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On a blustery day in the fall of 2001, a friendly representative from Wyeth Pharmaceuticals came into my office in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and asked me if I would like to give talks to other doctors about using Effexor XR for treating depression.

Wyeth would provide a set of slides and pay for me to attend a speaker's training session.

(Read content ‘Confessions of a drug rep with an M.D. in the drug-marketing juggernaut’…)

The hope is that these individuals may respond to inhibitors targeting the mutated cell surface receptor. While some people suffer anaphylaxis as part of a serious allergic reaction, in two out of three people, anaphylaxis has no known cause and thus the anaphylactic reaction is called idiopathic.

(Read content ‘Day Thanksgiving and Health people’…)

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President Hugo Chavez’s government is trying to cope with shortages of some foods, and the lines at state-run “Megamercal” street markets show many Venezuelans are willing to wait for hours to snap up a handful of products they seldom find in supermarkets.

“You have to get in line and you have to be lucky,” said Maria Fernandez, a 64-year-old housewife who was trying to buy milk and chicken on Sunday.

The lines for basic foods at subsidized prices are paradoxical for an oil-rich nation that in many ways is a land of plenty.

(Read content ‘Venezuelans struggle to find food (AP)’…)

"The European Commission is deeply concerned by Japan's plans to kill up to 1,000 minke, fin and humpback whales in a South Pacific whale hunt that will run until mid-April 2008," the EU's executive body said in a statement.

"The commission emphasises that there is no need to use lethal means to obtain scientific information about whales, and that adequate data for management purposes can be obtained using non-lethal techniques."

Despite Western protests, Japan's whaling fleet set off Sunday towards the Antarctic for the hunt, which is deemed legal under an international whaling convention.

Japan, which argues that whale meat is part of its culture, plans to kill 950 whales on the five-month mission using a loophole in a global moratorium that allows "lethal research" on the giant mammals.

"Japan's decision is all the more alarming as fin and humpback whales are classified as 'endangered' and 'vulnerable' species," the commission said.

"There is therefore a serious risk that the Japanese programme will undermine the long-term viability of these species in the Southern Ocean."

Brussels called on Japan to stop the hunt and urged the international community to find a "comprehensive solution" to whaling.

This story was written by Josh Kraushaar and Martin Kady II.

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The unexpected retirement of Rep. Mike Ferguson (R-N.J.) marks the latest in an exodus of moderate Republicans that is pushing the caucus in a rightward direction and could potentially cripple the partys chances of winning back seats in swing districts next year. (Read content ‘Retirements Push GOP To The Right’…)

There has been a steady escalation of violence in Afghanistan this year, and the United Nations estimates the number of security incidents has risen by 20 to 30 percent from last year.

More than 200 civilians have been killed by Taliban suicide bombs this year, and overall some 1,200 civilians have died, about half in operations by Afghan and international troops.

Afghanistan's biggest problems — poverty, drug production, corruption and weak government — are all linked to the lack of security due to the Taliban insurgency.

"Some seem to think that human rights are a luxury that can be enjoyed only after security is ensured.

(Read content ‘U.N. blames all sides for Afghan civilian deaths (Reuters)’…)

The U.S. military plans to seek a criminal case in an Iraqi court against an award-winning Associated Press photographer, but is refusing to disclose what evidence or accusations would be presented.

An AP attorney on Monday strongly protested the decision, calling the U.S. military plans a “sham of due process.”

The journalist, Bilal Hussein, has already been imprisoned without charges for more than 19 months. (Read content ‘Military Seeks Trial Of AP Photographer’…)

Chatter filled the venue of Cambodia’s U.N.-backed genocide tribunal Tuesday, as hundreds of people eagerly awaited the arrival of the chief of the Khmer Rouge’s largest and most notorious torture center.

Silence fell as Kaing Guek Eav - alias “Duch” - was escorted into a courtroom for the first public session of the long-delayed tribunal probing the communist regime’s reign of terror in the 1970s. (Read content ‘Khmer Rouge Torture Chief In Court’…)

"Asia has made real advances in reducing poverty but lies on the front-line of impacts from climate change," said Andrew Simms, policy director of the New Economics Foundation (NEF) and co-author of the study, entitled "Up in Smoke: Asia and Pacific."

In releasing the study Monday, Simms and other proponents of global economic prosperity noted with concern the possibility that global warming could "reverse" decades of social and economic progress across Asia, if appropriate measures were not taken now.

"It has become clear that Asia would see some major changes as a result of the impacts of climate change," said R K Pachauri, chair of the UN-led Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in his foreword to the study.

Asia is home to over 60 percent of the world's population, over half of whom live near coasts, which have become increasingly vulnerable to sea-level rise due to global warming.

(Read content ‘Climate Change Will Throw Asia’s Advances into Reverse - Study (OneWorld.net)’…)