Manufacturers of scented detergents, laundry sheets and air fresheners aren’t required to list all of their ingredients on their labels—or anywhere else. But many of these common household items contain potentially dangerous chemicals, a University of Washington study has found.
UW engineering professor Anne Steinemann’s analysis of some of these popular items found 100 different volatile organic compounds measuring 300 parts per billion or more—some of which can be cancerous or cause harm to respiratory, reproductive, neurological and other organ systems.
Some chemicals are categorized as hazardous or toxic by federal regulatory agencies. But the labels tell a different story, naming only innocuous-sounding “perfume” or “biodegradable” contents.
Industry representatives have denied their products are unsafe.
But tests that Steinemann ordered of dryer sheets, fabric softeners, detergents and air fresheners showed that 10 of the 100 volatile organic compounds identified qualified under federal rules as toxic or hazardous.
Man cuts off own head with chainsaw after flat is earmarked to be bulldozed by developers
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 3:00 PM on 14th July 2008
A ‘vulnerable’ man cut off his own head with a chainsaw after being ordered to move out of his home to make way for developers, police believe.
David Phyall’s severed head was found beside the power tool inside his housing association flat shortly after receiving his eviction notice.
Detectives were today investigating the possibility that the 58-year-old killed himself rather than leave his home of eight years.
Grisly: David Phyall’s body and severed head were found in his flat, above
He was the last resident living on an estate earmarked for demolition. All 71 surrounding flats were empty.
Paramedics and police made the gruesome find after receiving a 999 call.
An inquest is now being carried out into the exact cause of death and what had happened to Mr Phyall, described as ‘vulnerable’, beforehand.
It is understood police are not treating his death as suspicious.
Mr Phyall had lived in his flat at Bishopstoke in Eastleigh, Eastley, Hants, since 2000 and was fighting to stay there despite plans to bulldoze the entire area and rebuild it.
Many flats had already been boarded up.
Mr Phyall rented the property from Atlantic Housing Ltd.
He had been unhappy since the plans to level the flats and rebuild them were passed in 2006.
It is thought that he may have even been served with an eviction notice issued through the courts shortly before his death.
An inquest opened and adjourned by deputy central Hampshire coroner Simon Burge.
It listed the possible cause of death of Mr Phyall as ‘complete transaction of the neck’ and ‘chainsaw wound to the neck.’
An ambulance service spokesman said: ‘We were called to an address in Bishopstoke to reports to a “concerns for welfare.”
‘A rapid response vehicle attended and a search found a patient had sustained serious injuries.’
Ron Turtle, chairman of the Stoke Residents’ Association, said there was one tenant left whom he believed to be a disabled man who rented a ground-floor flat from Atlantic Housing.
He said: ‘They had offered him several places that were similar but he just didn’t want to move. In the end they had to go to court.’
Lib Dem Bishopstoke Parish Council chairman Anne Winstanley said: ‘The last I heard they were still negotiating with him to try to provide what he required to move into as an alternative.
‘It sounds very tragic for whatever the reason he met his death.’
Councillor Winstanley added that Bodmin Road had become a target for vandalism and nuisance behaviour in recent months.
The flats are thought to have been built in the 1960s but Atlantic Housing had revealed it would cost them more to repair than rebuild.
Southampton building firm Drew Smith were awarded a 7.8m pounds contract to design and build 54 replacement flats and 24 houses.
Three of the flats at Bodmin Road had been purchased by tenants under the right to buy but were repurchased by Atlantic Housing to enable the redevelopment to take place.
By Polly Dunbar | Last updated at 10:38 PM on 28th June 2008 | London Mail
Pot-holed roads, crumbling schools, litter-strewn streets – there’s no shortage of problem areas crying out for their attention.
But councils believe they have found a better use for their money: reducing the number of holes in chip shop salt shakers.
Research has suggested that slashing the holes from the traditional 17 to five could cut the amount people sprinkle on their food by more than half.
Trickle or Treat: Chip shop owner Carol Ackerman shows off an old 17-hole shaker and the new model
And so at least six councils have ordered five-hole shakers – at taxpayers’ expense – and begun giving them away to chip shops and takeaways in their areas.
Leading the way has been Gateshead Council, which spent 15 days researching the subject of salty takeaways before declaring the new five-hole cellars the solution.
Officers collected information from businesses, obtained samples of fish and chips, measured salt content and ‘carried out experiments to determine how the problem of excessive salt being dispensed could be overcome by design’.
They decided that the five-hole pots would reduce the amount of salt being used by more than 60 per cent yet give a ‘visually acceptable sprinkling’ that would satisfy the customer.
The council commissioned Drywite Ltd – a catering equipment company based in the West Midlands – to make five-hole shakers and bought 1,000 of them at a cost of £2,000, giving them away to fast-food outlets in their areas.
Drywite confirms that it has since received orders for the shakers from at least five other councils, including Rochdale Borough in Greater Manchester.
Another giving the shakers away is Labour-controlled Middlesbrough Council, where the idea has run into fierce criticism.
Cllr Chris Hobson, leader of the Conservatives, said: ‘This is just silly, a total waste of money in an area where council tax is very high. I’m all for good health but do they really think they are going to stop people using as much salt simply by putting fewer holes in thecellar? They’ll just shake it for longer.’
Beryl Scott, who owns the Chipchase Chippy in Linthorpe in the city, said a council worker had visited the previous week to explain the merits of less salty fish and chips. ‘He said he had a salt cellar with five holes to give me free.
I thought it was a joke. It doesn’t matter how many holes it has, people are going to put on as much salt as they want.’
Another local chip shop owner, Carol Ackerman, who runs Carol’s Plaice in the suburb of Acklam, said: ‘People will just put on more salt if they want more.
‘In fact, we have had some people unscrewing the lids to do so.’
Gateshead Council defended its decision. A spokesman said: ‘Research carried out by us discovered customers were often receiving huge quantities of salt with their fish and chips – up to half their daily allowance. The council was so disturbed it decided to commission a manufacturer to produce a salt shaker with fewer holes, which it distributed free to every fish and chip shop and hot food takeaway in Gateshead.
‘We believe the cost to be a small price to pay for potentially saving lives.’
The scheme is being promoted by the Local Authorities Coordinators of Regulatory Services, which is responsible for ensuring councils follow food hygiene rules. A spokesman said: ‘Heart disease costs taxpayers £7billion a year so to say that projects such as this are a waste of money is mind-boggling.’
The move against the fundraising exceptions for wealthy candidates is the latest blow to McCain-Feingold reforms.
By Warren Richey | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the June 27, 2008 edition
WASHINGTON – The US Supreme Court on Thursday struck down the so-called “millionaire’s amendment” of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, saying it violated free-speech protections.
In a 5-to-4 ruling, the high court said Congress cannot use federal election laws to disadvantage candidates who choose to use their own money to run for a seat in Congress.
The idea behind the law was to prevent a wealthy candidate from using massive personal spending in a campaign to drown out the voices of other candidates. It was also intended to counter the impression that seats in Congress can be purchased.
“The unprecedented step of imposing different contribution and coordinated party expenditure limits on candidates vying for the same seat is antithetical to the First Amendment,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion.
“The Constitution … confers upon voters, not Congress, the power to choose the members of the House of Representatives,” Justice Alito wrote. “It is a dangerous business for Congress to use the election laws to influence the voters’ choices.”
The ruling in Davis v. Federal Election Commission (07-320) marks the second time in as many years that the high court has invalidated a portion of the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA).
The measure at issue, Section 319 of BCRA, was aimed at leveling the playing field between candidates with access to personal wealth and those relying on campaign contributions from others.
Section 319 requires congressional candidates who are self-financing their campaigns to abide by stringent finance reporting requirements that don’t apply to other candidates. In addition, once a candidate’s personal spending in a House race crosses a $350,000 threshold, contribution limits are relaxed for all other candidates in the same race.
The other candidates may accept three times the usual $2,300 limit from individual contributors and receive unlimited coordinated expenditures from political parties. The self-financed candidate, meanwhile, must continue to abide by the lower contribution limits.
“We have never upheld the constitutionality of a law that imposes different contribution limits for candidates who are competing against each other,” Alito wrote. “This scheme impermissibly burdens [a self-financed candidate’s] First Amendment right to spend his own money for campaign speech.”
In a dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said the millionaire’s amendment does not impose any burden on a self-funded candidate’s freedom to speak, it merely helps others to speak. “The Millionaire’s Amendment represents a modest, sensible, and plainly constitutional attempt by Congress to minimize the advantages enjoyed by wealthy candidates,” Justice Stevens wrote.
The decision stems from a lawsuit filed by Jack Davis, a wealthy upstate New York businessman who twice ran unsuccessful campaigns to represent New York’s 26th congressional district. Mr. Davis, a Democrat, has announced he is running again for the same seat in 2008.
In all three of his campaigns, Davis pledged to pay his own campaign bills rather than seek support from special-interest groups. In 2004, he spent $1.26 million of his own money. In 2006, he lost the election by four percentage points after spending $2.27 million.
In contrast, Davis’s opponent in 2006, Rep. Thomas Reynolds, a four-term Republican, spent $5.1 million. That total included a $1.15 million war chest that existed at the start of the 2006 campaign cycle. In addition, Mr. Reynolds was chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), the party’s campaign organization.
Despite these advantages, incumbent Reynolds is the one who qualified under the millionaire’s amendment for campaign-finance-law exemptions that could have yielded him an additional $1.46 million in multiple contributions. In addition, he could have received support from the NRCC.
Reynolds did not exercise his right to accept the extra funds because he didn’t need to. He had plenty of donors willing to help him win reelection.
In striking down the law, the majority justices said the campaign-finance laws are designed to eliminate corruption or the appearance of corruption in the political system by limiting the role of money. But Section 319 seems to jettison this goal, they said, by increasing contribution limits for candidates who accept outside donations.
In his dissent, Stevens said combating corruption or the appearance of corruption isn’t the only government interest at stake in the nation’s campaign-finance laws. He said the government also has an interest in reducing the influence of wealth on election victories and the appearance that wealth alone dictates those results.
“The Millionaire’s Amendment quiets no speech at all,” Stevens wrote. “On the contrary, it does no more than assist the opponent of a self-funding candidate in his attempts to make his voice heard.”
Stevens added, “This amplification in no way mutes the voice of the millionaire, who remains able to speak as loud and as long as he likes in support of his campaign.”
Alito said it is not for Congress to try to stage-manage the way a campaign takes place. “Different candidates have different strengths. Some are wealthy; others have wealthy supporters who are willing to make large contributions,” he wrote. “Some are celebrities; some have the benefit of a well-known family name.”
“Leveling electoral opportunities means making and implementing judgments about which strengths should be permitted to contribute to the outcome of an election,” Alito wrote.
Alito’s majority decision was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, and Clarence Thomas. In addition to Stevens, Justices David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer dissented.
I felt very sorry and bad for you, that your life is going to end like this if you don’t comply, i was paid to eliminate you and I have to do it within 10 days.
Someone you call your friend wants you dead by all means, and the person have spent a lot of money on this, the person came to us and told us that he wants you dead and he provided us your names, photograph and other necessary information we needed about you. If you are in doubt with this I will send you your name and where you are residing in my next mail.
Meanwhile, I have sent my boys to track you down and they have carried out the necessary investigation needed for the operation, but I ordered them to stop for a while and not to strike immediately because I just felt something good and sympathetic about you. I decided to contact you first and know why somebody will want you dead by all means. Right now my men are monitoring you, their eyes are on you, and even the place you think is safer for you to hide might not be.
Now do you want to LIVE OR DIE? It is up to you. Get back to me now if you are ready to enter deal with me, I mean life trade, who knows, and I might just spear your life, $8,000 is all you need to spend. You will first of all pay $3,000 then I will send the tape of the person that want you dead to you and when the tape gets to you, you will pay the remaining $5,000. If you are not ready for my help, then I will have no choice but to carry on the assignment after all I have already being paid before now.
Warning: do not think of contacting the police or even tell anyone because I will extend it to any member of your family since you are aware that somebody want you dead, and the person knows some members of your family as well.
For your own good I will advise you not to go out once is 7pm until I make out time to see you and give you the tape of my discussion with the person who want you dead then you can use it to take any legal action. Good luck as I await your reply to this e-mail contact: mayhissolrestinpeace3@gmail.com
Bye.
William yahman.
MY REPLY:
O Yes, by all means I will pay you kind sir! I have contacted my bank and they are puting together 8999 monopoly moneys for you. Jes tell me my name and addres. Do you feel lucky?
A Look Inside What’s Been Called America’s Biggest Pharmacy’s Pill-Flipping Scheme
CHICAGO, June 13, 2008
(CBS) It’s America’s biggest drugstore chain.
“Beyond the reach of cell phones and superhighways, there’s a place called ‘perfect,’” rings the familiar ad for Walgreens.
In a perfect world, however, Walgreens wouldn’t be accused of ripping off taxpayers. But we’re nowhere near perfect. CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports.
Michael Behn, a former federal prosecutor, said, “The pharmacies nationwide had a pill flipping scheme.”
Behn helped expose how Walgreens exploited a Medicaid loophole.
To save taxpayer dollars, Medicaid limits how much it pays for popular forms of drugs.
But it doesn’t bother to set price-ceilings on rarely-used versions.
Take generic Zantac, or ranitidine, for example. The antacid is a huge seller in tablet form. Medicaid limits payment to 34 cents apiece.
The same drug as capsules has no price-ceiling because it was so rarely-prescribed. Medicaid pays $1.25 each.
Walgreens figured it could pocket millions by switching patients from tablets to capsules.
Behn explained to Attkisson, “These are the ranitidine capsules.”
“This is what was being prescribed?” Attkisson asked, pointing to the tablets. “And this is what was being given?” pointing to the capsules.
Behn replied, “Correct. At three times or more the cost to taxpayers,” Behn answered.
The scheme was blown wide open by a whistleblower, a pharmacist who doesn’t want to appear on camera. He said Walgreens rigged its computers to automatically switch to the most expensive type of pill.
“The only way in which a computer system could switch from a tablet and a capsule, is if someone went in and manipulated the computer system,” Behn said.
Attkisson asked, “And the fact that this was done nationwide indicates this was a corporate policy?”
Behn responded, “That’s what we alleged.”
By gaming the system, Walgreens managed to change over almost all Medicaid customers from cheap generic Zantac tablets to pricy capsules.
In Florida alone, it cost taxpayers an extra $1.2 million the first year.
And the pill-switching went on for several years nationwide, including other prescriptions: generic Prozac (fluoxetine) for depression, and generic Eldepryl (selegiline) for Parkinson’s.
Walgreens denies wrongdoing and declined to be interviewed.
But they recently agreed to pay back the government more than $35 million.
And they’re not the only ones. CVS and Omnicare quietly settled similar cases coughing up $86 million more.
The whole pill-flipping episode proves just how imperfect some drugstore chains can be.
A group in Santa Fe says the city is discriminating against them because they say that they’re allergic to the wireless Internet signal. And now they want Wi-Fi banned from public buildings.
Arthur Firstenberg says he is highly sensitive to certain types of electric fields, including wireless Internet and cell phones.
“I get chest pain and it doesn’t go away right away,” he said.
Firstenberg and dozens of other electro-sensitive people in Santa Fe claim that putting up Wi-Fi in public places is a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The city attorney is now checking to see if putting up Wi-Fi could be considered discrimination.
But City Councilor Ron Trujillo says the areas are already saturated with wireless Internet.
“It’s not 1692, it’s 2008. Santa Fe needs to embrace this technology, it’s not going away,” Trujillo said.
The city attorney hopes to have a legal recommendation by the end of the month.
TOKYO, Japan (AP) — When Yosuke the parrot flew out of his cage and got lost, he did exactly what he had been taught — recite his name and address to a stranger willing to help.
Police rescued the African grey parrot two weeks ago from a neighbor’s roof in the city of Nagareyama, near Tokyo. After spending a night at the station, he was transferred to a nearby veterinary hospital while police searched for clues, local policeman Shinjiro Uemura said.
He kept mum with the cops, but began chatting after a few days with the vet.
“I’m Mr. Yosuke Nakamura,” the bird told the veterinarian, according to Uemura. The parrot also provided his full home address, down to the street number, and even entertained the hospital staff by singing songs.
“We checked the address, and what do you know, a Nakamura family really lived there. So we told them we’ve found Yosuke,” Uemura said.
The Nakamura family told police they had been teaching the bird its name and address for about two years.
But Yosuke apparently wasn’t keen on opening up to police officials.
“I tried to be friendly and talked to him, but he completely ignored me,” Uemura said.
A group in Santa Fe says the city is discriminating against them because they say that they’re allergic to the wireless Internet signal. And now they want Wi-Fi banned from public buildings.
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