Demonstrators hold a giant opposition flag during a protest against Syria's President Bashar Assad in Bustan al-Qasr district in Aleppo, Feb. 22, 2013. REUTERS/Muzaffar Salman
By Reuters
The main Syrian opposition grouping has said it turned down invitations to visit Washington and Moscow to protest what it described as international silence over destruction of the ancient city of Aleppo by Syrian missile strikes.
A statement late on Friday by the Syrian National Coalition, an umbrella group of opposition political forces, said it also had suspended participation in a Friends of Syria conference of international powers due in Rome next month to protest the attacks it said have caused many civilian casualties.
"Hundreds or civilians have been killed by Scud missile strikes. Aleppo, the city and the civilization, is being destroyed systematically," the statement said.
"The Russian leadership especially bears moral and political responsibility for supplying the regime with weapons," it added, referring to Moscow's status as a leading ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
"In protest of this shameful international stand, the coalition has decided to suspend its participation in the Rome conference for the Friends of Syria and decline the invitations to visit Russia and the United States."
The invitations had been extended to opposition coalition leader Mouaz Alkhatib after he met the Russian and U.S. foreign ministers in Munich this month.
The invitations were made shortly after Alkhatib offered to negotiate Assad's departure with members of the Syrian government who were not tainted by having participated in the crackdown on the 23-month-long revolt.
Rocket attacks on eastern districts of Aleppo, Syria's industrial and commercial hub, killed at least 29 people on Friday and trapped a family of 10 in the ruins of their home, opposition activists in the city said.
On Tuesday activists said at least 20 people were killed when a large missile hit the rebel-held district of Jabal Badro, also in the east of the contested city.
Reuters
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HAVANA (AP) ? Cuban President Raul Castro has unexpectedly raised the possibility of leaving his post, saying Friday that he is old and has a right to retire. But he did not say when he might do so or if such a move was imminent.
The Cuban leader is scheduled to be named by parliament to a new five-year term Sunday, and Castro urged reporters to listen to his speech that day.
"I am going to resign," Castro said at a joint appearance with visiting Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, an enigmatic smile on his face. It was not clear whether he was joking.
"I am going to be 82 years old," Castro added. "I have the right to retire, don't you think?"
When reporters continued to shout questions about his plans for the next five years, Castro replied: "Why are you so incredulous?"
He said to listen carefully on Sunday.
"It will be an interesting speech," he said. "Pay attention."
Castro's tone was light and his comments came in informal remarks at a mausoleum dedicated to soldiers from the former Soviet Union who have died around the world.
The Cuban leader has spoken before of his desire to implement a two-term limit for all Cuban government positions, including the presidency. He has also alluded to the limited time he has left to overhaul the island's weak Marxist economy.
That has led many to speculate that this upcoming term would be his last, though term limits have never been codified into Cuban law.
In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland had no comment on Castro's remarks.
Most Havana residents had not heard about the comments, which were not shown on Cuban television, although other footage from his appearance with Medvedev was shown. Many reacted with skepticism.
"Who would they put in?" asked Marta Alvarez, a 45-year-old housewife walking through Old Havana. "But I don't think it would be now. It would happen in five years."
Castro will be 86 when his next term ends in 2018. Up until now, all eyes had been on who would emerge as Castro's first and second vice presidents during Sunday's proceedings. The positions are currently occupied by two loyal octogenarians who fought in the 1959 revolution.
Putting someone younger in one of those roles would be the first sign that Castro was settling on a potential next-generation successor, something he and his brother Fidel have never done, even as many comrades have succumbed to old age.
As far back as December 2010, Castro began to reflect on his responsibility, and that of his aging generation, to right Cuba's economy, noting that the actuarial tables leave them few remaining years.
"The time we have left is short, the task is enormous," he told lawmakers in his year-end speech that year. "I think we have an obligation ... to set (the country) on the right course."
When Raul Castro does leave the political stage, it would end more than a half century of unbroken rule by the two brothers, who came to power in 1959 at the head of a revolution against U.S.-backed strongman Fulgencio Batista.
Armando Gutierrez, a 78-year-old Cuban-American lawyer in Florida and veteran of the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, said he hoped Castro wasn't joking about retiring, but doubted that whoever follows would bring true political change.
"Can you imagine 54 years?" Gutierrez said. "Not even the Roman emperors lasted that long."
Relations with the United States have been sour since shortly after the revolution. One of the key provisions of the 51-year U.S. economic embargo on Cuba stipulates that it cannot be lifted while either of the Castros is in power.
Castro has implemented a series of economic and social reforms since taking over from his ailing brother in 2006, but the island is still ruled by one party. Fidel Castro is 86 and retired, and has seemed increasingly frail in recent appearances.
The elder Castro was also visited by Medvedev, Cuban state-run media reported. Communist Party newspaper Granma reported that the two countries signed an agreement on restructuring more than $20 billion in Soviet-era debt Cuba owes.
The terms of the restructuring weren't announced. The debt has been a point of contention between Cuba and Russia for years. It was originally built up in rubles to pay the Soviet Union for services provided in the 1980s, and Cuba has questioned how much it should be worth today.
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Associated Press journalists Camilo Losada and Anne-Marie Garcia in Havana and Christine Armario in Miami contributed to this report.
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PARIS (Reuters) - French President Francois Hollande's approval rating slipped to 37 percent in February as pessimism about the economy overtook satisfaction with his military intervention against Islamist rebels in Mali, a poll showed on Sunday.
The IFOP survey published in weekly paper JDD showed that Hollande's backing had dropped by one percentage point since the previous month, giving him the same popularity rate as that of Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault.
Dissatisfaction with the Socialist president was strongest among small business owners, 73 percent of whom were unhappy; blue-collar workers, with 70 percent; and private sector workers, with 66 percent, the pollster said.
The findings show negative views on Hollande's economic policies overshadowing feelings that he displayed strong leadership last month in sending French troops to Mali to help its government push back an offensive by Islamist rebels.
Grim economic news has dogged him since the start of 2013 as factory closures kept up pace, unemployment hovered near 15 percent and the national auditor, La Cour des Comptes, published a report highlighting lax management of state funds.
Meanwhile, the government has yet to find a buyer for the Petit-Couronne oil refinery in Normandy, which is set to close in April, and strife has worsened at Peugeot PSA's Aulnay plant, which is set to close in 2014.
The government also said for the first time that it was unlikely to bring the public deficit down to 3 percent of GDP by the end of 2013 in line with European targets, acknowledging doubts expressed by independent economists.
Cour des Comptes chief Didier Migaud said politicians' unwillingness to strip popular programs and attack niches in government was feeding "addiction" to public spending - which is higher in France as a percentage of GDP than any Western country aside from Denmark.
However, Migaud said the European Commission should allow for cyclical variations in the way it measures how countries have performed with regard to deficit targets, as EU-wide austerity policies had crimped activity.
"It's clear that we cannot think without taking the economic context into consideration," he told Europe 1 radio. "You see that growth is weak. Should we be taking that into consideration? Probably."
(Reporting by Nicholas Vinocur; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
EU member states plan to start testing immediately for horse DNA in processed beef foods and to detect an illegal medicinal drug in horsemeat.
The decision came at a meeting of the EU Standing Committee on the Food Chain, focused on the horsemeat scandal involving 12 European states.
Horse DNA has been found in numerous processed beef frozen meals.
Dutch officials have raided a meat processing plant suspected of mislabelling beef, prosecutors say.
The unnamed plant in the southern province of North Brabant is being checked as part of an investigation into an estimated 100 firms by the prosecutor's office and the government's food and consumer watchdog, the NVWA.
Norway and Austria are the latest two European countries to find horsemeat being sold as beef, discovering it in ready-to-eat meals.
Previously, the mislabelled meat was discovered in the UK, the Republic of Ireland, France, Switzerland, Sweden and Germany. Suspicious products have also been withdrawn in the Netherlands as tests are conducted there.
French supplier Spanghero has apologised to UK consumers over the horsemeat, but denied selling it deliberately.
Month of tests
The widening scandal has highlighted the complexity of the food industry's supply chains across Europe.
Continue reading the main story
Meat scandal
In mid-January, Irish food inspectors announced they had found horsemeat in some burgers stocked by UK supermarket chains
Subsequently, up to 100% horsemeat found in several ranges of prepared frozen food in Britain, France, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, Austria and Norway
Concerns that a drug used to treat horses, and which may be harmful to humans, could be in food chain
Meat traced from France through Cyprus and the Netherlands to Romanian abattoirs
Investigation suggests adulteration was not accidental but the work of a criminal conspiracy
Under the EU plan announced on Friday, 2,250 processed beef samples will be tested across the EU, ranging from 10 to 150 per member state. The samples will come from foods on sale in retail outlets and marketed as containing beef.
Separately, tests will be conducted for possible residues in horsemeat of phenylbutazone, also known as "bute".
The testing regime will be one sample per 50 tonnes of horsemeat, and each country will carry out a minimum of five tests. Phenylbutazone is a veterinary medicine whose use in livestock, including horses, is illegal.
On Thursday the FSA said eight horses killed in the UK had tested positive for bute, and meat from six of them may have entered the food chain in France.
But England's chief medical officer said the highest level detected posed "very little risk to human health".
The EU test results will be fed into the 27-nation bloc's rapid alert system for food safety. The tests will be carried out over one month, but that may be extended for another two months.
EU Health Commissioner Tonio Borg welcomed the swift approval of the plan by EU member states.
"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."
'Innocent victims'
The French government has suspended Spanghero's licence, saying it "knowingly" sold horsemeat as beef.
"We are innocent, we are victims, but I want to tell British consumers we are really sorry, we never sold them horsemeat deliberately," Spanghero's sales director Christophe Giry told the BBC.
Continue reading the main story
European press reaction
An editorial in the French left-wing daily Liberation says there is "collective cowardice" in the horsemeat scandal.
"Everybody is passing on the hot lasagne to their neighbour. In the realm of unhealthy eating, everybody is irresponsible."
Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung describes the fraud as "criminal, huge and tasteless". But it says the behaviour of German consumers is "in fact hugely tasteless too".
In the German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a commentary says "a whole nation shudders as if waste oils had been mixed into its muesli".
Romania's English-language daily Nine O'Clock attacks reporting of the scandal in the UK press, saying "the Brits are far from getting rid of stereotypes... the horsemeat scandal only worsens the fear and aversion towards Romanians".
Source: BBC Monitoring
"The French government put us to death," he added. Veterinary inspectors are visiting Spanghero's premises in southern France.
In the UK three people were arrested for suspected fraud in meat sales on Thursday.
And on Friday catering giant Compass Group and Whitbread, one of Britain's largest hotel chains, said it had found horse DNA in products sold as beef.
Some of the affected burgers and lasagne had been supplied to pubs and schools in the UK and Ireland.
Meanwhile, the UK's Food Standards Agency (FSA) said that after 2,501 fresh tests no new products had been identified as containing more than 1% horsemeat. It said the 29 positive results were on seven previously withdrawn products.
'Conspiracy'
In France, ministers said they believed the sale of horsemeat labelled as beef went on for six months and involved about 750 tonnes of meat.
Spanghero imported meat from Romania and sold it on to another company, Comigel, which made frozen ready meals at its factory in Luxembourg for further distribution.
Millions of processed meat products have been withdrawn from supermarket shelves across the EU.
The UK has asked the European investigative agency Europol to co-ordinate a continent-wide investigation into an alleged international conspiracy to pass horsemeat off as beef.
CLICKABLE
French food producer makes order
Comigel HQ in Metz, north-east France, asks its subsidiary, Tavola in Luxembourg, to make food products - including beef lasagne for Findus.
Factory orders meat
The Tavola factory orders the meat from Spanghero in the south of France.
Subcontractor used
Spanghero contacts a subcontractor in Cyprus to source the meat.
Subcontractor enlists trader
The Cypriot subcontractor in turn contacts a trader in the Netherlands.
Trader orders from Romania
The trader in the Netherlands places an order for meat with abattoirs in Romania.
Abattoirs send meat to France
The meat from the abattoirs travels to Spanghero in France. However, Romania rejects claims that it was responsible for wrongly describing the horsemeat from its abattoirs as beef. Horsemeat is always labelled as such, they say. The Romanian authorities claim records show orders had been for horse carcass - easily distinguishable from beef.
Meat used to make products
Spanghero sends the meat to the Comigel subsidiary?s factory in Luxembourg before the finished products are supplied to Findus and retailers across Europe, including the UK. The president of Comigel says the company was unaware the meat was coming from abroad.
Horsemeat found in Ireland and UK
Tests by Irish authorities have found equine DNA in beefburgers made by firms in the Irish Republic and the UK. Traces of horsemeat have also been found in stored meat at another plant in Ireland and one in Northern Ireland. In mainland Britain, police and officials probing alleged horsemeat mislabelling have carried out raids at a slaughterhouse in West Yorkshire and a meat firm near Aberystwyth. Three men were later arrested on suspicion of offences under the Fraud Act..
THURSDAY, Feb. 14 (HealthDay News) ? In news that might one day help humans who struggle with type 1 diabetes every day, Spanish researchers report that a single session of gene therapy injections cured five beagle puppies who had the blood sugar disease.
Even four years later, the dogs showed no signs of diabetes.
?Our data represent the first demonstration of long-term correction of diabetes in a large animal model using gene transfer,? the scientists wrote in the Feb. 7 online issue of Diabetes.
However, the dogs all had a chemically induced version of diabetes that?s meant to model human type 1 diabetes.
In humans, type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease, which means the body?s own immune system mistakenly attacks healthy cells as though they were bacteria or viruses.
In the case of type 1 diabetes, the immune system destroys the insulin-producing beta cells located in the pancreas. Insulin is a hormone that?s needed to transport glucose into the body?s cells to be used as fuel. Glucose is sugar that comes from the carbohydrates you consume. Carbohydrates are nutrients found in a variety of foods, including fruits, vegetables, breads and sweets.
Once the beta cells are destroyed, the body no longer makes insulin (or makes very little of the hormone), and anyone with type 1 diabetes needs insulin injections or an insulin pump for the rest of their lives.
However, insulin needs change constantly, depending on the type and amount of food eaten and level of physical activity. Even emotions can affect insulin levels. Too little insulin can cause high blood sugar levels, while too much insulin can cause low blood sugar levels. Neither condition is healthy and, if severe enough, either can cause death.
In the current study, the researchers developed a gene therapy that served two purposes: one was to sense the amount of glucose in skeletal muscles and the other was to release insulin. This research group had already tested this therapy in mice, where it was found to be successful in controlling blood sugar levels.
To test the therapy, the researchers needed dogs with diabetes. However, the types of diabetes that occur naturally in dogs aren?t the same as type 1 diabetes. So, the researchers induced diabetes in a group of beagle puppies between 6 and 12 months old. The dogs were then given daily insulin injections.
The gene therapy involved a single session of numerous injections in the dog?s rear legs. The needles used are like those used in human cosmetic procedures.
The dogs quickly got better and maintained normal blood sugar levels without insulin. The researchers continued to measure blood sugar control and the animals? health for more than four years. The dogs stayed healthy, and seem to have no long-term problems from the gene therapy.
Lead researcher Fatima Bosch, director of the Center of Animal Biotechnology and Gene Therapy at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona in Spain, said the next step in their research is to test the gene therapy on dogs with naturally occurring diabetes. The dogs will also be pets, so their living conditions and glucose levels will be varied, more closely mimicking what a person with type 1 diabetes would encounter.
Dr. Camillo Ricordi, director of the Diabetes Research Institute and the cell transplant center at the University of Miami, called the new research ?an important study, and a remarkable initial finding. But, this is not a type 1 model of diabetes. This is a model where you induce diabetes chemically and you may have residual [beta] cell function.?
Ricordi explained that because it?s not naturally occurring type 1 diabetes, there?s no worry of the immune system destroying the insulin-releasing cells in the muscle. But, in a person with type 1 diabetes, the immune system could still attack and destroy these new cells.
Dr. Massimo Trucco, chief of the division of immunogenics at Children?s Hospital of Pittsburgh, said the issue of autoimmunity is an important one. But, of greater concern to him is that while this therapy worked in very controlled conditions ? the dogs? diets and exercise sessions were controlled ? in real-life conditions, this therapy might not work as well.
?Dogs get the food you want them to have. They probably spent most of their time in a cage. But, kids eat what they want and play when they want, meaning their [blood sugar level] varies dramatically. If you inject this therapy into the muscles, the muscle cells don?t have the same apparatus to control the insulin levels that beta cells do. This would release insulin too well to give good control, and could cause [low blood sugar levels] when it does release,? he said.
Trucco said he doesn?t believe this therapy could translate to humans.
?Human beings are not clones of dogs. Beta cells are more complicated than muscle cells. Muscles just can?t secrete insulin quickly and efficiently like beta cells do,? he said.
But, he added that this was a very well-done gene therapy study that showed that the particular form of gene therapy used in this research appears to be safe for long-term use.
More information
Learn more about gene therapy from the Human Genome Project.
