IGIHE

Tag: InternationalNews

  • Jamaica to Radically Legalise Marijuana

    Jamaica to Radically Legalise Marijuana

    {{The Jamaican government has announced plans to radically reform the country’s drug laws.

    The Justice Minister Mark Golding said the cabinet was supporting a proposal to allow possession of up to two ounces (57 grams) of marijuana, known locally as “ganja.”.}}

    Mr Golding also said marijuana would be decriminalised for religious, medicinal and scientific purposes.

    It is expected parliament will approve the changes by September.

    “I wish to stress that the proposed changes to the law are not intended to promote or give a stamp of approval to the use of ganja for recreational purposes,” said Mr Golding.

    “The objective is to provide a more enlightened approach to dealing with possession of small quantities.”

    Correspondents say the government plans are a major victory for Jamaica’s Rastafarian movement, which considers ganja sacred.

    Recent changes in drug laws in countries like Uruguay or in American states such as Colorado have also given impetus to campaigns by local farmers and some politicians for the legalisation of marijuana.

    “It is not only wrong but also foolhardy to continue with a law that makes it illegal to posses ganja and its derivatives for medicinal purposes,” Mr Golding said.

    Angela Brown Burke, Kingston’s mayor, said recently: “The time has come to provide an opportunity for Jamaicans to benefit from the marijuana industry.”

    {{below is an extract from a song by Peter Tosh where he discusses legalizing the Weed}}

  • Brazil Wins, Comes Alive for World Cup Despite Protests

    Brazil Wins, Comes Alive for World Cup Despite Protests

    {{Brazil exploded with street parties as its soccer team won the World Cup’s opening game on Thursday but scattered violent protests were a reminder that many locals remain angry over the billions spent to host the tournament.}}

    Millions of fans dressed in Brazil’s canary yellow, green and blue home colors, cheered throughout Brazil’s victory over Croatia in Sao Paulo and continued the revelry into the night, with a heavy presence of police and troops to maintain order.

    The country briefly fell silent when Croatia took an early lead, but fireworks, horns and drum beats reached a crescendo as Brazil rallied for a 3-1 win.

    Despite worries over traffic and the Sao Paulo stadium, which was completed six months late and wasn’t fully tested before the game, there were no reports of major logistical problems before or after the game.

    Brazil’s coach, Luiz Felipe Scolari, after the game praised the stadium as “incredible” and “fantastic.”

    The smooth first game, and especially the victory, raised the spirits of many who feared the worries of the past year could spoil the party.

    “Despite all the controversy, this is the World Cup and we are Brazilians. We need to forget about all that now and cheer,” said Natia Souza, a fan in downtown Sao Paulo.

    President Dilma Rousseff, who attended the game and has defended the Cup against criticism ahead of her bid for re-election in October, was jeered by many in the stadium crowd and by fans at big-screen viewings across the country.

    wirestory

  • Bolivian Man Dies Aged 123 Years

    Bolivian Man Dies Aged 123 Years

    {{An indigenous man in Bolivia whose reported age would have made him the oldest person ever known, died on Monday night in his village near Lake Titicaca, his only living son said.}}

    Carmelo Flores, an Aymara Indian, claimed to be 123 years old. Flores carried national identity documents based on a baptism certificate showing his birthday as July 16, 1890.

    But Bolivia only began issuing official birth certificates in 1940 and authorities were never able to confirm or disprove Flores’ age.

    “He died yesterday at nine at night,” his son Cecilio Flores, who is nearly 70, said on Tuesday. “He wasn’t able to stand up, his foot was swollen. Doctors told me that’s how it is with diabetes.”

    Flores attributed his longevity to eating quinoa seeds and riverside mushrooms, and to constantly chewing coca leaves.

    He lived in a straw-roofed hut in Frasquia, a 4,000-meter (13,123-feet) high Andean hamlet east of La Paz.

    Flores said he fought in the 1932-35 Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay, hunting skunks to nourish himself.

    He also briefly lived in La Paz, but never took to the bustling capital.

    He spent his last years taking walks in shoes made of recycled tires and laying on a blanket watching village life go by.

    agencies

  • Obama Threatens Air Strikes Against Iraqi Insurgents

    Obama Threatens Air Strikes Against Iraqi Insurgents

    {{Sunni Islamist militants gained more ground in Iraq overnight, moving into two towns in the eastern province of Diyala, while U.S. President Barack Obama considered military strikes to halt their advance towards the capital Baghdad.}}

    After security forces abandoned their posts, security sources said the towns of Saadiyah and Jalawla had fallen to the insurgents, along with several villages around the Himreen mountains, which have long been a hideout for militants.

    Militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) overran the northern city of Mosul earlier this week and have since pressed south towards Baghdad in an onslaught against the Shi’ite-led government.

    The Kurds, who run their own autonomous region in the north, have taken advantage of the chaos to expand their territory, taking control of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and other areas outside the formal boundary of their enclave.

    Kurdish peshmerga forces also deployed men to secure their political party offices in Jalawla before the insurgents arrived in the town. There were no confrontations between them.

    The Iraqi army fired artillery at Saadiya and Jalawla from the nearby town of Muqdadiya, sending dozens of families fleeing towards Khaniqin near the Iranian border, security sources said.

    On Thursday Obama threatened U.S. military strikes against the Sunni Islamist militants who want to establish their own state in Iraq and Syria.

    “I don’t rule out anything because we do have a stake in making sure that these jihadists are not getting a permanent foothold in either Iraq or Syria,” Obama said at the White House when asked whether he was contemplating air strikes. Officials later stressed that ground troops would not be sent in.

    Obama was looking at “all options” to help Iraq’s leaders, who took full control when the U.S. occupation ended in 2011.

    wirestory

  • European Filmmakers Call On Putin After Crimean Jailed for Terrorism

    European Filmmakers Call On Putin After Crimean Jailed for Terrorism

    {{About 20 European filmmakers have penned an open letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin demanding clarity on the fate of Crimean director Oleg Sentsov, who is being held in Moscow on charges of terrorism.}}

    “Oleg Sentsov was arrested by the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation [FSB] at his home in Simferopol on May 11 and taken to Moscow, where he is detained and awaiting trial,” said the text of the letter, which was published in full by movie website screendaily.com.

    In the letter addressed to State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin and Prosecutor General Yury Chaika, among others, the manifest’s signatories said little was known about the condition of Sentsov.

    “We urge you to ensure the safety of Oleg Sentsov; to make public the whereabouts of the detained; to have the detained charged with a recognizable offense or released; to instigate a full, prompt and impartial investigation into the apparently arbitrary detention by the FSB,” the authors of the text, including British director Ken Loach and Spain’s Pedro Almodovar, added in the letter.

    An ethnic Russian, Sentsov stands accused by authorities of organizing a terrorist attack — a charge his supporters say is politically motivated.

    Sentsov was a supporter of Ukraine’s Euromaidan protesters, whose demonstrations led to the ouster of pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych in February, and he also helped Ukrainian military officers who did not support Russia’s annexation of Crimea to leave the Black Sea peninsula, The Hollywood Reporter reported.

    “Sentsov is one many people arrested in Crimea and carted off to Moscow on trumped-up charges. I would hope that we can use his position as a public figure to draw attention to this. I urge our brave friends and colleagues in the Russian industry to speak out,” British producer Mike Downey, a signatory of the letter, was quoted as saying.

    If found guilty, Sentsov faces up to 10 years in prison under Russian law — the minimum term available for those convicted of terrorism-related charges.

    {{ {Crimean director Oleg Sentsov was arrested by the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation at his home in Simferopol.}
    }}

    {themoscowtimes}

  • Cancer Patients May Get Treatment With Single Gene Test

    Cancer Patients May Get Treatment With Single Gene Test

    {{A new way of evaluating tumors may soon help cancer patients identify the underlying genetic link to their disease – and the best possible treatment – all in a single test.}}

    Researchers are set to begin clinical trials using a more comprehensive testing method that looks for all of the known genes that may be active in a tumor.

    The new method could guide patients to the right drug earlier, potentially replacing current tests known as companion diagnostics that only look for a specific biological trait or “biomarker.” The presence of a biomarker can predict whether a new class of drugs called targeted therapies will work on particular tumors.

    Results of these broader tests could even be used to quickly identify which patients might benefit from experimental drugs being tested in clinical trials. U.S. health officials see it as the future direction of cancer diagnostics.

    “We really are moving away from this one drug, one biomarker, one companion diagnostic,” said Dr Richard Pazdur, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s oncology chief.

    In advanced melanoma, for example, about half of patients’ tumors have a mutation in the BRAF gene. Roche makes a drug called Zelboraf that blocks that pathway, at least for a time. To get Roche’s drug, patients need to be evaluated with an FDA-approved companion diagnostic test. One of the tests is also made by Roche.

    In many cases, the FDA requires single-biomarker companion diagnostics as part of the drug approval process, but the broader testing model opens the door to additional players in the diagnostics space, including U.S.-based Foundation Medicine Inc and Thermo Fisher’s Life Technologies.

    In a trial starting later this month, for example, patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the lung could be recommended for one of five experimental treatments based on which genes are active. Foundation Medicine’s next-generation sequencing platform will be used to screen some 6,000 lung cancer patients over five years.

    The Lung Master Protocol trial, also known as Lung-MAP, will take place in some 400 research centers. It is a public-private partnership between the National Cancer Institute, Amgen Inc, AstraZeneca Plc and its U.S.-based biotech arm MedImmune, Roche’s Genentech unit and Pfizer Inc.

    A similar effort called the National Lung Matrix trial being organized in Britain by AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Cancer Research UK is set to start taking patients in July or August.[ID:nL6N0N63N5] Pazdur said a conference this fall will also discuss plans for a trial in metastatic breast cancer.

    “This is a new paradigm in many, many ways,” said Ellen Sigal, chairperson and founder of Friends of Cancer Research, which is organizing the U.S. lung cancer trial. “We’re revolutionizing not only the genetic testing but how patients get into a trial.”

    {{One tissue , Many Tests}}

    Dr Mace Rothenberg, senior vice president of clinical development for Pfizer’s cancer business, said having a single test looking for a single biological marker made sense when there were only a few targeted cancer drugs, which exploit specific weaknesses in patients’ tumors.

    “In the past 10 years, we’ve now identified many more potential targets of drugs, and these molecules are involved in critical functions of a cancer cell,” he said. “Now it becomes very relevant that we be able to go beyond that one tissue, one test to one tissue, many tests.”

    In non-small cell lung cancer, for example, there are more than a dozen different molecular abnormalities that are known to influence tumor growth.

    Dr Vince Miller, Foundation Medicine’s chief medical officer, said as more of the drugs win approval, doctors might need to run five to eight tests, all from a tiny scrap of tumor.

    “Tissue scarcity was becoming a very real issue,” he said.

    It’s an issue that Dr. Tadd Lazarus, chief medical officer at Germany’s Qiagen NV, knows about personally.

    Lazarus’ father is battling his second round of lung cancer, and biopsies must be done using a long needle, a process that produces only a tiny tissue sample. “You get a fixed amount of tissue and you have to maximize it,” he said.

    The German diagnostics company has three companion diagnostic tests on the U.S. market, including one recently approved for Amgen’s colorectal cancer drug Vectibix.

    Qiagen has also invested in a new testing platform from PrimeraDx, a privately held Boston-area company. Under an expanded partnership with Eli Lilly and Co, the companies plan to use the new platform to analyze both DNA and RNA biomarkers, targeting multiple molecular pathways active in common cancers.

    Roche’s Genentech is developing companion tests for about half of the experimental medicines in its pipeline, and is evaluating tests that can look at more than one target at a time, said spokeswoman Holli Dickson.

    wirestory

  • U.S. Budget Deficit Shrinks to $130 billion in May

    U.S. Budget Deficit Shrinks to $130 billion in May

    The U.S. budget deficit shrank more than six percent from a year earlier to $130 billion in May, according to data released by the Treasury Department on Wednesday.

    Analysts polled by Reuters expected a $131 billion deficit last month. The gap was $139 billion in May 2013.

    May’s results brought the year-to-date deficit to $436 billion, compared with $626 billion in the same period last year.

    Last month’s budget results were affected by differences in the calendar. If adjusted for timing-related transactions, the U.S. would have ended the month of May with a deficit of $87 billion, down from last year’s adjusted $106 billion deficit.

    Receipts totaled $200 billion, up 1 percent from a year ago, the monthly budget statement said, bringing the year-to-date total to $1.93 trillion.

    Outlays were at $330 billion, down 2 percent from last year, for a year-to-date total of $2.37 trillion.

    A Treasury Department official said that it is typical for the government to run into the red in May because there are no significant tax due dates that month.

    This was the 59th deficit in the last 60 months of May.

    econnews

  • Another Indian Woman Found Hanging From Tree

    Another Indian Woman Found Hanging From Tree

    {{A 19-year-old woman has been found hanging from a tree in a village in northern India, the third such case in weeks in Uttar Pradesh state.}}

    The body was found in the Moradabad area, three hours’ drive from Delhi. Her family told police she was raped. A post mortem examination is under way.

    Another woman was found hanged from a tree in Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday.

    Last month the gang rape and murder of two girls found in similar circumstances sparked outrage in India.

    On Wednesday, a 44-year-old woman was found hanging from a tree in the Bahraich area.

    Police said she had been threatened by locals for selling liquor in the area and her family filed a case naming five people connected to her death.

    Her family alleged she was gang raped, but her post mortem proved inconclusive.

    But it was the case on 29 May of two teenage girls gang raped and hanged in Badaun district that renewed a countrywide outcry over sexual violence.

    Three suspected attackers have been held in that case, along with two policemen accused of dereliction of duty and criminal conspiracy.

    Uttar Pradesh is home to 200 million people, which has led some here to describe it as the world’s largest failing state, reports the BBC’s Andrew North in Delhi.

    India’s new Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said protecting women should be a priority.

    Scrutiny of sexual violence in India has grown since the 2012 gang-rape and murder of a student on a Delhi bus.

    The government tightened laws on sexual violence last year after widespread protests following the attack.

    BBC

  • Thai Coup Leader Order Free World Cup TV

    Thai Coup Leader Order Free World Cup TV

    {{Thailand’s ruling junta has ordered TV regulators to ensure that football fans will not have to pay to watch any matches at the World Cup.}}

    The military said it was part of its “happiness campaign”, which has seen a number of policy gimmicks, such as free haircuts and concerts.

    The broadcaster that bought the rights to show the World Cup is reportedly claiming $21.5m (£13m) in compensation.

    The junta overthrew the government last month promising to restore order.

    It has since cracked down on dissent, detaining hundreds of potential opponents and releasing them with warnings about their future behaviour.

    Bangkok and some other parts of the country remain under curfew.

    In an attempt to subdue opposition to the coup, the military has been running a charm offensive alongside its repression.

    The BBC’s Jonathan Head in Bangkok says ensuring the World Cup can be watched by everyone is central to this so-called happiness campaign.

    The RS broadcaster had already bought the rights to the matches and planned to allow only a third to be shown on free-to-air channels.

    To see all of them viewers would have to buy a decoder, at a cost beyond many poorer Thais.

    So the military has ordered the national broadcasting regulator to negotiate a deal for all the matches to be shown at no cost, despite the potentially hefty compensation claims.

    Our correspondent says the military seems willing to spend generously to win hearts and minds.

    It is already promising to subsidise farmers, to revive ambitious infrastructure spending plans and to cap the costs of basic foods.

    The initiatives are borrowed from the government that the junta overthrew after months protests often directed at those same policies.

    {A football match with elephants representing World Cup nations was a big hit with students}

  • Russia Offers Gas Deal to Help Ukraine Economy

    Russia Offers Gas Deal to Help Ukraine Economy

    {{Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has said a gas price discount deal offered to Ukraine was designed to help its economy.}}

    After another round of negotiations, Ukraine rejected the price deal, saying it “won’t fall into Russian gas trap”.

    But Mr Putin said on Wednesday that the offer was “to support the Ukrainian economy at a rather difficult time”.

    The two sides have been locked in talks after Russia withdrew a deal to subsidise gas exports to Ukraine.

    On Wednesday, Russia offered a discount of $100 for every 1,000 cubic metres of gas exported to Ukraine.

    Deadline
    But Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said it was “a trap”. Ukraine wants a new gas deal based on “a contract, rather than on the basis of whether Russia likes the Ukrainian government or not”, he said

    Speaking in Moscow later on Wednesday, Mr Putin said: “We believe that our offer is more than in a partnership spirit, aimed to support the Ukrainian economy at a rather difficult time.

    “But if our offers are rejected it means we will enter another stage. This is not our choice. We do not want it.”

    The European Union-brokered talks in Brussels come after Russia threatened to turn off the gas taps to Ukraine if Kiev did not pay for past deliveries.

    However, Russia’s deadline for payment has been repeatedly pushed back after Ukraine paid off part of the sum.