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Even as India bans smoking in public places from Oct 2, a Canadian study has warned that parents who smoke in the presence of their kids in cars and homes might end up fostering nicotine dependence symptoms in them.In the light of their findings on the consequences of second-hand smoke, the researchers from various universities in Quebec province have stressed the importance of a ban on smoking in the presence of children in vehicles.

Jennifer O’Loughlin, a researcher and professor at Montreal University’s department of social and preventive medicine, said, “Increased exposure to second-hand smoke, both in cars and homes, was associated with an increased likelihood of children reporting nicotine dependence symptoms, even though these children had never smoked.

‘These findings support the need for public health interventions that promote non-smoking in the presence of children, and uphold policies to restrict smoking in vehicles when children are present.”

She said their findings confirm previous findings which said that exposure to second-hand smoke might lead to several nicotine withdrawal symptoms, depressed mood, trouble sleeping, irritability, anxiety, restlessness, trouble concentrating and increased appetite among non-smokers.

As part of their study, the researchers chose 1,800 children aged 10 to 12 and asked them to fill questionnaires on their health and behavior, including exposure to second-hand smoke and symptoms of nicotine dependence.

Said lead researcher Mathieu Belanger, “According to conventional understanding, a person who does not smoke cannot experience nicotine dependence.(but) our study found that 5 percent of children who had never smoked a cigarette, but who were exposed to second-hand smoke in cars or their homes, reported symptoms of nicotine dependence.”

The findings have been published in the September edition of the Canadian journal Addictive Behaviors.

One-and-a-half-month-old Junaid Alam was barely able to breathe because of his increasing abdominal swelling. But neither he nor his parents knew that the infant was actually carrying the foetus of his sibling inside him.One of the worlds’ bizarre medical conditions, a fetus-in-fetu - that is, a partly formed foetus inside a fully developed human body - was successfully removed after an operation at a hospital in Kolkata.

‘Alam, a resident of Jharkhand, was admitted to Belona Nursing Home at Mominpore (in south Kolkata) Sep 21 with severe respiratory distress and increasing abdominal swelling since birth. After carrying out a series of medical tests, including an X-Ray, an ultrasonography and a CT scan, a giant tumour was detected in his abdomen,’ paediatric surgeon Praffulla Kumar Mishra, who operated on Alam, told IANS.

‘After seeing the reports, the doctors were sure that it was a case of cancer in a hopeless condition, that is, if we operated, the chances of survival were only five percent,’ Mishra said.

Mishra further said Alam’s father Kausar had earlier consulted doctors in Jharkhand and Kolkata, but no one was ready to take up the case because of the survival risk.

However, after Kausar’s consent, Alam was operated on Sep 22 and the real shock came after that.

‘The tumour weighed one-and-a half kilos and was attached to the abdominal aorta with a vascular pedicle. When I cut open its covering, there was a partly formed human body of unidentified sex with two hands, two legs and deformed fingers and toes. There were even brain tissues without a skull and a partly formed vertebral column,’ Mishra said.

‘This is a case of fetus-in-fetu or fetiform teratoma, one of the rarest conditions in medical literature,’ the doctor added.

Explaining the condition that leads to such cases, Mishra said this abnormality occurs during early stages of twin pregnancy.

‘An ovum after fertilisation starts multiplying and at a certain stage starts differentiating into ectoderm, endoderm and mesoderm, which organises to form a human body. But if one of the foetus in undifferentiated form remains dormant, it tends to form a tumour called teratoma. These cells are toti-potent - they have the potency to become a part of ectoderm, endoderm or mesoderm.’

Mishra further explained that in such cases, the second foetus becomes dominant and envelops its twin. The twin can grow like a parasite inside the dominant one even post-birth but usually both die before birth.

‘This is a rare case where the dominant one has survived,’ Mishra said.

Alam, who is the fifth child of his parents, is still in the hospital and is keeping well.

‘There are less than 90 cases of fetus-in-fetu across the world recorded in medical literature,’ Ajay Mehta, doctor of Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai and who has earlier handled such a case, told IANS over the telephone.

Snackers, beware: Your favorite chocolate or creamy treats might contain milk contaminated with melamine.

The list of companies facing potential recalls grew Friday as reports of foods tainted with the industrial chemical melamine, which has been blamed in the deaths of four Chinese infants, spread to a widening range of products.

Food companies around the globe are rushing to assess their products and in some cases setting new strategies to prevent problems.

“We have to think about any processed food with milk or protein in it,” said James Rice, a food industry veteran who is now China country manager for Tyson Foods Inc., the world’s largest meat processor.

While his company is not affected, for others “that includes biscuits, cake mix, energy bars, anything that should have protein in it,” he said.

Many food companies already were taking special precautions before Chinese milk suppliers were found to be adding melamine to watered-down milk to boost its apparent protein content. The chemical, which is high in nitrogen, can fool tests aimed at verifying protein levels. The compromised dairy products are blamed for sickening 54,000 children.

Some companies learned the need for extra diligence in China the hard way, during a spate of scandals last year from unsafe foods and toothpaste to melamine-laced ingredients in pet food.

But many continued to disregard the risks, said Jeremy Haft, a businessman who runs factories in China in a variety of industries, including medical products, clothing and building supplies.

“I don’t think much was learned from the recalls of a year ago,” said Haft, who has written of his experiences in a book, “All the Tea in China.”

Tokyo-headquartered Lotte Group, a major snack maker, got caught up in the storm Friday after its popular chocolate-filled Koala cookies were recalled in Hong Kong and Macau because of melamine contamination.

Packages of the cookies, still on sale in Shanghai, list whole milk powder as an ingredient.

“We will look deeply into all the details of the manufacturing process,” said Kayh Kim, manager of Lotte China Food’s planning department in Beijing. “We really don’t want to lose our customers’ confidence.”

In Tokyo, a company spokeswoman said Lotte products sold in Japan are not made with Chinese dairy ingredients.

Meanwhile, the Shanghai-based maker of White Rabbit, a popular vanilla-flavored toffee, said it stopped domestic sales after the Hong Kong government’s Center for Food Safety said the candy contained more than six times the legal limit of melamine.

That followed White Rabbit recalls in Britain, Singapore, New Zealand and Australia.

When rumors of melamine-related recalls of Oreos and other sweets spread by phone text messages and on the Internet earlier this week, Kraft Foods Inc. hastened to reassure customers that none of its Oreo-brand products contain milk powder from China.

Oreo fillings contain no milk, while Oreo cookies with icing on them use milk powder from Australia, it said. “Regardless of where they are produced, Kraft products are always held to the highest quality and safety standards,” the company said.

As they expand operations in China, targeting its potential market of 1.3 billion people, many foreign-brand food companies still rely heavily on local partners for quality control, experts say.

New Zealand’s dairy cooperative Fonterra discovered the implications when its local partner, Sanlu Group Co., failed to take quick action after Chinese doctors reported that babies drinking its infant formula were developing kidney stones.

“The problem was that Fonterra, right from the start, had no control over what was going on,” said Bruce McLaughlin, CEO of Sinogie Consulting in Shanghai, which conducts market research and investigations.

“The most important thing is that if you’re going to make an investment and have your name tied up with it, you have to have control over what’s going on,” McLaughlin said.

For some, that may mean going it alone.

Chocolate maker Barry Callebaut, the world’s leading producer of cocoa, chocolate and confectionary products, set up its own factory west of Shanghai earlier this year. The quality control staff report directly to the Swiss company’s CEO.

The factory is testing milk products from all local suppliers, setting aside any from domestic sources until it is confirmed safe, said Gaby Tschofen, the company’s vice president for corporate communications.

A decision by Japanese beer maker Asahi Breweries Ltd. to set up its own dairy farm in China is proving fortuitous: the company’s milk, which went on sale only this month, is selling fast amid the melamine scare.

Asahi Green Source Farm, a venture with fellow Japanese companies Itochu Corp. and Sumitomo Corp., is stocked with more than 1,000 dairy cows from Australia and New Zealand, said Chen Na, a marketing department staffer.

“We already realized the importance of the source of raw milk, since it’s easy for trouble to crop up in a booming market, and we have made every effort to control the manufacturing process for liquid milk production,” she said. “Better safe than sorry.”

A Chinese astronaut performed the nation’s first-ever spacewalk on Saturday, the latest milestone in an ambitious program that is rivaling the United States and Russia in its rapid expansion. Mission commander Zhai Zhigang floated out of the orbiter module’s hatch in the spacewalk, shown live on state broadcaster CCTV. Tethered to handles attached to the Shenzhou 7 ship’s orbital module, Zhai remained outside for about 13 minutes before climbing back inside and closing the hatch behind him. “Shenzhou 7 has left the module, physically feel very good. Greetings to all the people of the nation and all the people of the world,” said Zhai, a 41-year-old fighter pilot who served as an alternate on two earlier manned flights.

Fellow astronaut Liu Boming also emerged briefly from the capsule to hand Zhai a Chinese flag that he waved for an exterior camera filming the event. The third crew member, Jing Haipeng, monitored the ship from inside the re-entry module.

Top Communist Party officials including President Hu Jintao watched the spacewalk from a Beijing command center, breaking into applause with the successful completion of each stage of the maneuver. “Your success represents a new breakthrough in our manned space program,” Hu told the astronauts in a scripted exchange that was also broadcast live.

“The motherland and the people thank you,” said Hu, who chairs the powerful Communist Party and government military committees that oversee the space program. The successful spacewalk paves the way for assembling a space station from two Shenzhou orbital modules, the next major goal of China’s manned spaceflight program.

China is also pursuing lunar exploration and may attempt to land a man on the moon in the next decade possibly ahead of NASA’s 2020 target date for returning to the moon. China launched its first manned mission, Shenzhou 5, in 2003, becoming only the third country after Russia and the United States to launch a man into space.

That was followed by a two-man mission in 2005. In step with its growing list of achievements, the military-backed program has grown progressively less secretive and officials have hinted in recent days at a desire for greater cooperation with other nations.

China plans to mass produce the next version of the Shenzhou ship to service a future space station and says it may make such missions available to other countries. Space cooperation between China and other nations has so far been limited and the U.S. has refused Chinese involvement in the international space station for fear it could gain technical secrets applicable to its arms industry.

A Chinese space program official said earlier that Russian technicians would assist in Saturday’s spacewalk, but it wasn’t clear what role they played. Since blasting off from the Jiuquan launch base in northwestern China on Friday, the astronauts had been largely occupied with preparing the suits and adapting to zero gravity.

Camera’s inside the re-entry vehicle have shown them working off of checklists and napping, while meals aboard the craft have followed a typical Chinese menu featuring versions of kung pao chicken, shrimp and dried fruit, the official Xinhua News Agency said. On Friday, the three-module capsule shifted from an oval orbit to a more stable circular orbit 213 miles (343 kilometers) above Earth, meaning it is circling at a constant distance.

The change ensured that Earth’s gravitational pull would not vary during the spacewalk attempt and will help Shenzhou make a precise landing on the Inner Mongolian Steppe on Sunday after its re-entry vehicle bursts through Earth’s atmosphere, Xinhua said. The spacewalk required astronauts to first depressurize and then repressurize the orbital module and proved the effectiveness of Zhai’s Feitian space suit, produced by China at a cost of US$4.4 million (3 million).

Liu wore a nearly identical Russian-made Orlan suit, according to the reports. Following the spacewalk, the astronauts released an 88-pound (40-kilogram) satellite to circle the orbiter and send back images to mission control.

The list of products caught in China’s tainted milk scandal grew Friday to include baby cereal in Hong Kong and snack foods in Japan, while Taiwan reported three children and a mother with kidney stones in the island’s first cases possibly linked to the crisis.

The Japanese government also said it had suspended imports of milk and milk products from China, where some 54,000 children have developed kidney stones or other illnesses after drinking baby formula contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine. Four deaths have been blamed on the tainted milk.

The latest problematic foods were Heinz baby cereal and Silang House steamed potato wasabi crackers. The Hong Kong government said in a statement Friday it found traces of melamine in the products, which were both made in mainland China.

Hong Kong urged the manufacturers to stop selling the products in the Chinese territory. Pittsburgh, Pa.-based Heinz ordered a recall of the baby cereal as a precautionary measure following the government’s announcement, it said in a statement on its Web site.

Hundreds of international food companies have set up operations in China in recent years, exposing them to the country’s notorious product safety problems. Melamine-tainted products have turned up in an increasing number of Chinese-made exports abroad — from candies to yogurt to rice balls.

In Japan, the Marudai Food Co. pulled its cream buns, meat buns and creamed corn crepes from supermarkets a week ago and tests have found traces of contamination in several products, Japanese Health and Welfare Ministry official Mina Kojima said Friday.

So far, there were no reports of health problems stemming from the contamination, she said. Marudai has sold more than 300,000 of the products, most of which are believed to have been consumed.

News of that contamination came after the Chinese territory of Macau said it detected melamine at 24 times the safety limit in products from another Japan-based company, Koala’s March cookies made by Lotte China Foods Co. The company is a member of a Tokyo-based conglomerate, Lotte Group.

An official at Lotte (China) Investment Co. Ltd. in Shanghai said Friday previous inspections had not shown any problems.

“But now that it tested positive in Macau, we find it necessary to do the inspections all over again,” said Guo Hongming, a legal assistant in Lotte Shanghai’s corporate planning department.

Some Hong Kong supermarkets pulled the chocolate-filled cookies off shelves Friday after the announcement by Macau authorities late Thursday. Cookie packages list whole milk powder as an ingredient.

Only some types of milk powder and milk have been recalled in mainland China so far, but the maker of one of China’s most popular candies said Friday it had halted sales because of suspected melamine contamination. White Rabbit candies have already been pulled from shelves around Asia and in Britain.

Ge Junjie, a vice president of Bright Foods (Group) Co. Ltd., was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua News Agency that the company was waiting for test results from the Shanghai Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau.

“We decided to halt all sales of White Rabbit candy, although the test results have not yet come out,” Ge said. Bright Foods’ subsidiary Guangshengyuan produces White Rabbit.

Meanwhile, Taiwanese authorities reported that three children who consumed Chinese milk formula had developed kidney stones, and doctors were checking whether their illnesses were linked to tainted products.

The two 3-year-old girls and a 1-year-old boy traveled frequently between Taiwan and China with their parents, said Liu Yi-lien, health chief of the Ilan county government in eastern Taiwan. One of the girls’ mothers also has kidney stones, he said.

“They have all consumed Chinese milk, but more tests are needed to establish the link to their kidney stones,” Liu said.

The cases are the first reports of illnesses on the island that could be related to tainted Chinese milk products. Six children have also become ill from melamine-tainted products in the Chinese territories of Hong Kong and Macau.

Still, the World Health Organization said it did not expect the number of victims to grow dramatically.

WHO China representative Hans Troedsson said public awareness of the issue meant many young children were getting health checks and avoiding tainted products.

“I think we will see some more cases, but not the high number like so far,” he said. “I think the recall and more thorough investigation and testing are now starting to eliminate some of these contaminated products from coming out to the public.”

On Thursday, the European Union banned imports of baby food containing Chinese milk. The move by the 27-nation EU adds to the growing list of countries that have banned or recalled Chinese dairy products because of the contamination.

Health experts say ingesting a small amount of melamine poses no danger, but in larger doses, the chemical — used to make plastics and fertilizer — can cause kidney stones and lead to kidney failure. Infants are particularly vulnerable.

Chinese suppliers trying to cut costs are believed to have diluted their milk while adding melamine because its nitrogen content can fool tests aimed at verifying protein levels.

MySpace’s new music service managed to bring major record labels together, but a group that licenses song rights for thousands of independent labels feels left out and angry, partly because indie musicians were a big reason the social networking site rose to prominence in the first place.

News Corp.-owned MySpace opened the much-anticipated MySpace Music on Thursday, giving its roughly 120 million users free access to hundreds of thousands of songs from the biggest recording labels.

Revenue for MySpace Music will come mainly from on-site ads and the sale of songs through Amazon.com Inc.’s MP3 downloading service. All four major record labels — Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group Inc., Universal Music Group and EMI Music — brought their catalogs to the service, which is operating as a joint venture between them and MySpace.

Sony ATV/Music Publishing and The Orchard, a large independent music distributor, were also on board for the launch, though neither have equity stakes in the service.

Other independent labels want to be a part of MySpace Music as well, but some executives from those companies were upset that they were excluded from the initial rollout.

“We’re extremely disappointed that they seem to misread their constituents so badly that they’ve ignored what we think is their core, their sweet spot, when they launched,” said Charles Caldas, chief executive of London-based Merlin, a music rights licensing agency that represents more than 12,000 independent labels.

Merlin — which counts labels Epitaph, Koch Records and Tommy Boy among its members — is in talks with MySpace to get its members involved with the service, Caldas said, but he’s “at odds to understand” why MySpace launched it without his group’s participation.

“MySpace is a brand that’s built its strength and built its power on the strength and diversity of the music it represents,” he said.

And if Merlin does become part of the service but does not own equity in it — MySpace is not saying right now whether others will get a stake in MySpace Music — Caldas and others are concerned the major labels could profit from their success.

“For us, to think that the majors will benefit via their equity from the utilization of our content is just shocking, mind boggling,” said Bob Frank, who chairs Merlin and is chief executive of New York-based Koch Records, whose artists include Sinead O’Connor and DJ Khaled.

MySpace co-founder and President Tom Anderson said MySpace is trying to make deals with every independent music aggregator, even those voicing complaints.

“There’s definitely no one on this side that wants this to be a major-label only service,” he said. “We’ve already got indie content and we want more indie content.”

Anderson said Merlin wasn’t included at launch time simply because the parties had not reached a deal yet.

As for the possibility that, through their stakes in MySpace Music, major labels could benefit from the success of independent artists on the site, Anderson said it’s a two-way street. For example, if MySpace features an independent or unsigned artist next to a major-label artist like singer Carrie Underwood, that helps drive traffic to the non-major label artists too, he said.

NPD Group entertainment analyst Russ Crupnick said MySpace handled its launch in a sensible way.

“It’s an unfortunate reality that the majors are the majors and if you don’t have Universal and Sony participating in this, you don’t have a service,” he said. “But I think over the long haul it’s really going to be incumbent on MySpace to provide some kind of equitable solution to everyone else.”

Facebook profiles can tell you more than just peoples’ birthdays and what movies they like - they can reveal the self-adoring, a new study suggests.

Researchers at the University of Georgia gave personality questionnaires to nearly 130 Facebook users and analyzed the content of their online profiles. They also had untrained observers look at the profiles and rate how narcissistic, or excessively egotistical, the owners of the profiles were.

The results of the study are detailed in the October issue of the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

The researchers found that the number of friends and wall posts (messages left by the owner of the profile or friends) that a person had on their profile correlated with how narcissistic they were. Study leader Laura Buffardi, a Ph.D. student in psychology, said this is similar to how narcissists behave in the real world, forming numerous but shallow relationships with others.

Narcissistic Facebook users were also more likely to have glamorous, self-promoting pictures for their main profile photo, while others tended to use snapshots, the study found. The untrained observers also noted the differences in photos and amount of social interaction.

“We found that people who are narcissistic use Facebook in a self-promoting way that can be identified by others,” Buffardi said.

Narcissism hampers a person’s ability to form healthy, long-term relationships, said study co-author W. Keith Campbell.

“Narcissists might initially be seen as charming, but they end up using people for their own advantage,” Campbell said. “They hurt the people around them and they hurt themselves in the long run.”

In the past, research has found that personal Web pages are more popular among narcissists, but this doesn’t mean that all Facebook users are narcissists.

“Nearly all of our students use Facebook, and it seems to be a normal part of people’s social interactions,” Campbell said. “It just turns out that narcissists are using Facebook the same way they use their other relationships - for self-promotion with an emphasis on quantity over quality.”

A major Japanese food manufacturer has found traces of an industrial chemical in some of its products that were made in China, as a food safety scare centered on tainted milk continued to spread, health officials said Friday. The news came as Japan added food products from 12 Asian countries and territories with a record of importing milk products from China to a watch list for special inspections. Japan’s Marudai Food Co. pulled its cream buns, meat buns and creamed corn crepes from supermarkets a week ago as the tainted milk scandal in China began to unfold.

Its tests have since found traces of the industrial chemical melamine in several of the recalled products, Health and Welfare Ministry official Mina Kojima said. Marudai has sold more than 300,000 of the products, most of which are believed to have been consumed, but so far there have been no reports of health problems, she said.

Company executive Masaaki Sugiyama told a news conference that two kinds of cream buns and the crepes had traces of melamine, but the amount was so small that it posed no health threat. He apologized for the company’s failure to prevent the contamination.

The public health department in Takatsuki, a western city where Marudai is headquartered, said its lab tests found one of the cream buns, “Cream Panda,” contained melamine 74 times higher than the tolerable daily intake level set by the European Food Safety Agency. But public health official Mami Matsumoto said an average adult would need to eat 33 crepes or 17 panda buns every day to risk being sickened.

“Nobody eats so many of them. We believe the risk is negligible,” Matsumoto said.

The ministry said earlier Friday that it had suspended imports of milk and milk products from China, and had singled out products from 12 other countries and territories for close inspection. The move was meant to prevent tainted products from entering the country, ministry official Yoshiya Nishimura said.

Powdered milk contaminated with melamine has been blamed in the illnesses of some 54,000 children and the deaths of four infants in China. The countries and territories targeted for close scrutiny South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, Singapore, Myanmar, Taiwan and Hong Kong have imported milk and milk products from China, though they have now suspended the imports or taken other safety measures, Nishimura said.

The ministry will pay special attention to imported milk, butter and cheese, as well as processed foods using dairy ingredients such as cookies, candies, dairy products and other foods, Nishimura said. So far, no problems have been found in products imported from the countries on the watch list, he said.

Tokyo-based Lotte Group, a major snack maker, was also caught up in the storm Friday after its popular chocolate-filled Koala cookies made in China were recalled in Hong Kong and Macau because of melamine contamination. Packages of the cookies list whole milk powder as an ingredient.

In Tokyo, a company spokeswoman said Lotte products sold in Japan were not made with Chinese dairy ingredients.

China has set the time of 9.07 p.m. (1307 GMT) on Thursday for its third manned space flight that will include a space walk, an official for the space programme said on Wednesday.In October 2003, China became the third country to put a man in space with its own rocket, after the former Soviet Union and the United States. It sent two more astronauts on a five-day flight on its Shenzhou VI craft in October 2005.

Last year, China sent its first lunar probe into orbit. China’s longer-term goals include establishing a space station and landing on the moon.

With organised retail in India growing at 20 per cent per annum, about 315 hypermarkets are likely to come up in Tier I and II cities by 2011, a study has said.

“Organised retail is growing at 20 per cent annually and encouraging mall-building activities at a phenomenal rate. This would lead to setting up of chain of hypermarkets,” the study by Assocham and consultancy firm KPMG said.

The joint study said in 2008, 212 towns have sufficient market potential for hypermarkets for break-even existence but this potential is yet to be realised.

“Given the growth in number of households, income and consumption per household in urban India, particularly in the leading 25 towns, five or more hypermarkets per city are feasible even in 2008,” Assocham President Sajjan Jindal said.

In 2011, the number of leading towns is projected to grow to 52 as tier III towns would also gain the market potential to support five or more hypermarkets, he said.

Hypermarkets sell automobiles to needles under one roof.

However, the study found Tier IV towns to be inviable for modern retail formats not only in 2008 but also in 2011.

Jindal said post-2011, organised retail would grow by 15 per cent as enough competition would have emerged by then and in about 400 towns, number of hypermarkets would have risen to 475.

The study, however, warns that despite considerable opportunities in Tier III, IV and V towns, setting up shop in these locations is likely to present retailers with challenges like availability of 25,000-30,000 sq ft for a single store in high street locations and recruiting sales staff and store managers.