Fluoride could be causing depression and weight gain and councils should stop adding it to drinking water to prevent tooth decay, scientists have warned.
A study of 98 per cent of GP practices in England found that high rates of underactive thyroid were 30 per cent more likely in areas of the greatest fluoridation.
It could mean that up to 15,000 people are suffering needlessly from thyroid problems which can cause depression, weight gain, fatigue and aching muscles.
Ukraine said it would buy what it called defensive weapons from the United Arab Emirates, bypassing the West’s reluctance to provide arms to help Kiev’s forces against Russia-backed rebels.
President Petro Poroshenko, speaking Tuesday at the International Defense Exhibition and Conference in Abu Dhabi, didn’t specify what type of equipment Ukraine would buy or in what quantities, but said they would help Ukraine protect its territory from the separatists.
The U.S. Defense Department plans to sell Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates $10.8 billion in advanced weaponry, including air-launched cruise missiles and precision munitions.
The United States has signed a $3.5 billion sale of an advanced antimissile interception system to the United Arab Emirates, part of an accelerating military buildup of its friends and allies near Iran.
The UAE is near the top of a list of the world's biggest weapons importers and is set to continue increasing its hi-tech defensive capabilities, according to a new report on international arms transfers. Analysts say the purchase of the weapons systems sends a message that the country is capable of protecting its territorial integrity while confirming that its posture is defensive.
The United States is by far the biggest supplier of arms to the UAE, the third-largest US weapons client. The UAE is also France's biggest arms export destination. The majority of the UAE's spending is on aircraft from the US and France, followed by missiles and air defence systems. From 2005 to 2009, the UAE received deliveries of 34 Mirage 2000 combat aircraft from France and 72 F-16 fighters from the US.
A zona euro não garantiu uma “convergência económica tão sustentável quanto esperávamos no início” da união monetária, lamenta o presidente do Banco Central Europeu (BCE). Mario Draghi diz que, agora, é preciso “reformas determinantes” para tornar os países “mais resilientes” e, a “médio a longo prazo”, terá de haver uma maior “partilha de soberania”, porque “ainda não vivemos numa união económica genuína”.
“Em segundo lugar, no médio a longo prazo, precisamos de evoluir desde sistema de regras e instruções sobre as políticas económicas nacionais para um sistema de partilha adicional de soberania, com instituições comuns”, afirma Mario Draghi, perante os eurodeputados.
Reação
Solução (pré-determinada).Putin: Recusa de Kiev em fornecer gás a regiões rebeldes é genocídio
A recusa de Kiev em fornecer gás às regiões separatistas do leste da Ucrânia assemelha-se a um genocídio, afirmou hoje o presidente russo, Vladimir Putin.
«Não só há fome na região, como comprovou a OSCE (Organização para a Segurança e Cooperação na Europa), como haverá uma catástrofe humanitária, se, além disso, for cortado o gás. Isso assemelha-se a um genocídio», declarou Putin, citado pela agência Ria-Novosti.
A Ucrânia anunciou quinta-feira que se recusa a pagar o gás que o grupo russo Gazprom começou a fornecer aos territórios do leste separatista.
«A Naftogaz não pagará, porque não temos qualquer hipótese de controlar a quantidade de gás que será enviada para esses territórios, nem qual será a sua utilização», declarou o administrador da companhia nacional ucraniana, Naftogaz Andriï Kobolev em conferência de imprensa, acrescentando que a empresa retomou o fornecimento de gás ao leste da Ucrânia, interrompido devido aos combates.

Não quero uma Europa com le pens ,syrisas , podemos e descendentes de salazares , francos , estalines , mussolines , etc.
A Chicago detective who led one of the most shocking acts of torture ever conducted at Guantánamo Bay was responsible for implementing a disturbingly similar, years-long regime of brutality to elicit murder confessions from minority Americans.
In a dark foreshadowing of the United States’ post-9/11 descent into torture, a Guardian investigation can reveal that Richard Zuley, a detective on Chicago’s north side from 1977 to 2007, repeatedly engaged in methods of interrogation resulting in at least one wrongful conviction and subsequent cases more recently thrown into doubt following allegations of abuse.
Zuley’s record suggests a continuum between police abuses in urban America and the wartime detention scandals that continue to do persistent damage to the reputation of the United States. Zuley’s tactics, which would be supercharged at Guantánamo when he took over the interrogation of a high-profile detainee as a US Navy reserve lieutenant, included:
• Shackling suspects to police-precinct walls through eyebolts for hours on end.
• Accusations of planting evidence when there was pressure for a high-profile murder conviction.
• Threats of harm to family members of those under interrogation used as leverage.
• Pressure on suspects to implicate themselves and others.
• Threats of being subject to the death penalty if suspects did not confess.
I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans.
E quem garante que numa Europa Federalista (Estados Unidos da Europa) nunca aparecerá mais um Franco ou Estaline? Uma federação com tanta nação diferente só funciona(rá) com mão de ferro. Veja-se o caso da União Soviética. Quanto à opinião forte, se virmos o caso da Alemanha que está a ser empurrada para uma guerra com um dos seus principaisarceiros de troca comercial (Rússia) devido à aderência à OTAN, não sei se isso será exequível. Aliás, a Europa na OTAN não tem muito a dizer. Limita-se a seguir ordens.
Repara que países como o Reino Unido completamente alinhados com os EUA nem sequer entraram no Euro.
IMF bent its rules to hobble Greece with unsustainable debt
In a 90-minute documentary aired this week on the French-German public television station Arte, an executive director from the international lending agency said that in 2010, when the Greek bailout was initially arranged, the IMF violated its own lending rules, apparently for political reasons.
Brazilian executive director Paulo Nogueira Batista said the agency’s rules were changed in a clandestine manner to allow the IMF to provide its share of bailout funds far beyond the normal limits allowed, and above all to violate the principle not to make any loans that have no chance of being repaid.
Philippe Legrain, a former adviser to the European Commission president, told Arte that the IMF managing director at the time, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, overrode objections from IMF staff so that Greece could pay the money it owed to French banks and not endanger his chances to run for president in France.
A former IMF official in the U.S. also took the agency to task this week for abusing its “exceptional access lending” — loans over and above the normal quota limits — in the Greek case.
“Despite the IMF’s rules that it is not supposed to resort to exceptional access lending when a country’s public debt is unsustainable or when the chances of program success are not good, the IMF has managed to lend to Greece some 1,860% of quota,” wrote Desmond Lachman, former deputy director of the IMF’s policy department. “That is more than three times the normal maximum IMF limit for such lending.”
IMF staff, according to the Arte documentary, were well aware of the consequences of the drastic fiscal adjustment being imposed on Greece. Former Greek executive director Panagiotis Roumeliotis showed what he said was a secret internal memorandum from the time that the IMF prescriptions would produce a “sharp contraction” and a “deep recession” in Greece.
O ministro das Finanças grego, Yanis Varoufakis, declarou hoje ter apresentado deliberadamente um programa de reformas vago para assegurar o aval dos parlamentos da zona euro ao prolongamento da ajuda a Atenas.
O Governo grego entregou no início da semana o muito esperado plano de reformas que tenciona aplicar, condição imposta pelos parceiros europeus e pelo Fundo Monetário Internacional (FMI) para prolongar quatro meses o programa de ajuda ao país e para receber um pagamento de 7,2 mil milhões de euros.
O plano não contém prazos nem compromissos em números, mas é deliberado, explicou Varoufakis à cadeia de televisão grega Antenna TV, recordando uma "imprecisão produtiva".
"Nós estamos confiantes com o nível de imprecisão", disse o ministro.
Varoufakis explicou que teve encontros com determinados homólogos da zona euro que o aconselharam a não incluir números no documento porque "senão não seriam aprovados pelos respetivos parlamentos".
"Há umas semanas falámos sobre como edificar as relações entre a Ucrânia e a Rússia, da forma como gostaríamos que fossem. Boris disse-me que ia revelar publicamente provas convincentes da participação das forças armadas russas na Ucrânia", afirmou Poroshenko à comunicação social ucraniana.
Segundo o chefe de Estado da Ucrânia, "alguém" tinha muito medo de que isso acontecesse.
O opositor russo Boris Nemtsov foi assassinado a tiro, em pleno centro de Moscovo, na noite de sexta-feira.
O Comité de Investigação, que reporta diretamente a Putin, informou, através de comunicado, que "segundo informação preliminar, uma pessoa não identificada disparou sobre Boris Nemtsov pelo menos sete ou oito vezes, a partir de um carro, quando este caminhava na ponte Bolshoi Moskvoretsky".
Nemtsov estava acompanhado por uma jovem proveniente da Ucrânia, quando foi abatido.