Category: news

In his autobiography, Mr Bush focuses on 14 major decisions of his life and presidency

Former US President George W Bush still has “a sickening feeling” about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, US media report.

The revelation comes in his memoir, “Decision Points”, to be published next week.

He also reveals that he temporarily considered replacing Vice President Dick Cheney, calling him the “Darth Vader of the administration”.

But he has no comment on his successor in the White House, Barack Obama.

In the autobiography, Mr Bush defends his decision to invade Iraq, according to advanced copies of the book.

He argues that both America and the Iraqis are better off without former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, whom he calls a “homicidal dictator”.

But Mr Bush admits that he was shocked when no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq.

“No one was more shocked and angry than I was when we didn’t find the weapons,” he writes. “I had a sickening feeling every time I thought about it. I still do.”

The former president also describes how he considered an offer by Vice President Dick Cheney to step down in 2003 so that Mr Bush could pick a different running mate for the 2004 election campaign.

“He had become a lightning rod for criticism from the media and the left,” Mr Bush writes.

“He was seen as dark and heartless.”

But Mr Bush writes that he decided to stick with Mr Cheney because he had chosen him “to do the job” and “that was exactly what he had done”.

According to media who obtained the autobiography, Mr Bush focuses on anecdotes and details of 14 major events of his life and presidency, including the decision to stop drinking and his decisions following the attacks of 11 September 2001.

He admits he made mistakes when responding to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and describes how he felt “like the captain of a sinking ship” when the economic crisis escalated towards the end of his presidency in 2008.

But he adds: “The financial crisis should not become an excuse to raise taxes.”

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

Drongos in the Kalahari desert mimic the alarm calls of other species in order to steal food, scientists find.

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

The McCanns discussed the case with the home secretary in August

The privately-funded investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann is at risk of running out of money, her parents have said.

Speaking three-and-a-half years after his daughter went missing on holiday in the Algarve, Gerry McCann said the cash “won’t last anything like a year”.

It comes as the McCanns launch a petition calling for a full review of the case by the UK and Portugal.

The Home Office said it would ensure “everything feasible” was being done.

Madeleine was three when she went missing from a resort in Praia da Luz on 3 May 2007. The Portuguese police investigation was supported by British officers but the inquiry was formally closed in July 2008.

Gerry and Kate McCann, from Rothley, Leicestershire, set up the Find Madeleine campaign. The millions of pounds raised have been spent on private investigators who have interviewed hundreds of witnesses and logged more than 16,000 calls and e-mails.

Mr McCann told the BBC: “We always have to keep an eye on the funds to make sure we are capable of supporting the investigation and it’s so important that there’s someone there at the end of a phone line, checking e-mails and speaking to people who come forward.

“We’re the only people who pay for that right now and it’s through donations that we’ve a managed to do that.”

He said: “At the current rate it won’t last anything like a year but we have to look at other fundraising aspects and it is very important to us that we are able to maintain a search”.

The Sun reports that the fund, which once peaked at £2m, is now down to £300,000, and The Mirror estimates that it will run out by spring 2011.

Co-operation needed

Even so, Mr McCann added that fundraising was a “secondary objective” and urged members of the public to sign the online petition to encourage the UK government to take action to identify areas for further investigation.

Madeleine McCann disappeared while on a family holiday in 2007

In an open letter launching the petition, the couple ask why they still do not have access to all the information gathered by Portuguese police, and say it was “incredible” there has been no formal review of the inquiry.

“We are certainly frustrated,” Mr McCann said.

“It’s been such a long time and we have been asking over and over again for the authorities to do more. And they are not practically doing anything and haven’t been for well over two years, and I don’t think its right for us to be responsible for the continued investigation into our own daughter’s disappearance.”

Mrs McCann said: “It’s been over two years now since anybody other than ourselves have looked for Madeleine and obviously our own team has limitations because they can’t go knocking on people’s doors. They can’t make people speak to them.

“We also know there is information in several regions, lying on different desks, different databases that hasn’t been put together. So two pieces might slot together and give you a result. We could be that much closer to finding Madeleine, but we need co-operation.”

The McCanns stressed they had not given up on Madeleine being found alive and cited the case of Jaycee Dugard being found in California, 18 years after she was kidnapped.

“When a young child has been taken, there’s more chance they have been taken to be kept and there’s absolutely no evidence Madeleine has been seriously harmed and without that we’ve got to believe we can still find her,” Mr McCann said.

The couple’s meeting with Home Secretary Theresa May in August came after earlier discussions with former home secretaries Alan Johnson and Jacqui Smith.

A Home Office spokesman said: “The Home Secretary has met Kate and Gerry McCann and is deeply sympathetic to their situation.

“The government wants to ensure that everything feasible is being done to progress the search for Madeleine. The British authorities will maintain a dialogue with the Portuguese and continue to liaise with Madeleine’s family on any developments.”

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

Certain lifestyle habits increase health risks

When it comes to health, men really are the weaker sex and this is an imbalance that needs redressing, say experts.

Men are more likely to get cancer than women and are also more likely to die from it.

Heart disease, strokes and obesity are other conditions with a heavier toll in men.

And when it comes to happiness, women again appear to have the upper hand if you look at suicide rates.

From the list of male ailments it is clear that many are related to unhealthy lifestyle choices, like drinking, smoking and a poor diet with little exercise.

Experts also know that men are particularly bad at seeking medical help even when they need it.

But is it fair to lay the blame with men themselves?

The Men’s Health Forum is launching a new campaign to tackle this poor health record.

It says too many men are still dying far too young.

In England and Wales, 42% of men die before their 75th birthday compared to 26% of women.

To put an absolute number on it, almost 100,000 men – which would be enough to fill all of the British Army full-time posts – are dying prematurely each year compared to about 66,000 women.

Yet most of these deaths are avoidable.

The biggest male killers are heart attacks and strokes. These circulatory diseases kill 300 in every 100,000 men compared to 190 in every 100,000 women.

Next comes cancer. Data shows men are 70% more likely than women to die from cancers that affect both sexes and 60% more likely to get cancer.

In third place are respiratory diseases, shortly followed by dementias and diseases of the liver.

Most of these diseases are linked to avoidable factors, such as obesity and heavy alcohol consumption, which are more commonly a problem among men.

As a group, men out-drink and out-smoke women and, what’s more, only 40% of men do enough physical activity.

This may partly explain why 41% of men are overweight compared with 32% of women.

Men are also more likely to violently end their own life, either inadvertently in a road traffic accident or intentionally via suicide.

Although the rates of suicide attempts do not differ between the sexes, men are far more successful at the job. Of all people who kill themselves, 76% are men.

Nicola Peckett, of Samaritans, said it was still unclear why men fared less well than women when it comes to health and survival.

“Some of it is because men are very bad at seeking help.

“We also know that men don’t access services as much as women.”

For example, men visit the GP far less than women, even when you discount the extra visits some women require for pregnancy care.

The Men’s Health Forum believes that getting men to be more involved in their health would help close the gender gap.

The charity’s chief executive Peter Baker said: “It is very easy and tempting to blame men for this and to be fatalistic about it, but we do not think that’s right. Men do care about their health and don’t want to die young.

“One issue is that the health system is not working for them. Services are not very male friendly.”

Ms Peckett believes there are wider issues to explain why men fare so badly.

“It’s not simply just that men are not seeking help. We need to look deeper than this.

“Could it be because our society favours girls or that we expect too much of our men?

“We’ve been asking these questions and have enlisted the help of social scientists and anthropologists to help us find out.”

She said their researchers are looking for societal causes.

Early work with male focus groups suggests factors like job security are also involved.

“There is anecdotal evidence that traditional male jobs are disappearing and more feminine skill roles are taking their place.

“We also know that men who lose their employment can feel emasculated.

“And because they tend to bottle up their feelings and don’t like to talk about things, problems can spiral out of control.”

In the meantime, she said there were plenty of things men could do to improve their quality of life and survival odds, including getting more exercise.

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

Kings of Leon have had three UK number one albums in seven years

From The Beatles to the Arctic Monkeys, Britain’s great rock bands have belted out the soundtracks to our lives and carved a place at the heart of our culture.

So why have so few new bands broken through in the past couple of years? And what are new acts doing to keep guitar music alive?

There is a theory that says, in the 60 years since the birth of rock ‘n’ roll, all the great guitar riffs have been played to death.

All the great anthems have been written, every sound has been wrung from the instrument and every possible band line-up and look have been worn out.

In other words, it has all been done a million times before.

A glance at the singles charts, where rock and indie bands are an endangered species, makes that a persuasive notion.

Killers frontman Brandon Flowers and The Kings of Leon are the only such acts to have cracked the top 10 so far this year.

Two years ago, more than a dozen guitar-wielding bands – including Coldplay, Oasis, Razorlight, Kaiser Chiefs and The Kooks – reached the same heights.

But then the world seemed to get bored of the conventional guitar sound and the term “landfill indie” was enthusiastically wielded to beat down bands that sounded safe and stale – The Pigeon Detectives, The Fratellis, The Enemy, The View, Editors and The Courteeners among them.

This year, bands like Muse and Kings of Leon, with large fanbases built over long careers, have remained huge.

Mumford and Sons are the most successful new band of 2010 and The xx won the Mercury Music Prize. Both have had great years, partly because they have broken the conventional indie stereotype.

There are still thousands of aspiring guitar bands under the radar – but it does not feel like many are threatening to grab the public’s attention.

The disillusionment can be traced back to record labels chasing quick hits rather than acts with longevity, according to BBC 6 Music DJ Steve Lamacq.

“In this current climate, people are signing bands who have got one or two good tracks, hoping they can make one good album,” he says. “And inevitably a lot of these bands are going to come and go.

“You end up ruining the sense of trust between tastemaker and audience, or record label and audience, or even musical genre and audience.

“If you stop believing in a certain sort of music, it’s going to take a lot for you to come back.”

Lamacq is 6 Music’s arbiter-in-chief of good new guitar music, and has been casting a critical ear over new bands since hosting Radio 1’s Evening Session in the heady days of Britpop.

Steve Lamacq’s favourite new bands

“The Crookes (above) are an incredibly erudite band with literary influences that make them stand apart from other people.”The Heartbreaks have that romance, that faded glamour of the seaside town, which is really moving at times.”Frankie & the Heartstrings are a great rock n roll band who want to be Eddie Cochrane.”

If Radiohead emerged with their debut album today, it would be “unthinkable” that their long-term prospects would be recognised, he believes.

“It’s the short term-ism coming home to roost, and that’s a problem for the music industry and the media. But it’s a problem that they’ve created for themselves in a lot of cases.”

Singer and songwriter Fran Barker cites Radiohead’s second album The Bends as the record that “made me really want to pick up the guitar”.

Her band Seerauber Jenny is “very much guitar-driven”, she says, with an extra dimension added by bandmate Neil Claxton, who was behind dance act Mint Royale.

Artists cannot get away with simply playing traditional guitar music any more, Barker believes.

“People expect so much more from what they hear, and you’ve got access to so much more,” she says.

“To be edgy you’ve got to try harder. You can’t have a simple sound any more – it’s got to be much more complex and instruments need to be used a lot more imaginatively.”

Mumford & Sons are the best-selling new British band of 2010

A hospital heart monitor – used for beats instead of drums – is among the gadgets Seerauber Jenny have employed.

Many bands are going further in their quests for a fresh sound, taking them far away from their “landfill indie” cousins.

Manchester gig promoters Now Wave say they showcase “the sounds of the near future”, seeking bands that are alternative, exciting and original.

Now Wave’s Wesley Jones says he is “a little bit bored” of the standard indie formula. “I think the public are as well.”

He mentions Glasgow quartet Errors, who recently played a Now Wave night, as an antidote. “That’s four guys with guitars in there – but also an array of other instruments,” Mr Jones says.

“And it doesn’t sound dissimilar to dance music. It’s 120bpm, there are no vocals, there’s no singing about having lost your girlfriend.

“But they’re utilising guitars in a different way. Not strumming them. There are all sorts of different ways to play it.”

Mount Kimbie, another forward-thinking bunch, play “post dubstep”, Jones says, which would be “unrecognisable to most indie rock fans”.

“And yet there’s a guitar in there, both plucked and played with a violin bow. It is used more in a soundscape way, or played and then heavily processed through other instruments to give it a very different sound.”

If you’re a budding music-maker with home software to create and record all the sounds you want yourself, who needs bandmates anyway?

Sean Adams, founder of the Drowned In Sound music website, says wryly: “If you’re a solo artist, you can create your own drummer without having to deal with drummers.

“Because of the way you can now create stuff with Garageband or Logic, it seems really limited to just be making sounds with the guitar, when there’s so much more you can do with a palette of sounds.”

Mr Adams, who released the Kaiser Chiefs’ first single, also believes fans find it unnatural to listen to something that is “attached to previous generations” on their ultra-modern mobile devices.

So where will the sound of the near future really come from? Will one of the mega-hip, leading-edge experimentalists hit upon a formula that propels them into the big time?

Or will young fans get sick of the soon-to-be landfill R&B, hip-hop and dubstep, and look to something they have rarely heard before – four blokes (or girls) with guitars, bass and drums and a rebellious rallying cry that they can relate to?

“Maybe the guitar isn’t as exciting and dangerous and vital as it once was,” Mr Adams says. “Maybe that’s going to come in a second wind with a backlash against all the dancier sounds and getting bored of seeing a guy on a laptop.”

“I think the next big thing that will come along will be like an Oasis,” Lamacq concludes. “It will sound like something you’ve heard before.

“And I don’t think we’d mind – if they said something about your life. If they were engaging and charismatic. If, when you listen to their song, you want to listen to it again. You want something to believe in.”

Very few new bands have been “touching people in that way” in the last 12 months, the DJ says.

“I can’t really put my finger on why bands aren’t forming like this – apart from they just want to take a short cut to success.

“Trying to be different now will be a struggle. But it will be the bands that are prepared to struggle that will take us out of this mess.”

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

The safety of IVF and similar fertility treatments has been closely scrutinised

Fertility problems in parents cannot explain why babies born through IVF treatment face a higher risk of cerebral palsy, say Danish scientists.

The University of Aarhus found babies of couples who struggled to conceive naturally had similar risks compared to those who conceived quickly.

But they found that the risk doubled in babies born with the help of IVF.

Other potential causes, such as the treatment itself, should be investigated, the scientists say.

UK experts said despite the low risk the issue needed to be taken seriously.

The safety of IVF and similar fertility treatments has been closely scrutinised since the first “test-tube baby” in the 1970s.

As the number of IVF babies rises, initial worries about developmental problems have faded, but there remain concerns over higher rates of cerebral palsy.

There are several possible reasons, including the increased risk of complications in multiple pregnancies, which until recently have been much more frequent in IVF pregnancies.

Doctors had also suspected that the underlying reasons for infertility might play a part, but the latest research casts doubt on that.

The team looked at a national database of medical information from thousands of pregnancies and births, the journal Human Reproduction reported.

They compared cerebral palsy rates in babies grouped depending on how long it took for their mothers to become pregnant after starting to try to conceive.

This length of time is used as a way of assessing fertility – taking more than a year to conceive might indicate some kind of problem, albeit one not severe enough to prevent pregnancy altogether.

When the “quick conceivers” were compared with those taking over a year, there was no significant difference in the rate of cerebral palsy.

However, a group of babies born after IVF or ICSI, in which sperm is directly injected into the egg, had approximately double the risk of cerebral palsy compared with those conceiving quickly.

The overall risk was not high – approximately one in 176 babies born – although this represents a significant number when set against the 12,000 babies born after IVF techniques each year in the UK.

Dr Jin Liang Zhu, who led the study, said: “Our research enabled us to examine whether untreated subfertility, measured by time to pregnancy, might be the reason for the higher risk of cerebral palsy after IVF/ICSI.

“Our results showed this was not the case because, even for couples who took a year or longer to conceive, there was no statistically significant increased risk.”

He said that parents should remember that the increased risk remained very low.

The other suspect in the raised cerebral palsy risk is twin pregnancies, which carry a higher rate of problems in both mother and baby, and frequently mean that babies are delivered early.

A recent study in Sweden suggested that the trend in recent years of putting just one embryo rather than two back into a woman as part of IVF was cutting the number of children born with cerebral palsy.

Professor Karl Nygren, one of the authors of that study, said that the extra risk “may have disappeared” in countries which transferred only a single embryo.

However, Professor Richard Fleming, from the Glasgow Centre for Reproductive Medicine, said it remained a problem.

“It’s pretty clear that the issue still has substance. Even though the risks are very low for individual babies, they are high enough to deserve further research.

“Single embryo transfer will improve matters, but not solve the problem entirely.”

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

The economy has been at the centre of electoral campaigning

Millions of voters are preparing to vote in the US mid-term elections to elect a new House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate.

President Barack Obama’s Democratic party is expected to lose its majority in the House of Representatives, but may hold on to the Senate.

Republicans hope to capitalise on voter discontent with the economy.

The parties used a final day of campaigning on Monday to urge their supporters to go out and vote.

Voting is set to begin on the East Coast at 0600 EDT (1000 GMT) when the first polls open in Connecticut, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, New York, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia.

The end will come 14 hours later when the last poll closes in Alaska at 0000 EDT (0400 GMT).

Up for election are all 435 House seats, 37 of the 100 seats in the Senate, governorships of 37 of the 50 states and all but four state legislatures.