WHO: Slight cancer risk after Japan nuke accident

LONDON (AP) — Two years after Japan's nuclear plant disaster, an international team of experts said Thursday that residents of areas hit by the highest doses of radiation face an increased cancer risk so small it probably won't be detectable.

In fact, experts calculated that increase at about 1 extra percentage point added to a Japanese infant's lifetime cancer risk.

"The additional risk is quite small and will probably be hidden by the noise of other (cancer) risks like people's lifestyle choices and statistical fluctuations," said Richard Wakeford of the University of Manchester, one of the authors of the report. "It's more important not to start smoking than having been in Fukushima."

The report was issued by the World Health Organization, which asked scientists to study the health effects of the disaster in Fukushima, a rural farming region.

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake and tsunami knocked out the Fukushima plant's power and cooling systems, causing meltdowns in three reactors and spewing radiation into the surrounding air, soil and water. The most exposed populations were directly under the plumes of radiation in the most affected communities in Fukushima, which is about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Tokyo.

In the report, the highest increases in risk are for people exposed as babies to radiation in the most heavily affected areas. Normally in Japan, the lifetime risk of developing cancer of an organ is about 41 percent for men and 29 percent for women. The new report said that for infants in the most heavily exposed areas, the radiation from Fukushima would add about 1 percentage point to those numbers.

Experts had been particularly worried about a spike in thyroid cancer, since radioactive iodine released in nuclear accidents is absorbed by the thyroid, especially in children. After the Chernobyl disaster, about 6,000 children exposed to radiation later developed thyroid cancer because many drank contaminated milk after the accident.

In Japan, dairy radiation levels were closely monitored, but children are not big milk drinkers there.

The WHO report estimated that women exposed as infants to the most radiation after the Fukushima accident would have a 70 percent higher chance of getting thyroid cancer in their lifetimes. But thyroid cancer is extremely rare and one of the most treatable cancers when caught early. A woman's normal lifetime risk of developing it is about 0.75 percent. That number would rise by 0.5 under the calculated increase for women who got the highest radiation doses as infants.

Wakeford said the increase may be so small it will probably not be observable.

For people beyond the most directly affected areas of Fukushima, Wakeford said the projected cancer risk from the radiation dropped dramatically. "The risks to everyone else were just infinitesimal."

David Brenner of Columbia University in New York, an expert on radiation-induced cancers, said that although the risk to individuals is tiny outside the most contaminated areas, some cancers might still result, at least in theory. But they'd be too rare to be detectable in overall cancer rates, he said.

Brenner said the numerical risk estimates in the WHO report were not surprising. He also said they should be considered imprecise because of the difficulty in determining risk from low doses of radiation. He was not connected with the WHO report.

Some experts said it was surprising that any increase in cancer was even predicted.

"On the basis of the radiation doses people have received, there is no reason to think there would be an increase in cancer in the next 50 years," said Wade Allison, an emeritus professor of physics at Oxford University, who also had no role in developing the new report. "The very small increase in cancers means that it's even less than the risk of crossing the road," he said.

WHO acknowledged in its report that it relied on some assumptions that may have resulted in an overestimate of the radiation dose in the general population.

Gerry Thomas, a professor of molecular pathology at Imperial College London, accused the United Nations health agency of hyping the cancer risk.

"It's understandable that WHO wants to err on the side of caution, but telling the Japanese about a barely significant personal risk may not be helpful," she said.

Thomas said the WHO report used inflated estimates of radiation doses and didn't properly take into account Japan's quick evacuation of people from Fukushima.

"This will fuel fears in Japan that could be more dangerous than the physical effects of radiation," she said, noting that people living under stress have higher rates of heart problems, suicide and mental illness.

In Japan, Norio Kanno, the chief of Iitate village, in one of the regions hardest hit by the disaster, harshly criticized the WHO report on Japanese public television channel NHK, describing it as "totally hypothetical."

Many people who remain in Fukushima still fear long-term health risks from the radiation, and some refuse to let their children play outside or eat locally grown food.

Some restrictions have been lifted on a 12-mile (20-kilometer) zone around the nuclear plant. But large sections of land in the area remain off-limits. Many residents aren't expected to be able to return to their homes for years.

Kanno accused the report's authors of exaggerating the cancer risk and stoking fear among residents.

"I'm enraged," he said.

___

Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.

__

Online:

WHO report: http://bit.ly/YDCXcb

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Kerry Is Hoping to Nudge Egypt Toward Reforms

CAIRO — Secretary of State John Kerry told Egypt’s political and business leaders on Saturday that it was urgent their country institute economic reforms and satisfy the conditions the International Monetary Fund has set for a $4.8 billion loan.

“It is paramount, essential, urgent that the Egyptian economy get stronger, that it gets back on its feet,” Mr. Kerry told a group of Egyptian and American business executives in Cairo. “It’s clear to us that the I.M.F. arrangement needs to be reached, that we need to give the market that confidence.”

Mr. Kerry’s visit — his first trip to an Arab capital as secretary of state — comes at a time of economic peril in Egypt. The country’s economy has teetered near collapse for months, with soaring unemployment, a gaping budget deficit, dwindling hard-currency reserves and steep declines in the currency’s value.

The fund’s loan is critical, economists say, because it would provide a seal of approval that Egypt’s economy is on a path toward self-sufficiency, allowing it to obtain enough other international loans to fill in its deficit. Both the United States and the European Union are prepared to provide substantial additional assistance if Egypt and the I.M.F. can come to terms.

But even as Mr. Kerry stressed the need for prompt economic steps — and the political peace needed to achieve those changes — some opponents of President Mohamed Morsi sought to put the spotlight on the nation’s uneasy political course.

Parliamentary elections are scheduled for April. The major opposition group, the National Salvation Front, has announced that it plans to boycott the vote to protest what it says is a push by Mr. Morsi and his Islamist allies to dominate politics.

The Obama administration has been criticized by some of Mr. Morsi’s rivals as being too supportive of the Egyptian president, as has Mr. Kerry, who was the first American senator to meet Mr. Morsi.

The delicacy of the issue was apparent when members of the political opposition were invited to a Saturday session with Mr. Kerry. Some members, including Hamdeen Sabahi, who came in third in the presidential election last year, decided not to attend. Mohamed ElBaradei, one of the leaders of the National Salvation Front, chose not to go, but to speak by phone with Mr. Kerry instead.

Those that attended, Mr. Kerry later said, engaged in a “very, very spirited” discussion.

 Mohamed El Orabi, a former foreign minister and a leading member of the National Congress Party who went to the meeting, said that Mr. Kerry had talked about the importance of democracy while driving home his message on the economy.

Mr. Kerry also met separately with Amr Moussa, a former secretary general of the Arab League and the head of the National Congress Party.

The two years of tumult that began with the ouster of former President Hosni Mubarak has sharply slowed foreign investment and tourism, and economists say the Egyptian government urgently needs a cash infusion of several billion dollars to fend off the risk of an economic calamity that could lead to more unrest and instability.

In September, the United States brought more than 100 business executives to Cairo to encourage trade and economic development. But continuing political protests, including when demonstrators scaled the walls of the American Embassy here on the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, discouraged many businessmen from following up, Mr. Kerry noted. (The protesters that day were angry over an amateurish American-made video denouncing Islam.)

The International Monetary Fund has held on-again, off-again negotiations with Egypt for more than a year about providing the $4.8 billion.

The fund has imposed two difficult conditions. It has required the Egyptian government to commit itself to undertaking painful reforms like raising taxes and reducing energy subsidies.

It has also required a demonstration of political support for the reforms and the loan, to ensure that the government will honor its commitments in the future. That requires a dependable political process, as well as a degree of consensus that Egypt’s political factions have been unable to sustain.

On Sunday, Mr. Kerry is scheduled to meet with Mr. Morsi. The secretary of state said he would discuss specific steps the United States could take to boost the Egyptian economy if Egypt worked out a loan package with the I.M.F. That will be Mr. Kerry’s final meeting in Egypt before departing for Saudi Arabia, the seventh stop on his nine-nation tour.

The protests and street violence that have destabilized Egypt’s transition continued Saturday. The Egyptian state media reported that a demonstrator in the Nile Delta city of Mansoura was killed when he was run over by an armored police vehicle.

Violence also flared again in the Suez Canal city of Port Said, where the state media reported that protesters had burned down a police station. The Port Said protests began Jan. 26 after 21 local soccer fans were sentenced to death for their role in a deadly riot at a match last year.

But over the past month, the demonstrations in Port Said have blurred together with sometimes-violent protests in several other cities along the Suez Canal or in the Nile Delta. Some protesters are angry at Mr. Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, accusing them of failing to deliver fast enough on the anticipated rewards of the revolution, including economic benefits.

Michael R. Gordon reported from Cairo, and David D. Kirkpatrick from Istanbul.

Read More..

HP sells webOS operating system to LG Electronics

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Hewlett-Packard Co said on Monday it will sell the webOS operating system to South Korea’s LG Electronics Inc, unloading the smartphone software it acquired through a $ 1.2 billion acquisition of Palm in 2010.

LG will use the operating software, used in now-defunct Palm smartphones years ago, for its “smart” or Internet-connected TVs. The Asian electronics company had worked with HP on WebOS before offering to buy it outright.

Under the terms of their agreement, LG acquires the operating software’s source code, associated documentation, engineering talent, various associated websites, and licenses under HP’s intellectual property including patents covering fundamental operating system and user interface technology.

HP will retain the patents and all the technology relating to the cloud service of webOS, HP Chief Operating Officer Bill Veghte said in an interview.

“As we looked at it, we saw a very compelling IP that was very unique in the marketplace,” he said, adding that HP has already had a partnership with LG on webOS before the deal was announced.

“As a result of this collaboration, LG offered to acquire the webOS operating system technology,” Veghte said.

Skott Ahn, President and CTO, LG Electronics, said the company will incorporate the operating system in the Smart TV line-up first “and then hopefully all the other devices in the future.”

Both companies declined to reveal the terms of the deal.

LG will keep the WebOS team in Silicon Valley and, for now, will continue to be based out of HP offices, Ahn said.

HP opened its webOS mobile operating system to developers and companies in 2012 after trying to figure out how to recoup its investment in Palm, one of the pioneers of the smartphone industry.

The company had tried to build products based on webOS with the now-defunct TouchPad tablet its flagship product.

HP launched and discontinued the TouchPad in 2010, a little over a month after it hit store shelves with costly fanfare after it saw poor demand for a tablet priced on par with Apple’s dominant iPad.

WebOS is widely viewed as a strong mobile platform, but has been assailed for its paucity of applications, an important consideration while choosing a mobile device.

(Additional reporting By Paul Sandle and Alistair Barr; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick, Tim Dobbyn and M.D. Golan)

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David Bowie Makes Triumphant Comeback with New Album: PEOPLE's Critic

By Chuck Arnold

03/01/2013 at 08:40 PM EST

Ten years after his last album, David Bowie is back – and so is his swagger.

Forget the moody musings of "Where Are We Now?" – the reflective comeback single that he dropped, seemingly out of nowhere, on his birthday last month (Jan. 8). The Next Day – which, though not released until March 12, began streaming in its entirety on iTunes on Friday – represents much more of an emphatic, energetic return from the 66-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Famer.

"We'll never be rid of these stars/ But I hope they live forever," sings Bowie, sounding like the immortal rock god he is over the glittering guitar-pop bounce of "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)."

It's one of many driving, guitar-charged tracks on The Next Day: You can just imagine Ziggy Stardust getting his groove on to the bouncy beat of "Dancing Out in Space," while "(You Will) Set the World on Fire" is a rocking, fist-pumping anthem for today's young Americans.

Elsewhere, "Dirty Boys" is a sleazy grinder that, with its saxed-up funkiness, harks back to his soulful periods like 1975's Young Americans. In another nod to Bowie's past, The Next Day was produced by Tony Visconti, who also worked on the star's Berlin Trilogy albums from 1977 to 1979.

On one of the standouts, the melodic, midtempo "I'd Rather Be High," the album takes a political turn with Bowie's anti-war message: "I'd rather be dead or out of my head/ Then training these guns on those men in the sand."

It's moments like these that make The Next Day a triumphant comeback from a much-missed icon.

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WHO: Slight cancer risk after Japan nuke accident

LONDON (AP) — Two years after Japan's nuclear plant disaster, an international team of experts said Thursday that residents of areas hit by the highest doses of radiation face an increased cancer risk so small it probably won't be detectable.

In fact, experts calculated that increase at about 1 extra percentage point added to a Japanese infant's lifetime cancer risk.

"The additional risk is quite small and will probably be hidden by the noise of other (cancer) risks like people's lifestyle choices and statistical fluctuations," said Richard Wakeford of the University of Manchester, one of the authors of the report. "It's more important not to start smoking than having been in Fukushima."

The report was issued by the World Health Organization, which asked scientists to study the health effects of the disaster in Fukushima, a rural farming region.

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake and tsunami knocked out the Fukushima plant's power and cooling systems, causing meltdowns in three reactors and spewing radiation into the surrounding air, soil and water. The most exposed populations were directly under the plumes of radiation in the most affected communities in Fukushima, which is about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Tokyo.

In the report, the highest increases in risk are for people exposed as babies to radiation in the most heavily affected areas. Normally in Japan, the lifetime risk of developing cancer of an organ is about 41 percent for men and 29 percent for women. The new report said that for infants in the most heavily exposed areas, the radiation from Fukushima would add about 1 percentage point to those numbers.

Experts had been particularly worried about a spike in thyroid cancer, since radioactive iodine released in nuclear accidents is absorbed by the thyroid, especially in children. After the Chernobyl disaster, about 6,000 children exposed to radiation later developed thyroid cancer because many drank contaminated milk after the accident.

In Japan, dairy radiation levels were closely monitored, but children are not big milk drinkers there.

The WHO report estimated that women exposed as infants to the most radiation after the Fukushima accident would have a 70 percent higher chance of getting thyroid cancer in their lifetimes. But thyroid cancer is extremely rare and one of the most treatable cancers when caught early. A woman's normal lifetime risk of developing it is about 0.75 percent. That number would rise by 0.5 under the calculated increase for women who got the highest radiation doses as infants.

Wakeford said the increase may be so small it will probably not be observable.

For people beyond the most directly affected areas of Fukushima, Wakeford said the projected cancer risk from the radiation dropped dramatically. "The risks to everyone else were just infinitesimal."

David Brenner of Columbia University in New York, an expert on radiation-induced cancers, said that although the risk to individuals is tiny outside the most contaminated areas, some cancers might still result, at least in theory. But they'd be too rare to be detectable in overall cancer rates, he said.

Brenner said the numerical risk estimates in the WHO report were not surprising. He also said they should be considered imprecise because of the difficulty in determining risk from low doses of radiation. He was not connected with the WHO report.

Some experts said it was surprising that any increase in cancer was even predicted.

"On the basis of the radiation doses people have received, there is no reason to think there would be an increase in cancer in the next 50 years," said Wade Allison, an emeritus professor of physics at Oxford University, who also had no role in developing the new report. "The very small increase in cancers means that it's even less than the risk of crossing the road," he said.

WHO acknowledged in its report that it relied on some assumptions that may have resulted in an overestimate of the radiation dose in the general population.

Gerry Thomas, a professor of molecular pathology at Imperial College London, accused the United Nations health agency of hyping the cancer risk.

"It's understandable that WHO wants to err on the side of caution, but telling the Japanese about a barely significant personal risk may not be helpful," she said.

Thomas said the WHO report used inflated estimates of radiation doses and didn't properly take into account Japan's quick evacuation of people from Fukushima.

"This will fuel fears in Japan that could be more dangerous than the physical effects of radiation," she said, noting that people living under stress have higher rates of heart problems, suicide and mental illness.

In Japan, Norio Kanno, the chief of Iitate village, in one of the regions hardest hit by the disaster, harshly criticized the WHO report on Japanese public television channel NHK, describing it as "totally hypothetical."

Many people who remain in Fukushima still fear long-term health risks from the radiation, and some refuse to let their children play outside or eat locally grown food.

Some restrictions have been lifted on a 12-mile (20-kilometer) zone around the nuclear plant. But large sections of land in the area remain off-limits. Many residents aren't expected to be able to return to their homes for years.

Kanno accused the report's authors of exaggerating the cancer risk and stoking fear among residents.

"I'm enraged," he said.

___

Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.

__

Online:

WHO report: http://bit.ly/YDCXcb

Read More..

Kerry Criticizes Turkish Prime Minister Over Zionism Remark

ANKARA, Turkey — Secretary of State John Kerry chastised Turkey’s prime minister on Friday for recently calling Zionism a “crime against humanity,” a comment that could frustrate Mr. Kerry’s desire to see an improvement in estranged Turkish-Israeli relations.

When Mr. Kerry set off on Sunday on a nine-nation trip, his plan was to use his visit in Turkey to consult on trade, the crisis in Syria and other Middle East issues.

But on Wednesday, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a United Nations forum in Vienna that the international community should consider Islamophobia a crime against humanity “like Zionism or anti-Semitism or fascism.”

The next day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel described Mr. Erdogan’s remarks as a “dark and false statement.”

By Friday Mr. Kerry was faced with the task of trying to discourage another outburst from the Turks and salvaging some chance of an improvement in ties between Turkey and Israel — the first a moderate Muslim-majority nation and important NATO ally, and the other the principal United States ally in the Middle East.

The Americans’ sternest message to the Turks was conveyed before Mr. Kerry’s plane even landed by a senior State Department official who spoke under ground rules that he not be identified by name.“This was particularly offensive,” the official said, referring to Mr. Erdogan’s comments. “It complicates our ability to do all of the things that we want to do together.”

Once in Ankara, Mr. Kerry initially approached the issue somewhat indirectly. Noting that he had attended a memorial event earlier in the day for a Turkish security guard who had been killed trying to stop suicide bomber at the American Embassy, Mr. Kerry said that this selflessness should inspire a “spirit of tolerance.”

“And that,” Mr. Kerry added, “includes all of the public statements made by all leaders.”

But in response to a question at a news conference with Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Mr. Kerry was more direct.

“Obviously, we not only disagree with it. We found it objectionable,” Mr. Kerry said of Mr. Erdogan’s statement, noting that he planned to raise the matter Friday evening with the prime minister. The comments by Mr. Davutoglu suggested that it might not be an easy discussion.

The foreign minister insisted Turkey was not hostile to Israel and that the downturn in relations was Israel’s fault, referring to a 2010 episode in which eight Turks and an American of Turkish descent were killed when Israeli commandos boarded the lead ship of a pro-Palestinian activist flotilla that was trying to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza.

“If Israel is expected to hear positive comments from Turkey, I believe they need to revise their attitudes not only toward us but also toward the settlements in West Bank and the people of the region,” he added.

During the 1990s, Turkey and Israel enjoyed close cooperation in ties that were nurtured by the secular Turkish military and the Israeli national security establishment, Dan Arbell, a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy, wrote last year.

Relations began to deteriorate after Mr. Erdogan became prime minister in 2003 and Turkey adopted a more assertive regional posture, which often involved sharp criticism of Israel’s policies. Ties between the countries reached a low point with the deadly Gaza flotilla confrontation.

American officials said they would like to find some way to foster an improvement in Turkish-Israeli relations, which the official on Mr. Kerry’s plane described as “frozen.”

“We want to see a normalization, not just for the sake of the two countries but for the sake of the region and, frankly, for the symbolism,” the official said. “Not that long ago you had these two countries demonstrating that a majority Muslim country could have very positive and strong relations with the Jewish state.”

On Friday night, Mr. Kerry dined at Mr. Erdogan’s residence. The session began inauspiciously when Mr. Kerry apologized for being a little late because of his lengthy discussions with Mr. Davutoglu.

Mr. Erdogan, who seemed irritated, said that Mr. Kerry and Mr. Davutoglu “must have spoken about everything, so there is nothing left for us to talk about.”

“There’s a lot to talk about,” Mr. Kerry said. “We actually didn’t talk about everything.”

According to a State Department official, the Turkish prime minister and Mr. Kerry discussed the gamut of Middle East issues, including the recent meeting in Rome on the Syria conflict, the situation in Iraq, Iran and the prospects for reviving the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.

American officials did not provide details on the exchange regarding Mr. Erdogan’s Zionism comments or whether the Turkish prime minister believed they had in any way been excessive.

The two men, the State Department official said, had a “frank discussion of the prime minister’s speech in Vienna and how to move forward.”

Read More..

HP sells webOS operating system to LG Electronics

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Hewlett-Packard Co said on Monday it will sell the webOS operating system to South Korea’s LG Electronics Inc, unloading the smartphone software it acquired through a $ 1.2 billion acquisition of Palm in 2010.

LG will use the operating software, used in now-defunct Palm smartphones years ago, for its “smart” or Internet-connected TVs. The Asian electronics company had worked with HP on WebOS before offering to buy it outright.

Under the terms of their agreement, LG acquires the operating software’s source code, associated documentation, engineering talent, various associated websites, and licenses under HP’s intellectual property including patents covering fundamental operating system and user interface technology.

HP will retain the patents and all the technology relating to the cloud service of webOS, HP Chief Operating Officer Bill Veghte said in an interview.

“As we looked at it, we saw a very compelling IP that was very unique in the marketplace,” he said, adding that HP has already had a partnership with LG on webOS before the deal was announced.

“As a result of this collaboration, LG offered to acquire the webOS operating system technology,” Veghte said.

Skott Ahn, President and CTO, LG Electronics, said the company will incorporate the operating system in the Smart TV line-up first “and then hopefully all the other devices in the future.”

Both companies declined to reveal the terms of the deal.

LG will keep the WebOS team in Silicon Valley and, for now, will continue to be based out of HP offices, Ahn said.

HP opened its webOS mobile operating system to developers and companies in 2012 after trying to figure out how to recoup its investment in Palm, one of the pioneers of the smartphone industry.

The company had tried to build products based on webOS with the now-defunct TouchPad tablet its flagship product.

HP launched and discontinued the TouchPad in 2010, a little over a month after it hit store shelves with costly fanfare after it saw poor demand for a tablet priced on par with Apple’s dominant iPad.

WebOS is widely viewed as a strong mobile platform, but has been assailed for its paucity of applications, an important consideration while choosing a mobile device.

(Additional reporting By Paul Sandle and Alistair Barr; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick, Tim Dobbyn and M.D. Golan)

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Josh Duhamel Has 'Full Conversations' with His Unborn Child

FameFlynet

Daddy-to-be Josh Duhamel is so excited about welcoming his first child that he’s begun to bond with wife Fergie‘s belly.

“I’ve had full conversations with the baby already,” Duhamel jokes to PEOPLE at Tuesday’s Nickelodeon upfront presentation in New York. “I’m trying my best to communicate from beyond the womb. Whether it can hear me, I don’t know, but I’m talking to it a lot.”

In addition to enjoying his chats with Fergie’s baby bump, the Safe Haven star, 40, admits he loves the Black Eyed Peas singer’s pregnancy glow.

“She looks so beautiful,” he says. “I look at her now as not only as my beautiful wife, but also as the woman carrying our child. That takes our relationship to a whole new level.”

As for dealing with the sleepless nights, diaper duty and constant feedings, the actor claims he’s up for the challenge.

“I actually look forward to that stuff that people warn you about,” he says. “I don’t mind waking up and dealing with the middle of the night stuff. I wake up early anyway. So I’m definitely ready for it. More so than I’ve ever been.”

There is one task Duhamel really wants to be ready for: ”I hope to be a great dad.”

“I have a lot more life experience than I had at 24. I feel like I’m a little more patient and more wise than I was before,” he explains. “It’s easier said than done, but I’m just looking to raise a good person.”

He adds, “When we saw the ultrasound, that thing was moving around a lot. So I think we are going to have our hands full.”

In the meantime, Duhamel will be busy preparing to host Nickelodeon’s 26th annual Kids’ Choice Awards, airing March 23 at 8 p.m..

“It’s truly bonkers what this show is going to be,” he says. “I’m trying to do things as a host that people would never expect me to do. So if people didn’t take me seriously before, they definitely won’t take me seriously now.”

– Paul Chi

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WHO: Slight cancer risk after Japan nuke accident

LONDON (AP) — Two years after Japan's nuclear plant disaster, an international team of experts said Thursday that residents of areas hit by the highest doses of radiation face an increased cancer risk so small it probably won't be detectable.

In fact, experts calculated that increase at about 1 extra percentage point added to a Japanese infant's lifetime cancer risk.

"The additional risk is quite small and will probably be hidden by the noise of other (cancer) risks like people's lifestyle choices and statistical fluctuations," said Richard Wakeford of the University of Manchester, one of the authors of the report. "It's more important not to start smoking than having been in Fukushima."

The report was issued by the World Health Organization, which asked scientists to study the health effects of the disaster in Fukushima, a rural farming region.

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake and tsunami knocked out the Fukushima plant's power and cooling systems, causing meltdowns in three reactors and spewing radiation into the surrounding air, soil and water. The most exposed populations were directly under the plumes of radiation in the most affected communities in Fukushima, which is about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Tokyo.

In the report, the highest increases in risk are for people exposed as babies to radiation in the most heavily affected areas. Normally in Japan, the lifetime risk of developing cancer of an organ is about 41 percent for men and 29 percent for women. The new report said that for infants in the most heavily exposed areas, the radiation from Fukushima would add about 1 percentage point to those numbers.

Experts had been particularly worried about a spike in thyroid cancer, since radioactive iodine released in nuclear accidents is absorbed by the thyroid, especially in children. After the Chernobyl disaster, about 6,000 children exposed to radiation later developed thyroid cancer because many drank contaminated milk after the accident.

In Japan, dairy radiation levels were closely monitored, but children are not big milk drinkers there.

The WHO report estimated that women exposed as infants to the most radiation after the Fukushima accident would have a 70 percent higher chance of getting thyroid cancer in their lifetimes. But thyroid cancer is extremely rare and one of the most treatable cancers when caught early. A woman's normal lifetime risk of developing it is about 0.75 percent. That number would rise by 0.5 under the calculated increase for women who got the highest radiation doses as infants.

Wakeford said the increase may be so small it will probably not be observable.

For people beyond the most directly affected areas of Fukushima, Wakeford said the projected cancer risk from the radiation dropped dramatically. "The risks to everyone else were just infinitesimal."

David Brenner of Columbia University in New York, an expert on radiation-induced cancers, said that although the risk to individuals is tiny outside the most contaminated areas, some cancers might still result, at least in theory. But they'd be too rare to be detectable in overall cancer rates, he said.

Brenner said the numerical risk estimates in the WHO report were not surprising. He also said they should be considered imprecise because of the difficulty in determining risk from low doses of radiation. He was not connected with the WHO report.

Some experts said it was surprising that any increase in cancer was even predicted.

"On the basis of the radiation doses people have received, there is no reason to think there would be an increase in cancer in the next 50 years," said Wade Allison, an emeritus professor of physics at Oxford University, who also had no role in developing the new report. "The very small increase in cancers means that it's even less than the risk of crossing the road," he said.

WHO acknowledged in its report that it relied on some assumptions that may have resulted in an overestimate of the radiation dose in the general population.

Gerry Thomas, a professor of molecular pathology at Imperial College London, accused the United Nations health agency of hyping the cancer risk.

"It's understandable that WHO wants to err on the side of caution, but telling the Japanese about a barely significant personal risk may not be helpful," she said.

Thomas said the WHO report used inflated estimates of radiation doses and didn't properly take into account Japan's quick evacuation of people from Fukushima.

"This will fuel fears in Japan that could be more dangerous than the physical effects of radiation," she said, noting that people living under stress have higher rates of heart problems, suicide and mental illness.

In Japan, Norio Kanno, the chief of Iitate village, in one of the regions hardest hit by the disaster, harshly criticized the WHO report on Japanese public television channel NHK, describing it as "totally hypothetical."

Many people who remain in Fukushima still fear long-term health risks from the radiation, and some refuse to let their children play outside or eat locally grown food.

Some restrictions have been lifted on a 12-mile (20-kilometer) zone around the nuclear plant. But large sections of land in the area remain off-limits. Many residents aren't expected to be able to return to their homes for years.

Kanno accused the report's authors of exaggerating the cancer risk and stoking fear among residents.

"I'm enraged," he said.

___

Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.

__

Online:

WHO report: http://bit.ly/YDCXcb

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Wall Street ends flat after late fade; S&P up for fourth month

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks ended flat on Thursday, giving up modest gains late in the session, denying the Dow a chance to inch closer to all-time highs.

The S&P 500 still managed to close out February with a fourth straight month of gains. JC Penney Co Inc was the day's biggest loser, falling 17 percent to $17.57 after the department store operator reported a steep drop in sales.

The U.S. economy grew slightly in the fourth quarter, a turnaround from an earlier estimate showing contraction, and a drop in new claims for unemployment benefits last week added to a batch of data suggesting the economy continues its sluggish improvement.

The Dow was within striking distance of its record high after a year-to-date advance of more than 7 percent. The Dow's record closing high, set on October 9, 2007, stands at 14,164.53, while the Dow's intraday record high, set on October 11, 2007, stands at 14,198.10.

The Dow Jones Transportation Average <.djt>, seen as a bet on future growth, is up 12.9 percent this year, and the 20-stock index hit a record intraday high earlier on Thursday.

"To push through to new highs, you would have to see consistent positive economic data in the U.S. and have Europe stabilize - those are two pretty big requirements," said Jeff Morris, head of U.S. equities at Standard Life Investments in Boston.

"It wouldn't surprise me to see us bounce around as we have the past couple of weeks," Morris added.

Volume was low for most of the session until quarterly index-rebalancing activity hit the tape at the very close of trading.

After a strong January with gains of more than 5 percent, both the Dow and the S&P 500 found gains tougher to come by in February. Minutes from the Federal Reserve's January meeting sparked concerns that the central bank may pull back on its stimulus measures sooner than expected, while looming U.S. budget cuts and turbulent Italian elections tempered investors' aggressiveness.

But concerns about Fed policy were eased by testimony from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke before a congressional committee earlier this week, as he defended the policy of buying bonds to keep interest rates low to boost growth, despite worries some have about possible inflation.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> shed 20.88 points, or 0.15 percent, to 14,054.49 at the close. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> lost 1.31 points, or 0.09 percent, to 1,514.68. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> fell 2.07 points, or 0.07 percent, to end at 3,160.19.

For the month, the Dow rose 1.4 percent, the S&P 500 gained 1.1 percent and the Nasdaq advanced 0.6 percent.

Limited Brands and Netflix ranked among the best-performing consumer stocks. Shares of Limited Brands, the parent of retailers Victoria's Secret and Bath & Body Works, gained 2.3 percent to $45.52. The stock of video streaming service Netflix climbed 2 percent to $$188.08.

In contrast, shares of Groupon Inc fell on weak revenue, with the daily deals company's tumbling 24.3 percent to $4.53.

Cablevision slumped 9.6 percent to $13.99 after the cable provider took a $100 million hit on costs related to Superstorm Sandy and posted deeper video customer losses than expected.

On a positive note, Mylan Inc gained 3.6 percent to $29.61 after the generic drugmaker posted a 25 percent rise in fourth-quarter profit and said it will buy a unit of India's Strides Arcolab Ltd.

Investors were keeping an eye on the debate in Washington over U.S. government budget cuts that will take effect starting Friday if lawmakers fail to reach agreement on spending and taxes. President Barack Obama and Republican congressional leaders arranged last-ditch talks to prevent the cuts, but expectations were low that any deal would emerge.

Volume was modest with about 6.81 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE MKT and Nasdaq, slightly above the daily average of 6.46 billion.

Advancing stocks slightly outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by 1,518 to 1,446. On the Nasdaq, the decliners had a slight edge, with 1,247 shares falling and 1,201 stocks rising.

(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Jan Paschal)

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