Monday, Dec 15th
Last update04:55:40 AM GMT
On top of criticism that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves medical devices with too little oversight comes another troubling finding: Many heart-related devices win FDA approval without being adequately tested on women, despite an agency directive to do so.
This means that heart valves, pacemakers, defibrillators and stents get implanted in women without evidence that they benefit this population, researchers from the University of California, San Francisco say.
Afghanistan’s president on Sunday rejected a U.S. apology for the mistaken killing of nine Afghan boys in a NATO air attack and said civilian casualties are no longer acceptable.
According to a statement from his office, President Hamid Karzai told U.S. ArmyGen. David H. Petraeus, the top commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, that expressing regret was not sufficient in last week’s killing of the boys, ages 12 and under, by coalition helicopters.
Scientists in Europe report they were able to diagnose Down syndrome prenatally by giving a simple blood test to pregnant women, an approach that might one day help them avoid the more extensive procedure used now to detect the condition.
The preliminary report published online Sunday in the journal Nature Medicine is the latest of several recent studies that suggest scientists can spot Down syndrome through fetal DNA that has been shed into the mother's bloodstream.
The lawyer for Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of having leaked a massive trove of US state secrets to WikiLeaks, has accused his military jailers at the marine base in Quantico, Virginia, of ritually humiliating his client by stripping him naked in his cell every night.
David Coombs, who is representing Manning in his court martial procedure, criticised the commanders of the Quantico brig for punishing the prisoner for a sarcastic comment he made in protest at his treatment. Coombs said Manning quipped that if he wanted to harm himself he could do so with the elastic waistband in his underpants or with his flip-flops.
A coalition of over 100 interfaith, nonprofit and governmental organizations plans to rally in New York City against a planned congressional hearing on Muslims' role in homegrown terrorism.
The coalition says Thursday's hearing will send the wrong message to U.S. Muslims by "demonizing" them. The Rev. Al Sharpton, entertainment promoter Russell Simmons and the imam who was an initial key supporter of plans to develop a mosque near ground zero are expected to speak at Sunday's rally in Times Square.
The Close Alliance Between Gates Foundation and Monsanto
As I discussed last month, Wikileaks has revealed just how deeply entrenched the US government has become with Monsanto. It's long been known that the government was being unduly influenced, but the leaked cables revealed the reality is far worse than expected; the US Department of State is actively promoting the private interests of Monsanto across the world.
To mark International Women's Day, an IoS survey shows progress is being made. Women are capturing an increasing number of seats in parliaments around the world, an Independent on Sunday survey to mark International Women's Day has found. In places such as South Africa and Iceland, they are approaching parity with men, and in one country, Rwanda, they are actually in the majority.
While much remains to be done, not least in the UK where barely one in four MPs are women, governance experts this weekend hailed the advances that many countries have made, including some of the world's least developed nations.
Israel and the United States created the Stuxnet worm to sabotage Iran's nuclear programme, a leading security expert has claimed.
Ralph Langner told a conference in California that the malicious software was designed to cripple systems that could help build an Iranian bomb.
Mr Langner was one of the first researchers to show how Stuxnet could take control of industrial equipment. It is widely believed that its target was machinery used to enrich uranium.
Public sector workers are employed by the government, but they are private citizens. Once a private citizen earns a dollar from the sweat of his or her brow, it no longer belongs to his or her employer.
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