The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| Italian town mints own money to fight austerity Posted: 29 Aug 2011 07:21 AM PDT  Mayor Luca Sellari displays Filettino's own bank currency, the 'Fiorito', at his office in Filettino, 100km east of Rome, August 29, 2011. Filettino, a small town in central Italy, is trying to go independent and mint its own money in protest against government austerity cuts. – Reuters pic Filettino, set in rugged hill country around 100km east of Rome, is rebelling against a proposal to merge the governments of towns with fewer than 1,000 inhabitants to save money. Filettino has only around 550 people, but instead of merging with neighbouring Trevi, mayor Luca Sellari is trying to go it alone and set up a "principality" along the lines of the famous republic of San Marino to the north. He has started minting Filettino's own bank currency, the "Fiorito", with his photo on the back, which he says is already being used by the townsfolk. "We aim to achieve real autonomy from Italy and we have the financial resources to do it," Sellari said in an interview on the town's website www.principatodifilettino.com. There was no immediate comment from the central government in Rome. Mayors from all over Italy are up in arms about proposals to cut local government funding and merge small towns as part of a €45.5 billion (RM194.82 billion) austerity plan to balance the country's budget by 2013. Mayors plan a protest in Milan today although media reports say the government is preparing significant changes to the budget, including a substantial dilution of the proposals on local government. – Reuters |
| Is chocolate good for your heart? It depends Posted: 29 Aug 2011 03:32 AM PDT  Chocolates are displayed during a chocolate fair in Barcelona, in this file photo of November 6, 2008. – Reuters pic New research presented at Europe's biggest medical meeting today suggested chocolate consumption might be associatedwith a one-third reduction in the risk of developing heart disease. Just why there should be such a link was unclear, the European Society of Cardiology congress was told. There has been a string of scientific studies in recentyears showing a potential health benefit from eating chocolate. Dark chocolate, in particular, contains compounds called flavanols thought to be good for the blood system. In an attempt to paint a clearer picture, Oscar Franco and colleagues from the University of Cambridge pooled results from seven studies involving 100,000 people. Five of the studies showed a beneficial link between eating chocolate and cardiovascular health, while two did not. Overall, the findings showed the highest levels of chocolate consumption were associated with a 37 per cent reduction in cardiovascular disease and a 29 per cent reduction in stroke compared with the lowest levels. Franco said there were limitations with the pooled analysis,which did not differentiate between dark and milk chocolate, and more research was needed to test whether chocolate actually caused better health outcomes or if it was due to some other confounding factor. "Evidence does suggest chocolate might have some heart health benefits but we need to find out why that might be," said Victoria Taylor, of the British Heart Foundation, who was not involved in the research. "If you want to reduce your heart disease risk, there are much better places to start than at the bottom of a box of chocolates." Franco, whose findings were also published online in the British Medical Journal, said while it seemed chocolate had heart benefits, these could easily be outweighed by the unhealthy nature of much confectionery. – Reuters |
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