Two US soldiers ‘killed by drone’

File picture of US soldier on patrol in the main bazaar in SanginThe US has focused on regaining control of territory from Taliban insurgents in Helmand

A drone missile strike is suspected of killing two US soldiers by mistake in southern Afghanistan last week, US military officials have said.

The apparent case of “friendly fire” is being investigated – if it is confirmed it would be a rare instance of pilotless aircraft killing US forces.

The incident took place in Helmand province where US-led troops are trying to push back Taliban insurgents.

US drones frequently target suspected militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Critics say hundreds of civilians have also been killed in such strikes in recent years.

The two US soldiers who lost their lives – sergeant Jeremy Smith, 26, and seaman Benjamin Rast, 23 – were part of a unit sent to reinforce marines coming under heavy fire from insurgents outside the town of Sangin, US network NBC News, which first reported the incident, said.

The marines, who were watching a video feed from the armed Predator drone overhead, saw infrared images moving towards them on the feed and may have concluded that those were insurgents instead of fellow marines, NBC reported.

The Pentagon has yet to comment on the deaths, saying they are being investigated.

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

Drug wastage costing NHS millions

MedicinesHalf of all medicines wastage is unnecessary, according to official figures
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Action is needed to stop the “sheer madness” which is leading to millions of pounds being wasted on unused medicines, nurses say.

Delegates at the Royal College of Nursing conference in Liverpool said it was heart-breaking to see piles and piles of medicines going to waste.

They described cases where cupboards full of out-of-date medicines had been found in patients’ homes.

They said people needed to be warned about the issue.

Black bin liners full of unopened boxes have been found while medicines are also thrown down the toilet or put in the bin.

Nurses proposed clearly labelling medicines with the details of how much they actually cost as well as handing out leaflets to patients about not getting repeat prescriptions if they were not using them.

“It breaks my heart to see this kind of waste”

Susan Smith, a palliative care nurse

They also suggested unused medicines that are returned to pharmacies could be repackaged and made available again – at the moment any returned drugs have to be disposed of.

About £300m of medicines are wasted each year in England, half of which is unnecessary, a Department of Health study found last year. If the rest of the UK is taken into account the figure is closer to £400m.

Christine Thomas, a community nurse in Swansea, described finding out-of-date medicines piled up in the houses of patients she cared for, saying the situation was “sheer madness”.

She also gave the example of a obese patient who kept re-ordering slimming pills, but refused to take them because they ruined her appetite.

She added: “This is a significant problem. It needs significant commitment and motivation to resolve it.”

John Hill, who described how he had seen a patient brought into to A&E with four carrier bags full of unused medicines, said: “We need to tighten up the safeguards. We need to stop all this waste.”

And Susan Smith, a palliative care nurse, said: “It breaks my heart to see this kind of waste.”

She said the key was for nurses and other NHS staff to regularly review the medicines patients were on.

But as well as being related to patients getting repeat prescriptions when they do not need them, medicines wastage is also caused by people not taking their drugs as they should.

Bj Waltho, a nurse from East Dorset, said this was worrying as it was leading to a large number of emergency admissions.

And she said in an era where the NHS was being asked to save money, tackling this issue could be a “real quick win”.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said: “We are aware of these concerns and have been clear that the NHS must find ways of making savings to free up resources for frontline care.

“Reducing wasted prescriptions is a way of working more efficiently. Wastage of medicines in primary and community care in the NHS is not a systemic problem and the NHS is making greater efforts to reduce the amount of medicines wasted than ever before.”

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

Retail sales ‘suffer worst fall’

Shoppers on the High StreetMost sales categories saw a decline in March

The struggling UK High Street suffered another blow when the British Retail Consortium (BRC) recorded its worst fall in sales since records began.

The BRC said total sales in March were down 1.9% on a year ago, although the early timing of Easter last year had an effect on the figures.

But the BRC said shoppers did not want to spend “unless they really had to”.

Footwear was the only growth sector, as food and drink, clothing, homeware, electrical, and others all fell.

Meanwhile, like-for-like sales were down 3.5%, in their worst showing in nearly six years.

Internet sales, which have been defying the general downward trend, showed their slowest growth since records began in 2008.

Recording of High Street sales figures began two years earlier.

Internet sales were 7.5% higher than a year ago, much weaker than the 10.4% in February.

Clothes and book sales suffered their largest declines since 2009 and 2005 respectively.

“Falling disposable incomes and the fear of worse to come means people don’t want to spend”

Stephen Robertson BRC director general

“We have seen an emergence of new, lower spending patterns since the middle of January, which are currently continuing to trend downwards,” said Helen Dickinson, head of retail at survey partner KPMG.

“Many retailers will not be able to sustain this ongoing weakness in demand beyond the short-term and are hoping for some good news around the extended bank holiday period and a feel-good factor driven by the royal wedding.”

There has been a string of gloomy outlooks recently from the likes of Next, Mothercare, HMV, Currys and PC World parent Dixons Retail.

The BRC pointed out that “uncomfortably high inflation and low wage growth have produced the first year-on-year fall in disposable incomes for 30 years”.

“Falling disposable incomes and the fear of worse to come means people don’t want to spend,” added BRC director general Stephen Robertson.

“There’s only so much discounts and promotions can do to overcome that.”

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

Penguins ‘hit by krill decline’

Chinstrap penguins (Image: BBC)The study suggests krill availability affects the population trends of penguins, such as chinstraps
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A number of penguin species found in western Antarctica are declining as a result of a fall in the availability of krill, a study has suggested.

Researchers, examining 30 years of data, said chinstrap and Adelie penguin numbers had been falling since 1986.

Warming waters, less sea-ice cover and more whale and seal numbers was cited as reducing the abundance of krill, the main food source for the penguins.

The findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) is a shrimp-like creature that reach lengths of about 6cm (2in) and is considered to be one of the most abundant species on the planet, being found in densities of up to 30,000 creatures in a cubic-metre of seawater.

It is also one of the key species in the ecosystems in and around Antarctica, as it is the dominant prey of nearly all vertebrates in the region, including chinstrap and Adelie penguins.

Warming to change

In their paper, a US team of scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography said a number of factors were combining to change the shape of the area’s environment.

Location of Scotia Sea (Image: BBC)

“The West Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) and adjacent Scotia Sea support abundant wildlife populations, many of which were nearly [wiped out] by humans,” they wrote.

“This region is also among the fastest warming areas on the planet, with 5-6C increases in mean winter air temperatures and associated decreases in winter sea-ice cover.”

They added that analysis of data gathered during 30 years of field studies, and recent penguin surveys, challenged a leading scientific idea, known as the “sea-ice hypothesis”, about how the region’s ecosystems was changing.

“(It) proposes that reductions in winter sea-ice have led directly to declines in ‘ice-loving’ species by decreasing their winter habitat, while populations of ‘ice-avoiding’ species have increased,” they explained.

However, they said that there findings showed that since the mid 1980s there had been a decline in both ice-loving Adelies (Pygoscelis adeliae) and ice-avoiding chinstraps (Pygoscelis antarctica), with both populations falling by up to 50%.

As a result, the researchers favoured a “more robust” hypothesis that penguin population numbers were linked to changes in the abundance of their main food source, krill.

“Linking trends in penguin abundance with trends in krill biomass explains why populations of Adelie and chinstrap penguins increased after competitors (fur seals, baleen whales and some fish) were nearly extirpated in the 19th to mid-20th Centuries, and currently are decreasing in response to climate change,” they wrote.

The team said that it was estimated that there was in the region of 150 million tonnes of krill for predators after the global hunting era depleted the world’s whale population.

During this period, data shows that there was a five-fold increase in chinstrap and Adelie numbers at breeding sites from the 1930s to the 1970s, they reported.

“The large populations of Adelie and chinstrap penguins were not sustained for long, however, and are now declining precipitously.”

They added that this was happening as rising temperatures and decreases in sea-ice was altering the physical conditions required to sustain large krill populations.

“We hypothesise that the amount of krill available to penguins has declined because of the increased competition from recovering whale and fur seal populations, and from bottom-up, climate-driven changes that have altered this ecosystem significantly during the past two to three decades.”

The US researchers concluded that the penguin numbers and krill abundance were likely to fall further if the warming trend in the region continued.

They wrote: “These conditions are particularly critical for chinstrap penguins because this species breeds almost exclusively in the WAP and Scotia Sea, where they have sustained declines in excess of 50% throughout their breeding range.”

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

Concern at bowel cancer survival

Surgeons operatingLaparoscopic surgery is used to remove some bowel cancers
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The survival rate for bowel cancer surgery varies widely between hospitals, a study shows.

It is the first time the number of people dying within 30 days of an operation has been reported across England for any cancer.

Overall, 6.7% of people died after surgery, but some hospitals had much higher mortality rates, according to a report in the journal Gut.

Cancer Research UK said the situation was “worrying”.

Bowel cancer is the third most common cancer in the UK.

The outcomes of all 160,920 people who had surgery to remove a tumour between 1998 and 2006 were analysed.

The overall mortality rate in that period dropped from 6.8% to 5.8%.

Looking at data for the last three years of the study, five hospital trusts had significantly higher death rates and three had significantly lower ones.

The proportion of patients dying within a month of surgery ranged from 15.6% at Burton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to 1.7% at Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Hospital trusts with significantly higher death rates for 2003 to 2006Burton Hospitals – 15.6%The Whittington Hospital – 13.1%The Rotherham – 11.2%Northampton General Hospital – 10.5%Colchester Hospital University – 10.4%

Preliminary data suggests the five hospitals which appeared to perform poorly had all improved by 2008, by when they all had achieved mortality rates close to the average.

Consultant surgeon at Burton Hospitals Trust, James Eccersley, said: “The Trust is aware that constant vigilance and improvement has reduced our mortality rate after surgery. We always strive to take on board new innovations to make surgery even safer.”

The explanation for the variation remains unclear.

Professor Paul Finan, from Leeds General Infirmary, said possible reasons included: “the degree of surgical specialisation, how guidelines were followed, the quality of high-dependency units (after-care surgery), anaesthetic services and whether the surgery was laparoscopic, which is less invasive.”

In heart surgery, outcomes improved significantly after death rates were published. By finding out what more successful hospitals do differently, it is hoped bowel cancer care can be improved across the country.

Factors affecting death ratesAge of patient

Under 50: 1%

Over 80: 15%

Tumour progression

Early stage: 4%

Most advanced: 10%

Patient’s economic background

Most affluent: 5.7%

Most deprived: 7.8%

Professor Philip Quirke, consultant pathologist at the University of Leeds, said: “In the past there’s not been enough emphasis on routine clinical practice. We can learn a lot, especially from the best. Why are they so good?”

The government’s national cancer director, Sir Mike Richards, wants statistics to become available for other cancers.

He said: “It’s taken time to get this far, but we’ve demonstrated this as a proof of principle and are working out how to do the same with other cancers.”

It is difficult to make international comparisons as other countries do not have data on a full national scale.

Studies in Scandinavia, Canada and the US have shown mortality rates between 2.7% and 5.7%. However, researchers cautioned against making direct comparisons.

Mark Flannagan, chief executive of Beating Bowel Cancer, said: “This study shows worrying variations in bowel cancer survival that need to be addressed.

“Bowel cancer is the UK’s second-biggest cancer killer, yet there are still significant inequalities in survival which need to be better understood before they can be tackled.”

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

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