In India, questions over decision to treat rape victim overseas

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The decision to fly the victim of a gang rape that outraged India for treatment in Singapore made little medical sense as the woman was so severely injured that her death was all but inevitable, doctors say.

The government, on the back foot after furious street protests and stinging criticism of authorities over the December 16 rape in the capital, New Delhi, has struggled to defend its decision to send the 23-year-old physiotherapy student overseas. She died 48 hours later.

With a deadly infection seeping into her blood from damage done to her intestines during the assault, complicated by a cardiac arrest and damage to the brain, she was just clinging to life when she was flown 2,500 miles from New Delhi to Singapore late on December 26, doctors said.

"It was ethically and morally wrong to have taken her out, given that she was sinking and her chances of survival were next to zero at that stage," said a doctor at New Delhi's All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), which was advising the team treating the woman at a sister hospital across the street.

"Such a thing raises false hopes in the minds of the family, the community. No doctor in his right mind would do this, unless you want to get the patient off your back," said the doctor, who declined to be identified, saying colleagues at the government-run hospital who had spoken out had been warned of consequences in what has become a politically explosive case.

The woman, who was assaulted by five men and a teenager on a moving bus after a male companion was beaten unconscious, cannot be named under an Indian law that prohibits identifying victims of rape.

Another doctor who was consulted during the woman's care at New Delhi's Safdarjang hospital, where she was taken following the assault, said she had been getting the best possible treatment in India and the question of why she was shifted should be answered by the government.

Many security officials have said they feared the protests would escalate if the woman had died in New Delhi, but the government has said the only consideration was her wellbeing.

"The idea was to give her the best possible treatment," said Harish Rawat, a government minister who attended a cabinet meeting on the woman's condition and the efforts to save her.

"I don't think the idea was to run away from the problem. Death here or death abroad would still have the same impact," he said. "We felt if there was a chance to save her, it should be tried. Take her to a transplant facility abroad."

At the time of the transfer, authorities at Safdarjang said her condition was critical which was why they decided to move her to Singapore's Mount Elizabeth Hospital, which specialized in multi-organ transplant.

But a transplant for her damaged intestine, if at all possible, was months away, doctors said. At the time of her transfer, the woman, unconscious since a heart attack the previous night, was in no condition to go through such an operation.

"One cannot think about intestinal transplant at this moment," Samiran Nundy, the head of surgical gastroenterology and organ transplantation at the Ganga Ram Hospital in New Delhi, was quoted as saying in newspapers.

"First, the infection spreading in her should be stopped, then one can think about transplant."

Within 40 hours of her arrival in Singapore, doctors called her family and told them the end was near, even as millions prayed at home in the hope that she would pull through.

"Sepsis followed by cardiac arrest is a terminal event in 99 percent of cases," said the doctor at AIIMS, referring to blood infection.

"Doctors will have anecdotal evidence about one or two cases in their whole career of somebody who survived. I had one case, a woman, but she too died within a month. Yes, miracles happen, but you were not looking at one in this case. It was clear to everyone, especially after the cardiac arrest."

PROTESTS AND PANIC

Piecing together the events leading up to her death tells a tale of authorities in Delhi trying to defuse public anger over the attack by initially insisting that she was getting the best possible treatment, and then, as things began to go wrong, getting increasingly worried that the protests that tapped a deep vein of frustration, could spin out of control.

The alarm bells for the government rang late on Christmas night when the woman suffered the cardiac arrest. That was nine days after she was brought in to Safdarjang hospital in a life-threatening condition after the brutal assault - she was assessed then as 5 on a scale in which 6 is rated as no chance of survival.

After the heart attack, her pulse rate became critically low. Doctors resuscitated her after three to four minutes but by then she had become unconscious, caused by lack of blood to the brain. She never regained consciousness from that point on.

Equally worrisome, the infection from her injured intestines had seeped into her blood and was spreading to her vital organs.

For the government, shaken by the scale and intensity of the protests that focused on the lack of safety in the capital for women, the deterioration in her health was cause for concern.

Even as the federal cabinet met the next morning, arrangements to fly the woman for treatment in Singapore were being put in place.

One official said the public mood was so fragile that the government felt that if she died in India, some people would have blamed the government for not sending her abroad for treatment.

"You can argue this the other way. They would have said 'if Sonia can go abroad, why not this girl'," the official said, referring to the head of the ruling Congress party, Sonia Gandhi, who travels abroad for treatment of an undisclosed condition.

Outside the prime minister's office where the cabinet met, thousands of baton-wielding police including crack members of Rapid Action Force kept the area under a lockdown. Days earlier, pitched battles broke out between hundreds of protesters and police at the scene, in which a policeman was killed.

Protesters had climbed the walls of South and North Block, the high-security seat of government, while others swarmed towards the iron gates of the presidential palace. They carried placards such as "The only two women safe in Delhi are Sonia Gandhi and Sheila Dikshit". Dikshit is the chief minister, the top elected official of the local government of Delhi.

A government official privy to the handling of the protests said the administration had not anticipated that so many students would come out onto the streets and that the protests would last for so many days.

But when protesters showed up at the presidential palace, the line had been crossed in the security agencies' mind.

"It was a near-breach of security at the presidential palace. The officials tasked with security didn't know how to control the protesters, if they had jumped over its gates. Would you fire at the students, the housewives?" the official asked.

The Intelligence Bureau, which coordinates all domestic intelligence, had been warning that the public mood may turn uglier, the official said.

NO PASSPORTS

At Safdarjung on the morning of December 26, a team of doctors arrived from Medanta Medicity, a private medical centre which runs an air ambulance service. Their mandate was to assess whether she could survive the airlift, said Dr Yatin Mehta, head of critical care at Medicity.

"The decision was to take her out of the country. Our job was to determine whether she could take the airlift, not whether she should be going or not," said Mehta, who accompanied the woman on the flight.

He said the option of sending her to Cambridge in Britain to a hospital that specializes in transplants, was considered but dropped because it would have involved a refueling stop for the aircraft and a two-hour road trip upon landing in London.

Flying her to the Canadian city of Toronto, which also has a specialized organ transplant centre, was also vetoed. They zeroed in on Singapore, six hours flying time away.

It is highly unusual for someone to be flown out of India for critical care. If anything, the traffic is the reverse, with people travelling to the country for treatment.

In the event, the transfer to Singapore was successful, Mehta said, although the woman suffered a drop in blood pressure during the flight. "We were prepared for that. We handed her over to Mount E in the same condition she left the hospital in Delhi," he said, referring to the Singapore hospital.

The woman's family first got wind of the plan to transfer her at hospital in Delhi, when her brother noticed a flurry of activity and a staff member said that doctors were considering moving her.

"We accepted the decision. We were not interfering in the treatment. The doctors said it was in the best interest of our sister, we accepted it. Our only condition was to save her," the brother told Reuters.

Shortly afterwards, officials from the foreign ministry arrived and issued the family travel documents, since none of them had a passport. Their pictures were taken at the hospital.

Three ambulances arrived at the hospital. One of the ambulances headed into the interior of the city and another took the route to the Medanta centre, followed by a convoy of television crews.

A third, carrying the woman, sped away to a special section of Delhi airport, giving everyone the slip.

After she was taken to Singapore, authorities in the city-state's Mount Elizabeth Hospital were frank about her bleak chances for survival.

"The patient is currently struggling against the odds, and fighting for her life," Chief Executive Officer Kelvin Loh said in a statement a day after she was admitted.

"Our medical team's investigations upon her arrival at the hospital yesterday showed that in addition to her prior cardiac arrest, she also had infection of her lungs and abdomen as well as significant brain injury."

Later that day, Soh said her condition was deteriorating.

Her family was told the end was near.

"We didn't expect her to go so quickly," said her brother, who was with her when she died. "At 9:30 p.m., the doctors called us in and said they were sorry, they couldn't do anything more. Her vital organs were failing."

"We went inside and stayed with her the whole night. We saw her heart beat slowing down on the machine. It kept dropping and then dropped to zero. The time was 4:05 a.m."

(Additional reporting by Rajesh Kumar Singh in New Delhi and Kevin Lim in Singapore; Editing by Robert Birsel and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Read More..

Private newspapers in Myanmar gearing up for the daily grind

YANGON: Private newspapers in Myanmar are gearing up to publish dailies for the first time, after authorities indicated they would begin issuing such licences in April.

Currently, only state-owned newspapers are allowed to publish dailies -- private ones are restricted to weeklies.

But observers caution that the still under-developed Myanmar economy might prove a challenge for private dailies.

There was a time when journalists from private newspapers like The Myanmar Times had to subject their reports to government censorship before the papers could be sent to the printers. But that changed last August, when authorities began reforming Myanmar's media regulations.

Geoffrey Goddard, senior editor of The Myanmar Times, said: "It was the curse of our professional lives and there was much celebration in the fourth estate when the decision was made by the government as part of the reform process to end pre-publication censorship."

Now, the government has indicated it will further liberalise the media sector -- by allowing applications for private daily licences as early as next month.

Mr Goddard added: "What we are eagerly looking forward to is the granting of licences to publish daily. That's the next big challenge for us and other newspapers in Myanmar."

The Myanmar Times has shown an interest in getting the license. But as with the rest of the world, the dailies have to contend with the onslaught of the online media. Currently, the Myanmar internet infrastructure might still be in the 90s, but it is expected to get up to speed soon.

There are more than 300 private weekly journals currently being published in Myanmar -- less than five are in English.

While many are excited at the prospect of publishing daily, observers doubt the viability of private dailies, given the country's under-developed economy.

Myo Aung, managing director of Success International Distributor, said: "Compared to neighbouring countries, our advertising budget is not very big. Most are local products. They advertise in magazines, journals and newspapers.

"But we hope that the government allows foreign investors to invest here. If foreign investors, and foreign firms and foreign expertise are here, I think our advertising scenario will also change very soon."

The government has already allowed foreign dailies to be distributed in the country.

And with the three state-controlled dailies currently having a circulation of 2.5 million copies a day, it will be a tough environment for upcoming private ones to compete in.

-CNA/ac

Read More..

Jharkhand cabinet recommends dissolution of assembly

RANCHI: The Jharkhand cabinet on Tuesday recommended the dissolution of the state assembly a day after Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) withdrew its support to the BJP-led government, said an official.

The cabinet meeting was attended by ministers from the BJP, All Jharkhand Students Union and Janata Dal-United. JMM ministers did not attend the meeting, said the official in the chief minister's office.

The cabinet's decision comes ahead of JMM presenting the letter of withdrawal of support to the governor.

The withdrawal of support on Monday has reduced the state government to a minority in the 82-member assembly.

Relations between JMM and BJP have been strained ever since chief minister Arjun Munda denied there was an agreement between the two parties on sharing the chief minister's post.

Read More..

Your medical chart could include exercise minutes

CHICAGO (AP) — Roll up a sleeve for the blood pressure cuff. Stick out a wrist for the pulse-taking. Lift your tongue for the thermometer. Report how many minutes you are active or getting exercise.

Wait, what?

If the last item isn't part of the usual drill at your doctor's office, a movement is afoot to change that. One recent national survey indicated only a third of Americans said their doctors asked about or prescribed physical activity.

Kaiser Permanente, one of the nation's largest nonprofit health insurance plans, made a big push a few years ago to get its southern California doctors to ask patients about exercise. Since then, Kaiser has expanded the program across California and to several other states. Now almost 9 million patients are asked at every visit, and some other medical systems are doing it, too.

Here's how it works: During any routine check of vital signs, a nurse or medical assistant asks how many days a week the patient exercises and for how long. The number of minutes per week is posted along with other vitals at the top the medical chart. So it's among the first things the doctor sees.

"All we ask our physicians to do is to make a comment on it, like, 'Hey, good job,' or 'I noticed today that your blood pressure is too high and you're not doing any exercise. There's a connection there. We really need to start you walking 30 minutes a day,'" said Dr. Robert Sallis, a Kaiser family doctor. He hatched the vital sign idea as part of a larger initiative by doctors groups.

He said Kaiser doctors generally prescribe exercise first, instead of medication, and for many patients who follow through that's often all it takes.

It's a challenge to make progress. A study looking at the first year of Kaiser's effort showed more than a third of patients said they never exercise.

Sallis said some patients may not be aware that research shows physical inactivity is riskier than high blood pressure, obesity and other health risks people know they should avoid. As recently as November a government-led study concluded that people who routinely exercise live longer than others, even if they're overweight.

Zendi Solano, who works for Kaiser as a research assistant in Pasadena, Calif., says she always knew exercise was a good thing. But until about a year ago, when her Kaiser doctor started routinely measuring it, she "really didn't take it seriously."

She was obese, and in a family of diabetics, had elevated blood sugar. She sometimes did push-ups and other strength training but not anything very sustained or strenuous.

Solano, 34, decided to take up running and after a couple of months she was doing three miles. Then she began training for a half marathon — and ran that 13-mile race in May in less than three hours. She formed a running club with co-workers and now runs several miles a week. She also started eating smaller portions and buying more fruits and vegetables.

She is still overweight but has lost 30 pounds and her blood sugar is normal.

Her doctor praised the improvement at her last physical in June and Solano says the routine exercise checks are "a great reminder."

Kaiser began the program about three years ago after 2008 government guidelines recommended at least 2 1/2 hours of moderately vigorous exercise each week. That includes brisk walking, cycling, lawn-mowing — anything that gets you breathing a little harder than normal for at least 10 minutes at a time.

A recently published study of nearly 2 million people in Kaiser's southern California network found that less than a third met physical activity guidelines during the program's first year ending in March 2011. That's worse than results from national studies. But promoters of the vital signs effort think Kaiser's numbers are more realistic because people are more likely to tell their own doctors the truth.

Dr. Elizabeth Joy of Salt Lake City has created a nearly identical program and she expects 300 physicians in her Intermountain Healthcare network to be involved early this year.

"There are some real opportunities there to kind of shift patients' expectations about the value of physical activity on health," Joy said.

NorthShore University HealthSystem in Chicago's northern suburbs plans to start an exercise vital sign program this month, eventually involving about 200 primary care doctors.

Dr. Carrie Jaworski, a NorthShore family and sports medicine specialist, already asks patients about exercise. She said some of her diabetic patients have been able to cut back on their medicines after getting active.

Dr. William Dietz, an obesity expert who retired last year from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said measuring a patient's exercise regardless of method is essential, but that "naming it as a vital sign kind of elevates it."

Figuring out how to get people to be more active is the important next step, he said, and could have a big effect in reducing medical costs.

___

Online:

Exercise: http://1.usa.gov/b6AkMa

___

AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner

Read More..

Pastor Accused of Killing Wives Faces Trial

Jury selection is scheduled to begin Monday for Pastor Arthur Schirmer, who is accused of killing his second wife and then staging a car accident to hide it.

Schirmer, 64, also faces a second trial at a later date for the death of his first wife. He has said he is innocent of all charges.

In 2008, the pastor and his wife, Betty, were involved in what appeared at the time to be a car crash. Schirmer told police at the time that he had been driving 55 mph and swerved to miss a deer, causing him to drive off the road, according to a police affidavit obtained by ABC News.

Schirmer also said at the time that his wife's head had come forward and struck the windshield, according to the affidavit. Betty died a day later and her body was cremated at the request of Schirmer.

It wasn't until a grisly suicide in 2010 inside Schirmer's office that authorities decided to revisit the case of Betty Schirmer's death and arrest the pastor.

The man who broke in and shot himself at the desk in Schirmer's office at the Reeders United Methodist Church, Joseph Mustante, was the husband of the pastor's secretary, Cynthia Mustante, Poconos Township Police Detective James Wagner said.

Pocono Record, David Kidwell/AP Photo

Mustante's suicide was prompted by the discovery that his wife and the pastor had apparently been having an affair, Wagner said. He was alone at the time of his death.

Investigators looking into the suicide say that several church parishioners had concerns about the deaths of Schirmer's two wives.

"That suicide eventually exposed the affair publicly and subsequent to that, questions arose about the loss of [Schirmer's] wives and his character became questionable," Wagner said.

Relaunching the investigation into the two deaths, Wagner said he quickly suspected that "foul play existed, and the car crash was staged," allegedly, by Schirmer. Wagner said investigators also believed there was something "suspicious" about the first wife's death, a marriage that investigators had not known about prior to the suicide.

Investigators Look Into Deaths of Rev. Arthur Schirmer's Wives

Schirmer's first wife, Jewel, died in April 1999 from a traumatic brain injury after she purportedly fell down a flight of stairs in Lebanon, Pa., Wagner said.

Lebanon is about 100 miles southwest of Reeders, where Schrimer later moved with his second wife.

At the time of Jewel's death, Wagner said, a relative told police that he suspected Schirmer may have had a hand in his wife's death but that the investigation was "never completed."

On Dec. 11, 2012 -- more than 13 years after Jewel died, a Lebanon County judge ruled Schirmer would be tried for her murder.

When investigators looked at the death of Betty Schirmer, they saw inconsistencies, Wagner said.

"There was no airbag deployment and it simply looked like a car that had driven off the road at a very low speed," Wagner said. "It didn't match the injuries to [Betty's head].

"I know there are people out there who probably know him and feel like there is absolutely no way he would be capable of doing this," Wagner of Schirmer. "But they clearly don't know him."

Read More..

Activists wary as India rushes to justice after gang rape

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - It's no surprise the Indian street wants faster, harsher justice for sexual crimes after a horrific gang rape that rocked the nation, but some activists worry the government will trample fundamental rights in its rush to be in tune with popular rage.

Last month's rape of a physiotherapy student on a moving bus and her death on December 28 in hospital triggered a national debate about how to better protect women in India, where official data shows one rape is reported on average every 20 minutes.

Many women's rights groups are cautiously hopeful the protests and outrage that followed the crime can be channeled into real change - fast-track courts for sexual offences and a plan to hire 2,500 new women police in Delhi are measures already in the works.

But legal experts and some feminists are worried that calls to make rape punishable with death and other draconian penalties will cramp civil liberties and are unconstitutional. They say India needs better policing and prosecutions, not new laws.

"If there are not enough convictions, it is not because of an insufficiency of law, but it is the insufficiency of material to base the conviction on," said retired Delhi High Court judge R.S. Sodhi.

Five men have been charged with the student's rape and murder and will appear before a New Delhi court later on Monday. They are due to be tried in a newly formed fast-track court in the next few weeks. A teenager also accused will likely be tried in a juvenile court.

Ahead of Monday's court appearance the five still had no defense lawyers - despite extensive interrogations by the police, who have said they have recorded confessions - after members of the bar association in the South Delhi district where the case is being heard vowed not to represent them.

GROUNDS FOR APPEAL

The men will be assigned lawyers by the court before the trial begins, but their lack of representation so far could give grounds for appeal later should they be found guilty - similar cases have resulted in acquittals years after convictions.

"The accused has a right to a lawyer from point of arrest - the investigations are going on, statements being taken, it is totally illegal," said Colin Gonsalves, a senior Supreme Court advocate and director of Delhi's Human Rights Law Network.

Senior leaders of most states on Friday came out in support of a plan to lower to 16 the age that minors can be tried as adults - in response to fury that the maximum penalty the accused youth could face is three years detention.

A government panel is considering suggestions to make the death penalty mandatory for rape and introducing forms of chemical castration for the guilty. It is due to make its recommendations by January 23.

"The more you strengthen the powers of the state against the people, the more the possibility you create a draconian regime," said Sehjo Singh, Programme and Policy Director with ActionAid in India and an expert on Indian women's social movements.

"We want to raise the bar of human rights in India, we want to raise the standards, not lower them."

The Indian Express newspaper warned against "knee-jerk" reaction and said any change to the juvenile law "must come after rigorous and considered debate. It cannot be a reaction to a fraught moment".

Courts are swamped with a backlog of cases in the country of 1.2 billion people and trials often take more than five years to complete, so the launch by Chief Justice Altamas Kabir of six fast-track courts in the capital to deal with sexual offences was widely greeted as a welcome move.

Several other states including Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra are now looking at following Delhi's example.

But Gonsalves says while the courts are a good idea on paper, similar tribunals in the past delivered dubious verdicts and put financial pressure on the rest of the justice system.

FAST TRACK COURTS

India set up 1,700 fast-track courts in 2004, but stopped funding them last year because they turned out to be costly. The courts typically work six days a week and try to reduce adjournments that lead to long delays in cases.

"The record of the fast-track courts is mixed," Gonsalves said. Conviction rates rose, he said, but due process was sometimes rushed, leading to convictions being overturned.

"Fast-track courts were in many ways were fast-track injustice," he said.

The real problem lie with bad policing and a shortage of judges, Gonsalves said. India has about a fifth of the number of judges per capita that the United States has.

Indian police are often poorly trained and underpaid, and have sometimes been implicated in organized crime. Rights groups complain the mostly male officers are insensitive to victims of sexual crimes.

Resources for, and expertise in, forensic science is limited in most of the country's police forces and confessions are often extracted under duress. The judiciary complains it is hard to convict offenders because of faulty evidence.

Human Rights Watch said reforms to laws and procedures covering rape and other sexual crimes should focus on protection of witnesses and modernizing support for victims at police stations and hospitals.

The rights organization has documented the continued use of archaic practices such as the "finger test" used by some doctors on rape victims to allegedly determine if they had regular sex.

"Reforms in the rape laws - these are needed. But not in terms of enhancing punishment," said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia Director of Human Rights Watch.

"Why they are not investigated, why there are not enough convictions, those are the things that need to be addressed."

(Additional reporting by Satarupa Bhattacharjya, Shashank Chouhan and Annie Banerji; Editing by Alex Richardson)

Read More..

Japan says China ships off disputed isles

TOKYO: Four Chinese government ships entered territorial waters around Japan-controlled islands at the centre of a dispute Monday, the Japanese coastguard said.

The four marine surveillance ships were seen moving within 12 nautical miles of the islands, known as the Senkakus in Japan and the Diaoyus in China, just before midday, the coastguard said in a statement.

It was the first time since December 31 -- and the 21st time since Japan nationalised the islands in September -- that any state-owned Chinese ship has been seen in the archipelago's waters, which lie in the East China Sea.

A state-owned Chinese plane flew through airspace over the islands early last month. Tokyo responded by scrambling fighter jets and said it was the first time Beijing had breached its airspace since at least 1958.

On Saturday, another Chinese state-owned plane approached the islands without entering the airspace, prompting another Japanese fighter jet dispatch.

-AFP/ac

Read More..

Pak soldier killed, India says fired in retaliation

SRINAGAR: Pakistani troops violated ceasefire on Sunday by firing mortar shells towards Indian army posts at Hajipir area in Uri sector near the Line of Control.

"They started firing mortar shells towards our posts in Uri sector around 3.15am," an army spokesman said. He said that some shells landed close to civilian habitation though no damage was done.

The spokesman added that Indian troops responded with light weapons which stopped the Pakistani shelling.

On the other hand, Pakistan's army has accused India of crossing the LoC and raiding its check post in Bagh area on Sunday. It said Indian troops raided a military post in the Hajipir sector of Bagh area, killing a soldier and injuring another.

(With inputs from Omer Farooq from Islamabad)

Read More..

FDA: New rules will make food safer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration says its new guidelines would make the food Americans eat safer and help prevent the kinds of foodborne disease outbreaks that sicken or kill thousands of consumers each year.

The rules, the most sweeping food safety guidelines in decades, would require farmers to take new precautions against contamination, to include making sure workers' hands are washed, irrigation water is clean, and that animals stay out of fields. Food manufacturers will have to submit food safety plans to the government to show they are keeping their operations clean.

The long-overdue regulations could cost businesses close to half a billion dollars a year to implement, but are expected to reduce the estimated 3,000 deaths a year from foodborne illness. The new guidelines were announced Friday.

Just since last summer, outbreaks of listeria in cheese and salmonella in peanut butter, mangoes and cantaloupe have been linked to more than 400 illnesses and as many as seven deaths, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The actual number of those sickened is likely much higher.

Many responsible food companies and farmers are already following the steps that the FDA would now require them to take. But officials say the requirements could have saved lives and prevented illnesses in several of the large-scale outbreaks that have hit the country in recent years.

In a 2011 outbreak of listeria in cantaloupe that claimed 33 lives, for example, FDA inspectors found pools of dirty water on the floor and old, dirty processing equipment at Jensen Farms in Colorado where the cantaloupes were grown. In a peanut butter outbreak this year linked to 42 salmonella illnesses, inspectors found samples of salmonella throughout Sunland Inc.'s peanut processing plant in New Mexico and multiple obvious safety problems, such as birds flying over uncovered trailers of peanuts and employees not washing their hands.

Under the new rules, companies would have to lay out plans for preventing those sorts of problems, monitor their own progress and explain to the FDA how they would correct them.

"The rules go very directly to preventing the types of outbreaks we have seen," said Michael Taylor, FDA's deputy commissioner for foods.

The FDA estimates the new rules could prevent almost 2 million illnesses annually, but it could be several years before the rules are actually preventing outbreaks. Taylor said it could take the agency another year to craft the rules after a four-month comment period, and farms would have at least two years to comply — meaning the farm rules are at least three years away from taking effect. Smaller farms would have even longer to comply.

The new rules, which come exactly two years to the day President Barack Obama's signed food safety legislation passed by Congress, were already delayed. The 2011 law required the agency to propose a first installment of the rules a year ago, but the Obama administration held them until after the election. Food safety advocates sued the administration to win their release.

The produce rule would mark the first time the FDA has had real authority to regulate food on farms. In an effort to stave off protests from farmers, the farm rules are tailored to apply only to certain fruits and vegetables that pose the greatest risk, like berries, melons, leafy greens and other foods that are usually eaten raw. A farm that produces green beans that will be canned and cooked, for example, would not be regulated.

Such flexibility, along with the growing realization that outbreaks are bad for business, has brought the produce industry and much of the rest of the food industry on board as Congress and FDA has worked to make food safer.

In a statement Friday, Pamela Bailey, president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents the country's biggest food companies, said the food safety law "can serve as a role model for what can be achieved when the private and public sectors work together to achieve a common goal."

The new rules could cost large farms $30,000 a year, according to the FDA. The agency did not break down the costs for individual processing plants, but said the rules could cost manufacturers up to $475 million annually.

FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said the success of the rules will also depend on how much money Congress gives the chronically underfunded agency to put them in place. "Resources remain an ongoing concern," she said.

The farm and manufacturing rules are only one part of the food safety law. The bill also authorized more surprise inspections by the FDA and gave the agency additional powers to shut down food facilities. In addition, the law required stricter standards on imported foods. The agency said it will soon propose other overdue rules to ensure that importers verify overseas food is safe and to improve food safety audits overseas.

Food safety advocates frustrated over the last year as the rules stalled praised the proposed action.

"The new law should transform the FDA from an agency that tracks down outbreaks after the fact, to an agency focused on preventing food contamination in the first place," said Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Read More..

Venezuela lawmakers elect Chavez ally as Assembly chief

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan lawmakers re-elected a staunch ally of Hugo Chavez to head the National Assembly on Saturday, putting him in line to be caretaker president if the socialist leader does not recover from cancer surgery.

By choosing the incumbent, Diosdado Cabello, the "Chavista"-dominated legislature cemented the combative ex-soldier's position as the third most powerful figure in the government, after Chavez and Vice President Nicolas Maduro.

"As a patriot ... I swear to be supremely loyal in everything I do, to defend the fatherland, its institutions, and this beautiful revolution led by our Comandante Hugo Chavez," Cabello said as he took the oath, his hand on the constitution.

He had earlier warned opposition politicians against attempting to use the National Assembly to "conspire" against the people, saying they would be "destroyed" if they tried.

Thousands of the president's red-clad supporters gathered outside parliament hours before the vote, many chanting: "We are all Chavez! Our comandante will be well! He will return!"

If Chavez had to step down, or died, Cabello would take over the running of the country as Assembly president and a new election would be organized within 30 days. Chavez's heir apparent, Maduro, would be the ruling Socialist Party candidate.

Chavez, who was diagnosed with an undisclosed form of cancer in his pelvic area in mid-2011, has not been seen in public nor heard from in more than three weeks.

Officials say the 58-year-old is in delicate condition and has suffered multiple complications since the December 11 surgery, including unexpected bleeding and severe respiratory problems.

Late on Friday, Maduro gave the clearest indication yet that the government was preparing to delay Chavez's inauguration for a new six-year term, which is scheduled for Thursday.

'CHAVEZ IS PRESIDENT'

Maduro said the ceremony was a "formality" and that Chavez could be sworn in by the Supreme Court at a later date.

The opposition says Chavez's absence would be just the latest sign that he is no longer fit to govern, and that new elections should be held in the South American OPEC nation.

Brandishing a copy of the constitution after his win in the Assembly, Cabello slammed opposition leaders for writing a letter to foreign embassies in which they accused the government of employing a "twisted reading" of the charter.

"Get this into your heads: Hugo Chavez was elected president and he will continue to be president beyond January 10. No one should have any doubt ... this is the constitutional route," he said as fellow Socialist Party lawmakers cheered.

The opposition sat stony-faced. One of their legislators had earlier told the session that it was not just the head of state who was ill, "the republic is sick."

Last year, Chavez staged what appeared to be a remarkable comeback from the disease to win re-election in October, despite being weakened by radiation therapy. He returned to Cuba for more treatment within weeks of his victory.

Should the president have to step down after 14 years in office, a new vote would probably pit Maduro, a 50-year-old former bus driver and union leader, against opposition leader Henrique Capriles, the 40-year-old governor of Miranda state.

Capriles lost to Chavez in October's presidential election.

"I don't think Maduro would last many rounds in a presidential race. He's not fit for the responsibility they have given him," Capriles said after the vice president's appearance on state television.

Chavez's condition is being watched closely by leftist allies around Latin American who have benefited from his oil-funded generosity, as well as investors attracted by Venezuela's lucrative and widely traded debt.

The country boasts the world's biggest crude reserves. Despite the huge political upheaval Chavez's exit would cause, the oil industry is not likely to be affected much in the short term, with an extension of "Chavismo" keeping projects on track, while a change in parties could usher in more foreign capital.

(Additional reporting by Deisy Buitrago; Editing by Vicki Allen)

Read More..