Category: news

Experts say it is too early to recommend supplements

Evidence is mounting that levels of vitamin B12 may be connected to the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

A study of 271 Finns found those with the highest levels were the least likely to be diagnosed with dementia.

However, an Alzheimer’s charity said despite the findings, published in the journal Neurology, it was “too early” to think about taking supplements.

It called for more research into the protective power of vitamins such as B12 – found in meat, fish and eggs.

Vitamin B12 can also be found in milk and some fortified cereals.

Alzheimer’s has been linked to B vitamins for some years, and scientists know that higher levels of a body chemical called homocysteine can raise the risk of both strokes and dementia.

Homocysteine levels can be lowered by increasing the amount of vitamin B12 in the blood.

A recent trial found that “brain shrinkage”, which has been associated with Alzheimer’s, was slowed in older people taking high doses of vitamins, including B12.

The volunteers for the latest study, carried out by scientists from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, were all aged 65 to 79, and did not have dementia at the start of the study.

Over the next seven years, 17 of them were diagnosed with the condition, and researchers were able to work out whether high or low levels of the active component of B12 had made any difference.

Again, those with high levels of homocysteine appeared to be at greater risk, and those with the highest levels of the vitamin appeared to be at lower risk.

Professor Helga Refsum, from the University of Oslo, another B-vitamin researcher, said that the study was “further evidence” that low levels of B12 were linked to Alzheimer’s.

“Though relatively small, with few cases of dementia, it should act as another incentive to start a large scale trial with homocysteine-lowering therapy using B vitamins to see whether such a simple treatment may slow the development of Alzheimer’s or other dementia.”

Rebecca Wood, the chief executive of the Alzheimer’s Research Trust, was cautious about the findings.

She said: “It might be tempting at this stage to stock up the cupboard with B vitamin in the light of recent findings – it remains too early to do that at this stage.

“The strongest evidence we have for reducing dementia risk is to eat a healthy, balanced diet, take moderate exercise, and keep cholesterol and blood pressure in check, particularly in mid-life.”

A separate study offered some encouragement to those looking for future treatments for the disease.

A treatment to lower levels of a protein called “STEP” in mice bred to develop a condition similar to Alzheimer’s disease appeared to reverse some of their memory and learning problems.

The Alzheimer’s Research Trust said it was too soon to know whether a similar treatment might be viable in humans.

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HMS Ark Royal played a key role in the Balkans conflict in the early 1990s

The Royal Navy’s flagship, the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, is to be scrapped early as part of the government’s defence review, the BBC has learned.

The move is part of the price paid by the Royal Navy for the decision to go ahead with two new aircraft carriers.

Launched in 1985, the Ark Royal will be decommissioned almost immediately, four years earlier than planned.

On Tuesday David Cameron will unveil details of the first strategic defence and security review in 12 years.

It is expected to see big spending cuts for the armed forces.

Chancellor George Osborne signalled on Sunday that the construction of two new aircraft carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, would go ahead, when he told the BBC it would cost more to cancel the projects than proceed with them.

The BBC has also learned that at least one of the new carriers will be redesigned so that it can deploy normal fighter aircraft that do not need a Harrier-style vertical lift capability.

The new design would allow American and French joint strike fighters to land on the new carrier.

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Sales of the new iPad were a slightly disappointing line in otherwise excellent results

Apple has again reported expectations-beating results, announcing $4.3bn (£2.7bn) profits for the third quarter.

The net income figure – announced after the close of trading in New York – was up 70% on a year earlier, and beat expectations of $3.8bn.

Revenues rose 67% to $20.3bn, topping already high expectations by $1bn, thanks to strong iPhone sales.

But sales of its new tablet computer – the iPad – were somewhat underwhelming at just 4.2 million.

That represents a rise of just 28% on the previous quarter, which was when the company first launched the new product.

However, Apple can take solace that iPhone sales were not hit by bad publicity over antenna problems with the newly-launched iPhone 4.

The firm sold 14.1 million of its smart phones in the quarter.

Sales of its Macintosh computers were up 27% on a year ago, while those of its iPod were down 11% – partly because the latter has been superseded by the iPhone.

The company revised its revenues forecast for the current quarter up to $23bn.

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A mob storms the office of a private television station in Kuwait after it broadcast programmes critical of the country’s ruling family.

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Ministers are expected to introduce a “flexible tenancy”

The social housing budget in England is to be cut by more than 50%, the BBC understands.

Council housing “for life” will also be phased out, with the needs of new council tenants assessed over time.

Despite the cuts, ministers are likely to set a target of building 150,000 affordable homes, changing the way councils charge rent to finance them.

Tenants will be charged nearer the going market rate, to release cash for the building programme.

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West Midlands Police is facing legal action if it does not commit to remove all cameras controversially put up in largely Muslim areas of Birmingham.

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Youths clashed with police in Nanterre, Paris and more than 200 schools were closed across France

About 1,500 petrol stations in France have run dry or are about to close as fuel supplies are hit by strikes over government pension reforms, officials say.

A blockade of oil refineries is into its seventh day and the body that supplies most supermarkets says one in four petrol stations is affected.

President Nicolas Sarkozy has called a crisis cabinet to protect supplies.

Oil company Exxon Mobil has described the situation as “critical”.

The exact number of France’s 12,000 petrol stations affected by the strikes is unclear, but an Exxon spokeswoman said that anyone looking for diesel around Paris or in the western area of Nantes would face problems.

Severe shortages have been reported in Brittany in north-west France and the International Energy Agency says that France has begun tapping into its emergency oil reserves.

Workers at France’s 12 oil refineries have been on strike for a week and entrances to many of the country’s fuel distribution depots have been blocked.

Panic-buying led to a 50% increase in fuel sales last week.

Go-slow

Strike action against the government’s reform plans is being ramped up, with lorry drivers starting the week by staging a go-slow on motorways around several major cities including Paris, Lille and Lyon.

A further day of strikes is scheduled for Tuesday, on the eve of a key Senate vote on the pensions bill.

Half of flights to and from Paris’s Orly airport and one in three flights at other airports are being cancelled, according to aviation officials.

Airport operator ADP said there were already some delays at the capital’s largest airport, Charles De Gaulle, on Monday because of strikes by oil workers.

Street protests have been planned in a number of cities and disruption is also expected on public transport and in schools.

The government wants to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 and the full state pension age from 65 to 67.

Burning cars

There was already demonstrations outside 261 schools on Monday, which the education ministry said had been blockaded.

In the western suburb of Nanterre in Paris, dozens of students clashed with riot police who fired rubber bullets.

Shop windows were reported broken in the Saint-Denis suburb, where education officials said more than half the areas secondary schools had been blockaded.

In Lyon, several cars were burned and one teacher whose car was badly damaged by fire complained: “They want to fight [against the pension reform]. OK, but they have to understand the meaning of what they are doing”.

In other developments:

In some cities, such as Toulouse (south-west) or Saint-Etienne (centre), public transport depots were blocked on Monday morning, preventing buses and tramways from operating for several hours.Rail traffic was being disrupted with one in two fast TGV trains running, and one in three normal-speed trains running.Although the Eurostar train service between Paris and London is normal, there is no Eurostar service between Brussels and London on Monday due to a strike in Belgium.A key fuel pipeline that supplies the two airports in Paris has been restored, but the civil aviation authority is warning airlines operating at Charles de Gaulle to arrive with enough fuel to make the return journeys.

Crisis cabinet

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has ordered key ministers to form a crisis cabinet with the role of ensuring the continuity of fuel supplies.

Prime Minister Francois Fillon has insisted he will not allow the refinery strikes to hit the French economy.

Several other figures have said the country is not at risk of fuel shortages.

“The government is in control,” Industry Minister Christian Estrosi told French radio on Monday.

“There will be no blockade for companies, no blockade for transport and no blockade for road users.”

The head of the French Petrol Industries Association, Jean-Louis Schilansky, has said fuel shortages are not yet at crisis point.

“If the lorry drivers go on strike, if people block the refineries, then we will have a very big problem. But we’re not at that stage yet,” he said.

France has a strategic fuel reserve which holds up to three months of supplies, the government says.

According to the latest opinion polls, more than 70% of French people continue to support strike action.

On Saturday, a fifth day of protests brought 825,000 people on to the streets, police said, although unions put the figure at 2.5 million to three million.

The pension reforms have already been approved by the National Assembly, the lower house of the French parliament.

The upper house, the Senate, has endorsed the key articles on raising the retirement age, and is due to vote on the full text on Wednesday.

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Teacher Katherine Birbalsingh, who made a speech criticising school standards at the Conservative conference, leaves her job but gives no explanation.

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Three security guards are arrested over the death of an Angolan man at London’s Heathrow Airport, as he was being deported.

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Three peers should be suspended and repay expenses, a House of Lords committee has recommended after investigating their claims.

Labour’s Baroness Uddin should be suspended until Easter 2012, and told to repay £125,349, the privileges committee said.

It also recommended Labour’s Lord Paul be suspended for four months and cross bencher Lord Bhatia for eight months.

Peers must vote on whether to accept the committee’s recommendations.

Lord Paul has already paid £41,982 and Lord Bhatia has paid back £27,446.

The House of Lords Privileges and Conduct Committee found that both Lady Uddin and Lord Bhatia had not acted in good faith by incorrectly designating their main homes in order to claim overnight allowances.

Peers whose main home is outside London have been able to claim £174 a night to stay near Parliament when attending the House of Lords.

Baroness Uddin was among peers to attract the interest of the Sunday Times, who suggested they deliberately designated little-used properties outside London as their “main homes” – in order to claim overnight expenses.

The committee’s report notes that all three of those investigated “had long-established London residences, in which they spent the bulk of their time, before acquiring a ‘main residence’ outside London, in which they spent a much smaller portion of their time”.

Between 2001 and July 2005 Baroness Uddin told the Lords authorities her “main home” was a house owned by her brother and sister-in-law in Frinton-on-Sea in Essex. Between August 2005 and January 2010 she said it was a flat she owned in Maidstone, Kent.

From January this year she has designated a three-bedroom house in Wapping, east London, rented from a Housing Association, as her main home – the report notes it has been her family home since 1993.

The committee said she had described both the Essex and Kent properties as a “bolt hole” – but said that did not alter the fact that her home, her family and social life were in London.

“We do not consider that a bolt hole as described by Lady Uddin could fall within any natural understanding of the term main residence. A bolt hole is merely a place of escape,” the committee found.

It said Baroness Uddin should repay £125,349 “to which she was not entitled” – saying claims were “made wrongly and in bad faith” – and be suspended until the end of the current parliamentary session, around Easter 2012. The report suggested she did not have the means to repay the money.

Her claims were also investigated by the Metropolitan Police earlier this year but no charges were brought.

The Labour peer and donor Lord Paul “freely admitted” he never spent a night at the one-bedroom flat in Oxfordshire he designated as his “main residence”, the report said.

The report on his claims states: “Lord Paul explained his interpretation of the term ‘main residence’ by reference to his cultural background. He insisted that ‘anyone coming out of India would not understand what main residence means’. He accepted that he had ‘not once’ looked at the guidance on the back of the claim forms.”

In oral evidence given on 11 October Lord Paul said the Sunday Times, which published the original investigation into his claims, had a “political agenda” and added: “I feel aggrieved that that action should be taken against me because of the newspapers.”

The committee said they could not claim, on the balance of probabilities, that he acted dishonestly or in bad faith but added: “However, his actions were utterly unreasonable and demonstrated gross irresponsibility and negligence.”

As he had already repaid the money it said he should be suspended for four months.

Responding to the report Lord Paul said: “I am disappointed that I seem to have been treated more harshly than others.”

He said the rules were unclear but he would accept the committee’s decision.

Lord Paul adds: “Despite the hurt that this has caused me, I accept the committee’s decision in the best traditions of parliamentary democracy.”

In a separate report into Lord Bhatia’s claims, the committee found he did “not act in good faith” in the way he designated his “main home” – for the purposes of claiming an overnight allowance – nor in mileage claimed for journeys to that property, in Reigate. It said he should be suspended for eight months.

Peers will debate the committee’s findings on Thursday and decide whether to suspend the peers. Leader of the Lords Lord Strathclyde said peers had “a duty” to consider reports into the conduct” of the peers.

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Mike Leigh is the award-winning director of Naked and Secrets & Lies

The British film-maker Mike Leigh has cancelled a visit to Israel in protest against controversial plans to compel non-Jewish new citizens to swear loyalty to Israel as a Jewish state.

The director, 67, had been due to spend a week at a film school in Jerusalem in late November.

But in a letter to the school’s director, he said Israel’s government had gone “from bad to worse”.

He called the loyalty oath “the last straw”.

The bill, which has been approved by Israel’s cabinet but still has to be passed by the Israeli parliament the Knesset, would add a phrase to the citizenship oath taken by non-Jews, requiring them to pledge allegiance to Israel as a “Jewish and democratic state”.

Critics say the move is discriminatory and would largely target Palestinians marrying Israelis. Some suggest that there is a contradiction in describing the Israeli state as both Jewish and democratic.

Leigh’s letter to Renen Schorr, the director of the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School, and Mr Schorr’s response have been published on the school’s website.

In it, Leigh – himself Jewish – cites the Israeli attack on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in May and the recent resumption of settlement-building on the West Bank as factors in his decision.

“I have become ever-increasingly uncomfortable about what would unquestionably appear as my implicit support for Israel were I to fulfil my promise and come,” he writes.

“I have absolutely no choice. I cannot come, I do not want to come, and I am not coming,” writes the award-winning director of Naked and Secrets & Lies.

The move is regretted by Mr Schorr, who in his response says “the academic-cultural boycott of Israel… does not arouse the Israeli public… Boycotts and ostracism are the antithesis of dialogue”.

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Eczema is a common skin condition

Cream often prescribed to relieve the symptoms of eczema may be making the condition worse, researchers claim.

Scientists at Bath University found that aqueous cream thinned the skin after a few weeks of use.

This, they say, is because it contains a detergent rather than just moisturisers.

Another expert said most GPs seemed unaware of official advice not to prescribe the cream as a moisturiser.

Eczema, which affects millions of adults in the UK, happens when the skin gets dry and cracked.

One way to reduce the discomfort and keep it under control is to use moisturising creams.

Aqueous cream, sold at every pharmacy, is an emollient cream, and is officially recommended as an alternative to soap when washing.

However, it is also frequently recommended by doctors for its moisturising properties – one recent poll suggested nine out of 10 GPs recommended it for childhood eczema.

The University of Bath study, published in the British Journal of Dermatology looked directly at its effects on the skin when used regularly.

Volunteers, none of whom had eczema, rubbed it into their forearms every day over a four-week period.

Scientists then compared skin samples taken before and after.

They found the thickness of the stratum corneum, the outermost skin layer, was reduced by about 10% in this time.

Professor Richard Guy supervised the research, conducted as part of a PhD course by researcher Manda Tsang. He said the sodium lauryl sulphate detergent in the cream was affecting a thin layer of fats lying on top of the skin.

He said: “Our study has found that rubbing aqueous cream containing sodium lauryl sulphate into the skin thins this protective barrier, making the skin more susceptible to irritation by chemicals.

“So to use this cream on eczematous skin, which is already thin and vulnerable to irritation, is likely to make the condition even worse.”

The National Eczema Society recommends alternatives such as white soft paraffin or even other types of emollient without such a high sodium laurel sulphate content.

Margaret Cox, chief executive of the National Eczema Society, said: “Aqueous cream contains sodium lauryl sulphate, which is a fairly heavy duty detergent. Sadly it is widely used – one it’s cheap and two, it’s prescribing habit.”

Professor Michael Cork, an academic dermatologist from the University of Sheffield, said despite advice from the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence in England and Wales not to prescribe or recommend aqueous cream in this way, it was still widespread practice.

He recommended that people with eczema use a formulation without the detergent instead.

“This layer of skin will grow back over time, but if you’re using aqueous cream on it every day, it simply won’t get the chance.”

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Newcastle United assistant Colin Calderwood is named Hibernian manager at a media conference.

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EMI, whose artists include Lily Allen, is the subject of fierce battle between Terra Firma and Citigroup

Music group EMI is due to begin a courtroom showdown with US bank Citigroup, amid reports that the two sides may yet reach a last-minute deal.

The investment bank faces allegations – fiercely rejected – that it tricked Guy Hand’s private equity firm, Terra Firma, into overpaying for EMI in 2007.

Newspaper reports have said that the combatants held peace talks about the £4.2bn ($6.7bn) takeover of EMI.

Unless a last-gasp deal is agreed, the case will open in New York on Monday.

Mr Hands wants damages and for Citi to agree to restructure the £3bn it lent Terra Firma to finance the deal, easing pressure on EMI’s finances.

David Wormsley, Citi’s main financial adviser on the deal, is accused of encouraging Terra Firma to pay more for EMI by telling Mr Hands that Cerberus Capital Management was still in the race to buy the music group.

Citi denies the allegations, arguing that Terra Firma had already approved the EMI bid before the conversation took place.

The case is said to centre on three phone calls between Mr Hands and Mr Wormsley in the days before bids for EMI were due.

Meanwhile, EMI, whose artists include Lily Allen and Robbie Williams, has finally agreed a plan with its pension fund trustees to pay off the £197m deficit in the EMI pension scheme.

The dispute between the two sides had threatened the company’s solvency and forced the pensions regulator to intervene.

EMI said it would pay the £197m in instalments between now and April 2016.

EMI’s chief executive Roger Faxon, said: “I am very pleased that we have been able to work with the trustee board to resolve all outstanding matters and reach this amicable agreement, which is aimed at reassuring members of the fund of the security of their pensions.”

But the pensions regulator made it clear that the repayment plan had only been agreed because it had threatened to impose a deal.

“As is often the case, our ability to impose a solution provides an incentive for parties to agree, even if at the last moment,” said June Mulroy, a director at the regulator.

“We are determined that scheme funding targets are set with appropriate levels of prudence, and we will not hesitate to invoke our powers where necessary.”

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Middlesbrough manager Gordon Strachan leaves the club after less than a year in charge, BBC Sport understands.

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