States' choices set up national health experiment


WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama's health care overhaul is unfolding as a national experiment with American consumers as the guinea pigs: Who will do a better job getting uninsured people covered, the states or the feds?


The nation is about evenly split between states that decided by Friday's deadline they want a say in running new insurance markets and states that are defaulting to federal control because they don't want to participate in "Obamacare." That choice was left to state governments under the law: Establish the market or Washington will.


With some exceptions, states led by Democrats opted to set up their own markets, called exchanges, and Republican-led states declined.


Only months from the official launch, exchanges are supposed to make the mind-boggling task of buying health insurance more like shopping on Amazon.com or Travelocity. Millions of people who don't have employer coverage will flock to the new markets. Middle-class consumers will be able to buy private insurance, with government help to pay the premiums in most cases. Low-income people will be steered to safety net programs like Medicaid.


"It's an experiment between the feds and the states, and among the states themselves," said Robert Krughoff, president of Consumers' Checkbook, a nonprofit ratings group that has devised an online tool used by many federal workers to pick their health plans. Krughoff is skeptical that either the feds or the states have solved the technological challenge of making the purchase of health insurance as easy as selecting a travel-and-hotel package.


Whether or not the bugs get worked out, consumers will be able to start signing up Oct. 1 for coverage that takes effect Jan. 1. That's also when two other major provisions of the law kick in: the mandate that almost all Americans carry health insurance, and the rule that says insurers can no longer turn away people in poor health.


Barring last-minute switches that may not be revealed until next week, 23 states plus Washington, D.C., have opted to run their own markets or partner with the Obama administration to do so.


Twenty-six states are defaulting to the feds. But in several of those, Republican governors are trying to carve out some kind of role by negotiating with federal Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Utah's status is unclear. It received initial federal approval to run its own market, but appears to be reconsidering.


"It's healthy for the states to have various choices," said Ben Nelson, CEO of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. "And there's no barrier to taking somebody else's ideas and making them work in your situation." A former U.S. senator from Nebraska, Nelson was one of several conservative Democrats who provided crucial votes to pass the overhaul.


States setting up their own exchanges are already taking different paths. Some will operate their markets much like major employers run their health plans, as "active purchasers" offering a limited choice of insurance carriers to drive better bargains. Others will open their markets to all insurers that meet basic standards, and let consumers decide.


Obama's Affordable Care Act remains politically divisive, but state insurance exchanges enjoy broad public support. Setting up a new market was central to former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's health care overhaul as governor of Massachusetts. There, it's known as the Health Connector.


A recent AP poll found that Americans prefer to have states run the new markets by 63 percent to 32 percent. Among conservatives the margin was nearly 4-1 in favor of state control. But with some exceptions, including Idaho, Nevada and New Mexico, Republican-led states are maintaining a hands-off posture, meaning the federal government will step in.


"There is a sense of irony that it's the more conservative states" yielding to federal control, said Sandy Praeger, the Republican insurance commissioner in Kansas, a state declining to run its own exchange. First, she said, the law's opponents "put their money on the Supreme Court, then on the election. Now that it's a reality, we may see some movement."


They're not budging in Austin. "Texas is not interested in being a subcontractor to Obamacare," said Lucy Nashed, spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry, who remains opposed to mandates in the law.


In Kansas, Praeger supported a state-run exchange, but lost the political struggle to Gov. Sam Brownback. She says Kansans will be closely watching what happens in neighboring Colorado, where the state will run the market. She doubts that consumers in her state would relish dealing with a call center on the other side of the country. The federal exchange may have some local window-dressing but it's expected to function as a national program.


Christine Ferguson, director of the Rhode Island Health Benefits Exchange, says she expects to see a big shift to state control in the next few years. "Many of the states have just run out of time for a variety of reasons," said Ferguson. "I'd be surprised if in the longer run every state didn't want to have its own approach."


In some ways, the federal government has a head start on the states. It already operates the Medicare Plan Finder for health insurance and prescription plans that serve seniors, and the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. Both have many of the features of the new insurance markets.


Administration officials are keeping mum about what the new federal exchange will look like, except that it will open on time and people in all 50 states will have the coverage they're entitled to by law.


Joel Ario, who oversaw planning for the health exchanges in the Obama administration, says "there's a rich dialogue going on" as to what the online shopping experience should look like. "To create a website like Amazon is a very complicated exercise," said Ario, now a consultant with Manatt Health Solutions.


He thinks consumers should be able to get one dollar figure for each plan that totals up all their expected costs for the year, including premiums, deductibles and copayments. Otherwise, scrolling through pages of insurance jargon online will be a sure turn-off.


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Carnival Cruise Ship Hit With First Lawsuit












The first lawsuit against Carnival Cruise Lines has been filed and it is expected to be the beginning of a wave of lawsuits against the ship's owners.


Cassie Terry, 25, of Brazoria County, Texas, filed a lawsuit today in Miami federal court, calling the disabled Triumph cruise ship "a floating hell."


"Plaintiff was forced to endure unbearable and horrendous odors on the filthy and disabled vessel, and wade through human feces in order to reach food lines where the wait was counted in hours, only to receive rations of spoiled food," according to the lawsuit, obtained by ABCNews.com. "Plaintiff was forced to subsist for days in a floating toilet, a floating Petri dish, a floating hell."


Click Here for Photos of the Stranded Ship at Sea


The filing also said that during the "horrifying and excruciating tow back to the United States," the ship tilted several times "causing human waste to spill out of non-functioning toilets, flood across the vessel's floors and halls, and drip down the vessel's walls."


Terry's attorney Brent Allison told ABCNews.com that Terry knew she wanted to sue before she even got off the boat. When she was able to reach her husband, she told her husband and he contacted the attorneys.


Allison said Terry is thankful to be home with her husband, but is not feeling well and is going to a doctor.








Carnival's Triumph Passengers: 'We Were Homeless' Watch Video









Girl Disembarks Cruise Ship, Kisses the Ground Watch Video









Carnival Cruise Ship Passengers Line Up for Food Watch Video





"She's nauseated and actually has a fever," Allison said.


Terry is suing for breach of maritime contract, negligence, negligent misrepresentation and fraud as a result of the "unseaworthy, unsafe, unsanitary, and generally despicable conditions" on the crippled cruise ship.


"Plaintiff feared for her life and safety, under constant threat of contracting serious illness by the raw sewage filling the vessel, and suffering actual or some bodily injury," the lawsuit says.


Despite having their feet back on solid ground and making their way home, many passengers from the cruise ship are still fuming over their five days of squalor on the stricken ship and the cruise ship company is likely to be hit with a wave of lawsuits.


"I think people are going to file suits and rightly so," maritime trial attorney John Hickey told ABCNews.com. "I think, frankly, that the conduct of Carnival has been outrageous from the get-go."


Hickey, a Miami-based attorney, said his firm has already received "quite a few" inquiries from passengers who just got off the ship early this morning.


"What you have here is a) negligence on the part of Carnival and b) you have them, the passengers, being exposed to the risk of actual physical injury," Hickey said.


The attorney said that whether passengers can recover monetary compensation will depend on maritime law and the 15-pages of legal "gobbledygook," as Hickey described it, that passengers signed before boarding, but "nobody really agrees to."


One of the ticket conditions is that class action lawsuits are not allowed, but Hickey said there is a possibility that could be voided when all the conditions of the situation are taken into account.


One of the passengers already thinking about legal action is Tammy Hilley, a mother of two, who was on a girl's getaway with her two friends when a fire in the ship's engine room disabled the vessel's propulsion system and knocked out most of its power.


"I think that's a direction that our families will talk about, consider and see what's right for us," Hilley told "Good Morning America" when asked if she would be seeking legal action.






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EU agrees to test for horse DNA in food labelling row






BRUSSELS: The European Union agreed on Friday the immediate launch of tests for horse DNA in meat products to reassure nervous consumers that their food is safe and to halt the horsemeat scandal spreading across Europe.

The test programme will also look for the presence of phenylbutazone, an anti-inflammatory treatment for horses which is harmful to humans and by law supposed to be kept out of the food chain.

The crisis continued meanwhile to build Friday as Austria and Norway confirmed that ready-to-eat "beef" meals containing horsemeat had been found, stoking concerns many more cases in more countries will come to light after falsely-labelled meat was found in Britain, France, Germany and Switzerland.

The scandal has left governments scrambling to figure out how and where the mislabelling happened in the sprawling chain of production spanning a maze of abattoirs and meat suppliers across Europe.

In Britain, the Food Standards Agency said that 29 out of 2,501 beef products it has tested so far have been found to contain more than one percent horsemeat but stressed that these must be considered exceptions.

"The overwhelming majority of beef products in this country do not contain horse. The examples we have had are totally unacceptable but they are the exceptions," FSA chief executive Catherine Brown said.

Brown added that the results were "still far from the full picture" and that testing continued.

French meat-processing firm Spanghero, blamed by Paris for the growing scandal, insisted again it was not responsible. "I don't know who is behind this but it is not us," Spanghero boss Barthelemy Aguerre told Europe 1 radio.

The French government on Thursday charged that Spanghero knowingly sold 750 tonnes of horsemeat mislabelled as beef over a period of six months, 500 tonnes of which were sent to French firm Comigel, which makes frozen meals at its Tavola subsidiary in Luxembourg.

That meat was used to make 4.5 million products that were sold by Comigel to 28 different companies in 13 European countries.

NorgesGruppen, Norway's largest retailer, said Friday that horsemeat was found in frozen lasagne dishes made by Comigel and sold in its stores and Austria said horsemeat was found in beef tortelloni sold in Lidl supermarkets.

Danish authorities said Friday they were probing whether a slaughterhouse may have mixed horsemeat into meat marked as beef that was supplied to pizza makers.

Under the measures agreed in Brussels, EU officials and statements said the testing of "foods destined for the final consumer and marketed as containing beef" could start immediately in member states, with the European Commission paying 75 percent of the costs for the first month.

The DNA controls, "mainly at the retail level", will include 2,250 samples across the EU, ranging from 10 to 150 tests per member state.

The phenylbutazone test will require one sample for every 50 tonnes of horsemeat, with each of the bloc's 27 states required to carry out a minimum of five tests.

EU Health Commissioner Tonio Borg, who proposed the plan at crisis talks on Wednesday, said he welcomed its swift approval and urged member states to keep up the momentum.

"I call on them to keep up the pressure in their efforts to identify a clear picture and a sequence of events," he said in a statement.

"Consumers expect the EU, national authorities and all those involved in the food chain to give them all the reassurance needed as regards what they have on their plates."

The test results will be reported to the European Commission by April 15 which will collate them in the EU's Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) so that they can be immediately used by member states.

- AFP/fa



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Key U.S. general backs keeping Afghan forces at peak strength


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. general nominated to oversee a vast region that includes Afghanistan on Thursday backed keeping Afghan forces at a peak strength of 352,000, contrary to current plans to shrink them after NATO declares the war over next year.


General Lloyd Austin, nominated to lead the U.S. military's Central Command, said at his Senate confirmation hearing that a more robust Afghan force, while more costly, would "hedge against any Taliban mischief" following America's longest war.


"Keeping the larger-size force would certainly reassure the Afghans, it would also reassure our NATO allies that we remain committed," Austin said.


The comments came two days after President Barack Obama announced in his State of the Union address that 34,000 U.S. troops - roughly half of the current U.S. force in Afghanistan - would be withdrawn by early 2014.


Obama reassured Americans that the costly, unpopular war was coming to an end, but he left unanswered bigger questions about America's exit strategy, including how many U.S. troops would stay in the country beyond 2014 to help train and advise the Afghans and to battle remnants of al Qaeda.


Obama also did not discuss the future size of the Afghan forces, although a White House fact sheet sent out after his address noted they would remain at 352,000 until "at least" early 2015.


Austin warned the Taliban would be waiting to test them.


"You could reasonably expect that an enemy that's been that determined, that agile, will very soon after we transition begin to try to test the Afghan security forces," Austin said.


Under current plans, the United States and its NATO allies will help build up the Afghan armed forces to 352,000 personnel, a number they are approaching, but the size of the force - which the allies will continue to fund - will be trimmed to 230,000 after 2015.


ECHOES OF IRAQ


The hearing frequently moved away from questions about the Afghan war and other current events to questions about Austin's past role as commander in Iraq, when a failure to strike an immunity deal for U.S. troops led to their total withdrawal in 2011.


Obama administration officials have warned that failure to strike an immunity deal with Afghanistan would also result in a pullout, but Afghan President Hamid Karzai and U.S. officials have expressed confidence a deal can be reached.


Republicans, who have criticized Obama's drawdown strategy in Afghanistan, noted that the president would have left a much smaller force in Iraq than Austin recommended, even if a deal had been struck.


Senator John McCain of Arizona lamented the lack of a U.S. presence in Iraq.


Pressed by Republicans, Austin acknowledged that the situation in Iraq was trending in a "problematic" direction, and agreed that a continued U.S. role would have helped bolster Iraqi forces.


When it came to Afghanistan, Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina warned Austin that if Obama sought an insufficient force for the post-2014 mission, he would refuse to vote for funding the war effort.


"It can be as low as 9 or 10,000, that I will stand with them," Graham said.


"If they overrule the commanders and create a force that cannot in my view be successful, I cannot in good conscience vote to continue this operation."


Graham said he would vote for Austin's confirmation once Austin spoke with the former commander of the Afghan mission, General John Allen, about his recommendations to Obama and reported back to the committee about his opinion.


(Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by David Brunnstrom)



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Helicopter scam: Jaswant agrees change in specifications made during NDA rule

NEW DELHI: Even as the BJP kept up its attack on the government over alleged kickbacks in the VVIP chopper deal, senior party leader Jaswant Singh on Thursday agreed with former IAF chief S P Tyagi that the change in specifications of the helicopters was done at the behest of then national security adviser BrajeshMishra. Singh, however, defended the decision, saying it was done to avoid a single-vendor situation.

Singh also said the guilty in the matter was an Italian company and people had "forgotten them".

"We should not make wild allegations against a former IAF chief. It is not in the interest of both the air force and the country. The probe is on. As Mr Tyagi himself is saying, the probe should be held early. Why don't you agree to his suggestion," Singh told reporters.

Supporting Tyagi, who has been accused of taking bribes in the deal through his cousins, Singh said one should be careful while alleging "guilt through association". "Don't start judging people simply because of association or simply because former air chief marshal Tyagi has cousins who are also known as Tyagis," he said.

The former defence and external affairs minister added, "One of my own cousins, first cousin, he was known as a smuggler. Does that make me a smuggler? If another relative of mine commits a crime, does that make me a criminal?"

On its part, BJP demanded that the CBI probe into the Rs 3,600 crore deal should be monitored by a competent authority so that the investigation was not "delayed" as was done in the 2G case. "Ordering a mere CBI inquiry is not enough. It must be monitored. In the 2G spectrum case, CBI probe was ordered in 2009 but the agency did nothing for 15 months. It was only when the Supreme Court started monitoring the case suo motu that things started moving," party spokesperson Prakash Javadekar said.

He maintained that three questions were of utmost relevance in the probe -- when the order was placed, when the alleged kickbacks were paid and who recipients were.

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Study: Fish in drug-tainted water suffer reaction


BOSTON (AP) — What happens to fish that swim in waters tainted by traces of drugs that people take? When it's an anti-anxiety drug, they become hyper, anti-social and aggressive, a study found. They even get the munchies.


It may sound funny, but it could threaten the fish population and upset the delicate dynamics of the marine environment, scientists say.


The findings, published online Thursday in the journal Science, add to the mounting evidence that minuscule amounts of medicines in rivers and streams can alter the biology and behavior of fish and other marine animals.


"I think people are starting to understand that pharmaceuticals are environmental contaminants," said Dana Kolpin, a researcher for the U.S. Geological Survey who is familiar with the study.


Calling their results alarming, the Swedish researchers who did the study suspect the little drugged fish could become easier targets for bigger fish because they are more likely to venture alone into unfamiliar places.


"We know that in a predator-prey relation, increased boldness and activity combined with decreased sociality ... means you're going to be somebody's lunch quite soon," said Gregory Moller, a toxicologist at the University of Idaho and Washington State University. "It removes the natural balance."


Researchers around the world have been taking a close look at the effects of pharmaceuticals in extremely low concentrations, measured in parts per billion. Such drugs have turned up in waterways in Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere over the past decade.


They come mostly from humans and farm animals; the drugs pass through their bodies in unmetabolized form. These drug traces are then piped to water treatment plants, which are not designed to remove them from the cleaned water that flows back into streams and rivers.


The Associated Press first reported in 2008 that the drinking water of at least 51 million Americans carries low concentrations of many common drugs. The findings were based on questionnaires sent to water utilities, which reported the presence of antibiotics, sedatives, sex hormones and other drugs.


The news reports led to congressional hearings and legislation, more water testing and more public disclosure. To this day, though, there are no mandatory U.S. limits on pharmaceuticals in waterways.


The research team at Sweden's Umea University used minute concentrations of 2 parts per billion of the anti-anxiety drug oxazepam, similar to concentrations found in real waters. The drug belongs to a widely used class of medicines known as benzodiazepines that includes Valium and Librium.


The team put young wild European perch into an aquarium, exposed them to these highly diluted drugs and then carefully measured feeding, schooling, movement and hiding behavior. They found that drug-exposed fish moved more, fed more aggressively, hid less and tended to school less than unexposed fish. On average, the drugged fish were more than twice as active as the others, researcher Micael Jonsson said. The effects were more pronounced at higher drug concentrations.


"Our first thought is, this is like a person diagnosed with ADHD," said Jonsson, referring to attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder. "They become asocial and more active than they should be."


Tomas Brodin, another member of the research team, called the drug's environmental impact a global problem. "We find these concentrations or close to them all over the world, and it's quite possible or even probable that these behavioral effects are taking place as we speak," he said Thursday in Boston at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.


Most previous research on trace drugs and marine life has focused on biological changes, such as male fish that take on female characteristics. However, a 2009 study found that tiny concentrations of antidepressants made fathead minnows more vulnerable to predators.


It is not clear exactly how long-term drug exposure, beyond the seven days in this study, would affect real fish in real rivers and streams. The Swedish researchers argue that the drug-induced changes could jeopardize populations of this sport and commercial fish, which lives in both fresh and brackish water.


Water toxins specialist Anne McElroy of Stony Brook University in New York agreed: "These lower chronic exposures that may alter things like animals' mating behavior or its ability to catch food or its ability to avoid being eaten — over time, that could really affect a population."


Another possibility, the researchers said, is that more aggressive feeding by the perch on zooplankton could reduce the numbers of these tiny creatures. Since zooplankton feed on algae, a drop in their numbers could allow algae to grow unchecked. That, in turn, could choke other marine life.


The Swedish team said it is highly unlikely people would be harmed by eating such drug-exposed fish. Jonsson said a person would have to eat 4 tons of perch to consume the equivalent of a single pill.


Researchers said more work is needed to develop better ways of removing drugs from water at treatment plants. They also said unused drugs should be brought to take-back programs where they exist, instead of being flushed down the toilet. And they called on pharmaceutical companies to work on "greener" drugs that degrade more easily.


Sandoz, one of three companies approved to sell oxazepam in the U.S., "shares society's desire to protect the environment and takes steps to minimize the environmental impact of its products over their life cycle," spokeswoman Julie Masow said in an emailed statement. She provided no details.


___


Online:


Overview of the drug: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/meds/a682050.html


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Ship Overcomes Towing Issues, Inches Closer to Port












The agonizingly slow progress of the stricken Carnival Triumph cruise ship carrying 4,000 passengers and crew was further delayed today by problems with the tug boats towing it in, meaning exhausted passengers may not get off the ship until nearly dawn.


The ship is now expected in port between 9:30 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. CT, according to Carnival. It could take up to five more hours to get everybody off the huge ship.


"There are some limitations. We know that up front," Carnival Cruise Senior Vice President of Marketing Terry Thornton said at a news conference this afternoon. "The ship still does not have power. We only have one functioning elevator aboard."


Thornton said that anyone with special needs and children will be the first to get off the boat. He said the company's number one priority is to make the process as "quick, efficient and comfortable" for guests as possible.


"We're not anticipating any additional difficulties," he said.


Click here for photos of the stranded ship at sea.


The passengers were achingly close to port about noon today as the ship began to enter the channel and proceed to the cruise terminal. At 1 p.m., the lead tow boat had a tow gear break, so a spare tug boat that was on standby had to be sent in to replace it.


But once the second tug was in position and the lines were re-set, the towing resumed only briefly before the tow line snapped.


"We had to replace that tow line so the ship did not begin progressing back into the cruise terminal until 2 p.m.," Thornton said






Lt. Cmdr. Paul McConnell/U.S. Coast Guard/AP Photo











Stranded Carnival Cruise Ship On Its Way to Port Watch Video









Carnival Cancels All Scheduled Voyages Aboard the Triumph Watch Video









Carnival Cruise Ship Making Its Way to Port Watch Video





Passengers desperate to get off the vessel waved at media helicopters that flew out to film the ship and passenger Rob Mowlam told ABCNews.com by phone today that most of the passengers on board were "really upbeat and positive."


Nevertheless, when he gets off Mowlam said, "I will probably flush the toilet 10 times just because I can."


Mowlam, 37, got married on board the Triumph Friday and said he and his wife, Stephanie Stevenson, 27, haven't yet thought of redoing the honeymoon other than to say, "It won't be a cruise."


Alabama State Port Authority Director Jimmy Lyons said that with powerless "dead ships" like the Triumph, it is usually safer to bring them in during daylight hours, but, "Once they make the initial effort to come into the channel, there's no turning back."


"There are issues regarding coming into the ship channel and docking at night because the ship has no power and there's safety issues there," Richard Tillman of the Mobile Bay Convention and Visitors Bureau told ABCNews.com.


When asked if the ship could be disembarked in the dark of night, Tillman said, "It is not advised. It would be very unusual."


Thornton denied the rumors that there was a fatality on the ship. He said that there was one illness early on, a dialysis patient, but that passenger was removed from the vessel and transferred to a medical facility.


The U.S. Coast Guard is assisting now and there are multiple generators on board. And customs officials will board the ship while it is being piloted to port to accelerate the embarkation, officials said.


After eight miserable days at sea, the ship's owners have increased the compensation for what some on board are calling the vacation from hell.


All 3,143 passengers aboard the 900 foot colossus, which stalled in the Gulf of Mexico after an engine room fire early Sunday, were already being given a full refund for the cruise, transportation expenses and vouchers for a another cruise. Carnival Cruise Lines is now boosting that offer to include another $500 per person. Gerry Cahill, president and CEO of Carnival Cruise Lines, announced the additional compensation Wednesday.






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Mumbai attack movie hits cinemas on Mar 1






MUMBAI: Memories of the Mumbai terror attacks of November 2008 still evoke fear among residents of the city.

And those old wounds are expected to reopen now that a Bollywood movie about the incident is set to hit the big screens.

India's financial capital came to a virtual standstill on 26 November 2008.

The attacks which lasted for four days drew widespread global condemnation.

The Pakistan-based terrorists, who were members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, killed 164 people and wounded at least 308 in their wake.

But the undying spirit of the citizens of Mumbai helped the city crawl back to its feet soon after the carnage ended.

And now, Bollywood is all set to release a film which will depict the gruesome terror attacks that shook Mumbai nearly five years ago.

The movie "The Attacks of 26/11" will hit cinemas on 1 March.

A publicity event to launch the movie's music was held at the Gateway of India.

Around 200 students lit candles in memory of the 26/11 victims.

The event then continued at Café Leopold where two of the ten terrorists launched their initial strikes in the first wave of attacks on the city.

Film maker Ram Gopal Varma said: "I strongly believe as a film maker and as a human being that the attacks of 26/11 which happened in 2008 are not against any community in particular. I think it is an attack on human beings and committed by certain inhuman elements."

The mood was sombre as the film maker and lead actor showed off a few teasers from the movie.

The usually reclusive veteran Bollywood actor Nana Patekar, who plays the lead role in the film, shed his inhibitions and spoke to the media with unusual frankness.

He said: "I feel pained whenever I think about the attacks of 26/11. The film depicts the mindset of the terrorists who went on a carnage in Mumbai. We are trying to portray through our films what steps can be taken to prevent such types of attacks in future."

The owner of the Leopold was also present at the event, and has played himself in the film.

The music launch of the film has reignited the anger and bitterness in the minds of Indian citizens.

But as in 2008, the movie also shows the world that Mumbai and its people have picked up the pieces and are refusing to let fear of terror attacks get in the way of their daily lives.

- CNA/al



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Clues to why most survived China melamine scandal


WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists wondering why some children and not others survived one of China's worst food safety scandals have uncovered a suspect: germs that live in the gut.


In 2008, at least six babies died and 300,000 became sick after being fed infant formula that had been deliberately and illegally tainted with the industrial chemical melamine. There were some lingering puzzles: How did it cause kidney failure, and why wasn't everyone equally at risk?


A team of researchers from the U.S. and China re-examined those questions in a series of studies in rats. In findings released Wednesday, they reported that certain intestinal bacteria play a crucial role in how the body handles melamine.


The intestines of all mammals teem with different species of bacteria that perform different jobs. To see if one of those activities involves processing melamine, researchers from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Shanghai Jiao Tong University gave lab rats antibiotics to kill off some of the germs — and then fed them melamine.


The antibiotic-treated rats excreted twice as much of the melamine as rats that didn't get antibiotics, and they experienced fewer kidney stones and other damage.


A closer look identified why: A particular intestinal germ — named Klebsiella terrigena — was metabolizing melamine to create a more toxic byproduct, the team reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine.


Previous studies have estimated that fewer than 1 percent of healthy people harbor that bacteria species. A similar fraction of melamine-exposed children in China got sick, the researchers wrote. But proving that link would require studying stool samples preserved from affected children, they cautioned.


Still, the research is pretty strong, said microbiologist Jack Gilbert of the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory, who wasn't involved in the new study.


More importantly, "this paper adds to a growing body of evidence which suggests that microbes in the body play a significant role in our response to toxicity and in our health in general," Gilbert said.


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Olympics: Wrestlers vow to fight Olympic removal






PARIS: Wrestlers around the world on Wednesday vowed to fight to save the ancient sport's Olympic status, after the International Olympic Committee voted to drop it for the 2020 Games.

Japan and Turkey -- whose cities Tokyo and Istanbul are bidding to host the Games in seven years' time -- led the calls for the world body to reconsider, as an online petition was organised urging a rethink and gained thousands of supporters.

The president of the Turkish wrestling federation, Hamza Yerlikaya, called the decision, taken at the IOC executive board meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Tuesday, "unfair" and a "mistake" that they would seek to overturn.

"To have the 2020 Olympics in Istanbul without wrestling is unthinkable," said Yerlikaya, himself a double Olympic gold medallist, three-time world champion and eight-time European champion in Greco-Roman wrestling.

"We won't allow it," he added.

In Japan, Yerlikaya's counterpart Tomiaki Fukuda said on his federation's website that he was "dissatisfied and baffled", echoing the views of the sport's world governing body, which called the decision "an aberration".

Wrestling will remain on the programme for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro but faces a fight against seven other sports for inclusion at the Games four years later. A final decision is to be made when all IOC members meet in September.

Members are seen as unlikely to vote against the executive board, however, raising the prospect that one of the few sports that survived from the original Olympics in ancient Greece into the modern era will disappear.

Wrestling first appeared in 708 BC and has only ever been left out of the Olympic programme once before in 1900.

The International Federation of Associated Wrestling Styles (FILA) has vowed to fight the decision, while multiple medallists Russia and Iran have also said they hoped the IOC would backtrack.

"This issue will definitely be a big blow to the country's sport, as it is one of our country's most popular sports," the head of Iran's national Olympic commitee, Mohammad Aliabadi was quoted as saying in Iranian media, "I will certainly pursue the case."

IOC president Jacques Rogge meanwhile insisted on Wednesday that the vote -- by secret ballot -- was fair and said he understood the angry response from those involved in the sport.

A meeting was planned between the committee and the International Federation of Associated Wrestling Styles (FILA), to discuss the matter, he told a news conference in Lausanne.

Wrestlers have been left dismayed by the decision, with Japan's undisputed queen of the ring, Saori Yoshida, saying: "I am so devastated that I don't know what to do."

Yoshida, a 55kg-class freestyle wrestler who is the face of Tokyo's campaign for the right to host the 2020 Games, has won a record 13 straight Olympic and world championship gold medals over 10 years.

In India, Sushil Kumar, who won a bronze in Beijing and a silver in London last year, said: "I still can't get over the news that we won't be at the Olympics.

"All sportsmen look towards the Olympics as the pinnacle of excellence, everyone wants to take part in them. Now what do we do? Give up wrestling? I hope the IOC will reconsider this decision."

An online petition at change.org entitled "The International Olympic Committee: Save Wrestling as an Olympic sport #SaveOlympicWrestling" has also been mounted, urging the US Senate to take up the matter.

By late afternoon on Wednesday, it had more than 21,000 signatures.

On Twitter, one user, @WrestlersLoveUs, wrote: "Ancient Olympic wrestlers used to sometimes fight to the death. IOC better understand we're ready to do that again. #SaveOlympicWrestling."

-AFP/fl



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