5 Top Ways Stars Lose All Their Cash

Last week Gary Busey passed a mandatory online financial management course in an attempt to convince a U.S. Bankruptcy court he'll start sensibly managing his money.  The veteran actor recently filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. But in Hollywood, going broke is just about as as common as a leaked nude photos; just ask Toni Braxton, Larry Wilcox, Vince Neil, Mike Tyson, and Stephen Baldwin, all of whom have recently filed for bankruptcy. Not to mention Zsa Zsa Gabor’s husband, who was forced to put their Bel Air mansion on the market last year to pay the ailing star’s medical bills; Wesley Snipes, who was imprisoned for three tax-related misdemeanor convictions; and Nicolas Cage, who lost one of his homes to foreclosure and has been plagued by IRS issues. So how is it that some of the most well-paid people on the planet can end up with next to nothing? We talked to financial management experts and they ticked off the top five ways rich celebs lose it all (or close to it). 5. They have no idea how money management works.  “Most celebrities have extremely creative minds. But in my experience, the most creative folks tend not to want to spend time dealing with business issues,” tax and business expert Joseph M. Doloboff, Partner at Blank Rome LLP in Los Angeles told FOX411’s Pop Tarts column. But don’t famous folks hire financial planners and business managers to take good care of their millions? “Most of them do, but at the end of the day, these accounts are still in a celebrities’ name, which gives them ultimate control over their wealth,” said Certified Financial Counselor for Financial Advice for the Artist, Erin Elizabeth Burns. Which can mean big spending, big mistakes and… 4. Bad advice.  Pete Krainik, Founder and CEO of The CMO Club, a networking resource for top marketing executives, noted that some celebrities do not have the skill sets to identify and determine the right business/financial managers for their needs. “Because they don’t think of themselves as brands, they don’t put the efforts or plans in place to maximize their value for endorsement deals,” he explained. “They should have themselves significant additional revenue streams – it is not just about getting the next role, but getting the next deal.” But some such "additional revenue streams" can also run in the red.. Last year, the Las Vegas rendition of Beso – the restaurant/nightclub co-owned by Eva Longoria – filed for bankruptcy to restructure nearly $5.7 million in debt and other liabilities. Prior to that, the Jay-Z owned 40/40 sports bar in Sin City shut its doors a mere eight months after opening. Britney Spears’s southern-inspired Nyla Restaurant reportedly hit monetary blows before she also severed ties, and both Jennifer Lopez’s “Sweetface” clothing line and restaurant Madres went dark. 3. Theft and fraud.  Hollywood's highest profile people are actually human, which means they too are susceptible to being screwed by business managers, badly worded deals and corrupt advisors. Just ask Kevin Bacon and wife Kyra Sedgwick, who were taken to the cleaners by Ponzi schemer Bernie Maddoff. Doloboff also said prominent factors in a celeb’s financial crumbling is their tendency to bring "friends" -- or family -- into the fray as business partners or employees. “Many professional athletes and entertainers want to help their friends while simultaneously helping themselves,” he said. “The best advice is to refrain from doing business with friends. True friends don’t condition their friendship upon doing business together.” Comedian Dan Cook will probably adhere to that – in 2010, his half-brother Darryl McCauley was ordered to pay the comic $12 million in restitution after pleading guilty to embezzling funds from him. McCauley allegedly stole $12,500 a month as Cook’s business manager. Friends and fraud – double whammy! 2. Drugs, booze, and bad habits. Stars are known to fall when the temptations of drugs/alcohol/hard partying turns into a dangerous addiction. It can also be more than an expensive habit, as addiction often impacts other areas. “You are far more likely to make poor decisions when under the influence of drugs or alcohol. When you’re dealing with celebrities, the problem is that their support groups, (friends, family, entourages, et al), often consist of enablers,” explained Richard Taite, the Founder and CEO of rehab center Cliffside Malibu. “It comes as no surprise that a successful celebrity can face financial destitution if they are abusing drugs or alcohol and are left to their own devices.” 1. Ridiculous overspending. Last but not least, some beautiful yet broke folks just lead foolishly fabulous lives (we're talking to you, MC Hammer) and refuse to accept that fame (and its fortune) can be fleeting. “Most celebrities have luxuries such as a cook, a driver, a personal stylist, a personal assistant etc.,” said Burns. “They become accustomed to this lifestyle, but when their contract isn’t renewed, or when the films offers stop coming in, they are still living this life of luxury with the expectation that they will always be in demand.” Yes, sadly, not every Hollywood tale has a happy ending. But with some good financial advise, the ending doesn't have to be tragic.

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At least four people, including three children, were killed, when a man on a scooter opened fire outside a Jewish school in Toulouse in southwestern France

At least four people, including three children, were killed, when a man on a scooter opened fire outside a Jewish school in Toulouse in southwestern France on Monday, officials said. The attack also left several injured, two of them seriously, and followed the killing of three soldiers in two separate shootings in the same region last week by a man who escaped on a scooter. BFM TV news channel said that the gun used in the attack at the Ozar Hatorah school was of the same calibre as that used in the soldiers’ shootings, but a spokesman for the interior ministry could not immediately confirm this. President Nicolas Sarkozy cancelled other appointments and was on his way to Toulouse on Monday morning, accompanied by Education Minister Luc Chatel and the president of the CRIF French Jewish association, Richard Prasquier. “I saw two people dead in front of the school, an adult and a child … Inside, it was a vision of horror, the bodies of two small children,” a distraught father whose child attends the school told RTL radio. “I did not find my son, apparently he fled when he saw what happened. How can they attack something as sacred as a school, attack children only sixty centimetres tall?” Several other people were injured, two of them seriously. A rabbi at the school, identified as Rahamim Sabag, told Israel’s channel two television that the dead were a 30-year old rabbi who taught at the school, the rabbi’s five-year-old son and two eight-year old children, one of them the daughter of the school’s principal. A spokesman for Israel’s foreign ministry, Yigal Palmor, expressed outrage at the killings: “We are following with great shock reports coming from Toulouse and we trust the French authorities will solve this crime and bring those responsible to justice.” A spokesman for the interior ministry said that security was being tightened at all Jewish schools in the country. About 50 investigators are already looking into the killings of two soldiers on Thursday in the town of Montauban, close to Toulouse, as they tried to withdraw money from a cash machine close to the barracks of the 17th parachute regiment. A third soldier was killed the previous weekend in Toulouse. Investigators had already confirmed on Friday that the same weapon had been used in both incidents.

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Spain's Unicaja, Caja Espana savings banks merge

Spanish regional savings banks Unicaja and Caja Espana have merged following the government's recent requirement that banks raise substantially their provisions set aside to cover toxic real estate exposure. The merger, in which Banco Caja Espana-Duero (Banco Ceiss) is effectively absorbed into Unicaja Banco, creates a group with approximately (EURO)80 billion ($104.9 billion) in total assets and a turnover of (EURO)120 billion ($157.4 billion), according to a joint statement released late Friday. The deal must first receive Finance Ministry and central bank approval and would require (EURO)850 million ($1114.86 million) of state aid, which is added to (EURO)525 million ($688.59 million) already injected into Caja Espana in 2010 by the Bank of Spain's restructuring fund (FROB).

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German taxpayer would be obliged to subsidise the wages of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.

 

When faced with the prospect of the Spanish government waiving the collective €752m debt the nation's football clubs owe to the country's tax authorities, the reaction in Europe last week was one of outrage. The German tabloid Bild even asked how long the German taxpayer would be obliged to subsidise the wages of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. What they meant was that while the European Union members bailed out the Spanish economy, successful Spanish clubs were failing to meet their own tax obligations. Strictly speaking, Real Madrid have no tax debt among the €170m debt that the club carry, but Barcelona owe €48m of their overall €364m debt to the Spanish taxman. Uli Hoeness, the outspoken president of Bayern Munich, got to the point rather more quickly when asked about the proposal to excuse Spanish clubs their tax debt. "This is unthinkable," he said. "We pay them hundreds of millions to get them out the shit and then the clubs don't pay their debts." It is a uniquely modern European dilemma, encompassing EU bail-out funds and the competitiveness of the continent's respective leading clubs, all of which ultimately adds another fiendishly complex element to the concept of Financial Fair Play, as proposed by Uefa president Michel Platini. It is further proof that while Spanish football is undoubtedly top dog in Europe, with five teams in the quarter-finals of the two Uefa competitions, it is not without problems. As The Independent's Pete Jenson reported in these pages on Saturday, a government report in Spain last week disclosed that the equivalent of £625m is owed by Spanish clubs to the country's public purse, with £353m of that due from 14 of the 20 clubs in the top division. This is not money owed to banks, investors or owners. It is owed to the Spanish people. On a sporting level it is "financial doping" at its very worse. On a social level it is nothing short of a disgrace in a country where youth unemployment currently runs at 50 per cent. Not all top Spanish clubs are culpable and it was reassuring to read in the breakdown of club debt by AS newspaper that Athletic Bilbao, the team of largely home-grown Basque stars who left English football spellbound with their schooling of Manchester United last week, do not owe the taxman a cent. So too Real Sociedad, Getafe, Villarreal and Sporting Gijon. On the other hand, Atletico Madrid, currently eighth in La Liga and drawn against Hannover 96 in the quarter-finals of the Europa League, owe the Spanish public purse €155m (£128m), more than any other club. The money from the €50m sale of Sergio Aguero to Manchester City last summer went straight to the tax authorities. Valencia, who play AZ Alkmaar in the same stage of the competition, owe €6m in unpaid tax. When Hoeness expressed German football's bitterness that their government is, indirectly, subsidising the success of Spanish clubs it is the likes of Hannover he was talking about. Atletico's big signing was Falcao from Porto last summer, a £33m signing financed by third-party ownership deals. Hannover bought Mame Biram Diouf from Manchester United. Enough said. No one would pretend that British football is the perfect financial model, especially given Rangers' and Portsmouth's debts to HMRC. Even the Germans have had their problems with Borussia Dortmund and Schalke. But unpaid taxes at a time when public services are being cut and jobs lost are particularly repugnant. Real Betis, Real Zaragoza, Racing Santander, Levante and Mallorca (denied a place in last season's Europa League because of their finances) owe a total of €118m to the Spanish tax authorities between them. There are also suggestions that unpaid social security contributions by some Spanish clubs rival those eye-watering figures for unpaid tax. In the past, Spanish football has been protected by the assumption that punishing badly-run clubs would cause such a backlash against government by voters that it would not be politically expedient. There is no points penalty in Spain for going into the equivalent of financial administration as there is in England. But attitudes are changing. The governing political group Partido Popular has described the situation as "intolerable". The government was forced to disclose the figures of unpaid tax because of an official request by Caridad Garcia of the Izquierda Unida (IU) party. A spokesman for IU, José Luis Centella, made the connection last week between the financial hardship felt by the Spanish people and the clubs' failure to pay. "This is bad news for all the people who have lost homes and suffered from the cutbacks while there is this tremendous generosity towards football." Wisely, the Spanish sports minister Miguel Cardenal announced last week that the government had dropped any consideration of giving football clubs a clean slate on their tax debts. There has even been a call from the centre-left party PSOE to ban clubs with tax debts from competing in the league, a rule that, already in place in Italian football, would change the face of La Liga overnight. Were the Spanish tax authorities to call in their debts tomorrow, Barcelona would surely be able to find, or borrow, the €48m they owe. Atletico, on the other hand, would find themselves in the kind of dire situation currently enveloping Rangers. There is a lesson for English football that in the risky game of investment and borrowing that most clubs enter as they attempt to fulfil the ambitions of supporters and owners, there are certain obligations that are non-negotiable. Football clubs command such loyalty and affection that they are too often cut slack, but, as the situation in Spain is starting to show, there is always a limit. Ridicule of Richards the last straw Down the years, Sir Dave Richards has given every appearance of being invulnerable to criticism or error of judgement. He has survived adversaries in the Football Association such as Lord Triesman and Ian Watmore in recent years. The financial problems of Sheffield Wednesday, where he was chairman, do not seem to have had an impact on his reputation. He walked out on the 2018 World Cup bid in a huff and it all blew over. Which makes it all the more incredible that an ornamental fountain, and a slightly unhinged but largely irrelevant speech on football, should prove his undoing. It just goes to shows that a divisive figure in football administration can survive a great deal but once their mistakes start to make people laugh – it's over. Will City seize their chance to get Mourinho? When Manchester City meet Chelsea on Wednesday, the shadow of one man falls over both clubs. Jose Mourinho is the last card that the most ambitious football club owners can play. If all else fails, then give Mourinho the job and if that does not bring success then you really are out of options. In Spain, the mood is that Mourinho may stay at Real Madrid in the penultimate year of his contract next season or he may go back to England if the right job presents itself. Is that Chelsea or could it be City? If Roberto Mancini fails to win the title this season and Mourinho is willing to come then it places an idea in the heads of City's owners. It is not as if he is available every summer.

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S SPAIN THE NEXT GREECE? NATION SINKS FURTHER INTO MIRE

Savage cuts to the Greek health service have seen the country's HIV and Tuberculosis rates soar - sparking fears it is becoming a third world nation.

Aid agencies said the cutting of hospital budgets by an astonishing 40 per cent had also led to a sharp rise in the number of citizens being diagnosed with Malaria.

In the south, they said, it is reaching near endemic levels not seen since 1970s.

The scrapping of needle exchange services has seen the number of HIV and Aids sufferers in central Athens rise by 1,250 per cent in 2011 alone.

There are more prostitutes on the streets selling their bodies to make ends meet, while heroin addicts are finding it harder to come by anti-retroviral treatments.

There is also the first instances ever of the two illnesses being transmitted between mother and child - something usually equated with sub-Saharan Africa and not Europe.

Médecins sans Frontières Greece's Reveka Papadopoulos said the health service cuts, which saw widespread job losses, were putting social services 'under very severe strain'.

She added: 'If not in a state of breakdown. What we are seeing are very clear indicators of a system that cannot cope'. She said the 40 per cent cuts were on top of a 24 per cent increase in 2011 in demand for medical services.

This, she said, was 'largely because people could simply no longer afford private healthcare. The entire system is deteriorating'.

On the rise: The number of HIV and Aids sufferers in Greece is soaring

 

She added: 'There has also been a sharp increase in cases of tuberculosis in the immigrant population.

'Cases of Nile fever - leading to 35 deaths in 2010 - and the reappearance of endemic malaria in several parts of Greece.

 

 

 

'The simple fact of the reappearance of malaria, with 100-odd cases in southern Greece last year and 20 to 30 more elsewhere, shows barriers to healthcare access have risen.

'Malaria is treatable, it shouldn't spread if the system is working.'

Good news: Greece is set to receive the next tranche of eurozone bailout cash next week

The news comes as it was revealed Greece will get €5.9billion in new bailout money on Monday. It is the first slice of a new rescue package meant to keep the country afloat while it overhauls its economy.

Greece stands to receive a total of €172.7 billion from its partners in the 17-nation eurozone and the International Monetary Fund until 2016.

IS SPAIN THE NEXT GREECE? NATION SINKS FURTHER INTO MIRE

Spain now owes more money than it has done in the last 20 years, the Bank of Spain said.

For 2011 the country's public debt was 68.5 percent of gross domestic product, up from 61.2 per cent in 2010.

While it is a relatively low ratio, compared with its 16 eurozone peers who have an average 87.7 per cent, it has almost doubled from 36.3 per cent in 2007.

This is because there is a lack of economic impetus since the credit-and-construction bubble burst in 2008.

Spain has been ordered by the European Commission to cut its budget shortfall from 8.5 per cent of GDP in 2011 to 5.3 per cent this year and 3 per cent in 2013.

It has forced Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to hunt for savings worth around €60billion.

This year's target is a compromise after Rajoy defied Brussels by ditching a much tighter goal of 4.4 per cent of GDP agreed by the previous government.     

But the task will be made tougher as the economy is thought to already be in its second recession in three years, with the government expecting output to shrink 1.7 per cent in 2012.

The cuts has led to the closure of 27 publicly run companies, some of which were duplicates - such as a water company.

Others included a loss-making entity tasked with stimulating Spain's small housing rental market and one created to back the Barcelona Olympics in 1992.    

The central bank also said Spain's 17 autonomous regions, blamed for the lion's share of the fiscal slippage last year, ran debt up by 17.3 per cent in 2011 to €140billion.

The data showed the country's wealthiest region of Catalonia, was the most indebted, closely followed by Valencia.  Both had debt-to-GDP ratios of around 20 per cent compared to an average of 13.1 per cent.    

Tighter controls over regional budgets imposed by the central government aim to bring their spending back under control this year, even if analysts retain doubts over their future compliance and banks' balance sheets.    

The sum includes money left over from the country's first rescue package and a new €130billion programme.

The disbursement was approved earlier this week, said Matthias Mors, the European Commission representative to the troika - the debt inspectors from the European Union, the European Central Bank and the IMF who are managing the Greek bailout.

The bailout, on its own, will not be enough to ease the country's financial woes.

An EU report released today said Greece must make a sustained effort to attract future investment and support export-led growth as it seeks to recover from a recession that is now in its fifth year.

But the report, prepared by the European Commission and the ECB, also said a bond swap deal with private creditors has made the country's debt load far more sustainable in the long-term.

The news has had a positive effect on European financial markets.

The FTSE 100 is today 0.45 per cent up at 5,967.43; France's CAC 40 is 0.54 per cent up at 3,599.37; and Germany's DAX is 0.33 per cent up at 7,168.37.

The report projects that, assuming interim targets are met, Greece's debt-to-GDP ratio will decline to below 117 per cent in 2020 and to below 90 per cent in 2030.

It was as high as 160 per cent of GDP before the debt relief deal was agreed with private creditors.

While progress has been made in reforming the economy, significant concerns remain, including inflation, a lack of credit available to households and business, and the need to regain competitiveness by reducing labor costs, Mors said.

'One of the priorities of this second program is the recapitalization of banks,' Mors said.

For one thing, bank deposits have fallen, he said. For another, the agreement to write down private debt 'will leave holes in the balance sheets of banks, because they held government bonds,' he added.

He said the new program includes €50 billion for bank recapitalisation. 'This is an enormous amount,' he said. Mors also warned that significant more belt-tightening lies ahead.

'The target for this year is a primary deficit of 1 per cent,' he said, referring to the budget balance before interest payments. 

'And the programme target for 2014 is a surplus of 4.5 per cent. And therefore people have to be aware that, in terms of fiscal adjustment, there's still a long way to go.' He said the Greek government will have to identify before this summer how it plans to close that gap.

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Premier League footballer Fabrice Muamba is in intensive care after collapsing during an FA Cup tie.

 

 The 23-year-old was said to be critically ill in the London Chest Hospital after falling to the ground at White Hart Lane in front of millions of television viewers watching the sixth round tie between Tottenham Hotspur and his club, Bolton Wanderers. Outside the hospital, the club's manager Owen Coyle said the following 24 hours were "absolutely crucial" and urged people to pray for the player's recovery. A Bolton spokesman said: "Bolton Wanderers can confirm that Fabrice Muamba has been admitted to the heart attack centre at London Chest Hospital where he is currently in a critically ill condition in intensive care. No further information will be issued at this stage. The club has requested the media to respect his family's privacy at this time." A packed White Hart Lane looked on with a worldwide audience watching live coverage on ESPN as the Trotters midfielder suddenly fell to the floor. Confusion turned to horror as medics sprinted on to the pitch to begin resuscitating the young man. Players looked shocked and watched in disbelief as the former England Under 21 star was treated with a defibrillator for several minutes before being stretchered off wearing an oxygen mask and taken to hospital. World Cup referee Howard Webb abandoned the game. As the message was relayed around the stadium with the score at 1-1, the fans applauded and chanted Muamba's name. Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore said: "The thoughts of the Premier League, its clubs and players are with Fabrice Muamba, his family and Bolton Wanderers. We would like to praise the players, match officials, coaching staff and medical teams of both clubs at White Hart Lane for their swift actions in attending Fabrice. "The league would also like to commend the compassion shown by the fans of Bolton Wanderers and Tottenham Hotspur. We hope to hear positive news about Fabrice who is and has been a wonderful ambassador for the English game and the league at Arsenal, Birmingham City and Bolton Wanderers." Manchester United star Rio Ferdinand wrote on Twitter: "Come on Fabrice Muamba, praying for you." England striker Wayne Rooney wrote: "Hope fabrice muamba is ok. Praying for him and his family. Still in shock." Muamba's team-mate Stuart Holden, added: "Still praying for Fab, the guy is a fighter on and off the field. We love you bro."

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Facebook's 'dark side': study finds link to socially aggressive narcissism

 

Researchers have established a direct link between the number of friends you have on Facebook and the degree to which you are a "socially disruptive" narcissist, confirming the conclusions of many social media sceptics. People who score highly on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory questionnaire had more friends on Facebook, tagged themselves more often and updated their newsfeeds more regularly. The research comes amid increasing evidence that young people are becoming increasingly narcissistic, and obsessed with self-image and shallow friendships. The latest study, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, also found that narcissists responded more aggressively to derogatory comments made about them on the social networking site's public walls and changed their profile pictures more often. A number of previous studies have linked narcissism with Facebook use, but this is some of the first evidence of a direct relationship between Facebook friends and the most "toxic" elements of narcissistic personality disorder. Researchers at Western Illinois University studied the Facebook habits of 294 students, aged between 18 and 65, and measured two "socially disruptive" elements of narcissism – grandiose exhibitionism (GE) and entitlement/exploitativeness (EE). GE includes ''self-absorption, vanity, superiority, and exhibitionistic tendencies" and people who score high on this aspect of narcissism need to be constantly at the centre of attention. They often say shocking things and inappropriately self-disclose because they cannot stand to be ignored or waste a chance of self-promotion. The EE aspect includes "a sense of deserving respect and a willingness to manipulate and take advantage of others". The research revealed that the higher someone scored on aspects of GE, the greater the number of friends they had on Facebook, with some amassing more than 800. Those scoring highly on EE and GG were also more likely to accept friend requests from strangers and seek social support, but less likely to provide it, according to the research. Carol Craig, a social scientist and chief executive of the Centre for Confidence and Well-being, said young people in Britain were becoming increasingly narcissistic and Facebook provided a platform for the disorder. "The way that children are being educated is focussing more and more on the importance of self esteem – on how you are seen in the eyes of others. This method of teaching has been imported from the US and is 'all about me'. "Facebook provides a platform for people to self-promote by changing profile pictures and showing how many hundreds of friends you have. I know of some who have more than 1,000." Dr Viv Vignoles, senior lecturer in social psychology at Sussex University, said there was "clear evidence" from studies in America that college students were becoming increasingly narcissistic. But he added: "Whether the same is true of non-college students or of young people in other countries, such as the UK, remains an open question, as far as I know. "Without understanding the causes underlying the historical change in US college students, we do not know whether these causes are factors that are relatively specific to American culture, such as the political focus on increasing self-esteem in the late 80s and early 90s or whether they are factors that are more general, for example new technologies such as mobile phones and Facebook." Vignoles said the correlational nature of the latest study meant it was difficult to be certain whether individual differences in narcissism led to certain patterns of Facebook behaviour, whether patterns of Facebook behaviour led to individual differences in narcissism, or a bit of both. Christopher Carpenter, who ran the study, said: "In general, the 'dark side' of Facebook requires more research in order to better understand Facebook's socially beneficial and harmful aspects in order to enhance the former and curtail the latter. "If Facebook is to be a place where people go to repair their damaged ego and seek social support, it is vitally important to discover the potentially negative communication one might find on Facebook and the kinds of people likely to engage in them. Ideally, people will engage in pro-social Facebooking rather than anti-social me-booking."

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It's Not Dementia, It's Your Heart Medication: Cholesterol Drugs and Memory

 

One day in 1999 Duane Graveline, then a 68-year-old former NASA astronaut, returned home from his morning walk in Merritt Island, Fla., and could not remember where he was. His wife stepped outside, and he greeted her as a stranger. When Graveline’s memory returned some six hours later in the hospital, he racked his brain to figure out what might have caused this terrifying bout of amnesia. Only one thing came to mind: he had recently started taking the statin drug Lipitor. Cholesterol-lowering statins such as Lipitor, Crestor and Zocor are the most widely prescribed medications in the world, and they are credited with saving the lives of many heart disease patients. But recently a small number of users have voiced concerns that the drugs elicit unexpected cognitive side effects, such as memory loss, fuzzy thinking and learning difficulties. Hundreds of people have registered complaints with MedWatch, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s adverse drug reaction database, but few studies have been done and the results are inconclusive. Nevertheless, many experts are starting to believe that a small percentage of the population is at risk, and they are calling for increased public awareness of the possible cognitive side effects of statins—symptoms that may be misdiagnosed as dementia in the aging patients who take them. Fat and the Brain It is not crazy to connect cholesterol-modifying drugs with cognition; after all, one quarter of the body’s cholesterol is found in the brain. Cholesterol is a waxy substance that, among other things, provides structure to the body’s cell membranes. High levels of cholesterol in the blood create a risk for heart disease, because the molecules that transport cholesterol can damage arteries and cause blockages. In the brain, however, cholesterol plays a crucial role in the formation of neuronal connections—the vital links that underlie memory and learning. Quick thinking and rapid reaction times depend on cholesterol, too, because the waxy molecules are the building blocks of the sheaths that insulate neurons and speed up electrical transmissions. “We can’t understand how a drug that affects such an important pathway would not have adverse reactions,” says Ralph Edwards, former director of the World Health Organization’s drug-monitoring center in Uppsala, Sweden. Two small trials published in 2000 and 2004 by Matthew Muldoon, a clinical pharmacologist at the University of Pittsburgh, seem to suggest a link between statins and cognitive problems. The first, which enrolled 209 high-cholesterol subjects, reported that participants taking placebo pills improved more on repeated tests of attention and reaction time taken over the course of six months—presumably getting better because of practice, as people typically do. Subjects who were on statins, however, did not show the normal improvement—suggesting their learning was impaired. The second trial reported similar findings. And a study published in 2003 in Reviews of Therapeutics noted that among 60 statin users who had reported memory problems to MedWatch, more than half said their symptoms improved when they stopped taking the drugs. But other studies have found no significant link between statins and memory problems. Larry Sparks, director of the Laboratory for Neurodegenerative Research at the Sun Health Research Institute in Sun City, Ariz., goes so far as to say that “you’ve got a better chance of buying a winning lottery ticket, walking outside and getting hit by lightning and dying” than you do of suffering a cognitive side effect from statins. Vulnerable Genes? Many experts agree that for most people the risk is quite low, but they are beginning to believe the effects are real. “A subset of the population is vulnerable,” argues Joe Graedon, co-founder of the consumer advocacy Web site the People’s Pharmacy, which has collected hundreds of reports of cognitive-related statin side effects in the past decade. Some researchers believe these people have a genetic profile that puts them at risk.

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Statin side effects: How common are memory loss, diabetes, and muscle aches?

 

When the US Food and Drug Administration told the makers of cholesterol-lowering statins to add new side effect warnings to their labels last week, many of the 40 million statin users may have been unaware of the extent of the risks associated with these drugs that have been touted by some cardiologists to be safer than aspirin. No question, statins -- which include Lipitor (atorvastatin), Zocor (simvastatin), and Crestor (rosuvastatin) -- are relatively safe drugs, and they’ve saved thousands of lives over the past 20 years, particularly in men with established heart disease. But like any drug they can cause problems in some, including muscle aches, an increased risk of diabetes, and, gaining recent attention, memory loss. University of California-San Diego researcher Beatrice Golomb published a paper two years ago describing 171 statin users who reported that they had developed memory problems and dementia-like symptoms that the statin users attributed to their use of the medications. The vast majority experienced an improvement in their symptoms after stopping the drugs and many saw their symptoms return after going back on statins. Robert Grindell, a state employee from Makinen, Minn., told me his short-term memory began to deteriorate after he started taking Zocor in his early 50s. (He contacted Golomb after hearing about her research.) “My co-workers told me I was coming in to ask them the same question three times in one day,” he said. “I had a CT scan to determine if I had a stroke, but it came back fine; the next day, I couldn’t even remember where I had the test performed.” After learning that Zocor caused memory problems, Grindell decided to go off it and said within a few days he noticed an improvement in his memory, not having to glance down several times at a printed phone number as he dialed it to remember the digits. Unfortunately, the exact incidence of these memory problems isn’t known. Manufacturer-sponsored clinical trials show that they occur in fewer than 1 percent of users, but statin researcher Dr. Paul Thompson, chief of cardiololgy at Hartford Hospital, said the real incidence is probably much higher. He has a study expected to be published sometime this year that measured cognitive effects in statin users compared with those on placebos that he said will provide a better estimate; the findings can’t be disclosed until the study is published. The diabetes risks of statins are more well-established. One review study published last year calculated an extra two cases of type 2 diabetes in every 1,000 patients who took a high-dose statin (80 milligrams per day) compared with those who took a lower dose (20 to 40 milligrams). And one clinical trial found that statin users had about a 25 percent increased risk of developing diabetes over a two-year period compared with those who took placebos. Experts, though, agree that in people at high risk for heart disease, the increased diabetes risk is outweighed by the statin’s protection against heart attacks and deaths from any cause. The danger of muscle destruction from statins -- which can damage the liver and kidneys -- is also clear but slight. According to Thompson, about 1 in every 1,000 statin users will develop severely elevated levels of the enzyme creatine kinase, which indicates muscle death, and only 1 in 10 million die from developing an extremely severe case of the condition called rhabdomyolysis. Muscle aches are far more common: occuring in about 1 in 10 users, according to Thompson. “It seems to be more common in people who do a lot of exercise.” In fact, a study he conducted found that marathon runners taking statins developed a greater increase in creatine kinase right after their race compared with runners who weren’t on statins. “We also see more muscle aches in older people and women since they have less muscle mass,” he said. Lowering the statin dose or switching to a different statin doesn’t always help, Thompson said. “In our studies, those who develop statin myalgia tend to get it again and again; they’re body may get sensitized to statins.” There may also be a genetic component, with statin muscle aches occuring more often in those whose parents also had them. And there may be a link between memory loss and muscle aches. “In our database, the majority of patients who had cognitive problems also had muscle problems,” Golomb said. She recommends that those who are having memory loss or muscle aches speak to their doctor about going off statins -- especially if they’re not in a high-risk group for heart attacks. Those who get the most benefits are men under 65 who’ve already had a heart attack, she said. Women, elderly people, and those without heart disease get much smaller benefits from statins, and it’s unclear whether the drugs extend their lives. “Many patients have told me that their doctor said going off statins would kill them,” Golomb said, “but that’s not an accurate representation of the evidence.”

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Health board owed £130k for treatment of foreign nationals

FOREIGN nationals not entitled to free treatment are said to owe Swansea Bay's ABM University Health Board more than £130,000 — the second highest figure in Wales. According to figures obtained by the Welsh Conservatives, only Cardiff and Vale UHB is owed more, at just over £200,000. ​ Darren Millar AM The Welsh Government has now said it is looking at further measures to help health boards recoup their costs. Figures obtained by the Tories following a Freedom of Information request show the money owed to the NHS in Wales more than doubled between 2008 and 2011. Of the £380,000 that was unpaid, at least £199,311 is still outstanding to Wales's seven health boards, while a minimum of £185,700 was written off after bosses exhausted efforts to be reimbursed. Shadow Health Minister Darren Millar AM expressed concern at the figures, arguing the Welsh NHS was in no position to be owing substantial sums of money. He said: "There are strict guidelines in place for explaining details of charges to patients who are required to pay. "The Welsh Government should look carefully at how well these rules are followed. "Any money written off by the NHS is regrettable when budgets are being squeezed so hard. The big rise evident in these figures is of great concern." The figures show that, in 2008/09, £70,815 had not been paid back. In 2010/11 that had increased to £257,713. And the Tories also claim there was been a downward trend in the rate of collecting money owed, down from 71 per cent in 2008/09 to 43 per cent in 2010/11. Some treatments, such as medical emergencies at A&E or compulsory psychiatric care, remain free of charge for everyone in Wales — regardless of where they are from or how long they have lived in the country. Other procedures, which include non-life-threatening outpatient care, are supposed to be paid for by non-EU residents. But the process and guidelines are far from straightforward as some countries have signed healthcare agreements with the UK. This makes its citizens exempt from some charges. ABM officials could not be contacted for comment. A Welsh Government spokesman said: "All visitors to Wales requiring NHS treatment are assessed as to their eligibility for free NHS treatment. "All treatment received in an accident and emergency department is free to all. "We have issued clear guidance to NHS organisations which states that they should recover the cost of caring for overseas patients who are not entitled to free care. "We are looking at what further measures can be introduced to support NHS organisations recover costs."

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Spanish state will need outside help – or even go bankrupt.

 

If the negative development in the Spanish housing market continues, it can – worst case – lead to renewed concern over that the Spanish state will need outside help – or even go bankrupt. Banks might face several hundred billion Euros in losses on the Spanish real estate market. This will mean a recapitalization of the Spanish banks – capital that can only come from the Spanish state. Now there is nothing new in that; but what is interesting is the free admission of a need to nationalize the Spanish banks. If you glace at the graph you will see the Danish housing market has dropped between 22% and 30% from the top – time and actual drop depending on market segment. As Danske Bank is roughly half the Danish finance sector it is hard to escape the conclusion that Danske Bank is in at least as big trouble as the banks in one of the more notorious frivolous and irresponsible economies in Europe. Danske Bank will presumably peg their flag to the difference in unemployment figure (Spain hovers around 20%). True as that may be; but unemployment figures are notoriously difficult to compare between countries. Not only do criteria differ; but the criteria differs over time – according to political convenience. It is kind of discussing distress on board the Titanic: “It’s only your end that is under water! I’m fine!!” That is the nearest to a Freudian slip admission of life threatening financial distress we can expect from Danske Bank. But it is time to bust a few myths before they come too much of age – and be established as “truths” – and draw some conclusions. 1)    Looking at the graph again prices on condominiums/flats/apartments had begun to drop way before the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Two years in fact. That was more due to a temporary rise in interest rates that made the calculations of monthly payments  – even to the least lunatic bank manager – clearly unrealistic. 2)    Generally sales were falling from mid 2007 – I trust the reader is can see through the regular seasonal variation to distinguish the trend. 3)    The collapse of Lehman Brothers and the perhaps inept handling of the resulting Credit Default Swap disaster had indeed nothing to do with the much deeper issue of banking irresponsibility and incompetence. Alan Greenspan has been quoted for saying that what surprised him was that banks had not taken preventive measures in their own interest. The forces of the free market self-regulating controls do NOT apply in the financial sector. 4)    The next major meltdown – which clearly is underway (Spain will not be able to meet the budget target agreed upon by Rajoy) – will in essence have nothing to do with the Greek debacle. Greece was/is – all things considered – handled more effectively than the collapse of Lehman Brother. To be fair: There was more advance warning and the cacophony of idiotic optimism had been quenched by German lack of sentimentality. 5)    You can see the lack of linkage to the Greek situation by the fact that the Danish and Spanish drop in housing prices (and lack of trade) is simultaneous. Danish banks were not exposed to Greek sovereign debt to ANY appreciable extend. Furthermore Denmark has a reasonably healthy export which is more than can be said about Spain. Still a near similar and at least simultaneous price drop in Denmark and Spain points to a factor nobody has wished to mention: The banks of both countries are to all intents and purposes deceased and with no future without state ownership.

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Spain has been surprised at the magnitude of this property down slide. thinking thought it would be around 10 percent.

Home-owners in Spain received yet another blow when figures released by the National Statistics Institute (INE) show that house prices fell even further in the last quarter of 2011.

House prices in Spain have been in free-fall since the start of the economic crisis with the construction industry coming to a virtual standstill. The figures show that the price of new build properties dropped by 8.5 percent in the final quarter of 2011 compared to The equivalent period in 2010. Those trying to sell their used homes are suffering even further with a drop of 13.7 percent.Analysts are blaming the recession, unemployment and uncertainty about Spain's economy as major factors, according to a report in El Pais. Property expert Julio Gil said:

“We have been surprised at the magnitude of this down slide. We thought it would be around 10 percent.”

With more and more people defaulting on their mortgages, the banks are being left with huge stockpiles of homes that they can't sell, even at knock-down prices, whilst the immigrants from Northern European countries that helped create the property boom in Spain have all but disappeared. This is the worst quarterly drop since the INE started recording the statistic, with Madrid the worst affected region.

Stop Desahucios

Logo of action group aiming to help families facing eviction.

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The Wall Street Journal reports that Spanish banks now hold "more than €400 billion worth of loans to the construction and real estate sector, " an amount that is equivalent to 40 percent of gross domestic product for Spain. Early figures show that the price drop is continuing in this first quarter of 2012.The personal tragedies behind the stark figures are very sad. An action group, called 'Stop Desahucios', has been formed to try and stop people being forcibly evicted from their homes. With unemployment rising at an alarming rate, many more people are finding themselves unable to pay their mortgages and discover that the banks are less than sympathetic to their plight, despite the fact the banks are overloaded with properties they can't sell. The action group try everything to help the families and if that fails they literally stand in front of the homes preventing officials from getting in to evict the families, many of whom have small children.Many foreigners with homes in Spain, whether permanent or holiday, just hand in the keys to the bank and head home leaving huge debts behind them.What is certain is that property prices in Spain will continue to spiral downwards and it will be some years before the property market begins to recove

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/321327#ixzz1pOewnM7S

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Prosecutors charge Catholic nun in alleged stolen baby scheme at Madrid hospitals

A Catholic nun has been charged with being part of a child stealing operation that ran over four decades in Spain. Sister María Gómez Valbuena is the first person to be indicted in connection with the probe into more than 100 cases of babies snatched from hospitals between the 1950s and 1980s. She was subpoenaed to testify before investigators recently but refused to answer questions, according to sources at the Madrid prosecutor's office. Identity crisis: Randy Ryder as a baby being cradled in a Malaga hospital in 1971 by the woman who bought him Her name has surfaced in dozens of complaints filed by mothers who claim they were robbed of their babies after giving birth at San Ramón and Santa Cristina hospitals in Madrid. Sister María was the assistant to Dr Eduardo Vela Vela, whose name also appears in the complaints filed by mothers. Prosecutors have decided that there is sufficient evidence to file charges against Sister María in one case, based on a woman's testimony that her daughter was taken from her in 1982 after she gave birth at the Santa Cristina Hospital.   More... The doctor who broke up families: Psychiatrist who damned hundreds as 'unfit parents' faces GMC probe Is legend of St Patrick just a bit of blarney? He was a runaway tax collector turned slave trader, says expert The woman, identified as María Luisa, states that she was told that her baby had died at birth but claims she was actually given to another family. Shortly after giving birth, María Luisa saw an ad published in a magazine taken out by a nun — Sister María Gómez Valbuena — who offered her services to help single mothers. María Luisa was separated at the time and had another daughter. When she went to see her, María Luisa discovered that the nun was actually offering to take her daughter away to give to a family. Reunited: Randy Ryder with Manoli Pagador, who believes she may be his real mother The children were trafficked by a secret network of doctors, nurses, priests and nuns in a widespread practice that began during General Franco’s dictatorship and continued until the early Nineties. Hundreds of families who had babies taken from Spanish hospitals are now battling for an official government investigation into the scandal. Several mothers say they were told their first-born children had died during or soon after they gave birth. But the women, often young and unmarried, were told they could not see the body of the infant or attend their burial. In reality, the babies were sold to childless couples whose devout beliefs and financial security meant that they were seen as more appropriate parents. Official documents were forged so the adoptive parents’ names were on the infants’ birth certificates. In many cases it is believed they were unaware that the child they received had been stolen, as they were usually told the birth mother had given them up. Experts believe the cases may account for up to 15 per cent of the total adoptions that took place in Spain between 1960 and 1989. It began as a system for taking children away from families deemed politically dangerous to the regime of General Franco, which began in 1939. The system continued after the dictator’s death in 1975 as the Catholic church continued to retain a powerful influence on public life, particularly in social services. It was not until 1987 that the Spanish government, instead of hospitals, began to regulate adoptions. The scandal came to light after two men, Antonio Barroso and Juan Luis Moreno, discovered they had been stolen as babies. Mr Moreno’s ‘father’ confessed on his deathbed to having bought him as a baby from a priest in Zaragoza in northern Spain. He told his son he had been accompanied on the trip by Mr Barroso’s parents, who bought Antonio at the same time for 200,000 pesetas – a huge sum at the time. DNA tests have proved that the couple who brought up Mr Barroso were not his biological parents and the nun who sold him has admitted to doing so. When the pair made their case public, it prompted mothers all over the country to come forward with their own experiences of being told their babies had died, but never believing it. One such woman was Manoli Pagador, who has begun searching for her son. A BBC documentary, This World: Spain’s Stolen Babies, followed her efforts to discover if he is Randy Ryder, a stolen baby who was brought up in Texas and is now aged 40. In some cases, babies’ graves have been exhumed, revealing bones that belong to adults or animals. Some of the graves contained nothing at all.

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€500 REWARD is on offer to anyone who can provide information leading to the arrest of the people who broke into a Marbella clothing store.

 

€500 REWARD is on offer to anyone who can provide information leading to the arrest of the people who broke into a Marbella clothing store.

 

The incident took place at The Jeans Factory Outlet around 5.30am last Friday and around 600 pieces of clothing were stolen worth €45,000.

“My alarm company called me straight away,” said Dutch owner Roy Samshuyzen. At first Roy thought it might be a false alarm as was the case a few months ago.

“Looking at the camera system from home I could not see anything so I headed straight over, still in my pijamas.

When I arrived five minutes later there were around seven police cars already there with the alarm company.”

This would have given the three burglars less than three minutes after the alarm went off to make off with their bounty.

“Since the glass is 8mm thick, like that of a bank’s, the burglars must have rammed it with a truck with a metal bar on the front.” Although the glass was replaced that same afternoon, Roy estimates that it will take “between eight and nine weeks to recover the losses from the robbery.”

The Jeans Factory Outlet is located on the main road on the approeach to Marbella coming from Malaga direction, so Roy believes there is a “good possibility that someone saw something,” hence the reward offer.

Roy was surprised that the “gang ignored the expensive jeans including Ed Hardy, Tommy HiIlfinger and Guess and took around 35 pairs of Antony Morato jeans and pairs from his own brand that are sold exclusively in the store”.

Roy thinks this could be because the gang saw a security screen and cameras on the side of the shop were the more expensive items are kept, but the cameras cover the whole store.

CCTV footage clearly shows three men, one of them wearing a hood covering his face, grabbing as many clothes as they can.

Roy will be heading down to the various markets over the coming days to see if he can find any of the 600 pieces of clothes, which he says would have retailed at about €45,000.

“The frustrating thing is that since it will be on the black market they will only be sold for around €50 to €10 each. Roy is “fed-up” at the unfairness of the situation.

“We do everything by the book, do everything to protect yourself and then sh*t like this happens”.

“I am not worried about the robbery; the money or the damaged store front. All of these things can be taken care of through the insurance.

It is the future of Marbella and of the world I am worried about. I worry for my five-year-old son, what is the world going to be like when he grows up. What kinds of things will he have to deal with?"

Meanwhile, although Roy has never had his business broken into before, his Mercedes Benz car was stolen from outside the store last year.

He was “talking to two men inside the shop about buying a pair of jeans.”

One of them “slipped away and somehow he managed to get behind the store desk and take the car key off the ring".

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Shisha cafes should have prominent notices saying, “Smoking shisha can kill” - just like you would on a cigarette packet

 puffing on a Turkish waterpipe is the latest trend to hit British bars and cafes.

The flavoured tobacco, which is smoked via a long pipe connected to a vessel filled with water, is particularly fashionable among young people, with the number of specialist bars rising 210 per cent since 2007.

But the World Health Organisation has warned that a one-hour shisha session can be as harmful as smoking 100 cigarettes.

Trend: Zaky Ali ,40, owner of Marhaba Cafe in Birmingham, with a hookah pipe for smoking shisha, which is becoming more popular among the young. But experts warn it can do more damage than cigarettes because users take more puffs of smoke

This is because a cigarette smoker typically takes between eight and 12 puffs, inhaling 0.5 to 0.6 litres of smoke.

But during hour-long shisha sessions smokers may take up to 200 drags, ranging from 0.15 to 1 litre of smoke each. 

 

 

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• Britain's drink death capital: How more people die from alcohol in Sunderland than anywhere else

 

‘Shisha smoking is a growing concern because people aren’t aware of the risks like they are with cigarette smoking,’ says Professor Robert West, director of tobacco studies at University College London.

‘The greater the exposure in terms of duration and amount smoked, the greater the risk to your health’

That’s because although shisha tobacco tastes nicer than cigarettes, it contains all the same toxicants known to cause lung cancer and heart disease.

Risk: Smokers typically take in 12 puffs on a cigarette compared to up to 200 for hookah pipes

Among the risks are heart disease, respiratory problems, lung and mouth cancer and problems during pregnancy.

‘Smoke from tobacco contains a number of carcinogens which damage the DNA in cells,’ explains Professor West. ‘Just one damaged cell can divide and multiply uncontrollably and quite quickly develop into a large tumour. This is what causes lung cancer,’ explains Professor West

Enthusiasts claim that as the smoke passes through water most of the harmful chemicals are absorbed, however there is no evidence to support this.

‘If people think it’s safer than cigarettes, when it’s not, they need to be informed otherwise,’ said Professor West.

There are other risks. As the mouthpiece is passed around from person to person, this raises the risk of transmitting diseases such as tuberculosis and hepatitis.

The waterpipe has been used to smoke tobacco for centuries, primarily in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

A rise in travel to countries such as Egypt and Turkey has seen the pipe transported to the UK.

The waterpipe is heavily sold as a souvenir, and is popular with tourists who like to take it back home as a gift or decorative object.

The waterpipe can also be purchased in various shops in London for as little as £20, with shisha tobacco costing £5-£10.

The tobacco is burned with charcoal in a bowl that sits above the vessel.

The smoke it produces passes through the water in the container and goes down the pipe so the user can sit by the vessel and an inhale it with their mouth. 

Middle Eastern inspired: A shisha user in Iraq, the pipe's traditional home

The smoke is cooled by the water and makes it feel less ‘harsh’ - and experts warn that as a result people inhale it more deeply into their lungs, which increases the risks even further.

Shisha tobacco is flavoured with fruit molasses such as apple and strawberry, so the residual redolent smoke is sweet.

Because it doesn’t taste like a cigarette, people often think of it as being safer or better. Many young people who don’t usually smoke are attracted to this seemingly harmless activity.

It’s also a cheaper option than buying a round at the pub. One shisha usually costs between £7-£20, and is often shared by two or three people throughout an evening.

In the borough of Westminster, London, the number of shisha cafes have gone up approximately by 68 per cent since 2007.

The smoking ban hasn’t stopped this trend from growing. Restaurant and café owners offering shisha have been able to flout the ban by creating garden terraces or patio seating outdoors.

But as the weather gets warmer, and shisha becomes more and more fashionable, experts are calling for better health warnings.

Professor West suggests: ‘Shisha cafes should have prominent notices saying, “Smoking shisha can kill” - just like you would on a cigarette packet.’

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Having a cocaine binge at the weekend followed by three or four diazepam to get to sleep on Sunday messes up the brain's chemistry

 

Having a cocaine binge at the weekend followed by three or four diazepam to get to sleep on Sunday messes up the brain's chemistry, a consultant psychiatrist says.Many people who use drugs recreationally also take prescription medicines such as tranquillisers, sleeping pills and painkillers to deal with the effects of a weekend high and get back to work on Monday, new research reveals. An international survey carried out by the Guardian and Mixmag magazine found that about a third of the 7,700 people from the UK who revealed their illegal drug use also took prescription sleeping pills – 22.4% had taken benzodiazepines such as temazepam in the last year and 7.2% had taken the newer "z-drugs" – zopiclone and zolpidem. Those taking part in the survey were predominantly well-educated working people who felt they were in control of their lives. But Dr Richard Bowskill, consultant psychiatrist and medical director of the Priory rehabilitation centre in Brighton, said he saw the fallout years later from this pattern of illegal and prescription drug-taking among "highly functioning" clients. "People think they are being their own pharmacist. They have a major binge of cocaine over the weekend and three or four diazepam to get to sleep on Sunday night. They think they understand what it is doing to their body and they think they are in control, but their brain chemistry is getting messed up," he said. "They know the effects of the drug. It's often being used following cocaine to self-medicate for the downswing and it causes chaos. It's a really common scenario. Then they can't get to sleep on Monday and they take some more sleeping tablets." While recreational drug users think prescription medicines are safe, because GPs hand them out and the tablets are what they purport to be, benzodiazepines and opioid painkillers are highly addictive if taken regularly for any length of time. Anna, who had a high-pressured job requiring her to make frequent long-haul flights, was not a recreational drug taker but started taking zopiclone to help her sleep on the plane or when she arrived in a different time zone and needed to be fresh for work in the morning. "Your body gets accustomed to the drugs. I didn't really understand their addictive nature," she said. "They weren't having an effect so I was having to up the dosage." She ended up taking five tablets at a time, but they just made her more anxious, irritable and sleepless. "I lost a lot of friends." She talked of the societal "pressure to perform" and her regret that there was so little help. GPs did not want to know, she said. With the help of the Council for Information on Tranquillisers, Antidepressants and Painkillers (CITA), a support group, she had been switched to a different drug and was slowly cutting down. Against expectations, most people in the Guardian/Mixmag survey did not get their prescription drugs from the internet, but from their own GP or a friend who had been prescribed them. GPs were in a bind, said Dr Peter Swinyard, national chairman of the Family Doctor Association. When people arrived in the surgery complaining of pain or insomnia "we are predisposed to believe what people tell us", he said. "We always work from the premise that they are being honest with us." Nonetheless, a survey the association did last summer showed that 52% of GPs were worried about prescription drug abuse in their area. Eight out of 10 of the 197 GPs who responded to the survey said they were aware of prescribing to people who they thought were addicted. Half were aware of occasions when prescriptions had been sold on. "People tell us they lose their prescription or it got eaten by the dog. A lot of general practices have systems like a book at reception recording those who say they have lost their prescription," Swinyard said. But there are people who GPs would not characterise as liars or cheats. "There is the traditional little old lady who is taking her sleeping pill prescription and selling it down the pub. I'm sure there is a cohort of elderly people supplementing their pension by selling their prescription drugs," he said. Although the Guardian/Mixmag survey responders mostly said they used sleeping tablets for sleep and painkillers for pain, they had often tried them to get high – 57.8% in the case of the anti-hyperactivity drug Ritalin, nearly 40% in the case of the benzos and 28% who had taken opioid painkillers. In the US, prescription opioids have caused a huge problem since oxycodone – better known by its brand name OxyContin – was licensed for use outside cancer treatment in the mid-1990s. In 2008, 15,000 Americans died from overdosing on prescription opiates, according to the Centres for Disease Control (CDC), which is more than on heroin and cocaine combined. The opioid epidemic appears not to have hit the UK. "There has been a rise in oxycodone deaths, but it is pretty small," said James Bell, addiction consultant at the South London and Maudsley NHS trust. "I have been trying to look for evidence here and it is not a big problem." Demand was fuelled in the US by direct advertising to the public. In the UK this is not allowed and most people are registered with a single NHS GP so cannot shop around. The Guardian/Mixmag study, which was conducted by Global Drug Survey, shows that a quarter of responders had taken prescription opioid painkillers and 9% had taken other painkillers. More than three-quarters said they took them for pain relief, 24% said they took them to get to sleep and 18% said they took them for mood-changing purposes.

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Police plans to fire rubber bullets in London

 

Scotland Yard authorised the deployment of rubber bullets ready for use on the streets of London 22 times in the past two years, The Independent can reveal. The figure suggests the Metropolitan Police had considered ordering its officers to open fire during public disorder incidents far more frequently than previously thought. The Yard yesterday refused to say on what dates and during which situations it ordered some of the nearly 3,000 baton rounds it possesses to be distributed to firearms teams. It said the release of such information could endanger future policing operations. The revelation that the Met authorised the distribution of the non-lethal rounds on average almost once a month in 2010 and 2011 follows the disclosure earlier this week that senior officers wanted to fire rubber bullets at rioters in south London last summer – but firearms specialists could not reach the trouble spots in time. The Met has now promised to make "more agile use" of the weapons. Although they have been used in Northern Ireland for many years, baton rounds have never been fired on the British mainland. Even in the extreme circumstances of last August's riots their use would have been seen as a significant escalation in police tactics and a move away from Britain's consensual policing model. The figures, obtained by the Liberal Democrat peer Dee Doocey, are an indication of an increasingly muscular response to what police believe is the increased threat to officers and the public from gangs or individuals bent on violent disorder. But campaigners argue that the use of non-lethal firearms in crowd control has no place in policing on the British mainland. The Yard was criticised last year when it released a statement saying that baton rounds – referred to by police as attenuating energy projectiles (AEPs) – might be deployed if extreme disorder occurred during a protest in London against tuition fees. In a written answer to a question last month from Baroness Doocey, the London Mayor, Boris Johnson, confirmed on behalf of the Met Commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, that the force had "authorised the movement" of rubber bullets 22 times in 2010 and 2011. But he said details of the incidents would only be given under conditions of secrecy because, if made public, they could compromise future operations. Lady Doocey, a member of the Greater London Authority and the Metropolitan Police Authority until it was replaced with a new body in January, said the disclosure of the precise dates was in the public interest. She told The Independent: "I have long believed rubber bullets have no role in policing demonstrations in London. This secrecy over their potential use merely confirms that view. It is simply wrong for the Met to be silent when on so many occasions the use of rubber bullets was being considered." Rubber bullets are designed to offer a non-lethal alternative to conventional firearms and police argue modern AEPs pose less threat of serious injury. Between 2006 and October 2011, the Met Police bought 2,700 AEP rounds. It said it could not produce figures for baton round deployments in previous years, adding that it followed strict guidelines designed to protect life and prevent serious injury. Opinion about rubber bullets remains divided within police ranks. A Met Police review of last summer's riots revealed officers dealing with violence in Enfield and Brixton decided against deploying the weapons because they believed it would escalate the confrontation. During the rioting, Sir Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said he did not consider the deployment of rubber bullets in London to be sensible in "any way, shape or form".

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Spain Approves Canary Islands Oil Exploration

The Spanish government approved Friday a controversial permit to explore for oil offshore the Canary Islands, in an area that could become by far the largest source of oil production in a country heavily dependent on crude imports. Approval of an exploration license marks the latest move in Spain's shift away from a policy of subsidy-dependent renewable energy projects as it seeks ways to improve its trade balance and steady its budget, but will likely face opposition from environmentalists and local government officials concerned about the threat of damage to the island's tourist-friendly, white-sand beaches.

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Spain's public debt soars to record high

Spain's public debt soared to a record high at the end of 2011, Bank of Spain figures showed Friday, as Madrid struggled to slash costs and escape the eurozone debt crisis. Public debt amounted to 734.96 billion euros ($960 billion), equal to 68.5 percent of annual economic output at the end of 2011 -- up from 66 percent three months earlier and 61.2 percent at the end of 2010. The accumulated debts breached the European-Union agreed limit of 60 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) but was still below the eurozone average, which approached 90 percent in the third quarter last year. It was the highest public debt ratio recorded in Spain since statistics in the current format were first published in 1995. Spain's public debt is rising fast because of runaway annual public deficits that have shot past EU-agreed targets, in part owing to high spending by regional governments. The previous Socialist government, ousted by the conservative Popular Party in November elections, had forecast a debt of 67.2 of GDP for the end of 2011, aiming to curb it to less than 70 percent in 2014. But the European statistics unit Eurostat was not so optimistic. It forecast a public debt of 69.6 percent in 2011, 73.8 percent in 2012 and 78 percent in 2013. Spain's conservative government, which took power in December, has yet to announce a new public debt target. The public debt ratio has grown without interruption since the first quarter of 2008 when, after nearly a decade of fast growth and budget surpluses, which trimmed the debt, it amounted to 35.8 percent of GDP. The situation in the 17 regions is particularly worrying: at the end of 2011 their accumulated debt rose to 140.1 billion euros, or a record 13.1 percent of national GDP, from 11.4 percent a year earlier. Municipal debts, however, eased over the year to 35.4 billion euros or 3.3 percent of GDP. Regional governments enjoy a high level of autonomy, prompting concerns in financial markets that their spending could compromise the central government's deficit-cutting goals. Spain had agreed to cut its annual public deficit to 6.0 percent of GDP in 2011 but it overran that target by a wide margin and ended up reporting a deficit of 8.51 percent of GDP. After winning a slight relaxation from Brussels in its goals for this year, Spain is now aiming for an annual deficit of 5.3 percent in 2012 and 3.0 percent in 2013. But the regions are not entirely to blame. The central government's finances also deteriorated in 2011, as its public debt rose to 52.1 percent of GDP at the end of the year from 46.4 percent a year earlier.

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Cadíz second bridge delayed until at least 2013

The Ministry for Development has announced a delay in the opening of the second road bridge into Cádiz which will now not be open to traffic until 2013. Minister, Ana Pastor, said that not with all the money in the world could a 2012 opening be achieved. 2012 was the target date so that it coincided with the bicentenary of the 1812 Spanish Constitution which was signed in the city on March 19 1812. The General Courts of Spain were transferred there while in refuge from the Peninsular War. The Minister added, ‘It will take at least another 15 months, and that only if there is no wind’. The Ministry of Development says the suspension bridge is now 75% complete, but a fundamental part of the project, linking to the 13 pivot bases which are already showing in the middle of the Cádiz Bay is still to be done. The bridge is the largest road infrastructure project in Spain and has a cost of about 300 million € and will link Cádiz with Puerto Real. It will be known as the Puente de la Constitución de 1812, and not the ‘Puente de la Pepa’ which was the name given by the previous Minister, Magdalena Álvarez.

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Place your bets on Euro Vegas

IT MAY just be the single largest contrarian bet in the euro zone. Sheldon Adelson, a casino tycoon, is expected soon to choose between Madrid and Barcelona for a €16 billion ($21 billion) gambling resort. The euro-zone turmoil does not faze him: “It will take us four to five years,” he told Forbes magazine. “By then everything will be solved.” Mr Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands (LVS) hopes to create a “Euro Vegas”, capable of attracting the 1 billion people who live in the 50 countries within a five-hour flight from Spain. He chose the country because of the weather and because its unemployment rate, now at 23%, “assures us the support of the government”. The numbers are certainly eye-popping. LVS would invest €6 billion in a first phase to build four hotel strips—eventually reaching 12—as well as casinos, shops, restaurants, golf courses and convention centres. LVS says the project could create 260,000 indirect and direct jobs, enough for nearly half the unemployed in Madrid. Spain is already the fourth-largest holiday destination in the world, but LVS reckons Euro Vegas would attract 11m new tourists on top of the 57m a year Spain already gets, increasing tourism spending by €15.5 billion over the next ten to 15 years. In this section News of the world Good for you, not for shareholders Zimplats happens Watch this space »Place your bets on Euro Vegas Luxury on the cheap Nazis in space The view from Liverpool Reprints Related topics Gambling Barcelona Madrid Spain Madrid and Barcelona, used to battling it out on the football pitch, have won a promise of neutrality from the central government. Barcelona admits that Madrid has the edge so far, since it has been talking to Mr Adelson on and off since 2007. But Barcelona has not given up. Mr Adelson recently visited a beach-front site near the city’s El Prat airport, which like Madrid’s Barajas has plenty of spare capacity. National and local leaders are keen on the project but opponents are sceptical of LVS’s claims about job creation, and worry that the casino will become a “fiscal and legal paradise” of tax breaks and exemptions from labour laws—a charge which regional officials deny. However, LVS is thought to be seeking a relaxation of Spain’s ban on smoking in public places, and lower gambling levies. Whichever city won would also have to bear the cost of such things as transport links to the resort. Given Spain’s precarious public finances, and considering that, as Mr Adelson puts it, there are “tens of billions to be made” from the resort, the authorities ought to resist any temptation to splash out taxpayers’ money to win the deal. They will have to assuage public fears of encouraging gambling addiction, infiltration by organised crime and the environmental impact of such a giant construction project. As in Singapore, where LVS recently opened a big casino resort, Spanish officials play down gambling as a small part of the overall package. Another worry is that the project will not happen at all. Spain has had its share of unrealised property developments. A €17 billion casino complex in the desert of Aragon, proposed in 2007, remains unbuilt. But LVS has withstood the global downturn pretty well, and the success of its Macao and Singapore operations gives it plenty of financial firepower. LVS boasts that its Marina Bay Sands development has “moved the needle” in Singapore, with record tourism figures one year after its opening. Euro Vegas would be much larger. A casino resort may lack the prestige of, say, a technology cluster, but Spain will have to take a few gambles to get its soaring unemployment under control.

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55 security guards arrested with fake qualifications

 

55 false security guards working in sensitive positions have been arrested in Madrid, Toledo, Cuenca and Badajoz. The National Police arrested the 55 who have all be established to have been working fraudulently, and some with jobs looking after explosives or acting as bodyguards. A statement from the National Police said those arrested lacked the necessary preparation for the work and were employed because of falsified qualifications. Some of them have a previous criminal record.

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The Spanish Government is to increase the tax on diesel vehicles

 

The Spanish Government has revealed that it wants to increase the tax on diesel vehicles because they ‘contaminate more’. The change will be a modification on the vehicle matriculation tax. The Secretary of State for the Environment, Federico Ramos, gave the news after meeting with the environment experts and said that in principle the regional administrations are in agreement. The local City and Town Halls say they now want to first analyse the financial consequences for them. Diesel vehicles not only pollute with CO2 but also emit Nitrogen Dioxide, and particles in suspension.

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The ex Mayor of Alcaucín in Málaga, José Manuel Martin Alba, who was arrested for a second time with seven other people

The ex Mayor of Alcaucín in Málaga, José Manuel Martin Alba, who was arrested for a second time with seven other people on Tuesday in the ‘Tristan case’, which comes from the ‘Arcos operation’, made a statement on Wednesday to the investigators of the UCO central operations unit of the Guardia Civil. La Opinión de Málaga reports that he denied knowing the land registry civil servants that he allegedly manipulated with false data to obtain the classification of building land. These plots were often purchased by foreign investors with the idea of building on them. However, the Guardia Civil has said that the land was not buildable and therefore a crime of fraud had taken place, and this part of the investigation is still under reporting restrictions. The declarations continue from the arrested civil servants from the land registry, some in payments, others in Hacienda, as well as three management auxiliaries. The Guardia Civil says that the civil servants, ‘coordinated by a lawyer, modified the data base of the land registry with the end of introducing the false information to give legal coverage to the construction of homes on non-buildable land. The Guardia Civil contends that in exchange they received illegal commissions. Rafael Yus from the Nature Studies Group GENA said that he was not surprised by the ex-Mayor’s new arrest. He said the modification to the land registry was ‘part of what they do here’ and claimed it was ‘a corruption which extends to other municipalities, but which it difficult to demonstrate’.

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Card firm in breast implant refund

 

A Midlands woman who was given PIP breast implants that ruptured has recouped the full cost of the surgery from her credit card company. She said Lloyds TSB refunded her £3,700 on the grounds that she was sold faulty goods. The British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS) said the move should offer a "ray of hope" to other patients with PIP implants. The woman, a hairdresser in her 40s from the Midlands who does not want to be identified, underwent a breast enlargement operation in 2008. She discovered she had been given PIP implants last September when she found a lump and went to a breast cancer clinic. "I was quite worried, but I was told it was just a rupture of my implants. It was only later I realised there was a health risk. I was really quite poorly with it," she said. The woman had the implants removed on the NHS in October, and contacted a firm of solicitors to see if she could get her money back. Because the company that performed the surgery had gone into administration, she was advised to check if she paid by credit card. Having discovered that she did use plastic to pay for the procedure, she applied to Lloyds TSB for a refund and received the money in full three months later. The woman said the credit card company were "wonderful" and stressed that she only had to fill in one form to get the reimbursement. "If I had gone through the solicitors they would have taken a sizeable part of it. Women need to be aware they can easily do it themselves," she said. Fazel Fatah, a consultant plastic surgeon and president of BAAPS, said: "We're delighted that at least a proportion of women who chose this method of payment should now have recourse to securing reimbursement for what are clearly defective, substandard goods." Around 40,000 women in the UK received implants manufactured by the now-closed French company Poly Implant Prostheses (PIP), mostly in private UK clinics. The implants were filled with non-medical grade silicone intended for use in mattresses. Lloyds TSB said it could not comment on the woman's individual case. But a spokeswoman for the bank said: "One of the advantages of using a credit card to pay for goods and services is that consumers can make a Section 75 claim if there has been a misrepresentation or breach of contract, providing the cost is above £100 and less than £30,000. Every Section 75 claim is different and each one will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis."

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Troubled Spain, Portugal now desperate for rain

 

Fernando Luna, a burly Spanish farmer, yanks a barley sprout from a field as dry as powder. He examines its roots, which are mostly dead, then tosses the stunted shoot away in disgust. "Worthless! This is worthless!" Luna shouts. Spain is facing its driest winter in more than 70 years and bailed-out Portugal next door is in similar straits. Thousands of jobs and many millions in agricultural output are in jeopardy. Both nations are desperately short of so much: tax revenues, bank credit, jobs, hope for the future. Now, it won't even rain. The landscape in northern Spain is now a palette in shades of ugly. Pale brown fields without crops or pasture stretch off into the distance. A pond for watering sheep has shriveled into a dustbowl. An irrigation canal down the road holds only stagnant water, murky from so much sediment and so little flow. Luna waves this way and that, distraught over fields he says are doomed to yield zero harvest. He has given up his winter crop for lost. "Imagine, the color of vinegar! They should be green, green, green," he says of the barley fields that lack shoots. Stalks should be reaching halfway up the shin at this point. Spain got less than 30 percent of its normal precipitation from December through February. There is a slim window of 10 days or so for it to rain and help farmers like Luna salvage at least part of their winter crops of wheat, barley and oats. And not all regions are as bad off as Huesca, a northern province where the Pyrenees lie and where Luna is president of a chapter of the ASAJA farmers association. But the March weather forecast is not good for farmers — just more blue skies, says Fermin Elizaga of the national weather service. "Out in the countryside, the situation is probably going to get worse," he says. A key concern is how full Spain's reservoirs will be for watering the lucrative fruit and vegetable crops that are the pride and joy of the country's euro40 billion ($52 billion) agriculture and livestock industry. Nationwide, reservoirs are at an average 62 percent of capacity — not that bad — but in Huesca they are just 20 percent. That means farmers get only 20 percent of the water they are normally allotted for irrigation and will have to leave much of their land idle. ASAJA estimates this will cost Huesca province around euro1.3 billion ($1.7 billion) in lost revenue from drastically smaller harvests of peaches, cherries, almonds and grapes. In a good year, 6,000 people work in the Huesca harvest and another 2,000 in canning, packaging and related services. It could be a lean year for them, as it will be for much of Spain, with its nearly 23 percent jobless rate — the highest in the 17-nation eurozone — and an economy expected to slip into its second recession in three years. In Galicia, Spain's lushly green northwestern corner where it usually rains all the time, pastures have no grass this year. Farmers there and elsewhere are being forced to ship in fodder for sheep and cattle at a cost of euro2 million ($2.6 million) a day, according to ASAJA national spokesman Gregorio Juarez. "They're all burned up," says Juarez. Being so used to plentiful rain, Galicia and other parts of northern Spain have fewer reservoirs, so they are less prepared than the often blazingly hot south, where places like Andalusia and Extremadura on the border with Portugal catch every drop of precious rain. In Huesca, one reservoir built in the 1950s is now so low you can see the ruins of a submerged village, Mediano. At the best of times, the tip of its 16th-century church belltower peeks out of the water and boaters row up and touch it. These days, the water is so low you could walk into the church itself if the front door were not sealed up. In Portugal, Joao Dinis, a spokesman for Portugal's National Farms Confederation, said the drought has added to hardships caused by the country's acute financial crisis, which forced it to ask for a euro78 billion ($102 billion) bailout last year, making credit scarce. Farmers are enduring "a very, very difficult" period, with cereal crops badly hit and grazing land in short supply. "It's the worst situation in living memory," Dinis said. He says Portuguese farmers need emergency aid of euro25 million ($33 million). The Farm Ministry is calculating the damages and negotiating exceptional grants for farmers with the European Union. In Robres, a speck of a village in Huesca, barley farmer Jose Manuel Allue is taking the rare step of watering his crop, grains like wheat and barley that are normally fed by rain alone. And he is blowing his entire irrigation quota in just two days, using 6-foot-high (2-meter) sprinklers to soak a piece of land as big as 40 football fields. The pole-like devices shower water with a pleasant, rhythmic spritzing sound. "After that is gone, it is just a matter of looking to the sky and hoping," Allue said, taking long drags on a strong, thick Spanish cigarette as the earthy smell of a pig farm wafts by. Seconds later, something does appear in the sky, but it's not clouds: three water-dumping fire planes returning from a mission further north. Forest fires — a staple of Spanish summers — have broken out in recent weeks because of the dry conditions, awfully early in the year for such blazes. Ditto for Portugal. Allue checks the weather forecast on the Internet or TV first thing each morning and hears talk of little else at the town tavern, but he has a herd of 1,100 pigs to tide him over if his barley crop proves worthless. Juarez, of ASAJA's Madrid office, says a drought is the last thing Spain needs now on top of its economic distress. He used a Spanish adage that when a stray dog is emaciated and mangy, it probably has other problems too. "For a skinny dog, it's all fleas," he says. Translation: When it rains, it pours.

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