ago.
Like cancer, mental illness is a common part of human life, especially as we get older, and it can affect us all, irrespective of lifestyle or background.
Also like cancer, much mental illness is most effectively treated in its early stages.
As the taboo of mental illness is broken down so people will present for help earlier, and society's burden of illness will come down: at this time we will all be finally "winning".
Tuition fees 'threaten languages'
There are fears that £36,000 fees for four-year language courses could put off students University language departments are warning that the increase in tuition fees in England could undermine their ability to recruit students.
Many language degrees include an extra year abroad - and there are fears that students will not want to pay up to £36,000 for a four-year course.
The organisation representing language departments is asking ministers for a fee subsidy for the extra year.
The government says it has ordered a review of support for modern languages.
But the University Council for Modern Languages is worried that students will be expected to apply for courses without knowing whether they will be charged the full price for four years.
They fear that the doubt surrounding fee support - and the prospect of paying an extra £9,000 for another year - will put off students.
The group's chairman, Prof James Coleman, says that at present many students on four-year courses have subsidised fees for the year abroad - with these subsidies paid through the funding council to universities.
But there has still not been any clarification on what will happen to about 17,000 language students when the fee system is changed in 2012.
Language departments want the government to fly the flag for their subjects Prof Coleman is writing to Universities Minister David Willetts calling for a waiver on fees for a year abroad.
"The government urgently needs to make a statement that they will support a year abroad and to moderate the impact of higher fees," says Prof Coleman.
"Potential students are already looking at courses," he says.
Prof Coleman says universities and students will need to know by the summer the detail of what support will be available.
He says students must be told "they will not be financially penalised for taking a four-year language degree".
In response, a Department for Business, Innovation and Skills spokesperson said: "The government recognises the important contribution of modern languages to our university system.
"We have asked the Higher Education Funding Council for England to review what support modern languages, and other strategic and vulnerable subjects, should receive from 2012."
This review is expected to report back in the autumn.
But language departments are worried that there needs to be a more rapid response - otherwise students might opt to avoid languages.
Baroness Coussins, chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on languages, is to voice her concern in the House of Lords this week.
Essex University is taking its own action - with plans to fund its own subsidy when fees are increased, so that language students will not pay any fees for the extra fourth year.
"The reason for the nil fee fo
Tuesday 29 March 2011
Anger as Yemen blast toll rises
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/world-middle-east-12902310
Death rates 'higher' in youth
The new report says mortality rates are now higher for teenagers than for children Premature deaths are now more likely to occur in adolescence and early adulthood than in childhood, a new global report claims.
The study in The Lancet looked at data from 50 countries - rich, middle-income and poor - over 50 years.
It found that while mortality rates had fallen overall, rates were now relatively higher in teenagers and young adults, than in young children.
Violence, suicide and road accidents are being blamed.
The new study shows death rates among young people have fallen dramatically over the last 50 years across the globe.
Mortality in children aged one to nine has fallen by some 90%, thanks largely to fewer deaths from infectious disease.
Dr Russell Viner University College London“The teenage years were the healthiest time of our life. It's no longer true”
But it is not all good news. Mortality rates have not been dropping as fast among teenagers and young adults. Violent deaths are on the rise in both young men and women in real terms, and suicide rates have also risen among young men.
Road deaths continue to take their toll too, according to the report.
This means that although mortality rates have fallen overall, they are now higher among teenagers and young adults than in children.
Young men aged 15-24 are now two to three times more likely to die prematurely than young boys aged one to four, the researchers claim.
"Modern life is much more toxic for teenagers and young people," says Dr Russell Viner of University College London, who led the study. "We've had rises in road traffic accidents, rises in violence, rises in suicide which we don't see in young children.
"The teenage years were the healthiest time of our life. It's no longer true."
This might not be the complete picture. The study doesn't take into account the poorest countries from sub-Saharan Africa, because the data was not available, say the researchers.
There are also regional variations. There was a peak in suicide rates observed during the post-communist countries in the late 1990s, for instance, while suicide rates have started to fall in rich countries in recent years.
But Dr Viner says trends first seen in the West are now being seen in developing countries, as the move to cities brings benefits and risks to the urban young.
"It seems that economic development, the move to cities, increasing urbanisation and social dislocation are actually quite toxic for our young people in terms of mortality," he says.
Co-author Dr Michael Resnick, of the University of Minnesota, told the BBC: "What is clear is that the greatest threats to young peoples' health, outside of living in extreme poverty and in 'hot z
US CA: San Diego Approves Sweeping Medical Pot Limits
Source: http://mapinc.org/url/1otwnj1P
'Damaged' donors
Robert Law on getting cancer from a donor kidney
An investigation is underway after two transplant patients got cancer from the same donor.
The recipients were each given a kidney from a woman with a rare form of blood cancer which was not picked up in routine safety checks.
The disease was detected too late in a post-mortem examination.
NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT), the agency responsible for transplant safety, said research would determine the scale of the problem nationally.
Rob Law, 59, and Gillian Smart, 47, both had transplants at the Royal Liverpool Hospital on 26 November 2010. The Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals Trust is conducting a joint investigation with NHSBT.
The donor, a 56-year-old woman, is said to have died from a brain haemorrhage.
Pathologists later discovered she suffered from intravascular B-cell lymphoma, a rare but aggressive form of cancer.
Professor James Neuberger Associate medical director, NHS Blood Transplant“Transplantation isn't risk-free. These are second hand organs”
Both kidney patients are now undergoing chemotherapy.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's File on 4, Gillian Smart said: "As a renal patient you come to terms with death very quickly. You see a lot of death while you dialyse.
"I didn't expect to have to come to terms with maybe a cancer death. It is quite a serious cancer and a hard cancer to fight."
Both patients want to know how the cancer was missed until the post-mortem and are considering legal action.
Mr Law said: "I felt I had to get to the bottom of this for the sake of anyone else in the same position, because there are 10,000 people a year who are waiting for a transplant.
"I feel they should know that any organs they get are suitable and they're not going to be infected by cancer or any other disease."
The Royal Liverpool's medical director Dr Peter Williams said both kidneys were transplanted from the same donor, who died at another hospital.
"When the kidneys were transplanted, the surgical team were completely unaware that the donor could have cancer," he said.
File on 4 is on BBC Radio 4 on 22 March at 2000 GMT and Sunday 27 March at 1700 GMT
Listen again on BBC iPlayer Download thHero's welcome?
Russia's spies were whisked away from a Moscow airport In the bad old days, homecoming spies could expect heroes' welcomes in Moscow, their faces on commemorative postage stamps and lifelong adulation.
But that, of course, was when they were fighting evil empires, rather than living the suburban American dream.
Today's returning spies seem to have done little hard work - or at least little work for the Russian state.
The glamorous Anna Chapman, for example, appears to have spent more time flogging private planes to Russian oligarchs.
But they have all been offered a Moscow flat and a $2,000 (£1,327) state pension - the sort of riches plenty of Muscovites can still only dream of.
The Russian press are treating the entire episode with a mixture of humour and disdain.
Our Man in Havana, James Wormold, passed off mundane details as secrets One commenter observed: "It reminds me of Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana where the spy convinces his Centre that a diagram of a vacuum cleaner is the blueprint for a new secret weapon."
The radio station Ekho Moskvy has announced a cartoon contest on the topic of the returning spies.
But there are plenty of Russians who say the spies "just weren't up to the job".
With the exception of the redheaded Anna Chapman, who will doubtless soon be offered a talk show and a column on a British tabloid, they do look like a dull lot compared to their Soviet forerunners - who were very good indeed at their jobs.
The old Soviet-era spies tended to be a cheerful lot, full of joie de vivre - it is perhaps their capacity for jollity that made them successful.
Mikhail Lyubimov, who spied in London in the 1980s, once told me that former spies should form an international association aimed at promoting international understanding.
"With our experience, we are by far the best equipped to work towards bettering understandings between nations," he said, only semi-seriously.
A former colleague, who was kicked out of Japan for spying, went on to have a successful career writing books that opened Japanese culture to Russian readers.
Nevertheless, it cannot be eas
Monday 28 March 2011
Mexico: Cartels, Military Battle for Public Acceptance
Live forever?
Advances in nutrition and medicine have had an impact on how long we are living healthy lives Move over Methuselah. Future generations could be living well into their second century and still doing sudoku to boot, if life expectancy predictions are anything to go by.
Increasing by two years every decade, they show no signs of flattening out. Average lifespan around the world is already double what it was 200 years ago.
Since the 1980s, experts thought the increase in life expectancy would grind to a halt but forecasters have repeatedly been proved wrong.
So can we go on living longer and longer? Is there a limit to how long we can survive into old age?
The reason behind the steady rise in life expectancy is "the decline in the death rate of the elderly", says Professor Tom Kirkwood from the Institute of Ageing and Health at Newcastle University.
He has a theory that our bodies are evolving to maintain and repair themselves better and our genes are investing in this process to put off the damage which will eventually lead to death.
As a result, there is no ceiling imposed by the realities of the ageing process.
"There is no use-by-date when we age, ageing is not a fixed biological process," Professor Kirkwood says.
A large study of people aged 85 and over in Newcastle, carried out by Professor Kirkwood and his colleagues, discovered that there were a remarkable number of people enjoying good health and independence in their late 80s and beyond.
Professor Tom Kirkwood Newcastle University“We are reaching old age with less accumulative damage”
With people reaching old age in better shape, it is safe to assume that this is all down to better eating habits, living conditions, education and medicine.
There are still many people who suffer from major health problems, but modern medicine means doctors are better at managing long-term health conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease.
"We are reaching old age with less accumulative damage than previous generations. We are less damaged," says Professor Kirkwood.
Our softer lives and the improvements in nutrition and healthcare have had a direct impact on longevity.
Nearly one-in-five people currently in the UK will live to see their 100th birthday, the Office for National Statistics predicted last year.
Life expectancy at birth has continued to increase in the UK - from 73.4 years for men for the period 1991 to 1993 to 77.85 years for 2007 to 2009.
Life expectancy for females at birth has also increased - from 78.9 years (91-93) to 82 years (2007-2009).
A report in Science from 2002 which looked at life expectancy patterns in different countries since 1840, concluded that there was no sign of a natural limit to life.
Researchers Jim Oeppen and Dr James
Syria troops disperse Deraa rally
There is a heavy security presence in the port city of Latakia Syrian troops have deployed in force in the northern city of Latakia, where at least 12 people have died in a wave of unrest that has shaken the regime.
Officials blamed foreign forces for the violence, but residents said pro-government gangs started the clashes.
The authorities said on Sunday they would end decades of emergency rule, after protests erupted in at least six cities on Friday.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is expected to address the nation soon.
Sources say Mr Assad is likely to announce on Tuesday that he is lifting the state of emergency after nearly 50 years and taking steps to annul other restrictions on civil liberties and political freedoms.
There are great hopes among many Syrians that President Assad's speech will put an end to the recent tension, says the BBC's Lina Sinjab in the capital, Damascus.
The unrest started in the southern town of Deraa on 18 March and has spread to several cities nationwide. It is the biggest threat to the rule of President Assad, 45, who succeeded his father Hafez on his death in 2000.
Officials say more than 30 people have died since the unrest began, but activists put the toll at more than 100.
Some 90 people have been wounded in this weekend's violence in Latakia Syrian troops are now in control of Latakia, 350km (220 miles) north-west of Damascus, our correspondent says.
The government says 12 people were killed during clashes on Friday and Saturday, but residents say the number could be higher.
The streets of Latakia, home to 450,000 people, were completely deserted on Sunday and all shops remained closed.
An Associated Press photographer said two police cars had been smashed in the main Sheikh Daher square.
The offices of SyriaTel, the mobile phone company owned in large part by a cousin of President Assad, had been burned, he said.
At one of the city's two hospitals, officials said they had treated 90 wounded people on Friday. Many had gunshot wounds to the hands or feet, while others were in critical condition, he added.
Deadly violence has also gripped cities in southern Syria for 10 days.
On Saturday, demonstrators set fire to the Baath party's local headquarters in the town of Tafas.
On Sunday, several hundred men were holding a sit-in at the Omari Mosque in the nearby town of Deraa, the original focus of protests and scene of a crackdown by security forces last week.
There have also been protests in Hama, a northern city where in 1982 the forces of President Hafez al-Assad, Bashar's father, killed thousands of people and razed much of the old quarter to put down an armed uprising by the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.
Protesters have vowed to keep taking to the streets until all their demands for more freedom are met.
One, two, three...
One, two, three, four... The number of protesters in London on Saturday has been estimated anywhere from 250,000 to 500,000. So is it possible to count?
No one knows exactly how many people joined the march and rally against spending cuts.
As the march finished in Hyde Park, the Trades Union Congress, which organised the event, estimated there was about 250,000.
On the following day, they were saying it was between 400,000 and 500,000. So how do they count?
"It's an inexact science, which is why we're not making any very, very accurate claims," says Nigel Stanley, head of TUC campaigns.
"We have been piecing together information from yesterday and think we're close to half a million people."
There are two ways of estimating numbers, he says. One is drawn from having a rough idea in advance of the capacity of streets in the area where people gathered for the start of the march.
"We know that the whole of Victoria Embankment was full but backing up to Lower Thames Street and people were in all adjacent roads and across the bridges," says Stanley
This advance planning involves studying very precise maps with measurements of streets, and then multiplying the width by the length to get the area, he says. Then you apply a rule of thumb that three people per square metre is comfortable and four is like a rock concert. On Saturday, it was probably about 3.5 per square metre, organisers estimate.
This calculation, helped by having a TUC representative in the police control room looking at CCTV, prompted the early and more modest estimates, says Stanley.
But then a second stage of calculations is required, to allow for the fact this is a moving group, with many people joining the march late. This requires some knowledge of how long the march takes to pass a particular point in the road.
"We know it took more than four hours to pass any point, and that the crowd was quite dense. A combination of these two ways, plus conversations with the police and others experienced in this, led us to revise the figure from 250,000 to nearer 500,000."
A part of BBC News Magazine, Who, What, Why? aims to answer questions behind the headlines
It would be better to always supply a caveat of a 20% margin of error but the media demand for accurate numbers is an impossible one to meet, he adds.
Of course, organisers of any demonstration are always open to accusations they inflate the numbers for their own ends.
That's why the police sometimes estimate numbers too. At a demonstration in London in 2003 against the Iraq War, organisers said nea
US CO: Glenwood OKs Zoning Regs for Medical Pot Operations
Adele equals Madonna album record
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/entertainment-arts-12860642
Twilight zone
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/business-12565417
Sunday 27 March 2011
Artists' fears for Thomas centre
Swansea's Dylan Thomas Centre was opened by former US president Jimmy Carter More than 200 writers, artists and supporters of Swansea's Dylan Thomas Centre have signed a letter expressing concerns about its future use.
Dr Who writer Russell T Davies, Cerys Matthews and Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy are among the names calling for it to be run by trust.
Swansea council is looking lease the centre to the city's universities to open a "creative industries hub."
It said the centre would not close and the permanent exhibition would remain.
Supporters' letter“The city is surely going to look a little bizarre, to put it mildly, in the eyes of the wider world if it is seen to have abandoned the Dylan Thomas Centre”
The letter states since the centre was opened 17 years ago by former US president Jimmy Carter it had delivered a programme of literary and artistic events "unparalleled for its variety and excellence by any other arts venue in the United Kingdom".
It adds: "The centre has celebrated the literary arts of Wales, in addition to music, drama and the visual arts, and has attracted to Swansea a panoply of internationally renowned writers who, returning home, have burnished the renown of Swansea and Wales in all parts of the world."
The signatories, who also include Hollywood actor Michael Sheen, theatre director Michael Bogdanov and Thomas's son Colm, say with the 100th anniversary of the poet's birth in 2014 a trust would be the best way to safeguard its future.
"Plans are currently being laid, locally and nationally, for celebrations of the 100th anniversary," they added.
"The city is surely going to look a little bizarre, to put it mildly, in the eyes of the wider world if it is seen to have abandoned the Dylan Thomas Centre on the eve of this major national and international celebration."
Writers, actors and musicians have signed the letter Last year Swansea council and universities revealed plans to transform the centre into a "cultural and enterprise hub" for creative industries.
But in response to the letter the council said it was "making serious and significant preparations" for the anniversary with the Welsh Assembly Government and other partners.
"The Dylan Thomas Centre is not threatened with closure," said a spokesman.
"A joint venture alongside the University of Wales will allow us to secure its future during these difficult economic times when finance is limited.
Taliban seize men in Afghanistan
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/world-south-asia-12874692
Letterman gets US comedy honour
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/entertainment-arts-12873635
Scots Lib Dem candidate resigns
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/uk-scotland-12874085
Libyan rebels sweeping westwards
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/world-africa-12873434
Saturday 26 March 2011
Inquiry into Legionnaires' case
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-12870591
Spain pledges economic reforms
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/business-12867626
Charlie Sheen
Charlie Sheen's recent behaviour has led to media and medical speculation about his health The recent behaviour of actor Charlie Sheen has led to some - including US TV doctor Dr Drew Pinsky and a number of bloggers - to suggest he has bipolar disorder.
In this week's Scrubbing Up column, mood disorders expert Dr Paul Keedwell suggests why many commentators tend to condemn or stigmatise celebrities who behave in this way.
Charlie Sheen has been flying the flag for the alpha male and the spirit of adventure with more than a little wit and bravura; something that has led to intense speculation about his mental health.
Whether or not Sheen does have a mental illness, the media coverage has told us important things about the way society sees mental health problems.
Articles on Sheen's behaviour have ranged from the judgmental - decrying his hedonistic lifestyle - to the celebratory - he has a right to behave like this and we should stop psychologising.
But there are also compassionate voices emerging: serious attempts to understand his behaviour.
Only a psychiatrist who fully assesses an individual face-to-face and takes a history from all possible sources is well placed to come up with a diagnosis and consider treatment options for mental illness.
Often more than one problem is identified, requiring a complex set of psychological, social and medical interventions.
“In judging him, we can all feel a bit better about our own transgressions”
However, many doctors in the media, and mental health discussion forums, have drawn parallels between Sheen's behaviour and the signs and symptoms of bipolar disorder.
These include increased rate of speech, speeding thoughts, increased sexual drive and reckless sexual behaviour, increased drug or alcohol misuse, profligate spending, irritability, thoughts of being especially powerful or gifted, thoughts rapidly jumping from one subject to another (known as "flight of ideas"), distractibility, paranoia, boundless energy and reduced need for sleep.
Discussions around the subject of bipolar disorder have generally been a good thing, highlighting the difficulties inherent in both diagnosing the disorder in the context of a hedonistic culture and drug misuse, and the difficulties in persuading the sufferer to accept treatment when they are feeling so elated and expansive.
However, it is worth considering the less charitable interpretations of Sheen's behaviour.
For example, we might take the line that he has brought his problems on himself by making a bad moral choice.
Drug use can certainly trigger and destabilise an underlying predisposition to mental illness.
However, even if mental illness runs in the family, predicting which of us will become ill is difficult.
To condemn someone with mental illness for using drugs is like condemning the smoker who has lung cancer.
“Mental illness is still treated differently to medical disease”
Also, the more considered commentators realise that mental illness can lead to excessive drug misuse, as well as the other way round.
I believe that there are three basic motivations underlying such negative judgements.
Firstly, they provide us with what we think is a neat cause for his mental imbalance - a lifestyle so extreme that we can distance ourselves from it, satisfy ourselves that what he is experiencing would never happen to us.
Secondly, in judging him, we can all feel a bit better about our own transgressions. Finally, because we envy celebrity as much as we covet it, we have a morbid fascination with witnessing the downfall of those who we admired.
Another angle from commentators is that Sheen's behaviour is merely on a spectrum of normality and that he should be free to express himself.
The behaviour of someone with a mental health problem may be infectious and seductive: many of us are naturally attracted to someone who is happy, energetic, expansive and creative.
Superficially, behaviours expressed by individuals with a mental illness do not have a clear cut off from more common variation.
Bipolar disorder, for example, merges into cyclothymia - the moody personality.
This "bipolar spectrum" has expressed itself in our great poets, artists, scientists and novelists.
At the sharp end, though, there is a real risk of suicide (over 500 times the average population risk) or death through excessive risk taking, not to mention the long term social consequences of marriage break up, career meltdown or a prison sentence.
I once assessed a man in clinic who had rapidly descended from IT entrepreneur with a loving family to a divorced, unemployed ex-con living in a hostel in a deprived part of London, wondering how he could have been arrested two years earlier in a South London brothel, threatening a prostitute with a replica hand gun.
Mental illness is still treated differently to medical disease, even though at the extremes the disorder it is no less biological, and no more controllable through human will alone.
It can be remedied with a combination of medication, talking therapies and lifestyle changes.
We still cannot speak its name, in the same way as we could not talk about having cancer just a few decades ago.
Like cancer, mental illness is a common part of human life, especially as we get older, and it can affect us all, irrespective of lifestyle or background.
Also like cancer, much mental illness is most effectively treated in its early stages.
As the taboo of mental illness is broken down so people will present for help earlier, and society's burden of illness will come down: at this time we will all be finally "winning".
i can see why the speculation about Mr Sheen's mental health has started and i mostly agree with this article. in particular that diagnosis from watching tv shows is impossible and should not be attempted by any sensible mental health practitioner! Also pointing out the mental illness is treated often as self-inflicted or different from medical illness is a point this is not made often enough
Report this comment@ reodudeThe same can be said the other way round. People fall victim to mental disorders, having gone through their whole life never having had a drink, smoke or any drugs. It's a null argument as it works both ways. Charlie Sheen is a joker though, and I reckon he's laughing at all of us for being so interested in him. Good for him, we're all dunces for caring at all ;)
My experience of bipolar disorder is of an illness that ripped my life apart as my spouse fell into its grasp. Everything from unaccountable mood changes and unreasonable demands to full blown violent insanity, all of which I had to shield my small children from. Devastating for the sufferer yes - but also devastating for the family of the sufferer, something which receives too little recognition.
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Annual health survey under threat
The General Lifestyle Survey looks at drinking habits, along with a wealth of other indicators Health experts have hit out after learning that a funding cut could mean the end of a key annual health survey.
The General Lifestyle Survey is carried out every year by the Office for National Statistics on behalf of a number of government departments.
It provides information on a wide variety of topics, including smoking and drinking habits across the UK.
But it has been proposed that NHS funding for the survey should be cut, which means it would end.
Each year, around 15,000 households are contacted and face-to-face interviews are carried out, questioning respondents on their smoking and drinking habits and their use of health services, as well as looking at the issues of housing, employment, education and income.
Once collated, the survey's results provide government departments with a valuable insight into the lives of UK residents.
The survey has been running almost continuously since 1971, enabling experts to spot emerging trends and cyclical patterns.
But now the NHS Information Centre has decided to axe its contribution of £300,000 that funds part of the work of the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
Professor Martin McKee London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine“This decision exposes the hypocrisy of a government that claims to promote public health yet enters into agreements with the food and alcohol industry that ignore the evidence on what really works”
That would mean the end of the survey, according to the head of the UK Statistics Authority Sir Michael Scholar, who has written to Health Secretary Andrew Lansley, urging him to reject the planned funding cut.
The threat to the future of the survey provoked an angry response from Professor Martin McKee, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who said he was amazed such a valuable resource could be lost.
"This decision exposes the hypocrisy of a government that claims to promote public health yet enters into agreements with the food and alcohol industry that ignore the evidence on what really works - and now makes it impossible to know what the results of its misguided policies actually are."
Other public health experts say the data in the survey is critical to developing effective health policies and holding the government to account for its actions.
The final decision rests with the health secretary, who must decide whether to approve the NHS Information Centre's proposal.
Sir Michael Scholar said: "The ONS, who, following extensive consultation with the users of their statistics, have just completed their post-budget cuts business plan, have no funds available to make up this shortfall, without damaging their own vital economic and social statistics.
"The decis
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Friday 25 March 2011
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How Elizabeth Taylor redefined celebrity
Elizabeth Taylor won two Oscars but many people remember her as much for her eight tumultuous marriages, ill health and addictions, all lived out in a way more public than any Hollywood star had done before.
Her life read like a script for many of today's Hollywood celebrities - she was a child star whose life was played out in the media, someone who was hounded by the paparazzi, had high profile relationships, and even battled drug addiction.
Elizabeth Taylor, who has died aged 79, in many ways defined the notion of modern day celebrity, someone whose life off-screen, as well as on, captivated millions.
"She was one of the first to really make her personal life as important as her professional life in terms of her stardom," says William Mann, a biographer of Taylor.
One of the main reasons was that her personal life had a gripping narrative of its own. Marrying eight times, twice to the same man, Elizabeth Taylor first went down the aisle at the age of 18. By the time she was 26 she was already a widow.
Karen Sternheimer University of Southern California“Looking back at some of the magazines from the early 1960s, you could be mistaken for thinking from the reports that she was the Britney Spears of her day”
"People nowadays will do anything for maximum media exposure," says Mann, "but she got maximum media exposure because she lived a life that was fascinating to millions."
But what made her "fascinating" life accessible to millions of readers and viewers was in part the break-up of the old Hollywood studio system in the 1950s.
The end of a system which had allowed the big film companies to effectively control stars' pay and publicity, meant the studios could no longer hush up personal scandals for fear of damaging a star's reputation, says Mann.
"Up until then, the studios owned the artists and had unspoken agreements with celebrity magazines so they would tread lightly on people," says Karen Steinheimer, a sociologist at the University of Southern California, and author of Celebrity Culture and the American Dream.
Steinheimer believes that the decline of the studios' power, combined with Taylor's colourful personal life, created a new, more cutting, and less sycophantic style of mainstream media coverage of celebrities - moving towards today's tabloid press.
"Some of the coverage of her first marriage, her first divorce and her affairs, was strikingly more critical than the coverage of most other celebrities at the time," says Steinheimer.
"Looking back at some of the magazines from the early 1960s, you could be mistaken for thinking from the reports that she was the Britney Spears of her day in terms of the negativity and relentless hounding of her and her relationships."
Taylor's romance with her Cleopatra co-star Richard Burton generated huge interest in the media, not only because their romance had transitioned from on-screen to off, but because they were both married to other people at the time.
Pictures of Taylor and Burton on a Mediterranean yacht in 1962 became a worldwide news event "It was one of the first times you covered these kind of indiscretions on a large scale," says Dawnie Walton, deputy editor of Life magazine's website.
Taylor's face was regularly on the front of celebrity magazines. Life featured her as a cover girl no fewer than 14 times, more than any other person in the publication's history.
Walton says the turning point for the way Life magazine covered celebrity relationships began with the Burton/Taylor affair, and the candid on-set interviews with the couple were a precursor to the modern day Hello and OK!-style spreads.
Their affair, in the more conservative 1960s, was taboo to many, a landmark moment. In that sense, Steinheimer believes Taylor was the "first victim of the paparazzi".
When Italian photographer Marcello Geppetti captured a picture of the pair frolicking on a yacht in the Mediterranean using a long telephoto lens, at the height of their affair, it became a worldwide news event.
Nowadays pictures of celebrities lounging around in bikinis on holiday are second nature in the tabloid press, but back in 1962, the shots were seen as shocking.
Steinheimer describes them as "one of the first 'gotcha' celebrity moments".
"The paparazzi wouldn't really exist today if it wasn't for them. The photographers got pictures of them going into clubs, they climbed up trees and looked down into her compound," says Mann.
"This might be standard behaviour for Hollywood today, but Elizabeth Taylor created that model," he adds.
Another model which many credit Taylor for is the role of the celebrity as a business entity.
She was the highest-paid actress of her time, negotiating a cool $1m for her role in Cleopatra, as well as a share of the profits for the film. This is now the model for many big stars.
Barry Adelman Executive producer, Golden Globes“She was extraordinarily beautiful, and was considered a good actress. That's not true of a lot of celebrities that today's media are obsessed with”
But her business acumen extended beyond Hollywood.
By creating her own jewellery l
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Thursday 24 March 2011
BBC to screen Kennedy mini-series
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Drillers propose deep-Earth quest
Japan's Chikyu vessel should be up to the task This spring, scientists will try to retrieve the deepest types of rock ever extracted from beneath the seabed.
The drilling project is taking place off Costa Rica, and will attempt to reach some 2km under the ocean floor.
Writing in the journal Nature, the co-chief scientists say their ultimate goal is to return even deeper samples - from the mantle layer below the crust.
Obtaining these rocks would provide a geological treasure trove "comparable to the Apollo lunar rocks" they write.
One of the co-chiefs, Damon Teagle from the University of Southampton, UK, told BBC News: "There are some fundamental questions about the way that the Earth has evolved over its history that we will only be able to answer once we completely understand the structure of the crust overlying the mantle, the interface between the mantle and the crust (known as the Mohorovicic Discontinuity, or Moho), and then also the nature of the mantle itself."
The mantle makes up the bulk of our planet's volume and mass. It stretches from the bottom of the crust down to the Earth's iron-nickel core some 2,900km further down.
Its rocks are distinct in composition from those that make up the continents and the ocean floor.
They are thought predominantly to be peridotites, which comprise magnesium-rich, silicon-poor minerals such as olivine and pyroxene.
The properties of these rocks and the conditions to which they are subjected mean much of the mantle is in motion.
Slow convection in this dominant layer plays a key role in the tectonic processes that help shape the surface above.
Scientists already have a range of samples from deep inside the Earth. Some of these were lifted up in the processes that built Earth's mountain ranges, and others have come up in the lavas of volcanoes.
But all the samples are altered in some way by the means that brought them to the surface, and scientists would dearly love to see pristine specimens.
"We need to know the exact chemical composition, and this composition varies from place to place," said Benoit Ildefonse from the Montpellier University 2, France.
"It's important because, depending on the composition, the physical properties of the mantle will also vary and eventually will have some effect on the dynamics of the Earth - on the way this mantle is able to move, on the way it's able to eventually partially melt and produce some magma that is carried out to the surface, creating the new ocean crust."
The last attempt to drill into the mantle, Project Mohole, was conducted in 1961. It failed, but its drill location could be the site of a new effort. Two other potential sites are being assessed, including one being actively investigated this spring Drilling into the mantle on land is impractical because the continents are where the crust is thickest - some 30-60k
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Wednesday 23 March 2011
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Osborne's Budget 'to fuel growth'
George Osborne will announce help for 10,000 first-time homebuyers Chancellor George Osborne is to increase the personal income tax allowance to give 25 million people a cut of around £45 a year in Wednesday's Budget, the BBC has learned.
The amount people can earn before paying tax will be increased by around £600 from April next year.
Mr Osborne will also announce £250m to help 10,000 first-time homebuyers purchase newly built flats and houses.
He is also expected to say a planned rise in fuel duty will be scrapped.
The Budget is the first since the autumn's spending review, which outlined the government's cuts programme.
Experts expect the forecast for economic growth in 2011 to be downgraded - after figures showed a 0.6% contraction in the last three months of 2010.
But they also believe borrowing figures will not be as high as previously anticipated - up to £10bn lower than the £158bn predicted in last June's emergency Budget.
Figures released on Tuesday showed the Consumer Prices Index annual rate of inflation had risen to 4.4% from 4% in January, driven by food, fuel and clothing costs.
The coalition government is committed to increasing the personal tax allowance to £10,000 by the end of its time in office.
In last year's Budget the chancellor announced a rise of £1000 to £7,475 from April 2011.
But higher rate taxpayers will not benefit from this, while the change to be announced on Wednesday will help all those earning less than £115,000 a year.
The Budget will also include a £250m package designed to help 10,000 first-time buyers to purchase a newly built flat or house, the BBC has learned.
The buyer would have to put up 5% of the cost, while the government and home builder would both put up 10%.
Mr Osborne hopes this scheme will boost the construction industry and help support up to 50,000 jobs.
The number of first-time buyers fell to 347,000 in 2010 - a record low.
In 2004/05, more than 700,000 people purchased their first property.
Mr Osborne has hinted that he will introduce a measure to help motorists affected by rising oil prices, fuel duty and the recent increase of the VAT rate from 17.5% to 20%.
It is thought he will scrap plans to raise fuel duty by one penny a litre, which had been due to come into effect in April.
Labour is calling for the VAT rise on fuel to be reversed, but Mr Osborne argues that this would be illegal under European Union rules.
At the same time as Mr Osborne makes his statement to the House of Commons, the Treasury will publish its "strategy for growth".
On Tuesday, Labour's shadow chancellor Ed Balls claimed there was "nothing" of importance in it, after apparently getting a leaked copy.
He told MPs its main policy was "getting rid of maternity and paternity rights".
But Mr Osborne told MPs said this was not the case and accused Labour of making too many spending commitments.
He will begin his Budget speech at about 1230 GMT on Wednesday.
This article is from the
The life and death of a superstar bear
The death of Knut, the world's most famous polar bear, has reopened the debate on the ethical minefield of man's relationship with wild animals. So should polar bears be kept in zoos, asks Tom de Castella.
Knut was born in Berlin Zoo in December 2006. Rejected by his mother, he was put in an incubator and brought up by humans.
His abandonment, cute looks and close relationship with the charismatic zookeeper Thomas Doerflein, turned him into a huge star. He became an environmental symbol, acting as a mascot for the German government's campaign against climate change and being superimposed into a photograph with Leonardo DiCaprio for Vanity Fair's Green Issue in May 2007.
But news of his premature death at the weekend has spurred on those who question both the way Knut was treated and the very fact polar bears are in zoos at all.
While polar bears can live to 30 years old, Knut was only four years and three months when he died. The cause of death has yet to be ascertained but already there have been accusations from animal rights groups.
From the word go, Knut's life was controversial. Shortly after his birth, the German media reported that an animal rights campaigner was calling for him to be put down rather than brought up by humans. It prompted a huge groundswell of sympathy for the bear, which never went away.
For Andrew Linzey, director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, it is a tragic tale from start to finish.
"Frankly, it would have been better for Knut not to have existed at all than live such a miserable life."
Those who questioned the implications of Knut's hand-rearing have suggested he suffered inevitable behavioural problems as a result both of his treatment and the crowds at the zoo.
But Linzey, author of Why Animal Suffering Matters, believes the issue is not whether the zoo was right to hand rear Knut. Once the cub was born, the management had a duty to hand rear him because a zoo is an artificial, "controlled environment".
The fundamental problem is wild animals being kept in captivity at all, he argues. "Zoos impose unnatural lives on most of their captives. People just see a cuddly bear and they want to gawk at him, but what they should see is an animal deprived of its natural life, exhibited for entertainment and profit."
Knut generated huge interest around the world And profit became a big part of Knut's short life. In 2007 alone Berlin Zoo made an estimated five million euros through increased ticket and merchandising sales. Hundreds of fluffy white toys were sold every day across the city, newspapers offered Knut figurines for 148 Euros and in 2008 a movie, Knut and his friends, opened in cinemas across Germany.
Knut's life was about celebrity rather than natural history, says Ian Redmond, a consultant to the Born Free Foundation's polar bear project in Canada.
"It does seem to highlight the dichotomy of people who love this one polar bear in particular and those who care about polar bears right across the species."
He sees little point in keeping large powerful animals in captivity. Not only do they lead "unfulfilled lives", but bears bred in zoos cannot be reintroduced to the wild as they lose the skills necessary to survive.
And those creatures bred in zoos become less and less like the wild animals we admire from natural history programmes, majestically leaping from ice floe to ice floe.
"As you breed in zoos down the generations you're getting further and further away from polar bear behaviour in the wild," argues Redmond. "You might be breeding out the traits that allow it to survive in the wild. What's the point? If you want cute cuddly bears for merchandising then that's a commodity."
In Knut's case critics suggested he had developed odd behavioural traits and had come to find the presence of the crowds necessary.
Some have suggested Knut had behavioural problems In recent years all but one British zoo has stopped keeping polar bears, a decision Redmond urges Berlin to follow.
But at the Highland Wildlife Park near Aviemore, Britain's only zoo to have polar bears, they are going in the opposite direction. The park has an elderly female and a young male, and when the former dies there are plans to bring in a young female so that mating can begin.
Douglas Richardson, the zoo's animal collection manager, says they have learnt lessons from the past. In the 1980s polar bears became "the poster child" for anti-zoo movement after being kept in cramped concrete pits whose only attempt at recreating the bear's eco-system was white paint.
"I came up with a design that gives the animals between five and six acres of fenced off rolling landscape in the middle of the Highlands."
Richardson said that that much of the criticism of Berlin Zoo - such as over their merchandising policy - was unjustified.
"The European Zoo community pumps the money it earns from merchandise back into conservation in the field. I guarantee that when we have cubs the giftshop here will be full of fluffy polar bear toys and that money will be going to conservation. You have to take advantage of the situation. The money is not going to line someone's pockets."
The wildlife broadcaster Chris Packham acknowledges that a polar bear in captivity loses the ability to relate to bears in the wild. And he believes that if wild polar bears die out there is no point keeping some alive in zoos.
But he argues that zoos have a crucial advocacy role for animals in the wild. And if a zoo is treating the bear well - as he believes Berlin Zoo was with Knut - then keeping some in captivity is a price worth paying.
It was suggested Knut missed his handler Thomas Doerflein "We don't need many polar bears in captivity. But sacrificing those animals is justified as they become ambassadors for their species, striking awe into the hearts of humans. We don't want bears and tigers to go extinct."
The immediacy of zoo animals will always wow children and adults in a way that television documentaries cannot, he says.
"I can still remember aged 12 going to the zoo and seeing a tiger for the first time. I could barely speak I was so in awe of the animal."
That has benefits not just for raising awareness about wild polar bears but for dramatising the issue of climate change. Many people might find it hard to visualise abstract notions such as a two degree temperature rise in 50 years' time. But the polar bear losing the ice it relies on for hunting seals, is a story that we can all understand, he says.
"The long-term prognosis is tough for polar bears. So I'd argue that if Knut attracted a million people to see him and they were impressed by what they saw that is the most important role that a zoo can play."
i can see why the speculation about Mr Sheen's mental health has started and i mostly agree with this article. in particular that diagnosis from watching tv shows is impossible and should not be attempted by any sensible mental health practitioner! Also pointing out the mental illness is treated often as self-inflicted or different from medical illness is a point this is not made often enough
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@ reodudeThe same can be said the other way round. People fall victim to mental disorders, having gone through their whole life never having had a drink, smoke or any drugs. It's a null argument as it works both ways. Charlie Sheen is a joker though, and I reckon he's laughing at all of us for being so interested in him. Good for him, we're all dunces for caring at all ;)
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My experience of bipolar disorder is of an illness that ripped my life apart as my spouse fell into its grasp. Everything from unaccountable mood changes and unreasonable demands to full blown violent insanity, all of which I had to shield my small children from. Devastating for the sufferer yes - but also devastating for the family of the sufferer, something which receives too little recognition.
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