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An ingredient in dark chocolate could help diabetics reduce high cholesterol levels, a study claims.

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

A major UN meeting aimed at finding solutions to the world’s nature crisis opens on Monday in Japan.

Species are going extinct at 100-1,000 times the natural rate, key habitat is disappearing, and ever more water and land is being used to support people.

Some economists say this is already damaging human prosperity.

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meeting will discuss why governments failed to curb these trends by 2010, as they pledged in 2002.

Delegates will also try to finalise a long-delayed agreement on exploiting natural resources in a fair and equitable way.

Before the start of the two-week meeting, Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (Unep), said it was a crucial point in attempts to stem the loss of biodiversity.

“There are moments when issues mature in terms of public perception and political attention, and become key times for action,” he told the BBC.

“And this is a moment when the recognition that biodiversity and ecosystems need preservation urgently is high, when people are concerned by it, and are demanding more action from the global community.”

A UN-sponsored team of economists has calculated that loss of biodiversity and ecosystems is costing the human race $2 trillion to $5 trillion a year.

Governments first agreed back in 1992, at the Rio Earth Summit, that the ongoing loss of biodiversity needed attention. The CBD was born there, alongside the UN climate convention.

It aims to preserve the diversity of life on Earth, facilitate the sustainable use of plants and animals, and allow fair and equitable exploitation of natural genetic resources.

The convention acquired teeth 10 years later, at the Johannesburg Summit on Sustainable Development.

Noting that nature’s diversity is “the foundation upon which human civilisation has been built”, governments pledged “to achieve by 2010 a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the global, regional and national level as a contribution to poverty alleviation and to the benefit of all life on Earth”.

Since 2002, most measures of the health of the natural world have gone downhill rather than up.

The majority of species studied over the period are moving closer to extinction rather than further away, while important natural habitat such as forests, wetlands, rivers and coral reefs continue to shrink or be disturbed.

“Since the 1960s we’ve doubled our food consumption, our water consumption,” said Jonathan Baillie, director of conservation programmes at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).

“The world’s population has doubled, and the economy has grown sixfold; in 2050 there will be 9.2 billion people on the planet.”

There are signs of change in some regions. The forest area is growing in Europe and China, while deforestation is slowing in Brazil.

About 12% of the world’s land is now under some form of protection.

But in other areas, countries – particularly in the tropics – have made little progress towards the 2010 target.

Government delegates here will consider adopting a new set of targets for 2020 that aim to tackle the causes of biodiversity loss – the expansion of agriculture, pollution, climate change, the spread of alien invasive species, the increasing use of natural resources – which conservationists believe might be a more effective option than setting targets on nature itself.

Delegates will also be negotiating a draft agreement on exploiting the genetic resources of the natural world fairly and sustainably.

The protocol, named Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS), aims to prevent “biopiracy” while enabling societies with abundant plant and animal life to profit from any drugs or other products that might be made from them.

Agreement on ABS has been pursued since 1992 without producing a result. But after four years of preparatory talks, officials believe the remaining differences can be hammered out here.

“We are confident that on 29 October, we’ll celebrate the birth of another baby, with the support of all parties, and we’ll have a protocol on access and benefit sharing,” said Ahmed Djoghlaf, CBD executive secretary.

“This protocol will be a future investment for the human family as a whole.”

However, the bitter politicking that has soured the atmosphere in a number of UN environment processes – most notably at the Copenhagen climate summit – threatens some aspects of the Nagoya meeting.

Some developing nations are insisting that the ABS protocol be signed off here before they will agree to the establishment of an international scientific panel to assess biodiversity issues.

The Intergovernmental science-policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is due to be signed off during the current UN General Assembly session in New York.

Many experts believe it is necessary if scientific evidence on the importance of biodiversity loss is to be transmitted effectively to governments, in the same way that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assembles evidence that governments can use when deciding whether to tackle climate change.

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

Research into the genetics of early menopause may lead to a simple test for women, says a UK scientist.

One in 20 women starts their menopause before the age of 46 – which can affect their chances of conceiving even a decade earlier.

The study, published in Human Molecular Genetics, found that four genes working in combination appeared to raise the risk significantly.

This could eventually help identify women at greatest risk.

Menopause is normally triggered when the number of remaining eggs in the ovary falls below about 1,000.

However, the biological controls which determine how quickly this ovarian egg reserve is used up are less well understood.

The researchers, from the University of Exeter and the Institute of Cancer Research, looked at four genes already thought to have some link to the menopause.

They took 2,000 women who had experienced early menopause, and a similar number of women who had entered the menopause at the normal age.

They found that the presence of each of the four genes appeared to have some influence on the age of menopause.

Egg depletion

When more than one was found in a woman’s genetic makeup, the impact was even greater.

Dr Anna Murray, from the University of Exeter, said that the ability to predict menopause was not just important at the time, but could be crucial to decisions made many years earlier.

In particular, the quicker-than-expected depletion of the egg reserve could make a difference to a woman’s ability to conceive.

She said: “It is estimated that a woman’s ability to conceive decreases on average ten years before she starts the menopause.

“Therefore, those who are destined to have an early menopause and delay childbearing until their 30s are more likely to have problems conceiving.”

She added: “These findings are the first stage in developing an easy and relatively inexpensive genetic test which could help the one in 20 women who may be affected.”

Professor Anthony Swerdlow, from the Institute of Cancer Research, described the findings as a “valuable step” towards helping women work out if they are at risk.

“This may in turn allow them to make informed decisions about their future fertility,” he said.

This is not the first attempt to find a way to identify those women who are at greatest risk of an early menopause.

Other methods include using ultrasound to assess the number of eggs left in the ovary, to try to work out how quickly that number is falling.

The latest study is part of a major effort – the Breakthrough Generations Study – following the fortunes of 100,000 women in an effort to reveal the causes of diseases such as breast cancer.

Iranian scientists also say that measuring levels of a hormone called AMH on a three-yearly basis may also be able to predict the problem years in advance.

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

The labour market in Scotland has weakened to its worst state in almost a year, figures have suggested.

The Bank of Scotland Report on Jobs showed the amount of permanent jobs available fell in September, with average salaries also down.

The index rating assigned by the report to gauge the jobs market was the lowest in 11 months and showed Scotland continued to underperform the UK.

Unemployment rose 13,000 in Scotland over the past three months, to 231,000.

The Bank of Scotland study showed that the number of people who found permanent work fell at the sharpest rate in 13 months, although there was a growth in demand for short-term workers.

Donald MacRae, chief economist at Bank of Scotland, said: “The reduction in the number of permanent jobs available on the Scottish labour market, as well as a fall in the number of people actually placed in full-time employment, is another indication of the dip in business confidence in Scotland.

“We are, however, continuing to see strong demand for temporary staff.

“The number of candidates placed in temporary positions rose at the strongest rate for three months, while the number of temporary vacancies rose for the 11th successive month.”

The number of people who found permanent jobs in September fell for the third successive month and at the fastest pace since August 2009.

The report also showed that average salaries for permanent staff fell for the fourth successive month in September. This decline was the sharpest since November 2009.

Glasgow-based recruiters saw the fastest growth in permanent job placements, while those in Edinburgh saw the sharpest rise in temporary staff billings.

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

Demand for Scotland’s current range of public services will require another £27bn over the next 15 years, according to a new report.

The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta) said extra resources will be needed, mainly because of the rising number of older people and the nation’s poor health.

The report has come as Holyrood faces a £42bn budget gap over the same period.

Nesta recommended radical reforms to Scotland’s public services.

It argued that to make services more sustainable, radical reform needs to become a more significant part of the Scottish government’s strategy towards spending reductions.

Nesta’s Radical Scotland report said more money should be put into reducing the pressure for more services at more cost, rather than focussing on meeting need once problems have become acute.

“Mainstream service delivery remains largely designed to react to problems rather than to prevent and solve them,” it said.

The report proposed some councils or health boards should be freed up to innovate with health, justice and social care.

With “new community status”, they would be given financial incentives to invest in change but with an expectation that the savings and lessons learned would be shared with other parts of the country.

Nesta, which was set up with Lottery funding to provide innovative answers to economic and social challenges, also looked at the cost of criminal justice.

It has proposed that more money should be spent on preventing drugs-related and drink-related crime and other social costs rather than spending more money on tackling the consequences.

The report calculated drink and drug-related long-term illness would cost the Scottish government £410m more per year by 2025, totalling £4bn over the next 15 years.

They said the growing number of older people, and of very old people, will push up government costs by £1.1bn per year within only six years.

If nothing was done to stop rising trends in prisoner numbers, the cost of jailing Scots would rise by as much as £250m per year to nearly £700m.

Among the ideas taken from outside Scotland, Nesta cited a decision taken in Texas not to build another jail, but to put the cost (at $500m or £312m) into treatment for mental health, substance abuse and post-prison support.

As a result, it is claimed the prison population rose by 90% less than anticipated, and the state government saved $434m (£271m).

Nesta said some groups in Scotland were already taking a similar approach on a small scale, such as East Renfrewshire’s School, Social Work, Police and Community programme (SSPC). It argued that approach to tackling violent and anti-social behaviour among young people helped reduce knife-carrying and vandalism by 20%.

The Radical Scotland report also said current responses to the UK government’s spending plans were not sustainable, “given the limits of traditional efficiency measures and the cost of rising demand for public services”.

It claimed even the contentious money-saving measures suggested in the Independent Budget Review, led by Crawford Beveridge, would still leave the Scottish government £1bn short of the necessary cuts by 2014-15.

Nesta’s chief executive Jonathan Kestenbaum said: “Numerous examples from Scotland demonstrate how services can be refocused at a local level to prevent longer term problems.

“Scotland must make radical reform of its public services the driving mission.”

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

Thousands of Eurostar passengers have had to change their travel plans because of industrial action on Belgium’s rail network.

Eurostar said no trains would operate from London to Brussels during the 24-hour strike from 2100 BST on Sunday.

The operator said a “very limited” replacement coach service would run between Lille and Brussels.

Eurostar will run a revised service between the UK and Lille, but trains to Paris will operate as normal.

Sunday’s last departure from London to Brussels was brought forward from 1934 BST to 1727 BST to avoid the dispute. On Monday, the 1934 BST from London is due to run as scheduled.

Eurostar said that the industrial action meant it was unlikely there would be any high-speed rail connections from Brussels to destinations in France, the Netherlands and Germany.

The operator said in a statement: “A very limited coach service will operate between Lille and Brussels and we expect heavy demand for these coaches and journey times will be significantly longer (by approximately two hours).

“We would therefore recommend that customers planning to travel between Belgium and the UK during this time postpone their journeys if possible.”

The company said that customers could exchange their tickets free of charge within 60 days for a journey in the next 120 days.

Eurostar usually runs 20 trains to Brussels on weekdays, each with a capacity of 750 passengers.

Meanwhile, German rail operator Deutsche Bahn said it had held its first test of a high-speed train carrying passengers through the Channel Tunnel.

Currently only Eurostar is allowed to operate on the route but the German firm is keen to widen competition.

Deutsche Bahn said it hoped to run services to Frankfurt and Cologne within the next three years.

At no time should you endanger yourself or others, take any unnecessary risks or infringe any laws. In most cases a selection of your comments will be published, displaying your name as you provide it and location unless you state otherwise. But your contact details will never be published.

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

Millions of children are at risk of neglect because of a parent’s drinking, and yet the problem is not being taken seriously, say charities.

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

The US military has assembled a 120-member team to prepare for the expected publication of some 400,000 Iraq war documents on the Wikileaks website.

The documents are thought to concern battle activity, Iraqi security forces and civilian casualties.

The Pentagon said it wants the documents back to avoid potentially damaging information being released.

The timing is unclear but it would dwarf Wikileaks’ July publication of more than 70,000 Afghan war files.

Pentagon spokesman Col Dave Lapan said the team was reviewing the files on the Iraq war to discover what the possible impact of the Wikileaks release could be.

Col Lapan said the files were from an Iraq-based database that contained “significant acts, unit-level reporting, tactical reports, things of that nature”.

He said the Pentagon did not know the timing of the leak but they were preparing for it to be as early as Monday or Tuesday.

Other sources said it may come later in the month.

Col Lapan said the files should be returned to the Pentagon because “we don’t believe Wikileaks or others have the expertise needed. It’s not as simple as just taking out names. There are other things and documents that aren’t names that are also potentially damaging.”

Wikileaks’ release in July of thousands of documents on the war in Afghanistan prompted US military officials to warn that the whistleblower website might cause the deaths of US soldiers and Afghan civilians because some of the documents contained the names of locals who had helped coalition forces.

But US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said in a letter to the head of the Senate Armed Services Committee that the leak had not revealed any “sensitive intelligence sources or methods”.

There have been fears that such leaks could damage US intelligence sharing with other nations as well as intelligence sharing between US agencies.

The investigation into the Afghan leak has focused on Bradley Manning, a US army intelligence analyst who is in custody and has been charged with leaking a classified video of a US helicopter attack in Iraq in 2007 in which a dozen people were killed.

The Wikileaks website is currently offline “undergoing scheduled maintenance”. Founder Julian Assange is being investigated in Sweden over an alleged sex crime.

He denies the charge and says the the allegations are part of a smear campaign by opponents of his whistle-blowing website.

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

A boy has been injured in a suspected shooting in the Radford Road area of Nottingham.

Police were called to the scene, near Hyson Green, just after midnight on Sunday.

The 16-year-old victim was taken to hospital for treatment and has since been discharged.

A number of roads in the area, between the junctions of Gregory Boulevard and Palin Street/Claypole Road, were cordoned off.

Nottinghamshire Police have appealed for anyone with information about the incident, which happened at about 0045 BST, to contact them.

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

A 26-year-old man has been arrested after a car ploughed into a crowd outside a nightclub in Greater Manchester.

Police said 23 people were injured, two seriously, when a car was driven at door staff outside the Dali Bar in Rochdale at 0210 BST on Sunday.

The vehicle, a Saab, went along the pavement for up to 200 yards before being driven away.

Officers are searching for another 26-year-old man from the Rochdale area.

Detective Chief Inspector Lynne Vernon said: “We are continuing to follow some excellent leads in our efforts to locate a second man and I would urge him to hand himself in.

“The person we are looking for knows we want to speak to him and so will a number of others – so if anyone knows where he is they should call us.”

Greater Manchester Police said the two men in the car were thought to have been refused entry to the bar, but returned and drove the vehicle at the club building at 0210 BST on Sunday.

The Saab was found abandoned about two hours later.

At no time should you endanger yourself or others, take any unnecessary risks or infringe any laws. In most cases a selection of your comments will be published, displaying your name as you provide it and location unless you state otherwise. But your contact details will never be published.

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