In the latest step to fight an anticipated breakout of the H1N1 swine flu virus, Germany’s 16 state health ministers have announced they plan to order another 18 million vaccination units. That’s enough to immunize nine million more people and ensures there is enough stock should demand surge later in the year.

The health ministers have already ordered 50 million swine flu vaccinations for 25 million people, as each person requires two doses of the vaccine. That means there will be enough vaccine to cover 40 percent of the German population.

The latest order is subject to funding being available. The thorny question of who will bear the cost of this – the federal government, the health insurers, the state health departments or local authorities – is being discussed at a special working group meeting in Berlin on Wednesday. (more…)

Germany’s coastline may soon be bristling with wind turbines. A new plan involves 2,500 turbines, 30,000 new jobs and enough power for over 8 million households. Still, some worry that environmental regulations, financing difficulties and even security issues might hurt the ambitious plan.

On Wednesday, Germany’s cabinet approved plans to dedicate special zones off its northern coast to house up to 40 offshore windparks that could provide electricity to over eight million households.

The plan involves setting aside zones between 12 and 200 kilometers (seven and 124 miles) off its northern shores. Of the 40 wind farms, 30 would be in the North Sea and 10 in the Baltic Sea. Of these, 25 have already received approval — 22 in the North Sea and three in the Baltic Sea. (more…)

Giving contraceptives to people in developing countriescould help fight climate change by slowing population growth, experts said Friday.

More than 200 million women worldwide want contraceptives, but don’t have access to them, according to an editorial published in the British medical journal, Lancet. That results in 76 million unintended pregnancies every year.

If those women had access to free condoms or other birth control methods, that could slow rates of population growth, possibly easing the pressure on the environment, the editors say.

“There is now an emerging debate and interest about the links between population dynamics, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and climate change,” the commentary says.    MORE>>>

Federal prosecutors hit Pfizer Inc. with a record-breaking $2.3 billion in fines Wednesday and called the world’s largest drug maker a repeating corporate cheat for illegal drug promotions that plied doctors with free golf, massages, and resort junkets.

Announcing the penalty as a warning to all drug manufacturers, Justice Department officials said the overall settlement is the largest ever paid by a drug company for alleged violations of federal drug rules, and the $1.2 billion criminal fine is the largest ever in any U.S. criminal case. The total includes $1 billion in civil penalties and a $100 million criminal forfeiture.

Authorities called Pfizer a repeat offender, noting it is the company’s fourth such settlement of government charges in the last decade. The allegations surround the marketing of 13 different drugs, including big sellers such as Viagra, Zoloft, and Lipitor. (more…)

Anyone put off by the poster that paints President Obama as a “socialist joker” might take a look at the typical American in the mirror. We already combine the worst features of both socialism and market forces in healthcare, because we can’t seem to learn from the best examples in other countries.

It’s time we did – because that’s where the real choices are. And eventually, we’ll have to choose.

On the (fully) socialized side, US Medicare and Medicaid consume 8 percent of our national income – about the same share as socialist European systems. Except that theirs cover everyone, not just the elderly. And we’ve only just begun to pay for our own collectivism, since the bulk of our boomers haven’t retired yet. When that gray wave crashes on our status quo shores, it’ll wipe away trillions in national wealth. (more…)

Swine flu was four times more likely to send blacks and Hispanics to the hospital than whites, according to a study in Chicago that offers one of the first looks at how the virus has affected different racial groups.

The report echoes some unpublished information from Boston that found three out of four Bostonianshospitalized from swine flu were black or Hispanic.

The cause for the difference is probably not genetic, health officials said. More likely, it’s because blacks and Hispanics suffer disproportionately from asthma, diabetes and other health problems that make people more vulnerable to the flu. (more…)

LONDON – The World Health Organization said Friday that Tamiflu should only be given to particularly vulnerable people — a warning to countries like Britain where the swine flu drug is being handed out freely.

WHO previously said it was up to doctors to decide who should get Tamiflu. On Friday, the U.N. agency said healthy people who catch mild to moderate cases of swine flu don’t need the drug, but the young, old, pregnant, and those with underlying health problems surely do.

If countries use Tamiflu too liberally, that could lead to resistant viruses, leaving the world with few resources to fight swine flu.

WHO said people thought to be at risk for complications from swine flu — children less than 5 years old, pregnant women, people over age 65 and those with other health problems like heart disease, HIV or diabetes— should definitely get the drug. (more…)

NEW YORK – Mayor Michael Bloomberg is defending pharmaceutical companies and their CEOs, declaring that they “don’t make a lot of money” and shouldn’t be scapegoats in the health care debate.

The billionaire mayor made the comments on his radio show Friday.

Abbott Laboratories Inc. Chairman and Chief Executive Miles White’s compensation was $25.3 million in 2008. Schering-Plough Corp. Chief Executive Fred Hassan’s was $16.2 million. (more…)

WASHINGTON – Steve Kramer spent an hour and a half swimming in the ocean Sunday — in Maine. The water temperature was 72 degrees — more like Ocean City, Md., this time of year. And Ocean City’s water temp hit 88 degrees this week, toasty even by Miami Beach standards.

Kramer, 26, who lives in the seaside town of Scarborough, said it was the first time he’s ever swam so long in Maine’s coastal waters. “Usually, you’re in five minutes and you’re out,” he said.

It’s not just the ocean off the Northeast coast that is super-warm this summer. July was the hottest the world’s oceans have been in almost 130 years of record-keeping.

The average water temperature worldwide was 62.6 degrees, according to the National Climatic Data Center, the branch of the U.S. government that keeps world weather records. That was 1.1 degree higher than the 20th century average, and beat the previous high set in 1998 by a couple hundredths of a degree. The coolest recorded ocean temperature was 59.3 degrees in December 1909. (more…)

A warning that the new swine flu jab is linked to a deadly nerve disease has been sent by the Government to senior neurologists in a confidential letter.

The letter from the Health Protection Agency, the official body that oversees public health, has been leaked to The Mail on Sunday, leading to demands to know why the information has not been given to the public before the vaccination of millions of people, including children, begins.

It tells the neurologists that they must be alert for an increase in a brain disorder called Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS), which could be triggered by the vaccine. (more…)

BERLIN (Reuters) – A customer shopping at a discount supermarket store in Germany found stems of a poisonous weed in mixed salad bags, triggering concerns about potential health risks, the store said.

Traces of senecio vulgaris or common groundsel, that can cause extensive liver damage if ingested in large amounts, were discovered by a customer with a specialized knowledge of plants in a Plus store in the northern city of Hanover.

“It’s hard for laymen to tell the difference from rocket,” said a Plus spokeswoman on Tuesday.

“We immediately took all affected bags off the shelves.”

Samples were sent to the University of Bonn for testing, which detected more than 2,500 micrograms of poison — 2,500 times more than the recommended daily allowance — in 150 grams of salad, German media reported.   MORE>>>

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The Obama administration late last week quietly approved one of six major mountaintop removal permits that were said to be undergoing close scrutiny by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Without announcing the move publicly, EPA gave the nod for the federal Army Corps of Engineers to issue a Clean Water Act permit for CONSOL Energy Inc.’s Peg Fork Surface Mine near Chattaroy in Mingo County.

EPA approved all eight valley fill waste piles originally proposed by CONSOL, provided that additional water testing is done before six of those fills are constructed, agency officials said. (more…)

As the health reform fight shifts this month from a vacationing Washington to congressional districts and local airwaves around the country, much more of the battle than most people realize is already over. The likely victors are insurance giants such as UnitedHealth Group , Aetna , and WellPoint. The carriers have succeeded in redefining the terms of the reform debate to such a degree that no matter what specifics emerge in the voluminous bill Congress may send to President Obama this fall, the insurance industry will emerge more profitable. Health reform could come with a $1 trillion price tag over the next decade, and it may complicate matters for some large employers. But insurance CEOs ought to be smiling.

Executives from UnitedHealth certainly showed no signs of worry on the mid-July day that Senate Democrats proposed to help pay for reform with a new tax on the insurance industry. Instead, UnitedHealth parked a shiny 18-wheeler outfitted with high-tech medical gear near the Capitol and invited members of Congress aboard. Inside the mobilediagnostic center, which enables doctors to examine distant patients via satellite television, Representative Jim Matheson didn’t disguise his wonderment. “Fascinating, fascinating,” said the Democrat from Utah. “Amazing.”

Impressing fiscally conservative Democrats like Matheson, a leader of the House of Representatives’ Blue Dog Coalition, is at the heart of UnitedHealth’s strategy. It boils down to ensuring that whatever overhaul Congress passes this year will help rather than hurt huge insurance companies.    MORE>>>

Last week the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published a report stating that organic food is not nutritionally superior to conventional food, and now the “insert-the-crass-word-for-a-common-organic-fertilizer” has hit the fan.

The research, led by public health nutritionist Alan Dangour of London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, analyzed 162 peer-reviewed studies from the past 50 years comparing organic and conventional foods. After winnowing this to 55 studies meeting a certain quality threshold, the researchers found no statistical difference in levels of most nutrients.

The reaction in the news media and on blogs was swift, reflecting a divide sowed long ago. The pro-organic movement, naturally, calls the analysis flawed if not rigged by agribusiness. Others see this as proof that paying premium prices for organic products is a waste of money.

But factors influencing nutritional composition of food in the journey from field to fork are so extensive – such as plant variety, seasonal differences due to weather, crop handling, processing, storage and cooking – that organic farming can only hope to make nominal contributions to nutrition. (more…)

LONDON – International cancer experts have moved tanning beds and ultraviolet radiation into the top cancer risk category deeming both to be definite causes of cancer.

For years, scientists have described tanning beds and ultraviolet radiation as “probable carcinogens.”

A new analysis of about 20 studies concludes the risk of skin cancer jumps by 75 percent when people start using tanning beds before age 30. (more…)

Two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) doesn’t sound like much. The temperature in L’Aquila, a small city in Italy’s central Abruzzo region which was hit by a devastating earthquake in April, goes up by two degrees as soon as the sun rises. Anyone staying overnight in L’Aquila would likely not even notice such a small change in temperature.

When the leaders of the G-8 group of industrialized countries gather at a military academy on the outskirts of L’Aquila on Wednesday, they will also be discussing a two-degree rise in temperature — but one with more palpable effects. The fact that the average temperature on earth will increase on this scale in the coming years represents a massive change. Average global temperatures have risen by 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) since the last ice age. Climatologists say that additional warming by more than two degrees would trigger substantial changes in the earth’s climatic systems. (more…)

When it comes to money matters, Germans have long had a reputation for knowing their stuff. But that could change if something isn’t done to promote economic understanding among the country’s youngsters.

Blame it on the age of electronic distraction, a basic lack of interest or a general dumbing down of society. It doesn’t much matter where the finger points because the fact remains that the generation waiting in the wings to run the country is a bit clueless. Economically speaking, that is.

The 2009 youth survey, conducted by the Association of German Banks (BDB), revealed that some 54 percent of the 750 young people questioned could not explain inflation. And of those who could, only six percent knew the current rate. (more…)

The Rhine River water temperature is three degrees Celsius above its natural average, the result of power plants along the river and global warming, German environmental group BUND said in a report issued Tuesday. Parts of the heavily-polluted river can reach a balmy high of 28 degrees during the summer, the study said. The warmest segment is between Mainz and Worms. “The days when the water temperature exceeds 23 to 25 degrees have been increasing in the past few years,” the report said, which could have a major impact on marine life in the river, especially for the salmon population, which the government is trying to reintroduce to the river. (more…)

History Channel –   America’s infrastructure is collapsing. Tens of thousands of bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. A third of the nation’s highways are in poor or mediocre shape. Massively leaking water and sewage systems are creating health hazards and contaminating rivers and streams. Weakened and under-maintained levees and dams tower over communities and schools. And the power grid is increasingly maxed out, disrupting millions of lives and putting entire cities in the dark. The Crumbling of America explores these problems using expert interviews, on location shooting and computer generated animation to illustrate the kinds of infrastructure disasters that could be just around the bend.

Throughout world history, great civilizations have survived and extended their rule through dependence on great infrastructures. Rome had its roads and aqueducts. The Mayans had their pyramids and palaces. But what happens when society neglects its infrastructure? Right now, the U.S. infrastructure is collapsing and it impacts every single person in this country. In the first half of the 20th century, our bridges, highways, tunnels, dams, levees, ports, water and gas pipelines were built during the greatest age of construction the world had ever seen. But now these steel and concrete achievements are deteriorating. More than 70,000 of our nation’s bridges are rated structurally deficient. Massive grid failures have left millions in the dark.25,000 miles of commercial navigable waterways and locks have exceeded their 50-year design life. Everything from dilapidated levees to pipelines to railroads is past their expiration date.

History Channel Air Dates:

Tuesday, July 07 08:00 AM

Tuesday, July 07 02:00 PM