Do drunks have to go to the ER?

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – With the help of a checklist, ambulance workers may be able to safely reroute drunk patients to detoxification centers instead of emergency rooms, according to a new study.

Researchers in Colorado found no serious medical problems were reported after 138 people were sent to a detox center to sleep it off, instead of to an ER.

In 2004, according to the researchers, it’s estimated that 0.6 percent of all U.S. ER visits were made by people without any problems other than being drunk. Those visits ended up costing about $ 900 million.

“Part of the issue has been – as it is in many busy ER departments – there’s a lot of chronic alcoholics that are brought in by ambulance, police or just come in. Often they are brought in because they have not committed a crime or there is limited space in our detoxification center. So the majority were brought to the ER department,” said Dr. David Ross, the study’s lead author from Penrose-St. Francis Health Services in Colorado Springs.

Ross said the ambulance company where he serves as medical director created the checklist with the help of the local detox center, which provided limited medical care by a nurse, and the local hospitals to reduce the number of drunks without medical needs being sent to the local ERs.

They created a checklist with 29 yes-or-no questions, such as whether the patient is cooperating with the ambulance worker’s examination and if the patient is willing to go to the detox center.

The patient was sent to the ER if the ambulance worker checked “no” on any question.

The researchers then went back to look at the patients they transported between December 2003 and December 2005 to see whether or not any of them ended up having serious medical problems at the detox center.

During that two year period, the ambulance workers transported 718 drunks. The detox center received 138 and the local ERs got 580.

Overall, 11 of the patients who were taken to detox were turned away because there was no room, their blood alcohol level exceeded the limit, their family came to pick them up or they were combative.

Another four patients at the detox center were taken to the ER because of minor complications, including chest and knee pain. However, there were no serious complications reported.

“We really believe that we did not miss anybody with a serious illness and injury that didn’t go to the ER as they should have,” said Ross.

But the researchers write in the Annals of Emergency Medicine that their study did have some limitations.

Specifically, the researchers did not plan in advance to do a study when they were creating the checklist, which means their findings are limited to whatever information was collected at the detox center and ERs.

Also, the number of people who were sent to the detox center in their study is relatively small, so it’s hard to tell how many serious complications they’d see among a larger group of people.

“We tried to estimate how likely we would have been to encounter a serious event… We estimated at most we’d encounter three serious adverse events (in 748 patients),” Ross told Reuters Health.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/QgPCT5 Annals of Emergency Medicine, online November 9, 2012.

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Serious About Free Markets? Prove It

On Friday the Republican Study Committee, a policy shop for congressional Republicans, published a memo on how to fix copyright law. By Saturday afternoon the group’s executive director had pulled the memo, which had evidently failed to approach the subject with “all facts and viewpoints in hand.” This is Washington’s way of saying that an interest group hit the roof, and indeed, Ars Technica reports that lobbyists from the “content industry”—Hollywood and recording companies—pressured the group to renounce the memo.

Copyright being in fact broken, you can still read copies of the memo online. It lays out what copyright reform advocates have been saying for years. Copyright protections now extend 70 years past the life of the author; for a corporation, 95 years after publication. This, along with punitive laws on copyright violation, hinders creativity and innovation. These facts aren’t new. What’s new is the tone. Derek Khanna, the memo’s author, writes like an unashamed free marketeer, and in doing so manages to latch on to a larger point: Laws that help businesses often harm markets. From the memo:

Today’s legal regime of copyright law is seen by many as a form of corporate welfare that hurts innovation and hurts the consumer. It is a system that picks winners and losers, and the losers are new industries that could generate new wealth and added value. We frankly may have no idea how it actually hurts innovation, because we don’t know what isn’t able to be produced as a result of our current system. (Emphasis in the original.)

Radical stuff. There’s no one in Washington to lobby for industries that don’t exist yet, and ever so briefly, Khanna and the Republican Study Committee stepped into that breach. Then they stepped back, to gather more facts and viewpoints. Here’s one: Pro-business and pro-market are not the same thing. The most pleasant place for a business is not elbows-out in the middle of a free market, but sitting alone, atop a fat monopoly. Ask your local cable provider. The larger a business gets, the more it has to protect from the companies and industries that might follow it with something better or cheaper. And the best way to protect what you have is to have it written into law.

Real markets, with real competition, are most helpful to newcomers. Small businesses and new industries create new value. Once created, they, too, move to Washington to protect it. Witness the growth of Google (GOOG) and Facebook’s (FB) lobbying operations in the Capitol. Khanna describes extended copyright protection as rent-seeking—in his words, “non-productive behavior that sucks economic productivity and potential from the overall economy.” What’s true of Hollywood and the recording industry could be said of any established industry.

Luigi Zingales, a professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a regular contributor to Bloomberg View, points out that larger companies can lobby for special exemptions in the tax code. This creates complexity in the tax code, which punishes smaller businesses that can’t pay for tax lawyers and don’t have anyone’s buttonhole on Capitol Hill. Zingales prefers simple regulations and simple taxes, which are harder for lobbyists to game and easier for democracies to understand. He sees this as a bipartisan problem. The left is inclined toward more regulation, and the right is pro-business, rather than pro-markets.

The direction Khanna was headed—a defense of open, competitive markets at the expense of existing businesses—is still wide open space, claimed by no party. This summer, conservatives such as Timothy Carney at the Examiner and Yuval Levin at National Review urged Mitt Romney to back markets, not businesses. But he chose not to, even though he, in his day, disrupted existing markets of his own. Some enterprising Republican can still do it. Derek Khanna in 2016! He’s young. Maybe VP.

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Former Ivory Coast leader’s wife wanted by ICC

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The International Criminal Court unsealed an indictment Thursday against former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo‘s wife on charges including murder, rape and persecution. It was the first time in the court’s 10-year history it has charged a woman.

The world’s first permanent war crimes tribunal said the arrest warrant was issued on Feb. 29 for former first lady Simone Gbagbo for crimes against humanity.

Her husband, Laurent Gbagbo, is already in custody at the court’s detention unit in The Hague facing similar charges stemming from his fight to retain power after losing a 2010 presidential election. If his wife is extradited, they could face justice together in an unprecedented husband-wife trial.

But a senior member of Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara‘s government, who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media, said Ivory Coast has already informed the ICC that the nation will not let her go.

“We informed them of this a long time ago,” he said.

The court’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, urged Ivory Coast to extradite Gbagbo.

“The type of crimes committed in the aftermath of the 2010 elections did not happen by chance — they were planned and coordinated at the highest political and military levels and all those bearing the greatest responsibility must be held to account,” Bensouda said in a statement.

She said prosecutors continue to investigate crimes committed by both sides in Ivory Coast’s bloody power struggle and expect to issue further arrest warrants in the future.

“The investigations are objective, impartial and independent, and are conducted in strict accordance with the law,” she said.

Ivory Coast officials are holding the 63 year old under house arrest in the northwest town of Odienne. Last week, Ivorian prosecutor Noel Dje Enrike Yahau said lawyers had questioned Simone Gbagbo there for two days and that the domestic charges against her remained the same: genocide, blood crimes and economic crimes.

Unsealing the ICC arrest warrant issued nearly nine months ago appears to be a tactic by the court to put pressure on Ouattara’s administration to hand over Ms. Gbagbo.

If authorities in Ivory Coast want to prosecute her, they have to convince judges at The Hague tribunal that their case involves the same crimes she is charged with at the ICC. It is a court of last resort, meaning it only takes cases from countries unwilling or unable to prosecute them.

The international court said in the warrant that there is evidence pro-Gbagbo forces deliberately attacked perceived supporters of Ouattara in the aftermath of the election.

Judges who reviewed evidence supporting the charges against Ms. Gbagbo said they found “there are reasonable grounds to believe that Ms. Gbagbo bears individual criminal responsibility for the crimes … as ‘an indirect co-perpetrator.’”

The warrant called Gbagbo an “alter ego for her husband” with the power to make state decisions. It said there is evidence to suggest she “instructed the pro-Gbagbo forces to commit crimes against individuals who posed a threat to her husband’s power.”

Her husband was the first former head of state to be taken into custody by the court when he was extradited to The Hague by the Ivory Coast government last year.

Prosecutors say about 3,000 people died in violence by both sides after Gbagbo refused to concede defeat following the election. Ouattara finally took power in April 2011 with the help of French and U.N. forces.

Ivory Coast is not a member state of the court, but has voluntarily accepted its jurisdiction.

It is very rare for a woman to be charged by an international war crimes court. In the past, the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal convicted former Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic of persecution and sentenced her to 11 years imprisonment.

The announcement of the arrest warrant and Ivory Coast’s refusal to hand over Gbagbo appeared likely to raise tensions between supporters of her husband and those who back Ouattara.

Moussa Toure Zeguen, a leader of the Gbagbo allies in exile in Ghana, said by phone from Accra that the former president’s supporters had no faith in the Ivorian authorities to give Simone Gbagbo a fair trial.

“We don’t trust them. The only thing that Ouattara is doing is revenge,” Zeguen said. “He wants to try us without trying any of the fighters from his side who also committed crimes. It is not fair, and this cannot bring reconciliation.”

____

Associated Press writers Rukmini Callimachi in Dakar, Senegal, and Robbie Corey-Boulet in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, contributed to this report.

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New York Athletes Use Twitter to Gain Cult Hero Status

If you’re one of the over 20.6 million Americans who has a Twitter account, chances are you’ve stumbled across the official SoccerGirlProblems Twitter handle, @SoccerGrlProbs, at least once while using the popular social media networking site.

SoccerGirlProblems, a feed spawned by three New York-based athletes, is a Twitter handle dedicated to the true-life outrageous complaints about everyday life as a high school or college soccer player.

The simple concept was started as a joke, but it has grown to startling dimensions.

SoccerGirlProblems has over 148,000 Twitter followers, and its explosive popularity led to the creation of a spinoff blog, a well-known YouTube account, a custom-made T-shirt business, and an official website.

Since opening in the beginning of 2012, the SoccerGirlProblems YouTube account has racked up over 3.2 million video views, and T-shirts have been selling like hotcakes. The SoccerGirlProblems Twitter page is also busier than ever, as it gained 50,000 new followers between May and November.

Punch #SGP or #SoccerGrlProbs into the Twitter search box on any given day, and you’ll immediately get a slew of hilarious tweets like “Took a long, hard stare at a pair of jeans this morning…Almost felt bad for neglecting them for so long. SWEATS IT IS,” along with other comedic gems like “family dreads thanksgiving if…i’m not on their team for flag football. Come on people what’s wrong with a little ‘friendly’ competition??”

With the SoccerGirlProblems brand finding so much success, one would expect the girls behind it to be household names by now, much like other Twitter/YouTube personalities like Jenna Marbles and Tay Zonday.

In fact, the founders of SoccerGirlProblems were afraid to reveal their identities until recently, as they feared retribution from conservative school administrators at their current school, Fairfield University.

The SoccerGirlProblems ladies believed that school officials from Fairfield would possibly find some of their hilarious tweets to be offensive or inappropriate. The founders did not want their tweets to bring negative exposure to their current or former schools.

It took over a year for the SoccerGirlProblems girls to reveal their identities publicly, but two of the three founders finally decided it was time to come out and detail how they became cult heroes via Twitter.

Carly Beyar, a South Hempstead, New York, resident and graduate of South Side High School in Rockville Centre, New York, along with Alanna Locast of Wantagh, New York, revealed that they are among the core group of tweeters handling the SoccerGirlProblems Twitter and YouTube accounts.

Locast, a graduate of Long Island’s Seaford High School, was an attacking offensive option for Fairfield until her graduation in 2011, while Beyar is still playing for the Fairfield Stags.

“It is still a shock to us that all of these girls relate to what we are saying,” Beyar said of her dedicated legion of Twitter followers in an exclusive online interview in May. “The soccer world is evidently a small one. It is comforting to know that we are not the only women soccer players out there dealing with these problems every day. Also, don’t get us wrong, we love soccer and will do anything for it; sometimes you just need to complain to keep you sane. ‘With training comes complaining.’”

Beyar and Locast, both standout high school soccer players on Long Island, think they can take SoccerGirlProblems to new heights due to the power of online marketing.

“I think it is easy to relate to our tweets when we are sarcastic and humorous,” Beyar said. “We try to take bothersome problems every day and turn it into something to just sit back and laugh about. We appreciate all of the support that our fans have given us since August. They are the best fans any Twitter account can ask for. Originally, we made this Twitter account for fun. We wanted to make it a team-based thing where everyone would tweet a problem from our team to get a laugh out of it. Little did we know how powerful the Web can be.”

Eric Holden covered the South Side Lady Cyclones girls’ soccer team in the 2010-11 season and has reported on Long Island soccer events since 2009. Follow him on Twitter @ericholden.

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FDA took 684 days to warn meningitis-linked firm: files

BOSTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration took 684 days to issue a warning letter after uncovering infractions that could potentially harm patients at the pharmacy at the center of the deadly U.S. meningitis outbreak, newly released documents show.

The New England Compounding Center (NECC) chastised the FDA in a letter dated January 5, 2007, telling the agency its response time was nearly 18 months longer than the FDA’s average response, according to letters released under an open records request.

“We believe that FDA’s nearly two year delay in issuing the Warning Letter contradicts FDA’s rhetoric regarding the asserted risks associated with our compounded products,” NECC co-owner and chief pharmacist Barry Cadden said in the letter, released by the FDA under an open records request.

The FDA acknowledged in a letter to Cadden dated October 31, 2008, that there had been a “significant delay” in its response but insisted that the delay “in no way diminishes our serious concerns about your firm’s operations.”

On Wednesday, a spokeswoman for the FDA, Erica Jefferson, said the delay in issuing the warning letter was due to the agency’s limited, unclear and contested authority.

“During the time between the inspection of NECC and the issuance of the warning letter, there was ongoing litigation pertaining to pharmacy compounding and significant internal discussion about how to regulate compounders, all of which delayed FDA,” she said.

The FDA has asked lawmakers to clarify its authority to oversee large-scale drug compounders such as NECC. But several Republicans have argued that the agency already had the authority that could have prevented the outbreak.

And on November 19, a congressional panel investigating the outbreak told the FDA not to expect new authority until it releases documents about its role.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 34 people have died and 490 have been injured after Framingham, Massachusetts-based NECC shipped a tainted steroid, methylprednisolone acetate, to medical facilities throughout the United States. The steroid is typically used to ease back pain.

On Tuesday, defense lawyers for NECC’s owners told a U.S. District Judge in Boston there was nothing to show they had a direct hand in the cause of the meningitis outbreak.

INDIGNANT AND UNCOOPERATIVE

NECC has consistently pushed back against attempts by regulators to discipline it, despite a series of violations dating back to 1999.

And the pharmacy’s principals have sometimes shown little respect for the FDA or its inspectors.

During a re-inspection of the pharmacy in 2004 following up on certain marketing and packaging violations, Cadden and his brother-in-law, Gregory Conigliaro, a co-owner of NECC, became indignant, according to a 2005 memorandum from the FDA inspector. Cadden declined to cooperate without speaking to a lawyer first and at one point instructed his brother-in-law not to answer any more questions.

Conigliaro said he had “a lot of things to finish and just did not have the time to sit with us to answer our questions,” the inspector said in his memo.

The FDA’s eventual warning letter to NECC in December 2006 was based on an inspection that began in September 2004 and ended on January 19, 2005, according to the documents.

(Reporting by Tim McLaughlin; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Andre Grenon)

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What Does a $225 Turkey Taste Like?

While the average cost of Thanksgiving dinner for 10 crept up to $ 50 this year, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation, some consumers are willing to fork out much more. At Ayrshire Farm in Middleburg, Va., the price of a 25-pound organic turkey: $ 225. That’s more expensive than an iPhone 5 (well, on contract). The farm also sells cooked 16- to 20-pound birds for $ 250.

According to Dave Stephens, the farm’s meat processing plant manager, the taste (and for some, the peace of mind) that comes with eating a certified organic, “humane” bird is worth every dollar. ”Because they are allowed to socialize and forage, and run around looking for leaves and bugs and stuff, they actually develop a darker dark meat and are a little more substantial in texture,” he says.

Ayrshire’s 25-pound birds are Holland Whites, with a white-meat-to-dark-meat ratio of about 60/40, Stephens estimates. These are larger than average heritage birds, which normally do not grow to more than 20 pounds. The organic turkeys mate naturally, are not fed hormones, and are allowed to roam freely. Heritage turkeys sold through Heritage Foods USA cost about $ 8 per pound as well.

This year Ayrshire Farm raised about 800 of these 25-pounders, and the vast majority of them are sold for Thanksgiving. Tuesday morning, the farm gave one as a gift to Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell.

Some may blanch at the thought of paying $ 25 to $ 50 for their turkey, but these upscale birds are actually cheaper than some other options. Chef Daniel Boulud’s catering company Feast & Fetes, for example, will prepare and serve a turkey dinner with appetizers and dessert at your house for about $ 140 per person. Wine, unfortunately, isn’t included.

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Ivory Coast: New prime minister named

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) — President Alassane Ouattara has tapped Foreign Minister Daniel Kablan Duncan to serve as prime minister in a new government one week after the surprise dissolution of cabinet.

The appointment of Duncan, a member of the PDCI party of former President Henri Konan Bedie, was announced at a press conference Wednesday by Amadou Gon Coulibaly, general secretary of the presidency.

Ouattara dissolved the cabinet last week over a feud between his political party and the PDCI over proposed changes to the country’s marriage law.

The PDCI supported Ouattara in the November 2010 runoff election in exchange for the prime minister’s post, helping him defeat incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo. Gbagbo’s refusal to cede office led to five months of violence that claimed at least 3,000 lives before Ouattara’s forces won.

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Nintendo’s Wii U: First Impressions

GamePad

The Wii U GamePad has a 6.2-inch touchscreen.

Click here to view this gallery.

[More from Mashable: Meet the Super Fan Who Waited in Line for a Month for a Wii U [VIDEO]]

Nintendo‘s newest console has only been available for one day, but that’s still enough time for early-bird consumers to get their hands on the Wii U, and test out its features and games.

We spent the last 24 hours playing with the Wii U, and have organized our early thoughts on the system. Read on if you’re on the fence about buying one.

[More from Mashable: Toys ‘R’ Us Says Wii U Pre-Order Shipments May Be Delayed]

Out of the Box

Setting up the Wii U is easy, but installing the software is more of a process. Nintendo issued a day-one patch to activate features such as MiiVerse, the company’s social features; this means users will spend between one to three hours (depending on connection speed) downloading and installing a patch that bricks their system. Not a great way to greet consumers excited to play your games. But there’s a chance that servers won’t be as busy in the coming weeks, so download times may improve. Each game I inserted had its own patch too, which users have to install on the second playthrough.

After getting through the patch, user still face an involved setup. They have to create their Mii avatar before they start playing, and create a Nintendo Network ID for network play. Users must also set up the GamePad’s universal remote functionality, which is thankfully the easiest part of the process. They only have to pick their TV manufacturer (the Wii U knows what to do next). The GamePad controls volume, input source and channels.

Look and Feel

The GamePad is the Wii U’s main portal, so users need it to access all the relevant menus (the console shows a different menu from the television); here, users can launch applications by touch. The default view includes apps such as Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Video Services and YouTube; but only Netflix is available now, which seems a bit like false advertising. Loading other options, such as the Nintendo eShop, requires pressing the Home button on the controller, which is unintuitive at first. But soon, the button quickly becomes a handy way to navigate to other parts of the Wii U, like the upcoming Nintendo TVii.

The most troublesome thing about the console is that everything moved slowly; launching games and apps took a long time. I felt like I spent awhile looking at a spinning blue circle.

Wii U games definitely take advantage of the console’s ability to support high-definition graphics. Cartoony games, such as Scribblenauts Unlimited or Nintendo Land look beautiful. For games such as ZombiU, which are supposed to appear more realistic, users might be disappointed. This system is supposed to be the next-generation of gaming consoles — meant to outshine the Xbox 360 — but I can’t say it achieves that.

The GamePad

Pre-launch, Nintendo has spent much of its time crowing about the features of the GamePad, a hybrid touch screen and controller that’s central to the Wii U. The first thing I noticed is its large size; but after spending a few hours with the GamePad, I’ve concluded that it won’t weigh you down like an iPad, yet is substantial enough that it doesn’t feel like a toy (though the glossy finish makes it look like one.)

Unfortunately, the GamePad takes some getting used to as an actual controller, especially for games that require more than simple controls or the gyroscope. My biggest complaint is that Nintendo bucked all gaming-controller tradition by swapping the position of the right analog stick and the four letter buttons. Anyone who has played any other modern console (including Nintendo’s own GameCube) knows instinctively that the analog stick goes below the buttons; but Nintendo flipped them on both the GamePad and the Pro Controller. If the company is only targeting non-gamers, they won’t notice; but this will be a difficult change for many others. Despite this drawback, the buttons, and especially triggers, feel good.

The GamePad is mostly dominated by the 6.2-inch touch screen with a passable resolution: 854 x 480. The most appealing feature of the Wii U — that users can play games or watch movies entirely on the GamePad — may be spoiled for some looking for HD crispness. Still, I watched a whole episode of Portlandia from Netflix on the GamePad, and also spent time playing New Super Mario Bros. U with the television off. Being able to isolate your gameplay to a smaller screen is very novel, and one of my favorite parts of the system.

Games

Nintendo’s Wii U has a better launch lineup coming out, compared to other consoles — but only a few titles stick out. Almost everyone I talked to in line at the Nintendo World store during the Wii U launch wanted New Super Mario Bros. U or ZombiU, both of which are fun titles. Nintendo Land, which is a pack-in if users purchase the Deluxe model, is going to be a huge hit at parties; from what I’ve seen so far, it has some engrossing minigames. I haven’t cracked open Scribblenauts Unlimited yet, but in demos it looks like a very promising title that would go well with a touch screen.

Some non-exclusive titles on other consoles are also appealing. I’m looking forward to digging in to Epic Mickey 2 and Tekken Tag Tournament 2. While the system had 24 launch titles, many more are expected to debut in the coming months.

I plan to spend Thanksgiving week exploring the Wii U, and will write a more detailed report on whether it’s the right console for gamers, families or casual users.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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PIRG warns of toy dangers but finds fewer of them

WASHINGTON (AP) — Toys are safer than ever before, consumer advocates say, but parents should remain vigilant in keeping their little ones away from powerful magnets and small items that can easily cause choking.

“The main trend that we saw this year was that we didn’t find as many toxic toys as we thought we would,” said Nasima Hossain, a public health advocate for U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

PIRG examined more than 200 toys on store shelves at major retailers and dollar stores and tested about three dozen toys for lead and chemicals called phthalates, which are used to make plastic products softer but have been linked to reproductive defects and other health problems. A 2008 product safety law ushered in new standards for children’s products, including strict limits on lead and phthalates allowed in toys.

Of the toys tested, only one — a Morphobot action figure — turned up lead levels that exceeded the new stricter federal limit on how much metal can be in the toy. For phthalates, the toys all met the federal standard for what’s allowed, though a Dora the Explorer backpack had levels that would trigger disclosure under Washington state and California law, the report said.

Small toys that could choke children and loud toys that could possibly lead to hearing loss were the primary concern of this year’s report.

A Dora the Explorer guitar and a set of colorful toy car keys for infants were cited for being excessively loud. Play food sets of everything from little strawberries to miniature sausage as well as small dragster cars that had tiny rubber traction bands on the wheels that could come loose were all listed as small enough to cause a child to choke.

The group also highlighted renewed concerns about magnets, especially the high-powered magnets in executive desktop toys for adults or a finger-play magnet toy for kids called Snake Eggs that PIRG found at a dollar store.

PIRG cited government estimates of 1,700 emergency room visits between 2009 and 2011 involving the ingestion of high-powered magnets. Most cases involved children between 4 and 12 years old. Older children have accidentally ingested the balls while trying to mimic tongue piercings. The magnets, such as the ones in the popular Buckyball desktop toys, can cling together if swallowed, pinch internal tissue and lead to serious injuries.

The Toy Industry Association’s Stacy Leistner says his group agrees that strong magnets are a risk for children and shouldn’t be available to them.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission this summer sued New York-based Maxfield and Oberton, the maker of the Buckyball desktop toys, to stop their sale. The finger-fidget toys are designed for adults, but CPSC said it was seeing too many injuries involving children.

Maxfield has maintained the toys are for adults, marketed to adults and carry clear warning labels — but it announced last month that it would stop making the Buckyball series. CPSC is considering a ban on high-powered magnet sets.

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Argentina’s Fernandez faces her first general strike

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Opposition trade unions protesting Argentina‘s economic policies brought public transportation and grains exports to a halt on Tuesday in the first general strike since President Cristina Fernandez took office five years ago.

Demonstrators burned tires to block roads and vandalized a handful of the businesses that opened despite the 24-hour work stoppage called by bus drivers, train conductors and port, airline and bank workers. They rallied in places including Plaza de Mayo in front of the presidential palace in Buenos Aires.

The general strike – the first to hit Argentina in a decade – follows broad protests held on November 8 over high crime, soaring inflation and the government‘s policy response.

Farmers also joined the protest led by Hugo Moyano, a gruff former truck driver once closely linked to Fernandez but now a leading opposition figure. He wants lower taxes for workers whose purchasing power has been drained by galloping inflation.

“The complaints are justified,” Martha Valazza, a 72-year-old retiree, said in the all-but-abandoned Retiro train station in Buenos Aires. “The worker must act to improve his own situation.”

Fernandez’s popularity has tumbled since she easily won re-election last year. Inflation is running at about 25 percent despite a sputtering economy, according to private economists. The government publishes much lower inflation data long dismissed by the markets as inaccurate.

“The strike is a consequence of slow economic growth and high inflation, which the government does not recognize and therefore does not reflect through adjustments in the sliding income tax scale,” said Ignacio Labaqui, who analyzes Argentina for emerging markets consultancy Medley Global Advisors.

The International Monetary Fund has given Argentina roughly until the end of the year to improve its murky inflation reporting or risk sanctions.

The strike increases the stakes in the political battle between the president and Moyano. Ties between the two soured after the death in late 2010 of Nestor Kirchner, Fernandez’s husband and predecessor as president.

Moyano’s CGT labor federation split earlier this year, with his allies re-electing him as leader in a vote rejected by rival union bosses aligned with Fernandez. The fracture in the umbrella group risks deepening labor unrest as inflation stokes wage demands.

‘LOSING CONTROL’

“This general strike raises the possibility that she is losing control of the street and it puts the unions that are allied with her in an uncomfortable position,” Labaqui said.

Fernandez, meanwhile, is moving to shore up her base. Her allies in Congress last month lowered Argentina’s voting age to 16 from 18, a change that could help the politically ailing president court the youth vote ahead of 2013 mid-term elections.

Argentina is the world’s top exporter of soy oil, needed to make biofuels, and soymeal used to feed cattle as far away as China, where the emerging middle class is clamoring for beef steak. The South American country is also the second-biggest corn exporter after the United States.

“This (strike) was necessary, unfortunately,” said Eduardo Buzzi, who heads the Argentine Agrarian Federation, which represents small-scale farms. “There is no way to dialogue. … This is the most anti-farm government Argentina has ever had.”

The agricultural sector has long quarreled with Fernandez over the 35 percent export tax her government puts on soybean exports and curbs it places on corn and wheat shipments.

Telephone calls went unanswered at the main grains port of Rosario. The usually noisy, truck-jammed entrance to the port of Buenos Aires was still, with activity expected to resume on Wednesday. The local stock and bonds market was also unusually quiet.

Just up the street from the presidential palace, tourist attraction Cafe Tortoni closed its doors after being vandalized.

“It’s painful,” a cafe employee told state television. “This is like a second home to us.”

(Additional reporting by Guido Nejamkis, Writing and additional reporting by Hugh Bronstein; Editing by Bill Trott and Will Dunham)

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