Eideard

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Pharmaceutical company Novartis on Sunday voluntarily recalled a number of over-the-counter drugs — including certain bottles of Excedrin and Bufferin — because of complaints about mislabeled and broken pills…it urged U.S. consumers to “either destroy or return unused” products that are part of the recall.

The items involved in the voluntary recall include Excedrin and NoDoz products with expiration dates of December 20, 2014, or earlier, as well as Bufferin and Gas-X Prevention products with December 20, 2013, or earlier expiration dates.

“(Novartis) is taking this action as a precautionary measure, because the products may contain stray tablets, capsules or caplets from other Novartis products, or contain broken or chipped pills,” the company said.

The moves follows Novartis’ decision to suspend operations at, and shipments from, its Lincoln, Nebraska, facility. The company said this was done “to accelerate maintenance” and make other improvements, adding that it currently “is not possible” to determine when the plant will reopen…

While Novartis announced Sunday’s recall, it said that it did so “with the knowledge of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.” This came about after an internal review and assessment of complaints identifying “issues such as broken gelcaps, chipped tablets and inconsistent bottle packaging.”

If you want to see a detailed list – and I really recommend you do so – of products associated with the recall, please click on the link and go here.

Before the ticker tape parades and the inevitable world tour, the triumphant Apollo 11 astronauts were greeted with a more mundane aspect of life on Earth when they splashed down 40 years ago today – going through customs.

Just what did Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins have to declare? Moon rocks, moon dust and other lunar samples, according to the customs form filed at the Honolulu Airport in Hawaii on July 24, 1969 – the day the Apollo 11 crew splashed down in the Pacific Ocean to end their historic moon landing mission.

The customs form is signed by all three Apollo 11 astronauts. They declared their cargo and listed their flight route as starting Cape Kennedy (now Cape Canaveral) in Florida with a stopover on the moon.

It never ends.

Throughout the U.S. South and as far north as Illinois and Indiana, a noisy and bizarre insect ritual is playing out for the first time since 1998. After living quietly underground for 13 years, billions of red-eyed cicadas — dubbed the “Great Southern Brood” by scientists — are emerging to mate and quickly die.

“The most common description I’ve heard is that it’s an alien invasion,” said Nancy Hinkle, a University of Georgia professor of entomology. “It sounds like the mother ship is hovering down in the woods.”

The insects are called “periodical” cicadas because they remain underground for years at a time, unlike the annual cicadas that surface each summer. There are also 17-year cicadas found largely in the Northeast and Midwest, Hinkle said.

“The periodical cicadas are about 30 percent smaller than the annual cicadas,” said Hinkle. “And periodical cicadas have bright red eyes.”

Commonly mistaken for locusts, they don’t bite and aren’t harmful to humans or crops.

The cicadas are not dormant during their long life underground. “They are actively growing,” Hinkle said. “The little nymphs are down in the ground, they’ve got their mouth parts attached to tree roots and they’re sucking the juice out of tree roots.”

When year 13 arrives, the nymphs burrow through the soil to the surface to become adults. They shed a layer of skin, leaving a shell behind. Then they inflate and dry their wings, allowing them to fly.

The roar begins as males attract females by furiously vibrating membranes in their abdomens, producing a loud drone…

But the fun, the feast and the noise will soon be over. After mating, females lay eggs on tree branches and, within a week or two, most of the adults die or get eaten. Little cicadas hatch, fall to the ground and burrow into the soil.

“We won’t see them again until 2024,” said Hinkle.

Just in case you plan on waiting.

A Canadian nuclear reactor is set to resume producing medical isotopes after being shut for 15 months of repairs.

The National Research Universal reactor in Chalk River, Ontario, was closed in May 2009 after a leak of heavy water within the reactor. It had been producing about a third of the world supply of medical isotopes.

The disruption to supply caused delays and cancellations of diagnostic tests that use the isotopes, including scans for cardiovascular disease and cancer…

Medical officials welcomed the 53-year-old reactor’s return to service…

The shortage caused by the Chalk River reactor’s closure was exacerbated by the shut-down for maintenance of another major isotope-producing reactor in Petten, in the Netherlands.

The isotopes produced at the Chalk River plant are used for medical imaging and diagnostic scans for fractures, cancer and heart conditions.

Phew!

Mei Lan returns to China Adios.

Only one fifth of the world’s forests remain but an area bigger than Canada could be restored without harming food production, a global alliance dedicated to restoring forests has announced…

“This is a first go at identifying the total scale of this opportunity. The next stage is to work at a country level to identify what we would restore in the real world,” Tim Rollinson, GPFLR chairman and director general of the British Forestry Commission told Reuters in an interview.

Marginal agricultural land, where productivity was low, had the most potential for restoration, the study found. “There are opportunities in almost every continent. The most potential is in Africa; there are substantial areas in China and India, as well as parts of Brazil…”

World leaders are meeting at a U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen in less than two weeks and there are fears that deforestation and agriculture issues will be at the bottom of a long list of responses to climate change to be discussed…

By 2030, the restoration of degraded forest land could make a 70 gigatonne cut in greenhouse gases — the same as from avoided deforestation — or even twice that amount, based on preliminary estimates in the report…

Forests once covered more than 50 percent of the world’s land area. That has declined to less than 30 percent due to unsustainable logging and conversion to other land uses such as grazing, industry, towns and cities, the GPFLR report said.

The profit from diverse deciduous and coniferous forests can make such a project sustainable. Most folks are ignorant of the agricultural history of, say, New England. Two centuries ago, almost denuded of trees, the region had more sheep than people. That agribusiness moved west to Texas and Colorado and forests returned, mostly through hard work from the Civilian Conservation Corps and also natural reseeding.

Significant industrial plantations – unfortunately monocultural – were also developed and add to the mix of forest which now covers a significant portion of rural, northern New England. Regardless of motive, the forests are back.

A convicted arsonist who escaped from prison by clinging to the underside of a security van has been re-arrested, police said.

Julien Chautard, 39, was arrested in the Piccadilly area of central London shortly after his friends and family encouraged him to call police, a Scotland Yard spokesman said.

Chautard was sentenced to seven years in jail at Snaresbrook Crown Court last week but spent just minutes inside Pentonville prison in north London after slipping out underneath the van he had arrived in…

He rang Islington CID on a number of occasions and told Detective Inspector Yasmin Lalani that he would be in the Piccadilly area. He was arrested at 8.50am.

Prison officials launched an inquiry into how staff failed to notice his disappearance from a group of new inmates following the escape on March 27. It is thought he crawled underneath the van and clung on as it was driven back through the “airlock” separating the jail from the outside world. His getaway remained a mystery for seven hours as the prison was scoured by officers ordered to stay until 2am the next day.

It’s almost silly to say he was re-arrested. After all, he rang up the coppers and told them to come and pick him up.

The golf course is in Bangalore
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For decades, the United States beckoned as the land of opportunity for bright, young Indians, lured by the prospect of prestigious university degrees followed by jobs on Wall Street or in Silicon Valley.

Indians have since 2001 been the largest foreign student population on American campuses, comprising around 15 percent of all international students at colleges and universities in the United States, according to the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi.

But now, the economic crisis that has sent the U.S. economy into its worst recession in decades, has tarnished the sheen of the ‘American Dream’ for many Indians who are opting for university studies and career opportunities at home.

America’s loss may be India’s gain, analysts say, pointing to a ‘reverse brain drain’ that may see India reaping benefits for years to come as some of its smartest and most talented people put their energies into India’ economy, Asia’s third-largest.

“The brain drain has already begun to reverse. Now there are many magnets pulling the best talent. Before, the U.S. was where everyone wanted to go,” said Vivek Wadhwa, a U.S.-based Indian academic who has written a paper on the issue. India’s economy has boomed at around 9 percent growth in each of the last three years, lifting millions out of poverty and creating a generation of affluent and ambitious young Indians…

Read the rest of this entry »

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U.S. Representative Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, says the government needs to determine if millions in employee bonuses at American International Group can be recovered.

“We need to find out whether these bonuses are legally recoverable,” Frank, a Democrat, told the “Fox News Sunday” program, adding that the timing of the company’s commitment to make the awards to its employees was important.

Embattled insurer AIG, which has received three government bailouts totaling $180 billion, had promised to pay about $1 billion in retention bonuses over a period of several years, half of which has already been paid…

About half of the $1 billion was due to be paid to staff of AIG’s main insurance businesses and the rest to employees of the largely unregulated AIG Financial Products.

Give ‘em a choice, Barney! They can return the bonuses – or work it off building roads, repairing bridges. You know. Doing something that puts blisters somewhere other than their lazy butts.

It’s been six long months since we last saw the “Battlestar Galactica” crew and their new Cylon allies go from the giddy high of finally finding Earth to the pitch-black depression of discovering the planet is a nuclear wasteland.

Tonight at 10 EST on the SciFi network, the second half of the fourth and final season commences with a gripping premiere episode that offers up a few more shockers..

Tonight we pick up right where we left off, with the expedition of humans and Cylons surveying the bleak landscape of what they had hoped would be their new home. The planet is not only fried, but the ruins offer myth-shattering clues about the original inhabitants that sucker-punch the survivors…

The series has played deliberately as a modern allegory. The new question is uncomfortably timely: What do you do when you’ve put all your eggs in one basket and the bottom of the basket drops out? Given the show’s admirable history of exploring humanity’s darker corners, it’s no surprise that some characters lament the cracked shells while others try to salvage an omelet.

I’d take the allegory further; but – that’s me. The stupidity and cruelty of war. The reason behind struggling for a better life together instead of seeking domination over all that live and dies. The potential dangers from political abuse of the gifts of science.

It’s set to record automatically in Hi-Def on the DVR. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.