Tiny Tick May Be Spreading Vegetarianism

A tiny tick might be to blame for a rash of meat allergies in central and southern regions of the U.S.

A bite from the lone star tick, so-called for the white spot on its back, looks innocent enough. But researchers say saliva that sneaks into the wound might trigger a reaction to meat agonizing enough to convert lifelong carnivores into wary vegetarians.

“People will eat beef and then anywhere from three to six hours later start having a reaction; anything from hives to full-blown anaphylactic shock,” said Dr. Scott Commins, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. “Most people want to avoid having the reaction, so they try to stay away from the food that triggers it.”

Cases of the bizarre allergy are cropping up in areas ripe with lone star ticks, according to research presented today at the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology annual meeting in Anaheim, Calif. But whether the bugs cause meat allergies remains unclear.

“It’s hard to prove,” said Commins. “We’re still searching for the mechanism.”

Allergies are immune reactions to foreign substances, from pet hair to peanuts. As antibodies attack the substance that caused the reaction, they trigger the release of histamine, a chemical that causes hives and, in severe cases, life-threatening anaphylaxis.

Commins said blood levels of antibodies for alpha-gal, a sugar found in beef, lamb and pork, rise after a single bite from the lone star tick. He said he hopes experiments that combine tiny samples of tick saliva with the invisible antibodies will prove the two are directly connected.

“It’s complicated, no doubt,” said Commins. “But we think it’s something in the saliva.”

The long lag between exposure to meat and the allergic reaction complicates things even more.

“Most food allergies occur very quickly,” said Dr. Stanley Fineman, president of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. “It’s also a bit unusual to see adults develop a food allergy.”

But the tick bite theory could help explain the sudden onset of some meat allergies, Fineman added.

Other Common food allergens include peanuts, shellfish, milk, eggs, soy and wheat. And most food allergy sufferers are glad to discover the source of their misery, even if it means upheaval for their diets.

“Avoidance is the best way to handle any food allergy,” he said.

But meat allergies are hard for some brawny barbecuers to swallow.

“Some people are totally destroyed,” said Commins. “Others say, ‘Maybe I’m better off without it.’”

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Administrator cuts 330 Comet jobs

9 November 2012 Last updated at 12:02 ET

The joint administrators of Comet say 330 staff are being made redundant.

The cuts will be made at the retailer’s head office and support centres in Rickmansworth (99), Hull (53) and a call centre in Clevedon (42).

There have been no redundancies at Comet distribution centres or stores, which continue to trade as normal and no further redundancies are planned.

All 236 Comet stores continue to trade as normal, and staff will continue to be paid, administrators say.

Administrator Neville Kahn said: “Staff will continue to be paid for the work they do while Comet is trading in administration. We remain extremely grateful to the staff and management for their continued loyalty and support at what is clearly a very difficult time.”

All employees who have been made redundant will be receiving full wages earned during the administration. The administrators will also provide assistance in claiming payments from the government’s Redundancy Payments Office.

Comet’s future

Joint administrators Neville Kahn, Nick Edwards and Chris Farrington, from the business advisory firm Deloitte, were appointed last Friday to oversee a possible revival of Comet or sale of the business.

“We are in discussions with a number of parties who have expressed interest in parts of the business and we continue to work hard to preserve jobs,” said Mr Kahn.

He added: “An in-store sale across all stores commenced yesterday and will continue through the coming weeks. We are pleased with the response so far, as the discounts have helped generate record levels of sales.”

It is reported that rival electrical retailers Dixons and PC World enjoyed a surge in shoppers last weekend after Comet called in administrators.

Comet was forced into adminstration after its US backers pulled the plug.

OpCapita and its founder Henry Jackson agreed a deal to buy Comet from Kesa last year for just £2. The private equity advisory firm has been under fire from critics for allowing the retailer to collapse.

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Ghana building collapse traps dozens, kills 1

ACCRA, Ghana (AP) — A five-story shopping center built earlier this year in a bustling suburb of Ghana‘s capital collapsed Wednesday, killing at least one person and leaving several dozen people trapped in the rubble, authorities and eyewitnesses said.

Rescue crews used cranes to try and remove debris from the top of the building amid fears that machinery sifting through the wreckage could injure trapped survivors. Crowds of bystanders gathered as rescuers sifted through cement and glass.

The fatality at the Melcom Shopping Center at Achimota, a suburb of Accra, was confirmed by Public Affairs Officer of the Ghana Fire Service Billy Anaglate. “We are still working to find out the fate of others who may be trapped under,” he said.

Other officials told The Associated Press that the death toll was likely to rise.

An AP reporter at the scene saw at least one man pulled from the debris, covered in dust and who was then whisked into an ambulance.

A Greater Accra Regional Public Affairs officer, deputy superintendent Freeman Tettey, confirmed that one person died and told the AP that 51 have been rescued and sent to hospitals around the capital.

“I was on my way to the shop when l saw it crumpling down,” Kojo Boadi, an eyewitness, said.

President John Mahama declared the scene a disaster zone and cut short his election campaign in the north of the country to be able to visit the site. The presidential election is scheduled for December.

The five-story store opened in February is part of the Melcom chain owned by Indian immigrant magnate, Bhagwan Khubchandani. His late father arrived in Ghana in 1929 as a 14-year-old to work as a store boy in the-then Gold Coast.

The store sells a variety of cheap, imported household goods and appliances that are popular with working-class Ghanaians.

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Assad fans vent over Syria at Qatar soccer match

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syria blames the state of Qatar for arming rebels bent on overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad. Qatar has accused Assad of genocide. On Thursday afternoon, the two countries battled it out on the soccer field.

“Our souls, our blood, we sacrifice them for Bashar,” the Syrian fans screamed, waving their national flag, as the under-19s played in the United Arab Emirates in an Asian Football Confederation tournament.

Twitter was ablaze with politicized messages on the game from a group of pro-Assad social media enthusiasts.

“Doesn’t matter who wins a football game, at the end #Syria is kicking #Qatar’s mercenaries asses everyday,” said a Twitter user whose tag is @ProSyriana.

The game was broadcast live on Syrian state television, though the commentators steered clear of politics.

Peaceful pro-democracy protests hit Syria’s streets in March 2011 but were met with live ammunition. Nineteen months later, Assad is fighting a civil war against a majority-Sunni Muslim opposition. Assad is an Alawite, a sect that is an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam.

Damascus said from the beginning that the uprising was a foreign-backed conspiracy and ever since, Assad supporters have directed vitriol at Sunni states Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

“#Qatar players (are) falling down like #FSA scum,” said @Syriancommando, a prominent online activist, referring to the Free Syrian Army, a group of Syria army defectors who joined rebel fighters.

In the end, after a Syrian red card and a couple yellows, Qatar won 2-1 but fell out of the tournament on points, while Syria stayed in.

“#Qatar u may have won the battle but u didn’t win the war. #Syria goes on to play next game, Qatar is out. We’ll win the real war too.” said @Partisangirl, a Syrian YouTube commentator.

(Reporting by Oliver Holmes; Editing by Tom Perry and Paul Casciato)

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UK PM warns of witch-hunt against gays in pedophile scandal

LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister David Cameron warned on Thursday that speculation about the identity of an unidentified member of his ruling Conservative party accused of sexually abusing children could turn into a witch-hunt against gay people.

Cameron, who leads a troubled two-party coalition, ordered an investigation this week after a victim of child sexual abuse in Wales said a prominent Conservative political figure had abused him during the 1970s.

The claims, which follow the unmasking of late BBC star presenter Jimmy Savile as one of Britain’s most prolific sex offenders, have stoked concern that a powerful pedophile ring may have operated in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s.

“I have heard all sorts of names bandied around and what then tends to happen is of course that everyone then sits around and speculates about people, some of whom are alive, some of whom are dead,” Cameron said during an ITV television interview.

“It is very important that anyone who has got any information about any pedophile no matter how high up in the country go to the police,” he said.

Britain’s interior minister warned lawmakers this week that if they named suspected child abusers in parliament they risked jeopardizing future trials.

MPs benefit from “parliamentary privilege” – meaning they can speak inside parliament freely without fear of legal action on a host of legally sensitive issues that might otherwise attract lawsuits.

Reports of child abuse have provoked fevered speculation on the Internet about the identity of the Conservative figure from the era of Margaret Thatcher, prime minister from 1979 to 1990.

When the ITV interviewer passed Cameron a piece of paper with the names of people identified on the Internet as being alleged child abusers, Cameron said:

“There is a danger if we are not careful that this could turn into a sort of witch-hunt particularly against people who are gay.”

“I am worried about the sort of thing you are doing right now – giving me a list of names you have taken off the Internet,” Cameron said.

The BBC aired a program last week in which Steven Messham, one of hundreds of victims of sexual abuse at children’s care homes in Wales over two decades, said he had been sexually abused by a prominent Conservative political figure.

However, the BBC reporter said he could not name the figure because there was “simply not enough evidence to name names”.

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

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Sudan’s Bashir vows “painful response” to alleged Israel bombing

KHARTOUM (Reuters) – Sudan‘s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on Thursday promised his country would respond robustly to what he believes was an Israeli bombing of a Khartoum arms factory and said he was in “perfect health” after undergoing surgery in Saudi Arabia.

Sudan last month accused Israel of carrying out an air strike on the Yarmouk arms factory in the south of Khartoum, causing a blast that killed four people.

Israel has not commented on the charge, but has long accused Sudan of channeling weapons from Iran to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

“I am in perfect health, and our response to Israel will be painful,” state radio quoted Bashir, 68, as saying in a brief text message sent to mobile phones.

Bashir, who came to power in a bloodless 1989 coup, left hospital in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday after undergoing a “small, successful” operation, state media said.

Sudanese blogs and newspapers had begun to speculate about the president’s health because he has held fewer public rallies in the past few months. He underwent surgery on his vocal cords in Qatar in August, an official said last month.

Over more than two decades in power, Bashir has weathered multiple armed rebellions, years of U.S. trade sanctions, an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court, waves of student protests, and the secession of oil-producing South Sudan last year.

He is known for his fiery speeches and for dancing and waving his walking stick at public events.

(Reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz; Writing by Alexander Dziadosz; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

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Draghi open to ECB rate cut, done helping Greece

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – The euro zone economy shows little sign of recovering before the year-end despite easing financial market conditions, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said on Thursday, leaving open the possibility of an interest rate cut in the months ahead.

But after keeping rates on hold on Thursday, Draghi said the ECB cannot do much more to help Greece with its debt burden and gave Spain none of the assurance it wants that ECB bond buying will lower its borrowing costs.

“The ECB is by and large done,” Draghi told his monthly news conference when asked what the bank could do for Greece.

The euro zone is grappling to find a formula to make Greek debt sustainable, with Germany and the International Monetary Fund at odds over the need for governments and the ECB to take a “haircut” on Greek bonds they hold to make the numbers add up.

The ECB agreed earlier this year to hand over to euro zone governments profits on its Greek bonds but has refused to take a hit on the value of the paper, saying that would be “monetary financing” which it is prohibited from doing.

The ECB held its main rate at 0.75 percent, deferring any cut while it waits for a cue to use its new bond-purchase plan. That wait may be prolonged after Spain completed its 2012 funding at affordable rates on capital markets on Thursday.

A Reuters poll had given an 80 percent chance the ECB would hold its main rate, but most of the 73 analysts polled expect it will be cut to a new record low of 0.5 percent within the next few months.

Draghi said ECB monetary policy is “very accommodative”. He declined to comment when asked whether markets were right to expect a rate cut next month and said the policymaking Governing Council had not discussed what it would do next year.

Economist Howard Archer at IHS Global Insight said: “Draghi appeared to ease open the door to a cut in interest rates over the coming months and potentially as soon as December.”

Not everyone expects a cut that soon.

“Our sense is that the ECB is firmly on hold,” said JP Morgan economist Greg Fuzesi, though he added: “Next year, the ECB will act if growth disappoints more fundamentally.”

Describing “a picture of weaker economies” in the euro zone, Draghi said this would influence new ECB economic forecasts due next month. Inflation would remain above the ECB’s target for the rest of the year, before falling below 2 percent in 2013.

“We certainly continue monitoring economic activity and we stand ready to act,” he said.

“We stand ready to act with OMT (bond-purchase plan) once the prerequisites are in place. We also stand ready to act with the rest of standard, normal monetary policy instruments.”

OMT READY TO GO

Recent survey evidence gave no sign of improvement towards the year-end and the risks surrounding the euro area remain on the downside, Draghi said. As he spoke, the euro fell against the dollar and hit a session low in early New York trade.

Gloomy data this week indicated the euro zone economy will shrink in the fourth quarter, which the ECB could eventually respond to by cutting rates.

Before making any decision to cut rates further, the ECB will focus on making sure that its looser policy reaches companies and households across the euro zone, a mechanism that has been broken by the bloc’s debt crisis.

The new bond-purchase plan – dubbed Outright Monetary Transactions (OMTs) – is the ECB’s designated tool for this but can only be activated once a euro zone government requests help from the bloc’s rescue fund and accepts policy conditions and strict international supervision.

So far no request has been made, but the announcement of the policy alone has calmed markets.

“We are ready to undertake OMTs which will help to avoid extreme scenarios, thereby clearly reducing concerns about the materialization of destructive forces,” Draghi said.

Asked whether he could imagine an extreme scenario in which the bank began buying bonds without conditions, he said the answer was ‘no’.

CALLING FOR HELP

Investors and euro zone policymakers have been urging Spain to seek aid but Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has so far held off a request, saying he wants assurances that ECB intervention would bring down Spain’s debt costs.

Draghi gave Rajoy no comfort.

“The Governing Council will take the final decision in total independence,” he said of any decision on whether to use the OMT programme. “In so doing, it cannot give any assurance ex ante”.

Spain sold 4.8 billion euros of debt including its first longer-term issue in 18 months on Thursday, enough to complete its 2012 financing programme and begin raising funds for next year. So there is little immediate pressure on that front.

Yields on Spanish government bonds have dropped by around 2 percentage points since Draghi said in late July the ECB was ready to do “whatever it takes to preserve the euro” – a pledge that heralded the bond-buying plan.

Investment funds have started flowing back into the euro zone since then, particularly from U.S. money market funds, Draghi said.

Some economists have now raised the possibility that the OMT might never have to be activated considering its impact so far.

But Matteo Cominetta, European economist at UBS, said it would eventually be put to the test because of the large amount of Spanish sovereign debt coming up for refinancing next year, roughly 140 billion euros according to Reuters data.

“Next year, you will have a record supply of Spanish bonds up for renewal in a situation where macro economic data will remain very bad for a long time in Spain,” Cominetta said.

(Reporting by Eva Kuehnen and Paul Carrel, writing by Mike Peacock; Editing by Paul Taylor)

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Canada firms to capitalize on nuclear trade with India

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Canadian firms will be able to export uranium and nuclear reactors to India for the first time in almost four decades under an agreement between the two nations, their prime ministers said, but more work is needed to implement the deal.

Once implemented, the agreement will end a ban on nuclear cooperation Canada imposed in 1976 after India secretly exploded its first nuclear bomb in 1974, commonly called the “Smiling Buddha”, using material from a Canadian-built reactor in India.

“Being able to resolve these issues and move forward is, we believe, a really important economic opportunity for an important Canadian industry, part of the energy industry, that should pay dividends in terms of jobs and growth for Canadians down the road,” Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Tuesday on a visit to New Delhi.

A negotiator with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), speaking on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the talks, said that what remained was a careful legal review of the language; translation into French and Hindi; and then a signing.

This is not expected to take very long, he said. The two sides have set up a joint committee to liaise on nuclear issues, but he said it would not be negotiating.

India aims to lift its nuclear capacity to 63,000 MW in the next 20 years by adding nearly 30 reactors. The country currently operates 20 mostly small reactors at six sites with a capacity of 4,780 MW, or 2 percent of its total power capacity, according to the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited.

Canada’s ambassador to India, Stewart Beck, said on Monday his country wanted to be able to track all nuclear material, but that India felt it only needed to report to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

It was not clear who made concessions in the talks and how effective the safeguards would be to ensure that Canadian material did not get used again for making nuclear weapons.

However, the CNSC official said India would now be required to notify Canada of any transfers to a third country and trade could only go to facilities that are safeguarded by the IAEA.

PROBABLY BEATING AUSTRALIA

Harper said the CNSC had worked to “achieve all of our objectives in terms of non-proliferation”.

Canada is in a race against Australia, its strategic ally but a commercial rival in the uranium business. Australia is also trying to nail down safeguards under which it too could sell uranium to India.

“We are effectively ahead of the Australians,” the CNSC official said, noting however that Russia and Kazakhstan were already supplying into India.

Opening up the Indian market would be a big help to Canada’s Cameco Corp, which is the world’s largest publicly traded uranium producer but which recently cut its long-term output targets due to the Fukushima disaster.

“Anytime we can reduce the roadblocks to selling our product around the world is always helpful,” Cameco chief executive Tim Gitzel told Reuters in Canada. “It opens a new market for us with the appropriate safeguards in place. So this is good news.”

Another potential beneficiary is Canadian engineering firm SNC Lavalin Group Inc, which bought the government’s commercial nuclear division, which designed the Candu reactor that is in use in numerous countries.

“As far as the sales of reactors goes, we would normally now request that Canada be accorded the same treatment as the Russians, the French and the Americans and that a site be designated in India for the implementation of at least a twin- unit Candu nuclear power station,” SNC Lavalin International President Ronald Denom, part of Harper’s delegation in India, told Reuters.

He also said it should open up the market to service the existing reactors in India.

Harper also said Canada welcomed foreign investment, after the country temporarily blocked Malaysian state oil firm Petronas’ C$ 5.17 billion ($ 5.19 billion) bid for gas producer Progress Energy Resources on October 20.

Late on Friday, Canada extended to December 10 its review of a $ 15.1 billion bid made in July by China’s CNOOC Ltd for Canadian energy producer Nexen Inc.

“Those decisions have to be taken looking at the global evolving economy in which we operate,” Harper said.

($ 1 = C$ 0.9965)

(Additional reporting by Julie Gordon in Toronto; Additional writing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Jonathan Thatcher and Michael Roddy)

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News Summary: Apple-Google lawsuit dismissed

CASE CLOSED: A federal judge in Madison, Wis., has thrown out a suit by Apple Inc. claiming that Google subsidiary Motorola Mobility is seeking unreasonably high license fees for the use of patents on wireless technology.

THE BACKDROP: The suit is part of a world-spanning battle between Apple and Google, whose Android software powers the smartphones that compete with Apple’s iPhone.

THE DISPUTE: In the suit filed last year, Apple said the license fee Motorola sought was too high. The devices at issue include the iPhone and iPod Touch, as they incorporate Motorola’s patented technologies.

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“Dad’s Army” star Clive Dunn dies aged 92

LONDON (Reuters) – British actor Clive Dunn, best known as a bumbling old butcher in the popular World War Two sitcom “Dad’s Army”, has died, his agent said on Wednesday.

Dunn passed away on Tuesday, Peter Charlesworth said, adding that he believed the actor died in Portugal where he has lived for many years. He was 92.

As Lance-Corporal Jones in Dad’s Army – a hit television series in the 1960s and 1970s about a group of local volunteer members of the Home Guard – Dunn was famous for catchphrases such as “Don’t panic!” and “They don’t like it up ‘em.”

He also had a No. 1 hit song with “Grandad” in 1971, which he performed several times on TV music show “Top of the Pops”.

Dunn was born in London in 1920 and enrolled in an acting academy after leaving school.

He played several small roles in films in the 1930s before serving in the army in World War Two, ending up in prisoner-of-war and labor camps for four years.

After the war he worked in music halls before enjoying success as Jones in Dad’s Army.

Underlining his ability to play characters far older than his real age, he followed Dad’s Army with a five-year run in children’s comedy series “Grandad” as an elderly caretaker.

According to the BBC, he is survived by his wife Priscilla Morgan and two daughters, Jessica and Polly.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

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