Category: News

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea may have to offer steep discounts to sell key state assets such as bank stakes, to help cut a growing fiscal deficit, while pumping money into the economy to pull it safely out of a global downturn.

The alternative is more delays, but the desperation for funds may be enough to override government fears of criticism for selling state assets on the cheap.

“The government will be more flexible, shifting away from its previous stance that it won’t sell the stake below a certain price. That could mean a big discount,” said one fund manager at a domestic asset management firm, asking not to be named because he is not authorised to talk to the media.

He was referring specifically to Woori Finance Holdings (053000.KS), which could be among the first to be offered and which has been in government hands since it was bailed out during the Asian financial crisis a decade ago.

The government wants to sell an initial 7 percent in South Korea’s third-ranked bank, worth $800 million at current market prices.

It is also selecting an adviser for the sale of 49 percent in Incheon International Airport, the main gateway to South Korea, in a deal worth an estimated $2 billion.

The offerings come as South Korea seeks fresh revenue after record spending to stimulate the economy over the past year has sapped state coffers, and as it tries to create more jobs. The government expects the 2009 fiscal deficit to be 5.0 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product.

But scaled back lending by banks and concerns about a slowing global economic recovery may reduce appetite for state assets, and some bankers say that could well mean some delays.

Concern about selling strategic assets to foreign investors could also be a barrier in some cases.

“There seems to be resistance to sell part of such infrastructure assets to foreign capital, considering those companies are not in financial difficulty,” said Kim Sun-bin, a chief researcher at Samsung Economic Research Institute.

“That will be the hottest issue going forward.”

In a similar move, India’s government plans to list some profitable state firms as Asia’s third-largest economy seeks to fuel growth without further widening a large fiscal deficit.

For foreign strategic buyers eyeing South Korea, the absence of management rights for the assets will make them less attractive. National security concerns could be another stumbling block.

“I doubt if the sale process will be able to proceed, considering market liquidity conditions,” said one M&A banker at a top local brokerage, asking not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.

“Daewoo Engineering’s case indicates the current market situation, with companies not ready to initiate active investments,” he said.

The auction for a majority of Daewoo Engineering & Construction Co Ltd (047040.KS), in a deal estimated at $3 billion, has drawn just three foreign investors after the sole local bidder, private equity firm MBK Partners, dropped out.

Australia’s Macquarie (MQG.AX) is tipped as a possible foreign bidder for some government assets, given its track record in infrastructure deals. It declined to comment.

TIMING

President Lee Myung-bak, who won office almost two years ago, had made privatising state-run institutions a centrepiece of his pro-business policy agenda, though this was put on hold after his popularity sank in a row over U.S. beef imports.

Some analysts said the government may now be tempted to try selling stakes as South Korea looks set to be among the first economies to recover from the downturn and with the local stock market up 40 percent so far this year.

With more state assets in the pipeline, including KDB Financial Group, the parent of Korea Development Bank, and stakes in Industrial Bank of Korea (024110.KS), the government may have little option but to opt for current market prices rather than hold out for the possibility of more later.

“We plan to speed up the process now that market conditions have been improving,” said one finance ministry official overseeing the sale plans.

“Timing will depend on market conditions, but there is no change to the deadline,” he said, referring to a 2012 timeline by which the government hopes to sell stakes in 112 state assets and raise about 4.6 trillion won ($3.97 billion). [ID:nSEO27569] ($1=1154.1 Won)

By Kim Yeon-hee
(Additional reporting by Yoo Choonsik; Editing by Jonathan Thatcher, Ian Geoghegan and Muralikumar Anantharaman)

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LONDON (Reuters) – Publisher Reed Elsevier’s (REL.L) (ELSN.AS) said on Wednesday its Chief Executive Ian Smith had quit because he was the wrong man for the times.

Smith, an industry outsider who resigns after only eight months in the job, will be replaced by divisional chief Erik Engstrom.

A company spokesman said: “Ian and the board decided it wasn’t the right role for him in the current economic circumstances. Erik has proven sectoral experience. There is no disagreement on strategy.”

Reed said Smith’s resignation would take immediate effect and was by mutual agreement. Engstrom has been CEO of the company’s scientific-publishing division Elsevier for the last five years.

Reed also warned that 2010 operating margins would likely be modestly reduced, due to a weak revenue environment combined with increased investment, particularly in U.S. legal markets.

Shares in Reed Elsevier fell 3 percent in early trading, the leading decliners in a flat European media index .SXMP.

Chairman Anthony Habgood said in a statement: “Ian has had the difficult task of leading Reed Elsevier during unprecedentedly turbulent economic times. The boards and I would like to thank him for his contribution in this respect and wish him well for the future.”

Smith — who had previously held senior roles at Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L), General Healthcare Group and housebuilder Taylor Toodrow (TW.L) — was not immediately reachable for comment.

Engstrom, 46, has been CEO of Elsevier since 2004. He previously worked at private equity firm General Atlantic Partners, book publisher Random House [BERT.UL] and Swedish paper-products firm SCA (SCAb.ST).

Under his leadership, Elsevier’s revenues and profits have grown every year, creating a business with turnover of 1.7 billion pounds ($2.8 billion) in 2008.

TURMOIL

Paul Richards, analyst at London brokerage Numis, said: “Reed is supposed to be a solid defensive stock, so to have this sort of management turmoil and the cautioning on 2010 trading — it’s pretty disappointing.”

UBS analyst Polo Tang wrote in a note: “The news will be negative for sentiment, although we believe investor opinion on Smith was divided.”

Smith had made a largely unpopular decision to issue new shares in July representing 9.9 percent of the company’s issued share capital to reduce its $8.4 billion net debt after failing to sell its trade-magazines unit RBI last year.

Reed Elsevier stock traded in London has underperformed the FTSE 100 index .FTSE by 20 percent this year.

Smith had made a strong case for accelerating investment, particularly in the U.S. legal market, where Reed has been losing market share to Thomson Reuters (TRI.TO)(TRI.N).

In the company’s last trading update in July, he said: “Despite the global recession, I believe that now is the right time to develop more aggressive market and product strategies to capture the market opportunities and increase competitive differentiation.”

Reed said on Wednesday first-half trends had continued as expected in the second half, with advertising and promotion markets and employee screening remaining difficult but likely to stabilise as comparatives get easier.

“The major professional markets, accounting for the majority of Reed Elsevier’s business, are proving more resilient than most but not immune from late cycle pressures given the subscription nature of much of the revenue,” it said.

By Georgina Prodhan and Kate Holton

(Editing by Joel Dimmock and Andrew Callus)

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LONDON (Reuters) – The private equity backers of Danish telecoms group TDC (TDC.CO) are meeting banks this month as they look to line up advisers to sell part of their $7.4 billion stake, people familiar with the matter said.

Buyout firms Blackstone (BX.N), KKR, Permira, Apax and Providence Equity Partners are meeting banks in November but might not pick a syndicate to run a share sale until next year, one of the sources said.

The buyout firms bought 88 percent of TDC in 2006 in what was then Europe’s largest leveraged buyout (LBO), eclipsed only by KKR’s 11.1 billion pound ($18.6 billion) deal for Alliance Boots the following year. The remaining 12 percent is listed on the Danish stock exchange.

The private equity firms declined to comment. TDC had no immediate comment.

Based on TDC’s share price, the company is worth about $8.4 billion.

($1=.5973 Pound) (Reporting by Simon Meads and Quentin Webb; additional reporting by Peter Levring in Copenhagen)

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TOKYO (Reuters) – Private equity firm TPG Capital could partner with American Airlines on a minority investment in Japan Airlines (9205.T) to prevent its defection to a rival airline group, the chief financial officer of American parent AMR Corp (AMR.N) said.

The emergence of TPG as a potential investor comes as the loss-making Japan Airlines seeks its fourth state bailout since 2001, saddled with $15 billion in debt, a massive pension deficit and dozens of unprofitable routes.

The Japanese government pledged on Tuesday to enlist a state bank to offer bridge loans to prevent the airline from running short of cash and said it may introduce legislation to cut a pension shortfall that hit $3.7 billion in March.

Even as it struggles to avoid bankruptcy, JAL is being wooed separately by American Airlines and Delta Air Lines, which are keen to gain access to JAL’s network in Asia and a stronger foothold in Japan. JAL is Asia’s largest carrier by revenues.

AMR’s Thomas Horton said TPG, which helped fund Continental Airlines emergence from bankruptcy in 1993 and backed a failed takeover attempt for Australia’s Qantas Airways (QAN.AX) in 2007, has agreed to potentially invest in JAL as part of any deal with American Airlines.

“As appropriate and if it were welcomed by Japan Airlines and the government of Japan, TPG could also be part of a comprehensive recovery plan,” Horton told reporters in Tokyo.

“They have been active in the airline space over the years.”

A spokesman for TPG in Tokyo declined to comment.

American partners JAL in the Oneworld alliance, which pools frequent flyer miles and feeds passengers between members, and is keen to block it from joining Delta in the rival SkyTeam group.

American has argued that JAL and Delta would have difficulty clearing regulatory hurdles if they sought antitrust immunity for closer business ties because the alliance would give SkyTeam control of 60 percent of air traffic between Japan and the U.S.

American, which has hired Rothschild [ROT.UL] as an adviser on the deal, also estimates that defecting to SkyTeam could drain JAL of about $500 million in revenues during a transition period of 18-24 months.

A Delta spokeswoman in Tokyo declined to comment.

SIDE SHOW

In addition to a capital investment, American has been talking with JAL on forming a joint venture to cooperate more closely on scheduling, pricing and marketing. American estimates this could bring another $100 million in annual revenue to JAL.

Such close cooperation requires an “open skies” agreement between Japan and the United States. The two governments are in negotiations and are aiming for a deal this year.

The posturing by American and Delta remains a side show in the context of the much larger hurdles facing JAL. Any investment from the U.S. carriers would likely be a fraction of the 300 billion yen in capital a government-appointed task force estimated it needs to stage a sustained recovery.

JAL applied last month for a bailout from the Enterprise Turnaround Initiative Corporation of Japan, a state-backed body that is expected to take until January to study its assets and decide whether it is worthy of an injection of public funds.

Japan’s recently elected government is under pressure to save JAL while contending with growing investor concern it faces a funding crunch to finance public debt expected to swell to 200 percent of GDP this year.

The government said on Tuesday the Development Bank of Japan (DBJ) would extend loans to keep it in operations until the ETIC can decide on support, part of a rescue package to ease market jitters ahead of JAL’s first half earnings report on Nov. 13.

The Nikkei business daily reported JAL was likely to post an operating loss of more than 90 billion yen, hurt by a decline in passengers and per-customer sales.

The government will also consider legislation to forcibly cut pension payouts, aiming to get around current laws that allow retirees to easily block such a move. 

Shares of JAL, which have lost almost half their value this year, rose 4.8 percent after the government announced its support for the pension and bridge loan issues. The benchmark Nikkei Average .N225 ended flat.

The government did not announce the size of the bridge loan but two sources told Reuters on Wednesday the state-owned DBJ would offer a 100 billion yen ($1.1 billion) line of credit, while private banks would put up 25 billion yen.

Loans from units of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (8306.T), Mizuho Financial Group (8411.T) and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (8316.T) will be used to buy aircraft and will be guaranteed by another state-owned bank, the sources said.

The sources also said JAL would announce its application for a debt restructuring scheme on Nov. 13 under which a third party would mediate between JAL and its creditors.

The scheme, called “Alternative Dispute Resolution”, would trigger a suspension of loan payments. This would reduce the amount of funds JAL needs to secure in the near term.

JAL CEO Haruka Nishimatsu is likely to resign to take responsibility for the airline’s woes, one source said.

A JAL spokesman said nothing has been decided on the size of the loans or whether it would apply for the ADR scheme. ($1=89.63 Yen)

By Nathan Layne and Nobuhiro Kubo

(Additional reporting by Taro Fuse in Tokyo and Mansi Dutta in Bangalore; Editing by Chris Gallagher and Lincoln Feast)

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The EHA, at a Stakeholder Consultation Meeting organised by DG Environment on Novemebr 10, on the review of the EU Seveso II Directive, asked the EU Commission more consideration of the use of hydrogen as an energy carrier in its environmental protection legislation. Current environmental legislation look at hydrogen only as an industrial gas and is not yet taken acoount the increasing use of hydorgen as a  clean energy carrier in transport and stationary energy systems. The EHA is closely following the review of the EU Integrated Pollution Prvention and Control Directive and the Seveso II Directive that applies to thousands of industrial establishments where dangeorus substances are present in quantities exceeding the treshold in the directive (for hydrogen 5 tons). more information on the Seveso II review process can be found at the Seveso II website. The EHA  reortt of the meeting is available for EHA members in the members section.

The Prime Minister marked the passing of the First World War generation during a special service at Westminster Abbey this morning.

Gordon Brown and his wife Sarah joined the Queen, heads of the Armed Forces and members of the public at the service on Remembrance Day.

The ceremony was held following the deaths earlier this year of the last three veterans of the First World War living in the UK.

During the ceremony the PM joined people around the country in observing the traditional two-minute silence.

In a statement, the PM said has was humbled to be present at Westminster Abbey as the bravery and sacrifice of the First World War generation was remembered.

“With their sad passing, we have now lost our living link with the Great War. But we must never forget what they did for each and every one of us. The courage and selflessness of those brave men who fought in that war will never be forgotten.

“It is our duty to teach our children and grandchildren of their heroism.

“And today of course our thoughts are also with all the men and women of our Armed Forces, serving with such distinction at home and overseas.”

Previous story: Remembrance Sunday

Reader Cameron Boykin alerts us to the news that a game modder appears to have filed a DMCA claim against Infinity Ward for its video of a certain part of Modern Warfare 2, claiming that the element in the game was influenced by a mod he had created. While this may seem amusing to the folks who are pissed off at Infinity Ward for various consumer-unfriendly positions, it still appears to be an abuse of the DMCA. It doesn’t sound like Infinity Ward flat out took this guy’s code or anything — and having similar gameplay elements is unlikely to be copyright infringement at all. While it may have just been a joke or a “protest” sort of move, filing a bogus DMCA takedown is bad news no matter how you look at it, and can get the filer into a lot of legal hot water pretty quickly.

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Some Japanese gadget freaks do have a penchant for weird earphones, that’s for sure, meaning these things actually seem to sell. I doubt that otherwise, Tokyo-based accessory maker Greenhouse would have updated the buta (piggy) earphones they gave us in June 2008. It’s not a technical update but the same earphones are available in purple and orange now (see the picture on the left).

You can still get the first series, available in black, white and pink, too (pictured below). The idea remains the same: Stick one half of a pig into your right ear and the other half into the left ear. You can still choose between ear pieces in 3 different sizes (small, medium and large).

Greenhouse plans to start selling the pig earphones in Japan next week for $15 each. I suggest you contact the Japan Trend Shop, Geek Stuff 4 U or Rinkya in case you live outside Japan and you’re interested in getting one.

We’re coming back, men!Looks like someone’s getting jealous of all the attention Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is getting. After a long bout of sile…

The Final Fantasy XIII (Xbox 360, PS3) launch preparations are “going very steadily,” this according to Square Enix president, Yoichi Wada. What’…

It’s very easy to win a Tekken art book from us!
$150 Spy pen is probably good enough for “Mission: Impossible”
And our costume contest winner is…
Mouse and keyboard vs. Console controller: Let’s bury the hatchet
First review of New Super Mario Bros. Wii gives the game a 9.2 (and guess from who that number’s from!)

This one’s a bit old, but I’m cleaning out some older posts I wanted to write up. Sent in by johnjac, apparently the University of Texas charges a local painter a fee for selling paintings of its main building, the Texas Tower. While the Freakonomics post delves into whether this should be a flat fee or a percentage, shouldn’t the actual question be why should the painter have to pay a fee at all?

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MALICIOUS CODE

Viruses
– A program that has the ability to ‘break away’ and to’copy ‘into the program / other systems
– Depending on other programs.
– Be active when ‘something’ that contains a virus run.
– Usually within one operating system, although there are different operating systems
– Infect: Memory and storage

Worms
– Does not depend to a program.
– Reproduce themselves by themselves mencopy from 1 computer to another computer.
– Using the network / Network.
– Did not attack the program.
– Does not change the program.
– Not corrupt the data.
– But dangerous.
– Utilize network resources.

Trojan Horse
– A fragment program that hide in the program and has a special function
– Often hidden in programs that attract users
– For example an interesting program, a new game.
– Usually used to tap one’s password.
– Trojan horse programs clever:
Not leave a trace presence
Can not be detected
Programmed to destroy himself before it was detected

Bombs
– Like the Trojan Horse
– Often combined with viruses, worms and programs that attack the system.
– Works by date, time or under certain conditions
– There are 2 kinds of bombs: time and logic
– Who work on a particular time is called time bomb (a bomb)
– Who worked on the incident / circumstances called logic bomb (logic bomb)

Back Doors
– A technique used by the programmer to enter into a system.
– Is a secret way to enter into a system.
– Its function is to provide to the programmer to enter into a system through the ‘back door’.
– Sometimes programmers let trap door in the program to monitor pengetasan a program or operation.

OTHER WILDLIFE
Bacteria
A program that does nothing but reproduce themselves
Usually beralokasi in memory, disk or other storage media.

Rabbits
Another name of the program that produced very quickly.

Crabs
Programs that attack / disrupt the data display on the screen.

CREEPERS
A program, such as worms, which menyerbar from other terminals to the network in the ARPANET (1970s) while displaying the message “I’m the Creeper, catch me if you can” to this program will be liquidated by “The Reaper”.

Salamis
A program that attacks the values of the money in the bank transaction files, especially the value of fractional
Value fractions (cents) from the interest taken and transferred to the account of another person

http://www.google.com/ig/adde?moduleurl=http://feeds.feedburner.com/time/topstories&source=imag&val=3

(NaturalNews) According to the American Cancer Society (ACS), breast cancer is the most common cancer in women, affecting over 200,000 women in the U.S. each year and killing more than 40,000. For American men, cancer of the prostate is the type of malignancy that strikes with the greatest frequency.

The ACS says an estimated 192,280 men will be diagnosed with the disease in 2009 and around 27,360 men will die from it. Based on the assumption that finding breast and prostate cancers in the earliest stages will make them easier to cure and slash mortality rates, for over twenty years the U.S. medical establishment has pushed for mass screenings for these common cancers.

So after two decades, all this testing must have resulted in a huge decline in deaths from these diseases, right?

Wrong.

In an opinion piece published in the October 21st issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), experts from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and the University of Texas (UT) Health Science Center explain that overall breast and prostate cancer rates are higher and far more men and women are being treated. However, the incidence of aggressive or late stage cancers has not been significantly reduced at all. Bottom line: the huge and highly hyped effort to screen the adult population for breast and prostate cancers has not brought about the anticipated decrease in deaths.

“Screening does provide some benefit, but the problem is that the benefit is not nearly as much as we hoped and comes at the cost of over diagnosis and over treatment,” said one of the paper’s authors, Laura Esserman, MD, MBA, in a statement to the media. Dr. Esserman is a professor of surgery and radiology, director of the UCSF Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center, and co-leader of the breast oncology program at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center.

“We need to focus on developing new tools to identify men and women at risk for the most aggressive cancers, to identify at the time of diagnosis those who have indolent or ‘idle’ tumors that are not life-threatening. If we can identify groups of patients that don’t need much treatment, or don’t need to be screened, wouldn’t that be great?” she stated. “Screening is by no means perfect. We should want to make it better. For both breast and prostate cancer we need to invest in changing our focus from the cancers that won’t kill people to the ones that do.”

The JAMA article points out that screening costs an enormous amount of money — more than $20 billion is spent annually in the U.S. to check people for prostate and breast cancer. And the sheer number of people convinced to have these tests has resulted in far more early cancers being detected than in the past. For example, because of regular prostate screening antigen (PSA) testing, now considered “necessary” for most middle-aged men, the number of American men diagnosed with prostate cancer has almost doubled since l980. The number of woman being diagnosed with breast cancer has nearly doubled over that time as well.

So why do the authors of the JAMA article write “the contribution from screening is uncertain”? Because while screening increases the detection of slow growing tumors, the JAMA authors point out, it too often misses the most aggressive cancers which grow so fast that they are not detected early enough to be cured in many cases. And the cancer experts also point out that many patients are undergoing treatment from cancers that actually pose minimal risk. That’s right: despite all the fear and scary statistics loudly publicized about these diseases, having breast or prostate cancer doesn’t necessarily mean you have a dangerous disease.

“Without the ability to distinguish cancers that pose minimal risk from those posing substantial risk and with highly sensitive screening tests, there is an increased risk that the population will be over-treated,” the authors of the JAMA article conclude.

“The basic assumption that screening programs that find and treat early stage disease will then prevent late-stage disease, or prevent cancer from spreading, may not always be correct. If a tumor is aggressive, finding it early may not prevent death,” one of the authors, Ian Thompson, MD, said in a statement to the media. Dr. Thompson is professor and chairman of the Department of Urology at the Cancer Therapy and Research Center at the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio and has authored about 400 scientific articles addressing prevention, early detection, and treatment for prostate, kidney, and bladder cancers.

The JAMA authors are not condemning all cancer screening but getting the word out that it is “most successful when pre-malignant lesions can be detected and eliminated” such as during colonoscopies. And they are calling for these specific recommendations for early detection and prevention:

• The development of tests that distinguish between cancers that are lethal and those that are low-risk.

• A reduction in treatment for low-risk disease. “Diagnosing cancers that don’t kill the patient has led to treatment that may do more harm than good,” they stated.

• Developing tools for doctors and patients to help them make informed decisions about prevention, screening, biopsy and treatment. This includes providing individualized treatments tailored to a person’s specific tumor.

• Working to identify those who are at the highest risk for cancer and using proven prevention interventions to keep them from developing a malignancy in the first place.

“Over the years we have worked hard to find new treatments and new ways of finding disease and many of these interventions when appropriately assessed have saved lives,” said Otis W. Brawley, MD, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, and professor of hematology, oncology and epidemiology at Emory University, in the press statement. “It is very appropriate that we occasionally step back, assess and reflect on what we in medicine are doing. In the case of some screening for some cancers, modern medicine has overpromised. Some of our successes are not as significant as first thought. Cancer is a complicated disease and too often we have tried to simplify it and simplify messages about it, to the point that we do harm to those we want to help.”

NaturalNews has previously reported on serious health issues involving mass screenings for breast and prostate cancer, including a study showing that an increase in mammography screenings is associated with an increased incidence of breast cancer (http://www.naturalnews.com/024901.html). In addition, research published recently in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute concluded over a million American men who were told they had prostate cancer following the advent of PSA tests most likely had no real health problem — until they started down the path of side-effect laden treatments and became labeled as “cancer patients” (http://www.naturalnews.com/027193_cancer_Prostate_prostate_cancer.html).

For more information:
http://news.ucsf.edu/releases/experts-issue-call-to-reconsider-screening-for-breast-cancer-and-prostate-c/

(NaturalNews) Cholesterol-lowering statin drugs may cause serious and long-term muscle damage that persists even after the drugs are halted, according to a new study conducted by researchers from Tufts Medical Center and the University of Bern, and published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Researchers have known for some time that minor muscle aches and weakness, known as myalgia, occur in between 10 and 15 percent of patients taking statins, while more severe, persistent pain known as myopathy occurs in roughly 2 percent. In the current study, researchers performed muscle biopsies on 83 patients, 44 of whom were taking statins and also suffering from myopathy severe enough to interfere with exercise and daily activities. Twenty-nine of these patients were currently taking statins, while the other 15 had ceased using the drugs at least three weeks before.

Another 19 participants were taking statins but not suffering from myopathy, while the final 20 had never experienced myopathy and never taken statins.

Researchers found signs of muscle damage in 25 of the myopathy patients, including the majority of those who had already stopped taking statins.

“Although in clinical practice, the majority of patients with muscle symptoms improve rapidly after cessation of therapy, our findings support that a subgroup of patients appears to be more susceptible to statin-associated myotoxicity, suffering persistent structural injury,” said senior author Annette Draeger.

The researchers also found that only one of the patients with muscle damage had elevated levels of the enzyme creatine phosphokinase (CPK), widely believed to be a marker of muscle distress.

“This paper is challenging the dogma that if the CPK level is low, it rules out the possibility of muscle damage,” co-author Richard Karas said. “You can have microscopic muscle damage and the level of CPK can still be normal.”

Researchers do not know why statin use leads to myopathy in some patients, although they know that certain factors may raise the risk, including high doses of the drugs, old age, vigorous exercise or taking certain other drugs in conjunction with the statins, including some cancer drugs and antibiotics.

Sources for this story include: www.forbes.com.

(Natural News) Most health conscious people know of the positive effects on digestion from using probiotic supplements. Many take probiotic supplements after using antibiotics to replace the good intestinal flora bacteria indiscriminately killed during antibiotic use.

This practice is so well known that MD’s have begun recommending probiotics during and after antibiotics.

But there is new evidence that probiotic benefits go beyond that. One area of investigative research is building the immune system’s resistance to allergies that affect the skin. An obvious example of a skin’s allergic reaction is eczema, which tends occur often with infants.

A recent Dutch study gathered over 150 pregnant women with allergic disease histories in their families. During the last six weeks of pregnancy, they were given either three strains of probiotics or an inactive placebo pill. Neither they nor the doctors knew which was which.

After those pregnant women gave birth, most of their children were monitored by the Dutch researchers. The children continued to receive probiotics or placebos for 12 months. After three months, the rate of eczema occurring among the probiotic subjects was less than half of those given only placebos.

There were no more probiotics or placebos administered to the children after 12 months. However, many were still observed up until age two. As they approached that age, the gap between eczema occurrences between the two groups, probiotic and placebo, narrowed somewhat.

But there was still a substantial difference. The study results were considered evidence that probiotics can have an effect on offspring from allergy-prone mothers, and the report was written up in the Journal of Allergy.

Another recent study published in the Journal of Nutrition involved probiotics administered to mice. This time the focus was on food allergies. The mice all had whey intolerances, and they were fed probiotics and prebiotics while drinking milk. With the help of probiotics, their intolerance to whey showed considerable improvement with almost no skin reactions.

Up to eight percent of children have various chronic food allergies. Extending this study to children may prove probiotics to be a useful natural remedy for eliminating food allergies.

Sources for this article include:
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE5985G520091009
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1954094/can_probiotics_help_with_allergies.html?cat=5

 The guys behind Uncharted 2 needs your help. Naughty Dog is currently running a poll on their official site asking fans on what they want to see…

Toilet training your cat. They say it can be done, and CitiKitty has put together a complete Cat Toilet Training Kit to help make it incredibly easy. Now, I haven’t tried this yet myself, but after reading all about the CitiKitty I think I’m going to give it a shot.

The kit includes a training seat that is placed underneath the toilet seat to transition your cat from the litter box to the toilet. There’s also a training guide and a tip sheet, plus a packet of CitiNip catnip for use during the training process. The training guide has explicit instructions on how to first move your cat from using the litter box to using the toilet with litter, and then to using just the toilet with no litter. It’s a multi-step process that can be used with any cat that is healthy, at least three months old, and already successfully litter-box trained. It is also possible to train multiple cats at once.

According to CitiKitty, the benefits of toilet training your cat include:

• NO MORE LITTER MESS Toilet trained cats do not use kitty litter, eliminating the mess and smell of a litter box from your home.
• BETTER FOR YOUR CAT Because your cat is toilet trained they will no longer be exposed to chemicals and silica dust found in many litter brands, which has been proven to cause respiratory and other health-related problems in cats.
• SAVE $$$ Toilet trained cat owners have the luxury of not having to purchase kitty litter, saving them thousands of dollars.
• BETTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT Each year more than 4 billion pounds of kitty litter is sent to landfills in the United States. Most of that litter is made from strip mined clay which is a non-renewable resource. By toilet training your cat you help preserve precious resources.
• MORE TIME FOR YOUR CAT Why spend endless hours cleaning up a litter box when you can be spending it playing with your cat!

Now, this may not be for every cat, but there are an awful lot of comments from satisfied customers on the CitiKitty website, and there seem to be quite a few success stories, so it just might work for your cat.

A few words about flushing cat feces

This is a controversial topic, as we found out last year during Litter Week. I uncovered some important information, first read this post about the problems that can be caused by flushing cat feces, then make sure to read the follow-up post about how it can be quite safe to flush in most situations.

Enter to Win a CityKitty Cat Toilet Training Kit PLUS one of Two $100 Shopping Sprees at CitiKitty.com!

CitiKitty not only makes the toilet training kit, but they also offer a wide variety of other cat-related products on their newly re-designed website CitiKitty.com and this is your chance to win a $100 shopping spree! Two winners will be selected in a random drawing and each will receive a CitiKitty Cat Toilet Training Kit plus a $100 credit to spend on any products at CitiKitty.com. To enter, please leave a comment on this post with your thoughts about toilet training your cat. Have you ever tried it before? Are you thinking about making the transition? The drawing will take place on November 18 and the winners will be notified via email. One entry per person. This giveaway is limited to addresses in the US and Canada.

I vaguely recall a similar story a couple years ago, though now I can’t find it, but the Nieman Journalism Lab has an article about how PR folks are starting to use targeted Google AdWords buys to respond to negative press coverage. It doesn’t seem like this sort of thing would really be all that effective, but the article discusses a PR guy who bought up AdWords on a variety of related keywords for the New Zealand Seafood Industry Council, after the NY Times came out with a negative story about overfishing. Of course, it looks like the guy also went over the line, claiming in one ad that the NY Times “apologizes for story,” when the truth is that it just apologized for its use of a photograph it didn’t have the rights to — not the story itself. Amusingly, the guy also buys the reporters’ own names as keywords in running his ads. I could see how that might intimidate the journalists (if they’re particularly thin-skinned) but it’s not really clear how that actually helps get the “other side” out.

What was potentially more interesting is that the NY Times (unlike many other newspaper websites) actually linked to the Council’s website within the story, and the Council changed the page that clickers ended up on to a rebuttal to the NY Times story, whereas before it had just been a page about the type of fish in question. That seems like a smart move by the Fish Council, though it makes you realize why some publications might be skeptical about linking out, especially when whoever operates the site being linked to has the opportunity to change the site.

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