Millions of poor children in the United States may be getting fat before age 10 because their mothers are stressed out and the youngsters seek escape in unhealthy comfort food, researchers said on Tuesday. The stress is rooted in poverty and can be brought on by money woes, work loads, insufficient health insurance and other factors, said Craig Gundersen of the University of Illinois, who led the study. "People will eat in response to feeling stress," he said in a telephone interview, and in this case children may be eating more in response to stress-related trouble at home....An estimated 17 percent of U.S. children between the ages of 2 and 19 are obese and another 16 percent are overweight. ..."A number of mothers in this study suffer from at least one symptom of depression and anxiety. By providing these women with relevant medical care and counseling, these symptoms may be alleviated with the further indirect benefit of reducing childhood overweight," the researchers wrote.

The agricultural giant Monsanto may well still be the world's most hated company. The company that brought the world Agent Orange, the defoliant of choice in the Vietnam War, followed up a decade ago with a strident push to flood the world with genetically modified crops. .... The company trumpets especially its work to engineer more water-efficient maize. Of course, despite the company's public pledge to "share knowledge and technology" the company's corporate aim is to make sure that farmers buy Monsanto-patented water-efficient seeds by the trillion....Nature on Molokai has suffered badly from the invasion of Monsanto and other big-farm companies.

The extent to which US doctors and psychologists violated human rights and betrayed the ethical standards of their professions by designing and implementing a worldwide torture programme is greater than previously thought, says a report from Physicians for Human Rights. The report is based on analysis of a previously classified report from the inspector general of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that was released at the end of August, on Barack Obama's instructions and which provides more detail on the role of health professionals in the CIA's torture programme, including abuses conducted against 14 detainees between September 2001 and October 2003. The new report's authors argue that the information shows that health professionals played central roles in developing, implementing, and providing justification for torture. Health professionals in the Office of Medical Services and psychologist contractors engaged in designing and monitoring harmful interrogation techniques, they say.....Scott Allen, Physicians for Human Rights

Newly elected Japanese legislators from Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) have promised to press for the removal of US military units from the southern island of Okinawa. All five Okinawa politicians said they were opposed to a deal between the US and Japan regarding the Futenma air base in their region. The lawmakers emphasized that thousands of US Marines and their families should be moved to the US Pacific island territory of Guam. Washington has said it has no intention to renegotiate the Futenma replacement facility plan or Guam relocation. "The United States has no intention to renegotiate the Futenma replacement facility plan or Guam relocation with the government of Japan," State department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters.....The new Japanese prime minister is said to be a strong critic of what he calls Tokyo's 'subservient position to Washington'. Hatoyama had regularly criticized the pro-US ruling party for joining in refueling operations in the Indian Ocean in support of the US-led forces in Afghanistan. Hatoyama has also vowed to pursue new politics that would take Tokyo away from the 'excesses of US-style capitalism'. "As a result of the failure of the Iraq war and the financial crisis, the era of US-led globalism is coming to an end," Hatoyama wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times last week.

China's Ministry of Health and the Red Cross Society of China have jointly launched a pilot organ donation system in five cities and five provinces to harvest organs from brain stem dead patients. The system is a step towards bringing transplant organ procurement procedures into line with internationally accepted practices. Announcing the programme, China's deputy health minister, Huang Jiefu, admitted that more than 65% of current organ donors are executed prisoners, with only a tiny proportion of organs coming from brain stem dead people. "Executed prisoners are definitely not a proper source for organ transplants," he told the state run newspaper China Daily. The new donor system, launched on 25 August, covers five major cities--Nanjing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Wuhan, and Xiamen--and the provinces of Guangdong, Jiangxi, Liaoning, Shandong, and Zhejiang provinces. It has been welcomed by observers as a small but important step in the right direction.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat on Friday blasted Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's intention to approve plans for hundreds of new housing units in the West Bank before considering a brief settlement construction moratorium, saying that "the only thing suspended by this announcement will be the peace process." Erakat insisted Israel had already responded "with total defiance" to US calls for a settlement freeze. "The real Israeli official answer is being conducted on the ground by continuing the building of housing units and settlements," he said.