Iceland's new government may revoke a controversial decision taken last week to increase the country's whaling quota more than sixfold.

Finance minister, Steingrimur Sigfusson, who is also the fisheries minister, told a news conference yesterday: "We agreed in a government meeting this morning to send a formal warning out to those with vested interests in whaling, saying that the recent decision of the ex-minister of fisheries about increasing the whaling quota for the next five years is now being reconsidered."

He added: "We intend to make a policy statement about this issue in a few days."

Former is still a man's property, judge rules in landmark case

Six cancer patients whose sperm samples were lost by the NHS have won their claim for damages in a landmark judgement which establishes the legal principle that a man's semen is his own property.

The case, which could cost the NHS hundreds of thousands of pounds in compensation, is expected to lead to a review of the law relating to ownership of human body parts.

In yesterday's judgment the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, the most senior judge in England and Wales, rejected the notion that sperm held by North Bristol NHS Trust had the same legal status as a discarded toenail or hair cut at a barber's shop.

Google has announced a new feature that allows users to share their locations among a chosen network of friends.

The "opt-in" Latitude service uses data from mobile phone masts, GPS, or wi-fi hardware to update a user's location automatically.

Users can also manually set their advertised location anywhere they like, or turn the broadcast off altogether.

The service has raised a number of security concerns, as many users may not be aware that it is enabled.

Latitude is based on Google's My Location feature that has been in place since last year.

Legumes in particular are often cited as being high in antioxidants, which have the property of being able to fight off free radical cells within the body, reducing the risk of cancer and other chronic diseases. A recent study further investigated these connections, as researchers focused on the benefits of one type of legume, dry beans, in reducing the risk of mammary cancer.

To address whether dry bean consumption is associated with a reduction in mammary cancer, scientists at Colorado State University studied the anticancer activity of six market classes of bean including; small red, great northern, navy, black, dark red and white kidney bean in the diet of laboratory animals. They also evaluated whether the level of antioxidants or seed coat pigments in the bean were related to mammary cancer. The study was funded by a grant from the Beans for Health Alliance, and the Colorado Agricultural Experiment Station with assistance from Archer Daniels Midland Co. and Bush Brothers Inc. Results from the study were published in the January-February 2009 issue of the journal Crop Science.

Cooked dry bean powder from the six market classes and a control group without beans in the diet were fed to laboratory rats in a standard preclinical model for breast cancer. The dry bean powders were also evaluated for antioxidant capacity, phenolic and flavonoid content; all factors thought to be associated with anticancer activity. Chemical analysis of the beans revealed that total phenolic and flavonoid content varied widely among market classes and the differences were strongly associated with seed coat color; where colored beans had ten times or greater phenolic and flavonoid content compared to white beans. Antioxidant capacity of the beans also varied widely among dry bean market classes and were highly related to seed coat color, where colored beans had approximately two to three times greater antioxidant capacity than white beans.

Dry bean consumption from every market class reduced cancer incidence (number of animals with one tumor) and tumor number per animal compared to the control group. Cancer incidence was reduced from 95% in the control group to 67% in animals fed beans. The average number of malignant tumors was also reduced from 3.2 in the control group to 1.4 tumors per animal in the group fed bean.

Scores of state offices will be closed today as more than 200,000 workers take their first unpaid day off in response to California's deepening fiscal crisis.

That means Californians won't be able to take a driver's license test or conduct business at some state office buildings.

(...)The state judge who last month upheld the governor's furlough order said Thursday that his decision did not apply to about 15,600 employees of statewide elected officials, such as the attorney general, schools chief and controller. Administration officials said they may file a lawsuit in coming weeks seeking to also keep those workers home.

Workers in some other departments will take their unpaid days off on a different schedule, and the governor's office decided Thursday to keep open all one-stop career centers for the unemployed.

Among the closed offices will be all Department of Motor Vehicles outlets, Fish and Game, Food and Agriculture, Social Services and the Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

The Department of Mental Health will be closed, but mental hospitals will remain open. Workers Compensation offices will be closed.

Scientists say the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet would have such profound effects it would shift the planet's rotation, sending a bulge of water into the Northern Hemisphere.

The enormous ice sheet, which many experts believe could collapse as the climate warms, is so heavy that as it melts it "will actually cause the Earth's rotation axis to shift rather dramatically," reports a team led by geophysicist Jerry Mitrovica, at the University of Toronto. The scientists say the North and South poles would move about half a kilometre if the entire ice sheet collapses and shifts more water north.

Coastal regions from Washington to Vancouver could expect sea levels to rise at least six metres, Mitrovica and his colleagues report Friday in the journal Science. Much of Florida would be drowned as would low-lying areas in Maritime Canada, the Arctic and along the Pacific coast.

There is nowhere on the coast of Canada or the U.S. that the sea level won't rise to at least six metres, Mitrovica said in an interview.

He and his colleagues stress that the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, while a big concern, is not imminent and may not occur for centuries. "But these findings do suggest that if you are planning for sea level rise, you had better plan a little higher," says co-author Peter Clark at Oregon State University.