EU plan for medicine stockpile could worsen UK’s record shortages

Bloc plans to bulk-buy key drugs for all 27 countries, potentially leaving Britain ‘behind in the queue’

The EU is to stockpile key medicines that will worsen the record drug shortages in the UK, with experts warning that the country could be left “behind in the queue”.

The EU is seeking to safeguard its supplies by switching to a system in which its 27 members work together to secure reliable supplies of 200 commonly used medications, such as antibiotics, painkillers and vaccines.

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Generic drugs in the US are too cheap to be sustainable, experts say

Non-brand-name drugs are one inexpensive part of the healthcare system but they’re driving some manufacturers out of business

Generic drugs are the singularity of American healthcare – they are too cheap. And it’s driving some manufacturers out of business altogether.

Drug prices regularly sparks recrimination and outrage on Capitol Hill, such as a recently announced investigation by Senate Democrats and Bernie Sanders into the price of albuterol inhalers.

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‘This used to be a calm place’: killing continues in Ecuador’s week of chaos

As cartels and crime syndicates flock to Ecuador for cocaine trade profits, its murder rate has soared, with a TV station assault the crescendo of a week of bloodshed

Political upheaval and street protests, gun battles and floods. José Luis Calderón has seen it all during his 23 years as one of Guayaquil’s top television journalists. Never had the Ecuadorean reporter been the story himself.

That changed just after lunch last Tuesday when the 47-year-old reporter heard shouts and the sound of people running in the corridors of TC Televisión, the channel where he works. “At first … we thought it was a fight,” he remembered. But as the yelling intensified, it became clear it was not.

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Calls for nationwide pill testing after suspected MDMA overdoses at Melbourne music festival

Eight people were in induced comas after the Hardmission event at Flemington on Satuday

The suspected MDMA overdoses at a Melbourne music festival that left eight young people in medically induced comas over the weekend has sparked renewed calls for nationwide pill-testing programs.

Harm reduction and social justice advocates, and the Australian Lawyers Alliance (ALA), were among those urging state governments to legalise pill-testing, saying the scale of the overdoses highlight the urgency of the issue.

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This article was amended on 8 January 2024 after Ambulance Victoria clarified that eight people were in induced comas, not seven.

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Jump in opium imports suggests the ancient drug’s possible comeback in Australia

AFP unable to rule out whether users are visiting modern opium dens to buy and consume the drug

One of Australia’s emerging niche drugs in 2023 happens to be one of the country’s oldest.

About 180 years after opium was first imported into the country, the Australian federal police seized more than double the amount of the drug this year than in 2022. It is also almost six times the amount seized in 2021.

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Cocaine packages totalling 124kg found washed up on beaches between Sydney and Newcastle

About 39kg of the drug was found by a fisherman on Tuesday, before a similar amount was discovered in Newcastle

A fisherman on Sydney’s northern beaches is one of several members of the public to discover packages containing 124kg of cocaine that have washed up on the New South Wales coast, sparking a police investigation.

NSW police on Wednesday confirmed its state crime command were investigating after the packages were discovered on beaches between Sydney and Newcastle from Friday. The initial barnacle-encrusted discoveries sparked a warning against removing or opening any more that were discovered.

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Biden poised to loosen restrictions on marijuana, but some say it’s not enough

Legalization advocates say reclassifying drug to schedule III from schedule I doesn’t resolve state and federal law conflicts

The US government appears poised to announce next year the most sweeping changes in decades to how it handles marijuana, the psychoactive drug dozens of states allow to be sold from storefronts, but which federal law considers among the most dangerous substances.

Evidence suggests that Joe Biden’s administration, responding to a policy the president announced last year, is working on moving marijuana to schedule III of the Controlled Substance Act (CSA), a change from its current listing on the maximally restrictive schedule I. That would lessen the tax burden on businesses selling the drug in states where it is legal, and potentially change how police agencies view enforcement of marijuana laws.

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James Cleverly apologises for ‘appalling’ date rape drug joke at No 10 event

Home secretary said secret of a long marriage was sedating spouse on the same day a new policy on spiking was announced

James Cleverly has apologised for joking about spiking his wife’s drink with a date rape drug in comments made at a Downing Street reception.

The home secretary’s remarks came just hours after the Home Office announced plans to crack down on spiking, when someone puts drugs into another person’s drink or directly into their body without their knowledge or consent.

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Biden pardons thousands of people convicted of marijuana possessions

Move is latest in round of executive clemencies meant to rectify racial disparities in the justice system

Joe Biden is pardoning thousands of people who were convicted of use and simple possession of marijuana on federal lands and in the District of Columbia, the White House said Friday – his latest round of executive clemencies meant to rectify racial disparities in the justice system.

The US president is also granting clemency to 11 people serving what the White House called “disproportionately long” sentences for nonviolent drug offenses.

The Associated Press contributed reporting

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Workers at Tory donor’s JCB factory test positive for drugs after sniffer dogs called in

Exclusive: ‘Significant’ number of staff sacked from digger firm after drug and alcohol tests

JCB, one of the UK’s biggest manufacturers, is investigating a spate of drug use among workers based at its headquarters and has sacked a “significant” number of staff, the Guardian can reveal.

A message sent to UK employees last week by the digger-maker’s group human resources director, Max Jeffery, seen by the Guardian, said it had been conducting a “series of investigations into substance misuse” over the past two months. This had resulted in a “small but significant number of people leaving JCB”.

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Tweaks to law on spiking ‘won’t help’ unless police attitude changes, say experts

Home Office plans wording ‘update’ but campaigners call for new offence to help address low conviction rate

The Home Office has announced plans to “modernise” spiking laws in a move it claims will help bring perpetrators to justice. But experts said the changes will not make any difference without simultaneous investment in police training and other measures to improve the handling of cases on the ground.

Under plans unveiled this weekend, the government will amend the criminal justice bill to make clear that spiking is illegal. It is also drawing up new guidance to provide an “unequivocal” definition of the crime.

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Drug lords hunt corrupt police officers who stole shipment in Tijuana

Two officers suspected of theft have been killed, prosecutors say, along with at least three others

A recent killing spree in the Mexican border city of Tijuana could have been lifted from a TV script: enraged drug lords hunting down corrupt police officers who stole a drug shipment.

Two of the officers suspected of the theft have been killed, prosecutors say. But so have at least three other officers, according to the city’s former police chief, suggesting the cartel believed to have owned the drugs may have launched a generalized retribution.

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Experts call for fewer antidepressants to be prescribed in UK

Open letter to government from experts and politicians says rising usage ‘is a clear example of over-medicalisation’

Medical experts and politicians have called for the amount of antidepressants being prescribed to people across the UK to be reduced in an open letter to the government.

The letter coincides with the launch of the all-party parliamentary group Beyond Pills, which aims to reduce what it calls the UK healthcare system’s over-reliance on prescription medication.

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Nine men to be tried for murder of Dutch crime reporter Peter R de Vries

Hearing to start in January in case of journalist shot in the street in 2021 who was adviser to a witness in trial of a Dutch drug baron

Nine men suspected of the murder of prominent Dutch crime reporter Peter R de Vries will go on trial in January, a Dutch court has announced, with a verdict expected by the summer.

De Vries was gunned down on a busy Amsterdam street on 6 July 2021, shortly after leaving a TV studio where he had appeared as a guest on a programme.

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‘They thought I had cancer’: painkiller banned in UK linked to Britons’ deaths in Spain

Patients’ group says reactions to metamizole can cause sepsis and organ failure – and British and Irish people are at higher risk

A patients group representing several British victims has launched legal action against the Spanish government over claims it failed to safeguard people against the potentially fatal side effects of one of the country’s most popular painkillers, involved in a series of serious illnesses and deaths.

The drug metamizole, commonly sold in Spain under the brand name Nolotil, is banned in several countries, including Britain, the US, India and Australia. It can cause a condition known as agranulocytosis, which reduces white blood cells, increasing the risk of potentially fatal infection.

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Drug that can halve breast cancer risk offered to 289,000 women in England

Anastrozole to be made available to women who have been through the menopause and have family history of breast cancer

Almost 300,000 women at higher risk of developing breast cancer are being given access to a drug that can halve their risk in a “major step forward” in the fight against the disease.

An estimated 289,000 women in England who are at moderate or high risk of breast cancer will from Tuesday be able to take the tablet to try to prevent it from developing, NHS bosses said.

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Ozempic overdoses: data reveals Australians sent to emergency after misuse of diabetes drug

Exclusive: NSW poisons information centre received more than 120 calls related to the diabetes drug in a year, 83% of them about medication errors

Patients have been referred to hospital emergency departments after unintentionally taking a higher dose of Ozempic than prescribed, data obtained by Guardian Australia has revealed.

The drug semaglutide, sold under the brand name Ozempic in Australia, is subsidised under the pharmaceutical benefits scheme for the treatment of type 2 diabetes.

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WA town stops using Wiggles song to deter homeless people; Paul Keating lauds Bill Hayden at state funeral – as it happened

This blog is now closed

Husic was on the show to discuss the results of the AI Safety Summit held in the UK this week, where Australia and 27 other countries signed a major artificial intelligence agreement.

The Bletchley Declaration affirms that AI should be developed, designed and deployed in a human-centric and safe manner.

It has been very clear from a number of countries, not the least of which the US, which brought in a big executive order this week to improve AI safety and security, that there will be more safety testing and also evaluating those AI models, and holding companies much more accountable for the way that they do that development work.

There will be safety institutes set up in the US and the UK to help with that testing and it will involve researchers in that work and a state of the science report that will look at the developments particularly around what they call frontier AI, generative AI and Australia will have a voice there with the CSIRO’s chief scientist, Dr Bronwyn Fox, who will represent our country in the development of that research work to give governments and regulators a heads up on how the technology is evolving too.

I have been concerned for weeks about where things would head. I was concerned that innocent Palestinian families would bear the brunt and the heaviest burden, in terms of the type of action that was being foreshadowed.

I think the world, the international community, is watching very closely. I have said previously there has to be a much more strategic, precise way to hold Hamas to account. Israel’s actions do matter, in terms of the way in which they conduct these military operations, and I think a lot of us are deeply concerned about the impact, not only on innocent Palestinians but particularly kids.

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Minister denies ‘cultural issue’ among Tory MPs after Crispin Blunt’s arrest

Gillian Keegan says to trust in due process as eighth Conservative loses whip over sexual misconduct allegations since 2019

A cabinet minister has said there is no “cultural issue” with Tory MPs after Crispin Blunt became the eighth Conservative during this parliament to lose the whip over allegations of sexual misconduct.

Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, said all the individual incidents were separate and that the prime minister expected due process in the investigation into Blunt.

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Several hospitalised in Austria after using suspected fake diabetes drug

Health regulator says serious side-effects possibly caused by insulin in counterfeit versions of Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic

Several people have been admitted to hospital in Austria after using suspected fake versions of Novo Nordisk’s diabetes drug Ozempic, the country’s health safety body has said, the first report of harm to users as a European hunt for counterfeiters widened.

The patients were reported to have suffered hypoglycaemia and seizures, serious side-effects that indicate that the product contained insulin instead of Ozempic’s active ingredient semaglutide, the health safety regulator Bundesamt für Sicherheit im Gesundheitswesen (BASG) said on Monday.

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