MoD faces new cuts in cost review

16 May 2011 Last updated at 01:02 GMT  The Army is facing the loss of 7,000 posts by 2015 under the earlier plans The Ministry of Defence is seeking to find more savings from the armed forces in the next financial year.

A three-month study, reporting in July, will consider which personnel and equipment programmes could be cut.

Last October's strategic defence and security review saw HMS Ark Royal and the Harrier fleet scrapped and the loss of 41,000 forces and civilian jobs.

The MoD said it was assessing whether spending assumptions made in the past were still affordable.

The strategic defence and security review unveiled in October 2010 outlined the future shape and size of Britain's armed forces.

Under the plans, defence spending is to fall by 8% over four years.

The RAF and navy will lose 5,000 jobs each, the Army 7,000 and the MoD 25,000 civilian staff. Among the other cuts was the scrapping of the new Nimrod surveillance plane.

Continue reading the main story Harrier jump jet retiredNimrod spy plane cancelled5,000 RAF personnel axed over five years5,000 Navy personnel cut7,000 army personnel cut25,000 civilian MoD staff axedTrident replaced but ￡750m savings from fewer warheadsTwo aircraft carriers saved, but one will not enter serviceThe MoD says the strategic defence and security review is not being re-opened.

But after completing the planning round for its budget for the financial year ending in March 2012, its work for next year has already started.

The MoD says the new study is part of work being done to ensure it matches its planning assumptions with its spending settlement, and closes the gap between the two.

BBC defence correspondent Caroline Wyatt said more still needs to be done to balance the books.

Potential targets could include HMS Illustrious, the UK's last surviving aircraft carrier, which is due back from a refit next year, as well as plans for a new fleet of armoured vehicles, our correspondent added.

News of the study come as Defence Secretary Liam Fox prepares to address Parliament later on amendments to the Armed Forces Bill that will see principles of the military covenant - the nation's duty of care to personnel - written into law for the first time.

It is understood that measures to improve soldiers' welfare in areas such as health, housing and education for forces' children will also be revealed.

Japan 'to review energy policy'

 10 May 2011 Last updated at 10:10 ET  Mr Kan said Japan should look more closely at renewable energy sources Japan is to reconsider plans to increase its reliance on nuclear power in the wake of the crisis at the Fukushima plant.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan said Japan had to start from scratch with its energy plans following the disaster.

The plant has been leaking radiation since the 11 March earthquake and subsequent tsunami damaged cooling systems to the reactors.

Operator Tepco has asked for government help to compensate those affected.

More than 80,000 local residents living within a 20km (12 mile) radius of the plant have been evacuated from their homes.

Agriculture and businesses have been hit and there is no timescale yet for allowing residents to return, although a small group were allowed inside the no-go zone briefly on Tuesday to gather belongings.

Total compensation claims are not yet known, but analysts say they may be more than $100bn (￡61bn).

'Big incident'

Nuclear plants currently supply about 30% of Japan's electricity.

Addressing a news conference, Mr Kan described nuclear power as a "major pillar" of Japanese society, along with fossil fuels.

But he said other forms of energy would also be key in the future.

"The current basic energy policy envisages that over 50% of total electricity supply will come from nuclear power while more than 20% will come from renewable power in 2030," he said.

Access to the no-go zone is banned, but trips are being arranged for residents to gather necessities

"But that basic plan needs to be reviewed now from scratch after this big incident."

"Better safety must be ensured in nuclear power while renewables need to be promoted."

He said greater focus would also be placed on ways of conserving energy, turning Japan into an "energy-saving society".

Mr Kan also said he would not take his prime minister's salary until the plant was under control and would be paid only as a member of parliament.

Tepco (Tokyo Electric Power Company) has said that it may take up to nine months to achieve a cold shut-down at the nuclear plant, which workers are struggling to stabilise.

Cooling systems were knocked out, causing fuel rods to overheat. There were subsequently explosions at four reactors operating at the time of the earthquake.

Engineers are pumping water into the reactors to cool them as they work to restore the damaged cooling systems.

Mr Kan's comments came hours after Tepco said it had presented a formal written request for assistance to Economy Minister Banri Kaieda.

In a statement, the company said it faced "an extremely severe situation" in terms of raising funds and that it needed state help so that "fair and prompt" compensation could be paid to local residents.

It has promised to restructure and executive salaries have already been reduced.

Nuclear Physicist from University of Surrey, Professor Paddy Regan describes Japan's energy profile

Japan's biggest power utility also faces billions of dollars in extra fuel costs to make up for reactor closures at Fukushima.

Shares in Tepco - which serves an area that accounts for 33% of Japan's economy - have plunged since the earthquake and subsequent tsunami.

On Tuesday, Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda hinted that the government would give Tepco some form of support.

"They can't be allowed to face bankruptcy," said Penn Bowers, an analyst at CLSA in Tokyo. "I think everyone understands they can't be allowed to fail."

Review Casts More Doubts on a Lung Cancer Study

 

But the doctors who conducted a controversial, widely publicized lung cancer study involving more than 50,000 patients at numerous hospitals were unable to locate 90 percent of the consent forms, according to a confidential review provided to The New York Times.

The finding casts further doubt on a clinical trial that made headlines in 2006 when it concluded that fully 80 percent of lung cancer deaths could be prevented through wide use of CT scans.

That trial, led by Dr. Claudia I. Henschke at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, drew sharp criticism from skeptics of cancer screening; the criticism intensified when The Times reported in March 2008 that the research was being financed in part by $3.6 million in grants from the parent company of the Liggett Group, a cigarette maker.

The confidential report on patient consent, dated Oct. 7, 2008, recommended that the trial be stopped. But it continues to this day, although not at Weill Cornell.

Several ethicists said the hospital was legally required to disclose the ethical problems documented by the secret review. That has not happened either.

The confidential report was commissioned by Weill Cornell after The Times’s 2008 article and other revelations about the study in the newsletter The Cancer Letter. The hospital hired four prominent professors from other universities to undertake an independent review of Dr. Henschke’s research, known as the International Early Lung Cancer Action Program, or I-Elcap.

In their report, the reviewers scolded Weill Cornell administrators for failing to supervise the research more closely, “especially knowing that scientific controversy has surrounded I-Elcap almost from its inception.”

One reviewer, Dr. David P. Carbone, a professor of medicine and cancer biology at Vanderbilt, said in an interview that he and the other reviewers never found out “whether these consents were obtained and lost or whether they weren’t obtained at all.”

He said that Dr. Henschke acted with the best of intentions, “but there’s no way for me to justify any of the problems” documented by the group’s review.

Dr. Henschke, who has since left Weill Cornell for Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, declined to respond to the findings of the 2008 review, saying it was confidential. But in an e-mail, she said the responsibility for keeping track of consent forms lay with all the hospitals where the experiments were done.

“I-Elcap is a non-federally funded academic consortium of independent, autonomous sites that share certain data,” she wrote.? “Accountability and responsibility for human protection lie at the local level.”

But Dr. Henschke’s research has been supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, and federal rules governing research conducted at multiple sites have long required that the coordinating center either collect copies of patient consent forms or ensure that they are being kept appropriately.

“The responsible conduct of a study requires that informed consent documents be kept on file,” said Dr. P. Pearl O’Rourke, director of human research affairs at Partners HealthCare, part of Harvard University. “There should be a system so that every consent form can be found no matter if individuals were enrolled at a single site or multiple sites.”

John D. Rodgers, a spokesman for Weill Cornell, wrote in an e-mail that the medical school followed federal research regulations “and there were no issues regarding the safety of the research subjects.”

Dr. Bruce A. Chabner, director of clinical research at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and editor in chief of The Oncologist journal, said he would ask Weill Cornell for an explanation of the problems outlined in the 2008 scientific review, as well as a follow-up to the report. His journal has published research by Dr. Henschke, and “if we find there was no informed consent for those patients, the paper would have to retracted,” he said.

The American Cancer Society helped finance Dr. Henschke’s research, and some of her work was published in cancer journals owned by the society. Dr. Otis W. Brawley, the society’s chief medical officer, said any study underwritten by the organization must conform to federal research rules, including those that require that problems with informed consent be reported to federal science agencies.

He added that the society’s journals might have to correct or retract any study that proved unable to document that patients had given informed consent. “But I don’t want to prejudge the case,” Dr. Brawley said.

In November, a huge federal study found that annual CT scans of current and former heavy smokers reduced their risk of death from lung cancer by 20 percent and, even more surprising, seemed to reduce the risks of death from other causes as well.

Although the scale of the benefit was substantially less than Dr. Henschke claimed her research showed, the federal study was widely interpreted as confirming her longtime contention that CT screening can save lives from lung cancer, which kills more than 150,000 people each year in the United States. Most patients discover their disease too late for treatment, and 85 percent die from it.

 

Week in Review: A Tipping Point for Gay Marriage?

Yet that is just what King & Spalding, a venerable Atlanta firm, did last week. Under pressure from gay rights groups and apparently fearful of criticism from the law students it recruits and the corporate clients it serves, the firm said it would not defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act against a challenge that it violates the Constitution.

The episode has so far mostly been discussed as a matter of legal ethics, and the firm has had a rough ride. But there is something larger going on, too.

For many gay rights advocates, the decision amounts to a turning point in the debate — the moment at which opposition to same-sex marriage came to look like bigotry, similar to racial discrimination and the subordination of women.

To opponents of same-sex marriage, the firm’s decision is the latest evidence that elite opinion generally and the legal culture in particular is racing ahead of popular opinion and shutting down a worthwhile debate.

“There is a big gap between elites and everyone else” over same-sex marriage, said Maggie Gallagher, the president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, which supports traditional marriage. The polls and political science literature support her: What may be orthodoxy in faculty lounges remains an open question among the public at large.

Another critic of same-sex marriage said King & Spalding’s decision illustrated just how wide the divide between elite and mass opinion on same-sex marriage has become. “There is no doubting that the default position of the American academy is to dismantle the institution of marriage and remake it on a new basis,” Matthew J. Franck of the Witherspoon Institute, a conservative research group, wrote in a blog post on Friday. “The deadly combination of unchallenged liberal presumptions and casual intimidation of dissenters is probably at its worst in the most prestigious universities, which set the tone for the rest of the country, on this issue as on many others.”

Ms. Gallagher sounded bitter and besieged as she described how the nature if not the substance of the debate had shifted. “Either you’re with them or you’re a hater,” she said of gay rights advocates. “They’re trying to exclude you from the public square.”

Evan Wolfson, the president of Freedom to Marry, said he welcomed a conversation, but the arguments against same-sex marriage were so empty that they were not worthy of respect. “If you know that the only arguments that can be made for a position are discriminatory and harmful to real people,” he said, “you should think about whether you should make them.”

This latest skirmish in the culture war over marriage was prompted by the Obama administration’s decision in February that it would no longer defend in court the part of the Defense of Marriage Act that denies federal benefits to gay and lesbian couples married in states that recognize such unions. That decision was itself unusual and thus telling.

But it was only one indication of how quickly the battle lines are moving. In 2008, a federal judge in New York ruled that it was defamatory to call a straight man gay. Ten months later, a different judge of the same court, relying on what he called “a veritable sea change in social attitudes about homosexuality,” said there was no longer “a widespread view of gays and lesbians as contemptible and disgraceful.”

The second judge, Denny Chin, drew a comparison. In 1926, he said, New York’s highest court ruled that it was libelous to call a white man “colored” or “Negro.” Such rulings were common in much of the nation in the first half of the last century; they are unimaginable today in any state. The range of views that may be expressed in respectable circles can be a bellwether in judging what society is ready for, said David A. Bositis, an analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies who has studied the politics of race.

“Part of the evolution of equality obviously includes moving from where statements are viewed as normal and accepted to being socially undesirable,” he said. “When some turning points in these struggles are reached, it becomes more and more unsavory to behave in some ways and take certain positions. In polite society, it’s no longer considered acceptable to make overtly racist statements.

“But in the case of gay rights,” he added, “those turning points still have a ways to go. I certainly can see that day coming. Compared with the civil rights movement for African-Americans, the movement for gay rights has proceeded with a remarkable degree of speed.”

 

Review Casts More Doubts on a Lung Cancer Study

But the doctors who conducted a controversial, widely publicized lung cancer study involving more than 50,000 patients at numerous hospitals were unable to locate 90 percent of the consent forms, according to a confidential review provided to The New York Times.

The finding casts further doubt on a clinical trial that made headlines in 2006 when it concluded that fully 80 percent of lung cancer deaths could be prevented through wide use of CT scans.

That trial, led by Dr. Claudia I. Henschke at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, drew sharp criticism from skeptics of cancer screening; the criticism intensified when The Times reported in March 2008 that the research was being financed in part by $3.6 million in grants from the parent company of the Liggett Group, a cigarette maker.

The confidential report on patient consent, dated Oct. 7, 2008, recommended that the trial be stopped. But it continues to this day, although not at Weill Cornell.

Several ethicists said the hospital was legally required to disclose the ethical problems documented by the secret review. That has not happened either.

The confidential report was commissioned by Weill Cornell after The Times’s 2008 article and other revelations about the study in the newsletter The Cancer Letter. The hospital hired four prominent professors from other universities to undertake an independent review of Dr. Henschke’s research, known as the International Early Lung Cancer Action Program, or I-Elcap.

In their report, the reviewers scolded Weill Cornell administrators for failing to supervise the research more closely, “especially knowing that scientific controversy has surrounded I-Elcap almost from its inception.”

One reviewer, Dr. David P. Carbone, a professor of medicine and cancer biology at Vanderbilt, said in an interview that he and the other reviewers never found out “whether these consents were obtained and lost or whether they weren’t obtained at all.”

He said that Dr. Henschke acted with the best of intentions, “but there’s no way for me to justify any of the problems” documented by the group’s review.

Dr. Henschke, who has since left Weill Cornell for Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, declined to respond to the findings of the 2008 review, saying it was confidential. But in an e-mail, she said the responsibility for keeping track of consent forms lay with all the hospitals where the experiments were done.

“I-Elcap is a non-federally funded academic consortium of independent, autonomous sites that share certain data,” she wrote.? “Accountability and responsibility for human protection lie at the local level.”

But Dr. Henschke’s research has been supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, and federal rules governing research conducted at multiple sites have long required that the coordinating center either collect copies of patient consent forms or ensure that they are being kept appropriately.

“The responsible conduct of a study requires that informed consent documents be kept on file,” said Dr. P. Pearl O’Rourke, director of human research affairs at Partners HealthCare, part of Harvard University. “There should be a system so that every consent form can be found no matter if individuals were enrolled at a single site or multiple sites.”

John D. Rodgers, a spokesman for Weill Cornell, wrote in an e-mail that the medical school followed federal research regulations “and there were no issues regarding the safety of the research subjects.”

Dr. Bruce A. Chabner, director of clinical research at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and editor in chief of The Oncologist journal, said he would ask Weill Cornell for an explanation of the problems outlined in the 2008 scientific review, as well as a follow-up to the report. His journal has published research by Dr. Henschke, and “if we find there was no informed consent for those patients, the paper would have to retracted,” he said.

The American Cancer Society helped finance Dr. Henschke’s research, and some of her work was published in cancer journals owned by the society. Dr. Otis W. Brawley, the society’s chief medical officer, said any study underwritten by the organization must conform to federal research rules, including those that require that problems with informed consent be reported to federal science agencies.

He added that the society’s journals might have to correct or retract any study that proved unable to document that patients had given informed consent. “But I don’t want to prejudge the case,” Dr. Brawley said.

In November, a huge federal study found that annual CT scans of current and former heavy smokers reduced their risk of death from lung cancer by 20 percent and, even more surprising, seemed to reduce the risks of death from other causes as well.

Although the scale of the benefit was substantially less than Dr. Henschke claimed her research showed, the federal study was widely interpreted as confirming her longtime contention that CT screening can save lives from lung cancer, which kills more than 150,000 people each year in the United States. Most patients discover their disease too late for treatment, and 85 percent die from it.

 

Review Casts More Doubts on a Lung Cancer Study

But the doctors who conducted a controversial, widely publicized lung cancer study involving more than 50,000 patients at numerous hospitals were unable to locate 90 percent of the consent forms, according to a confidential review provided to The New York Times.

The finding casts further doubt on a clinical trial that made headlines in 2006 when it concluded that fully 80 percent of lung cancer deaths could be prevented through wide use of CT scans.

That trial, led by Dr. Claudia I. Henschke at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, drew sharp criticism from skeptics of cancer screening; the criticism intensified when The Times reported in March 2008 that the research was being financed in part by $3.6 million in grants from the parent company of the Liggett Group, a cigarette maker.

The confidential report on patient consent, dated Oct. 7, 2008, recommended that the trial be stopped. But it continues to this day, although not at Weill Cornell.

Several ethicists said the hospital was legally required to disclose the ethical problems documented by the secret review. That has not happened either.

The confidential report was commissioned by Weill Cornell after The Times’s 2008 article and other revelations about the study in the newsletter The Cancer Letter. The hospital hired four prominent professors from other universities to undertake an independent review of Dr. Henschke’s research, known as the International Early Lung Cancer Action Program, or I-Elcap.

In their report, the reviewers scolded Weill Cornell administrators for failing to supervise the research more closely, “especially knowing that scientific controversy has surrounded I-Elcap almost from its inception.”

One reviewer, Dr. David P. Carbone, a professor of medicine and cancer biology at Vanderbilt, said in an interview that he and the other reviewers never found out “whether these consents were obtained and lost or whether they weren’t obtained at all.”

He said that Dr. Henschke acted with the best of intentions, “but there’s no way for me to justify any of the problems” documented by the group’s review.

Dr. Henschke, who has since left Weill Cornell for Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, declined to respond to the findings of the 2008 review, saying it was confidential. But in an e-mail, she said the responsibility for keeping track of consent forms lay with all the hospitals where the experiments were done.

“I-Elcap is a non-federally funded academic consortium of independent, autonomous sites that share certain data,” she wrote.? “Accountability and responsibility for human protection lie at the local level.”

But Dr. Henschke’s research has been supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, and federal rules governing research conducted at multiple sites have long required that the coordinating center either collect copies of patient consent forms or ensure that they are being kept appropriately.

“The responsible conduct of a study requires that informed consent documents be kept on file,” said Dr. P. Pearl O’Rourke, director of human research affairs at Partners HealthCare, part of Harvard University. “There should be a system so that every consent form can be found no matter if individuals were enrolled at a single site or multiple sites.”

John D. Rodgers, a spokesman for Weill Cornell, wrote in an e-mail that the medical school followed federal research regulations “and there were no issues regarding the safety of the research subjects.”

Dr. Bruce A. Chabner, director of clinical research at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and editor in chief of The Oncologist journal, said he would ask Weill Cornell for an explanation of the problems outlined in the 2008 scientific review, as well as a follow-up to the report. His journal has published research by Dr. Henschke, and “if we find there was no informed consent for those patients, the paper would have to retracted,” he said.

The American Cancer Society helped finance Dr. Henschke’s research, and some of her work was published in cancer journals owned by the society. Dr. Otis W. Brawley, the society’s chief medical officer, said any study underwritten by the organization must conform to federal research rules, including those that require that problems with informed consent be reported to federal science agencies.

He added that the society’s journals might have to correct or retract any study that proved unable to document that patients had given informed consent. “But I don’t want to prejudge the case,” Dr. Brawley said.

In November, a huge federal study found that annual CT scans of current and former heavy smokers reduced their risk of death from lung cancer by 20 percent and, even more surprising, seemed to reduce the risks of death from other causes as well.

Although the scale of the benefit was substantially less than Dr. Henschke claimed her research showed, the federal study was widely interpreted as confirming her longtime contention that CT screening can save lives from lung cancer, which kills more than 150,000 people each year in the United States. Most patients discover their disease too late for treatment, and 85 percent die from it.

 

E.U. to Review Mobile Operators' Policies on Web Access

BERLIN — The European Commission is planning to investigate whether European mobile operators are managing wireless Internet traffic to discriminate against competitors or consumers who use data-intensive services.

Neelie Kroes, the European Union’s telecommunications commissioner, on Tuesday will ask an advisory panel of national regulators to examine whether mobile operators are upholding the principle of network neutrality, which calls for all data traffic to be treated equally.

In a 10-page summary of remarks she intends to present in Brussels, which was obtained by the International Herald Tribune, Ms. Kroes said she was so far unconvinced that a serious problem existed or that new legal consumer safeguards were needed.

Referring to consumer complaints over blocking or throttling of certain types of mobile Internet use, Ms. Kroes, in her prepared remarks, said, “The commission does not have evidence to conclude that these concerns are justified at this stage but should be borne in mind in a more exhaustive, fact-finding exercise.”

Advocates of network neutrality criticized the inquiry as insufficient, saying that the fact-finding mission was superfluous and ignored obvious, continuing problems with the mobile Internet. Operators, for example, do not connect Skype calls over their networks because the Internet calling company’s services would siphon revenue from their own businesses.

“The European Union appears to be alone in the developed world in tolerating on such a wide scale these types of arbitrary restrictions on Internet use,” said Jean-Jacques Sahel, the director of government and regulatory affairs for Skype in London. “It has to cease and we look to European authorities to unambiguously protect consumers.”

The review will ask regulators from E.U. member states to examine whether a European telecommunications law that takes effect on May 25 is sufficient to ensure an open Internet. The law requires operators to disclose traffic management practices to consumers, gives consumers the right to switch operators in a single day and gives national regulators the power to set minimum levels of service for mobile Internet operators.

Lawmakers in Europe, unlike those in the United States, have taken a relatively hands-off approach to network neutrality, allowing the Continent’s mobile operators, which are typically former national monopolies, to manage and prioritize data to ensure smooth flowing traffic.

In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission last year adopted network neutrality rules that forbid operators to block content on their networks. But the commission’s legal authority has been questioned, and the U.S. House of Representatives voted on April 8 to restrict the F.C.C.’s ability to manage operator practices.

In Europe, the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers debated network neutrality in 2009 and amended telecommunications laws to enshrine the concept as a fundamental right, but imposed only weak restrictions on operators. The Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications, an advisory panel of 27 E.U. national regulators, will examine whether the new law safeguards consumers.

Luigi Gambardella, the chairman of the European Network Operators’ Association, which is based in Brussels and represents mobile operators, said his group supported Mrs. Kroes’s view that “any additional regulation should avoid deterring investment, or innovative business models, leading to a more efficient use of the networks and creating new business opportunities.”

John Phelan, a spokesman for the European Consumers’ Organization, a Brussels group, said Mrs. Kroes’s fact-finding mission overlooked a wealth of evidence that European operators were discriminating against rival services and high-volume mobile users.

Mr. Phelan pointed to a new network neutrality law adopted this year in Norway, a country that is not a member of the European Union, which was supposed to protect consumers from discriminatory treatment by mobile operators. The new rules have had no effect on the market leader, Telenor, and other operators, which continue to downgrade or block traffic from commercial rivals, he said.

“We think the approach Ms. Kroes is choosing is a missed opportunity,” Mr. Phelan said. “There is plenty of evidence that a problem exists and that we need strong action. This soft approach to the issue is not producing the necessary result.”

The panel of regulators, Berec, will not complete its work until the end of the year. Ms. Kroes would not propose new regulations, if any, until 2012.

Copies of her prepared remarks were circulated over the weekend.

“Judging from what we’ve seen of her report so far, it appears that Mrs. Kroes is not even convinced there is a problem,” said Jérémie Zimmermann, a spokesman for La Quadrature du Net, a French group that opposes restrictions to the Internet.

Last week in Paris, a bipartisan, 86-page report by three members of the French Parliament criticized the data traffic management practices of Frence mobile operators and recommended new consumer safeguards be adopted.

Mr. Zimmermann said all three French mobile operators, Orange, SFR and Bouyges Telecom, continued to ban competing Internet voice services like Skype.

But even in France, which was the first European country last year to systematically police and fine Internet users for illegal downloads of copyrighted films, music and other forms of entertainment, new pro-consumer legislation is not guaranteed.

“I am not certain that the French report will lead to any concrete action to protect consumers,” Mr. Zimmermann said.