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FDA warns about flavored cigarettes sales

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 (UPI) --

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says it has issued warning letters to online companies selling flavored cigarettes in the United States.

FDA officials said the warning letters order the companies to stop marketing and selling the products. Failure to do so may result in additional regulatory actions such as seizure or injunction. In addition, FDA requested a written response from each of the companies within 15 days outlining the corrective actions taken.

Enforcement of the flavored cigarette ban is FDA's effort to remove cigarettes that contain certain candy or fruit flavors from the marketplace, the federal agency said in a statement. Removal of these products from the market will assist in the prevention of children and adolescents from starting to smoke and in the reduction in death and disease caused by smoking.

The warning letters are available at http://www.fda.gov/ICECI/EnforcementActions/WarningLetters/default.htm#recent.

NASA seeks student research experiments

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 (UPI) --

The U.S. space agency says it's seeking experiments from U.S. college and university students for high-altitude science research.

NASA officials said their annual project provides near space access for 12 undergraduate and graduate student experiments to be carried by a NASA high-altitude research balloon. The flights typically last 15 to 20 hours and reach an altitude of 23 miles. Experiments may include compact satellites or prototypes.

The experiments are flown aboard the High Altitude Student Platform, or HASP -- a balloon-born instrument stack launched from the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility's remote site in Fort Sumner, N.M., NASA said in a statement. The goals of the project are to provide a space test platform to encourage student research and stimulate the development of student satellite payloads and other space-engineering products.

The project is a joint effort between NASA and the Louisiana Space Grant Consortium.

The balloon can support approximately 200 pounds of student payloads, officials said, noting since 2006, the HASP program has selected 44 payloads for flight, the work of more than 200 students from across the United States.

The deadline for applications is Dec. 18, with next fall targeted for the flight. NASA officials expect to make their selections in January.

Additional information is available at http://laspace.lsu.edu/hasp/Participantinfo.html.

'Conficker' computer virus going strong

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 (UPI) --

The Conficker and Taterf computer worms are still going strong a year after they made their first appearances, U.S. experts say.

Eric Sites, chief technology officer of anti-virus firm Sunbelt Software, told Monday's USA Today the viruses may be unstoppable, but observed, The sad fact is worms and viruses would be wiped out if everyone used best security practices.

The ability of the worms to spread their Internet-borne thievery of personal data and passwords and promulgate the sale of worthless software is escalating as U.S. software giant Microsoft disclosed the number of copies of Conficker and Taterf cleansed from Windows-based personal computers rose 98.4 percent in the first six months of this year, the newspaper reported.

We're doing proprietary things with real dollars attached, raising the opportunity for people to take advantage, Rob Housman, executive director of the Cyber Secure Institute, told USA Today. We didn't design the Internet to be secure. We designed it to be free.

Experts say the worms are spread when infected memory sticks, music players, cameras, camcorders and smartphones are plugged into the universal serial bus, or USB, ports of modern PCs.

FDA: Some pig ears, beef hooves tainted

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 (UPI) --

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is warning pet owners not to use pig ears and beef hooves produced by Pet Carousel Inc. due to possible contamination.

The FDA says the products, distributed nationwide for sale in pet food and retail chain stores, might be contaminated with salmonella bacteria.

The Sanger, Calif., company distributes the products under the brand names Choo Hooves, Dentley's, Doggie Delight and Pet Carousel.

FDA officials warned consumers not to handle the products or feed them to their pets. Consumers with the contaminated pig ears and beef hooves should dispose of them in a safe manner by securing them in a covered trash receptacle, the FDA said.

Pets with salmonella infections might become lethargic and have diarrhea or bloody diarrhea, fever and vomiting. Officials said some pets may only experience a decreased appetite, fever and abdominal pain. Infected, but otherwise healthy pets can become carriers and infect other animals or humans.

Copenhagen failure would be 'suicide': Maldives

MALE (AFP) --

The president of the Maldives has warned that a failure to agree a deal on limiting greenhouse gas emissions in Copenhagen next month would be an act of "collective suicide".

"At the moment every country arrives at climate negotiations seeking to keep their own emissions as high as possible," President Mohamed Nasheed said here. "This is the logic of the madhouse, a recipe for collective suicide.

"We don't want a global suicide pact. We want a global survival pact."

More than 190 nations are to meet for UN talks in Copenhagen from December 7-18, aiming for a post-2012 accord to slash emissions from fossil fuels that trap solar heat and drive global warming.

But after nearly two years of haggling, deep rifts remain over apportioning emissions curbs between rich economies and fast-growing developing nations and on the accord's architecture and legal status.

Nasheed opened a two-day forum for 11 countries considered the most vulnerable to climate change, urging them to go carbon neutral to show the rich world the way forward.

"A group of vulnerable, developing countries committed to carbon neutral development would send a loud message to the outside world," Nasheed said, adding that they needed to make a commitment to carbon neutrality.

Nasheed, 52, called the meeting of the world's least polluting smaller states, including Kiribati and Barbados, in a bid to hammer out a common stance ahead of the Copenhagen summit.

"If those with the least (pollution) start doing the most, what excuse can the rich have for continuing inaction?" he asked. "We know this is not an easy step to take, and that there might be dangers along the way.

"We want to shine a light, not loudly demand that others go first into the dark."

Being carbon neutral normally means reducing emissions of greenhouse gases where possible and offsetting or compensating for any others that cannot be eliminated.

Some 85 delegates were taking part in the conference at the Bandos island resort, a short boat ride from Male, the capital of the archipelago which is best known for its upmarket tourism.

Last week, the Maldives flagged off construction of a 200-million-dollar wind farm as part of efforts to make the low-lying archipelago carbon neutral by 2020.

The facility on a small islet just north of the capital Male is expected to be completed within 20 months, an official said, adding that it would supply more than half the nation's electricity needs.

Nasheed, whose cabinet met underwater last month in a stunt aimed at highlighting the Maldives' vulnerability to rising sea levels, said he wanted the country to be a showcase for renewable and clean energy.

In 2007, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that an increase in sea levels of just 18 to 59 centimetres (seven to 24 inches) would make the Maldives virtually uninhabitable by 2100.

More than 80 percent of the tiny nation, famed as a tourist paradise because of its secluded beaches, coral reefs and white-sand beaches, is less than a metre (about three feet) above sea level.

China, Britain, Denmark, France, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia and the United States sent observers for the conference, called the Climate Vulnerable Forum, officials said.

Maldives urges states to form 'carbon neutral' lobby

MALE (AFP) --

The Maldives, which is one of the nations most vulnerable to rising sea levels, on Monday asked fellow endangered states to go carbon neutral and lead a drive to reduce global warming.

Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed opened a two-day conference here on climate change urging smaller countries, which are faced with the prospect of being wiped out, to adopt environmentally-friendly energy.

Nasheed, 52, called the meeting of 11 of the world's least polluting smaller states, including Kiribati and Barbados, in a bid to hammer out a common stance ahead of the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen in December.

"We want to shine a light, not loudly demand that others go first into the dark."

Last week, the Maldives flagged off construction of a 200-million-dollar wind farm as part of efforts to make the low-lying archipelago carbon neutral by 2020.

The wind turbine facility on a small islet just north of the capital Male is expected to be completed within 20 months, an official said, adding that it would supply more than half the nation's electricity needs.

Being carbon neutral normally means reducing emissions of greenhouse gases where possible and offsetting or compensating for any others that cannot be eliminated.

More than 80 percent of the tiny nation, famed as a tourist paradise because of its secluded beaches, coral reefs and white-sand beaches, is less than a metre (about three feet) above sea level.

Russian bomb physicist Ginzburg dead at 93

by Alexander Osipovich MOSCOW (AFP) --

Nobel Physics prize winner Vitaly Ginzburg, who helped develop the Soviet hydrogen bomb, has died at the age of 93, the Russian Academy of Sciences said Monday.

Ginzburg said the bomb "saved" his life during an anti-Jewish campaign. But he had drawn controversy in recent years with fierce public criticism of the Russian Orthodox Church, which has enjoyed surging popularity and political influence since the fall of the atheist Communist regime.

"He died from heart failure," Irina Presnyakova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Academy of Sciences, told AFP. News agencies reported that Ginzburg died late Sunday after long suffering from ill health.

Born into an educated Jewish family in Moscow in 1916, just before the Bolshevik Revolution, Ginzburg helped develop the Soviet Union's hydrogen bomb in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

He worked on the project with Andrei Sakharov, who later became a prominent anti-Communist dissident, and stayed friends with him even after Sakharov was officially condemned and sent into internal exile in 1980.

Alhough Ginzburg joined the Communist Party in 1942, he came under pressure from the totalitarian regime of Joseph Stalin amid an anti-Semitic state campaign against perceived Western influences in science.

But the importance of the bomb project -- which was aimed at preventing the Soviet Union from falling behind the United States in the atomic arms race -- kept Ginzburg out of prison.

"I was saved by the hydrogen bomb," Ginzburg wrote in his autobiography on the website of the Nobel Prize Committee.

A theoretician whose interests ranged from black holes and cosmic rays to low-temperature physics, Ginzburg wrote more than 400 scientific papers, won numerous honours and lectured well into his eighties.

In 2003, he shared the Nobel Physics Prize with US physicists Alexei Abrikosov and Anthony Leggett for their contributions to the theory of superconductors and superfluids.

Superconductors let electric current pass without resistance and without dissipating energy as heat. Researchers hope to use them in ultra-fast computers and magnetic trains, among other applications.

After the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Ginzburg acquired another claim to fame -- as one of Russia's leading critics of religion.

An avowed atheist, he became a ferocious critic of the growing influence of the Russian Orthodox Church even as many of his countrymen were turning to the church after the downfall of official Soviet atheism.

In 2007, he was one of 10 prominent scholars who signed an open letter to then-president Vladimir Putin denouncing the "clericalization" of Russia and criticising efforts to teach Orthodox Christianity in state schools.

The letter provoked angry complaints from Orthodox groups.

"Faith is the free choice and right of every person. But I am against the propagation of religion in schools," Ginzburg said in a 2006 interview with official government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta.

"In general, I envy believers. I am 90 and being overcome by illnesses. For believers it is easier to deal with them and with life's other hardships. But what can be done? I cannot believe in resurrection after death."

Maldives leader warns of Copenhagen 'suicide pact'

MALE (AFP) --

The president of the Maldives warned Monday that the world was set to sign a "global suicide pact" unless it agreed a deal in Copenhagen next month to limit greenhouse gas emissions.