"UK seeks data on breast implant breaks" January 05, 2012|By ASSOCIATED PRESS
LONDON - Britain’s health secretary has demanded that private UK clinics supply data by the end of the week on how many French-made PIP breast implants have ruptured in Britain.
Related: Boston Globe Boob Job
Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said yesterday that officials lack good data on numbers of implant failures in British patients. Some 42,000 women in Britain are thought to have received the implants.
The implants, made by now-defunct French company Poly Implant Prothese, were pulled from the market last year in countries across Europe and South America amid fears they could rupture and leak silicone into the body.
After more than 1,000 ruptures, France has recommended that the estimated 30,000 women in France with the implants get them removed, and agreed to pay for the procedure.
France’s health safety agency says the implants appear to be more rupture-prone than other types. Investigators also say PIP used industrial silicone rather than the more expensive medical variety to save money. The medical risks posed by industrial silicone are unclear.
The French decision has put pressure on British health authorities from women who want their implants removed.
In an interview yesterday with BBC radio, Lansley said the government hopes to determine the rate of failure of the PIP implants compared with other products.
Lansley said so far there was no evidence of a heightened risk of cancer associated with the ruptured PIP implants....
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Boobs usually come in pairs, right?
"In Britain, Labor Party chief struggling; Criticized over leadership, lack of connection" by Anthony Faiola | Washington Post, January 22, 2012
LONDON - For the opposition Labor Party, this should be a shining moment. Under Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, unemployment is up, budget cuts are biting British wallets, and the government’s veto of a new European Union economic treaty has left the country increasingly isolated from its neighbors.
And yet rather than Cameron, it is Labor’s chief, Ed Miliband, who is confronting a profound crisis of popularity. Only 16 months after he defeated his brother to win the crown of opposition leader, Miliband’s approval ratings have sunk to record lows. Suddenly, not only his rivals on the other side of the aisle but also power brokers within his own party are openly questioning his leadership in elections still three years away....
Miliband hit some points familiar to Labor’s platform - calling for fairer distribution of wealth and a kinder breed of capitalism. But seemingly parroting Cameron, he is also questioning whether deeply indebted Britain can still afford the old days of big government.
Yet the problem, analysts say, is not Labor’s message, but the messenger. Miliband, fairly or not, is being pelted with criticism for everything from his failure to come off as a credible leader to harsh, highly personal attacks in the British news media suggesting he might be “too ugly’’ to hold Britain’s top job.
More than anything, though, Miliband has seemed a round short in the intellectual blood sport of British politics, played out weekly on the floor of Parliament where Cameron and Miliband set their wits against each other in terse, often-biting oral combat.
“I think the simplest way of saying it is that most people don’t see him as a prime minister,’’ said Peter Kellner, president of YouGov, a British polling firm. “It’s to do with his manner, his lack of experience, the fact that people don’t see a toughness of character in him. People on some level think being prime minister is a man’s job, and in Ed Miliband, they see a boy.’’
The son of the noted Marxist academic and Holocaust survivor Ralph Miliband, Ed Miliband, 42, was elected to Parliament seven years ago, rising fast to the rank of energy and climate-change chief under former Labor Prime Minister Gordon Brown. In the 2010 contest for party leadership, Miliband defeated his older brother, David Miliband - Brown’s former foreign minister - in large part by currying the support of labor unions.
Now many in the Labor Party appear to be wondering whether they picked the right Miliband. On Ed Miliband’s side is that Labor, unlike its Conservative rivals, has a history of holding on even to unpopular leaders.
Also in Miliband’s favor is the lack of an obvious successor if he was to step aside. For now, however, the Labor faithful appear to be betting that Miliband will somehow up his game.
But internal party criticism about his inability to connect with voters is already coming to the forefront....
Miliband’s situation looks worse when compared with Cameron’s success. The prime minister has defied the odds, maintaining a relatively buoyant approval rating despite his relentless and, according to the polls, largely unpopular crusade against government spending.
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"Britain’s minister of energy steps down; Faces charges over alleged lies in speeding case" by John F. Burns | New York Times, February 04, 2012
LONDON - Prime Minister David Cameron’s coalition government was shaken yesterday when criminal charges for perverting the course of justice in an eight-year-old speeding case were filed against Chris Huhne, the minister of energy and climate change.
Huhne, 57, immediately resigned and said he would mount a “robust defense’’ when the case came to an initial court hearing Feb. 16. He will face trial with his former wife, Vicky Pryce, 59, a prominent Greek-born economist who has held high-ranking government jobs. Legal experts said that precedents set in similar cases had resulted in jail terms, usually in the range of three to nine months.
The case will center on accusations that Huhne, then a member of the European Parliament, was caught speeding by a police camera on a highway outside London in 2003 and falsely claimed, with his wife, that she was the driver, to avoid having his license suspended....
That disclosure followed a bitter breakup of the couple’s 26-year marriage after Huhne took up with a younger woman who had previously worked as one of his political aides.
Officials at the prosecution service have said that a crucial factor in the decision to bring criminal charges in the case came when The Sunday Times, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., reached an agreement last month with investigators to hand over a cache of e-mails that had passed between Pryce and the newspaper.
Although the case has been a political sensation, it seemed unlikely to destabilize the Cameron government more than briefly....
That was a pretty small reverberation.
Despite an often fractious relationship during their time in government, the two coalition parties, with a majority in the House of Commons, have pledged to maintain their partnership until the next general election, expected in 2015. The party leaders, Cameron for the Conservatives and Nick Clegg for the Liberal Democrats, have said differences on a wide range of other policy issues will be subordinated until then to the parties’ common agreement on the need for harsh spending cuts to rein in a ballooning government deficit.
Britain's third party really turned into a dud, didn't it?
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So which boob is bigger?
"UK study assesses top climate change risks" Associated Press, January 27, 2012
LONDON - Coastlines, working patterns, and even the country’s most famous meal are under threat from climate change, Britain said yesterday in its first-ever national assessment of the likely risks.
The $4.4 million study sets out the most pressing climate change problems expected to affect the United Kingdom, from rising sea levels to more frequent summer droughts....
I'm sorry, readers, I've run out of energy.
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Yeah, right. How is that winter over there?
Also see:
Royal Ascot bans hats favored by young
Judge OK's eviction of Occupy London
Hey, how did that asshole make it in here?
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