■GERMANY
Thieves nab potency pills
A gang of four looted 4.9 million euros (US$6.9 million) worth of potency pills in a burglary at Bayer AG’s headquarters in Frankfut, the company said on Monday. Five weeks after burglars stole two barrels filled with 320,000 of Bayer’s Levitra pills, Bayer said it had put up a reward of 20,000 euros for information leading either to the perpetrators being caught or the retrieval of more than half the swag. The thieves cut through a wire fence and smashed a window in a building where the pills were stored before escaping, police said. Bayer, whose products range from Aspirin painkillers to Yasmin birth control pills, said on its Levitra Web site that the pill may help men fight erectile dysfunction when other oral treatments do not work.
■SWEDEN
C-section may hurt immunity
Swedish researchers have detected a possible link between babies born by planned Cesarean section and the increased risk of developing diseases like diabetes, cancer and asthma in later life, a study published in this month’s edition of Acta Paediatrica said. Babies delivered with planned Cesarean section had changes to the DNA pool in their white blood cells, possibly connected to altered stress levels, the study conducted at the Karolinska Institute said. “Our results provide the first pieces of evidence that early so-called epigenetic programming of the immune system during birth may have a role to play,” Mikael Norman of the Department of Clinical Science, Intervention and Technology said. The findings are interesting as Cesarean section delivery is on the rise worldwide. At present it is the most common surgical procedure among women of child-bearing age. The team took blood samples from umbilical cords from 37 newborn infants just after delivery, and collected new samples three to five days after birth. The blood samples were analyzed to study the degree of DNA-methylation, or chemical altering of the DNA, in the white blood cells. These cells are a key part of the immune system.
■SERBIA
Tito’s widow granted ID
The widow of former Yugoslavia’s communist dictator Josip Broz Tito has been granted a Serbian passport after nearly 30 years of life in seclusion. Jovanka Broz, 84, has lived in Belgrade without travel or identity documents in a decrepit government-owned house since Tito’s death in 1980. Interior Minister Ivica Dacic handed her the documents on Monday at a highly publicized ceremony. “This means a lot to me,” Broz told Dacic. Told by Dacic that it was “nothing special” and everyone had the right to the documents, she responded: “To me, it is special.” Jovanka Broz fell out of favor shortly before Tito’s death and was forced out of the dictator’s luxurious Belgrade residence. Some reports at the time said that she had ambitions to take over the country after his death.
■IRAQ
Hussein grave visits banned
The government imposed a ban on Monday on all organized visits to the grave of executed president Saddam Hussein after some schools near his stronghold of Tikrit arranged trips for their pupils. “The Cabinet secretariat has sent instructions to the education ministry and to Salaheddin Province and its provincial council banning the organization of visits to the tomb of the president of the former regime,” a statement said. Saddam loyalists regularly hold commemorations by his graveside in his native village of al-Awja, outside the northern town of Tikrit, on the anniversaries of his birth and execution.
RSS