Category: news

An exhibition at the National Army Museum looks at the unique challenges war places on a relationship.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

By Richard Black

Clearance of forest for palm oil plantations continues in some parts of Indonesia

A major palm oil producer is joining forces with environmental campaigners in a bid to ramp up forest protection.

The giant Indonesian company Golden Agri-Resources (GAR) has agreed to work within new standards aimed at saving forests that store a lot of carbon.

International environment group The Forest Trust (TFT) is partnering the company and will monitor compliance.

The palm oil industry has regularly been accused of destroying old-growth forest as demand rockets.

The new deal expands on existing standards agreed under the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), an international alliance of producers, processors, retailers and environment groups.

Already, RSPO rules forbid clearing old-growth forest or land with high conservation value, and developers are also supposed to obtain informed consent from local people before initiating new plantations.

Under the new deal, GAR will go further, vowing not to plant on peat, and not to clear forest where significant carbon is locked up in trees.

This should mean that large tracts of forest that have been partially logged will now be off-limits to the company.

Initially, the figure of 35 tonnes of carbon stored per hectare will be used as a ceiling; but that could change as research progresses.

“We’re not trying to undermine the RSPO – we’re saying ‘this is something you guys need to look at and maybe move towards,'” said Scott Poynton, TFT’s executive director.

“Everyone’s talking about taking the lead, but no-one’s doing it – this is an example of taking the lead,” he told BBC News from Indonesia.

GAR is the world’s second-largest producer of palm oil, a product mainly used in food, fuels and cosmetics.

Like other companies in the field, it has been heavily criticised by environmental groups – a state of affairs that it wants to change.

“As a leading player in the palm oil industry, we are committed to playing our role in conserving Indonesia’s forests,” said Franky Wijaya, GAR’s chairman and CEO.

Palm oil growing spread to East Asia from Africa in the 1960s, and quickly took off

“Our partnership with TFT allows us to grow palm oil in ways that conserve forests and that also respond to Indonesia’s development needs; creating much needed employment while building shareholder value.”

Earlier in the year, TFT finalised a deal with Swiss-based food giant Nestle designed to “ensure that its palm oil procurement had no deforestation footprint”.

This led to discussions with suppliers such as GAR – and the conclusion that in order to preserve their markets, growers would have to purify their operations.

Greenpeace, which has taken the lead on the issue among international NGOs, sees the deal as a potential step forwards.

“This is really throwing a gauntlet down to the rest of the palm oil sector, and to other players,” said campaigner Phil Aikman.

“It’s setting a threshold for carbon, and that’s pretty good – it’ll protect a lot of orangutan habitat and other important areas that have been threatened by palm oil plantations.

“It challenges the rest of the sector to increase its productivity rather than target new areas over and over again, and that’s been the main issue.”

With RSPO, another issue has been compliance, with a number of companies accused of failing to live up to their promises.

But TFT says it will be working closely with GAR to make sure pledges are delivered.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Ravens living in juvenile gangs are more stressed than those in adult pairs, a new study reveals.

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Personality disorders are widespread, experts say

We need to be more aware of personality disorders – which are more prevalent than people realise, say experts.

Prof Eddie Kane, of the Institute of Mental Health, said 4% of people have such a condition, with some studies showing rates as high as 13%.

These vary in severity and in personality disorder type.

People with personality disorders are more likely to end up in prison, commit suicide and have mental health problems.

A personality disorder is defined as a pattern of behaviour that deviates markedly from the individual’s culture.

Those with personality disorders repeatedly behave in a way that is not acceptable to the community that they live in and cause distress to themselves, or others.

There is a range of different disorders including borderline, anti-social, paranoid and narcissi.

Doctors say that one of the reasons they are so difficult to treat is that the disorder is ingrained in a person’s behaviour – in the same way that we all have ingrained personality traits.

Dr Kingsley Norton, personality disorder lead at West London Mental Health Trust, said: “We all have personalities and it is difficult for us to change the way we behave if it goes against our personality ‘type’.

“For example, a belief that people with personality disorders often have is, ‘people cannot be trusted – they will always let you down.’

“This is a core belief to that person and will govern the way that they interact with everybody.”

That can lead to unco-operative behaviour that is threatening or aggressive – and can get the person with the disorder into trouble.

Most people with personality disorders do not commit offences.

However, for some it significantly contributes to behaviour that gets them involved in the criminal justice system.

About two-thirds of prisoners meet the criteria for at least one type of personality disorder and they have a higher risk of drug abuse.

Leading experts say the disorders are under recognised – even though the numbers of people suffering from personality disorders is much higher than those with more well known problems, such as schizophrenia.

Prof Kane, director of the Personality Disorder Institute at the Institute of Mental Health, University of Nottingham, said: “Although 4% is the generally accepted figures for prevalence some international studies have shown prevalence as high as 13%.

“But because personality disorder is not a disease it does not attract the sympathy that conditions such as schizophrenia does.”

Experts are now trying to train those who are most likely to come into contact with a personality disorder how to recognise the condition to make the situation easier to manage.

This is crucial because the way in which staff interact with someone who has a personality disorder can affect the patient’s condition.

Dr Norton said: “If the relationship with a patient is not right, it will affect the condition adversely but relationships can also be a cure. It is therefore very important that staff are trained properly.”

Prof Kane has developed a training programme for staff that are most likely to come into contact with those who have personality disorders.

It uses video reconstructions to show the types of situations where staff may encounter someone with a personality disorder and what they can do to keep the situation in control.

So far, the programme has been rolled out to a variety of staff including prison officers, police officers, GP receptionists and nurses.

About 5,000 people will have been trained by 2012. In the future professionals working in education and with younger people are likely to get training.

Prof Kane said it could stop difficult situations escalating: “This training helps people to understand personality disorders.

“It is delivered by a trainer and a person with a personality disorder. Feedback from those with personality disorders has shown that it makes a big difference to their experiences in those situations.”

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Children on the programme were also found to be better singers

Singing in school can make children feel more positive about themselves and build a sense of community, research based on 10,000 children suggests.

An evaluation by the Institute of Education of England’s national singing programme, Sing Up, found a clear link between singing and well-being.

It also found that children who took part in the programme had a strong sense of being part of a community.

But it is not clear that the scheme will be fully funded in future.

The Sing Up scheme supports schools to increase singing in choirs, lessons and individually, and provides a range of resources to help.

The Institute of Education’s independent three-year study, commissioned by the Sing Up programme, is based on data collected from 9,979 children at 177 primary schools in England.

It said: “A clear inference may be drawn that children with experience of Sing Up are more likely to be advanced in their singing development and to have a positive self-concept,” the study said.

It also found that Sing Up children were up to two years ahead in their singing development than those of the same age who did not take part in the programme.

Composer Howard Goodall, the National Singing Ambassador, said: “These findings are gold dust for head teachers.

“We’ve always maintained that singing, alongside its brain-training benefits, can help children to grow in confidence and create stronger communities and now we’re able to prove it with hard evidence.”

The research comes just days after ministers said they were safeguarding the funding of music in schools at the present level for one year ahead of a major funding shake. But there are no guarantees on music funding after 2012.

And some councils could see music budgets cut by up to 10% next year.

The £10m a year Sing Up scheme was only funded until the end of 2011, but ministers said on Monday they would provide some funding to enable it to continue.

A spokesman for the Department for Education said: “We know that schools and teachers value the resources provided by Sing Up, that is why the government will provide some funding for 2011-12 to enable a sustainable future for Sing Up to be developed.”

However the Department for Education has not made clear how much it will provide.

The announcement on the future of the Sing Up programme was in response to the Henley Review of music which warned that music education in England’s schools was still “patchy”.

And it said there should be more opportunities for singing and playing musical instruments in schools, as well as efforts to bring professional musicians into the classroom.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Lung cancer death rates among European women have been steadily increasing in recent years

Experts are predicting a fall in overall cancer death rates for men and women across Europe in 2011.

Using data from the World Health Organization, they say cancer deaths should fall by 7% in men and 6% in women compared with rates in 2007.

Overall, almost 1.3 million people will die from cancer in 2011, they estimate.

Recent declines in stomach, colon, breast, womb, prostate and male lung cancers should continue, the researchers say in Annals of Oncology.

But they say female lung cancer is rising in all major EU countries except the UK.

According to the researchers, the UK has had the highest rates of female lung cancer deaths for a decade and, although they are not going down, they do appear to be levelling off.

Professor Carlo La Vecchia of the University of Milan in Italy and Professor Fabio Levi from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland reached their calculations by looking at overall cancer rates in the EU as well as individual cancer rates in six major EU countries: France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the UK.

Based on cancer trends between 1970 and 2007, they predict there will be 1,281,436 cancer deaths in the EU in 2011 (721,252 men and 560,184 women), compared with 1,256,001 (703,872 men and 552,129 women) in 2007.

When these figures are converted into world standardised rates per 100,000 of the population, this means there will be a fall from 153.8 per 100,000 to 142.8 per 100,000 in men, and from 90.7 to 85.3 in women – a drop of 7% in men and 6% in women – since 2007.

The overall downward trend in cancer death rates is driven mainly by falls in breast cancer mortality in women, and lung and colorectal cancer in men.

“Lung, colorectal and breast cancers are the top causes of cancer deaths, and these are showing major changes,” say the researchers.

But in the EU as a whole, world standardised death rates from lung cancer in women have gone up from 12.55 per 100,000 of the female population in 2007 to 13.12 in 2011.

However, a worrying increase in deaths from pancreatic cancer in women, which had been observed in 2004, appears to have levelled off.

Professor Stephen Spiro, of the British Lung Foundation, said lung cancer remained the most common killing cancer in men and women and was related to smoking in 80% of cases.

“Over the last 30 years, lung cancer rates have dropped in men as they have quit smoking in large numbers. However, this trend is not seen in women as nearly a quarter continue to smoke.

“The rates of lung cancer in women are not falling in the UK and the disease has overtaken breast cancer as the most common cause of cancer deaths in the UK and in many European countries.”

Mike Hobday, head of policy at Macmillan Cancer Support, welcomed the fall in death rates but warned the number of people living with cancer in the UK was increasing by 3% every year.

“We know that there are currently two million people in the UK living with a cancer diagnosis, if the current rate continues, the number will have doubled to four million people by 2030.

“Cancer is changing. For many cancer is now a long-term condition and it is important to realise that it is no longer just about people dying quickly of cancer or being cured.”

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

The Patriot Act was strongly backed by President George W Bush

The US House of Representatives has blocked a bill to extend some surveillance powers granted by the 2001 Patriot Act after the 9/11 attacks.

The bill was opposed by most Democrats and some Republicans, and failed to win the two-thirds vote needed for passage.

It would have extended until December provisions on wiretaps, access to business records and surveillance of terror suspects granted by the law.

The White House backed the bill but said it favoured a longer extension.

In the 277-148 vote, 26 Republicans joined Democrats in opposing the bill, and 67 Democrats voted in favour. The bill had the support of the Republican leadership.

The bill fell seven votes short under expedited rules requiring a two-thirds super-majority, but could still pass under normal procedural rules, in which case it would need only a simple majority for passage.

The Patriot Act was shepherded through Congress by President George Bush shortly after the terror attacks of 11 September, 2001.

Mr Bush and other supporters argued that the legal safeguards traditionally granted to criminal suspects left the US ill-protected against further attacks.

Critics say the broad powers the act grants US law enforcement agencies violate Americans’ privacy, and on Tuesday the American Civil Liberties Union applauded the bill’s rejection.

“The House should be commended for refusing to rubber stamp the continuation of these provisions,” Laura Murphy, director of the group’s legislative office, said in a statement.

“For the nearly 10 years it has been law, the over-reaching Patriot Act has been abused by law enforcement to violate innocent Americans’ privacy.”

The provisions set to expire give the US government the authority for “roving surveillance” of suspects who might be able to thwart investigative methods that ordinarily require a judge’s warrant.

They also give federal investigators access to business records with a warrant from a secret national security court and grant federal law enforcement greater power to watch foreign so-called “lone wolf” terror suspects.

At it stands, those provisions are set to expire at the end of this month.

Ahead of the vote, the White House said it supported the House bill but would prefer the provisions to be extended until December 2013.

“This approach would ensure appropriate congressional oversight by maintaining a sunset, but the longer duration provides the necessary certainty and predictability that our nation’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies require,” the White House said in a statement.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

William Hague spoke to the BBC’s James Robbins who is travelling with the foreign secretary on his tour of North Africa and the Middle East

The Middle East peace process could become a “casualty” of the calls for change sweeping across the Arab world, the foreign secretary has warned.

William Hague, who is touring the region, said it could “lose further momentum” if international focus shifts to countries like Tunisia and Egypt.

He urged Israel to avoid “belligerent language” and called for “bold leadership” from the United States.

Protests are continuing in Egypt with the aim of ousting the president.

Last month, Tunisia’s President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali stood down after weeks of anti-government demonstrations.

His exit sparked a wave of similar uprisings elsewhere, most prominently in Egypt, where protesters were back on the streets in large numbers on Tuesday demanding the immediate resignation of President Hosni Mubarak.

There have also been anti-government demonstrations in Jordan – where King Abdullah dismissed his government – and in Yemen, where President Ali Abdullah Saleh announced he would not stand for re-election in 2013.

Mr Hague is currently on a three-day tour of north Africa and the Middle East.

In an interview on his way to Jordan, he voiced concerns about the future.

“Amidst the opportunity for countries like Tunisia and Egypt, there is a legitimate fear that the Middle East peace process will lose further momentum and be put to one side, and will be a casualty of uncertainty in the region,” he said.

“Part of the fear is that uncertainty and change will complicate the process still further. That means there is a real urgency for the Israelis and the United States.”

Mr Hague spoke after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to “reinforce the might of the state of Israel” whatever the outcome of the unrest.

Responding directly to those words, the foreign secretary said: “This should not be a time for belligerent language.”

He added that without action now, “within a few years, peace may become impossible”.

He re-iterated his feelings in a message on the micro-blogging website Twitter, saying: “Time for bold leadership on Middle East Peace Process from the US & equally bold steps by Israelis and Palestinians”.

BBC diplomatic correspondent James Robbins said Mr Hague’s blunt language was a reflection of his frustration at Israel’s refusal to compromise on settlement building in and around Jerusalem, and the Obama administration’s failure to set a clear timetable for negotiations.

While in Tunisia – his first calling point – Mr Hague met senior members of the interim government and offered the UK’s assistance to help build democratic institutions.

He also announced the creation of the Arab Partnership Initiative, which will provide £5m of funding to support reform projects across the wider region.

William Hague spoke to the BBC’s James Robbins who is travelling with the foreign secretary on his tour of North Africa and the Middle East

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.