Fenerbahce withdrawn from Europe

The Champions League draw takes place on Thursday (1645 BST) Turkey's Football Federation has withdrawn national champions Fenerbahce from the Champions League because of an ongoing match-fixing investigation.

On Thursday the Turkish side were due to join 32 elite European clubs in the draw for the Champions League group stage being held in Monaco at 1645 BST.

Uefa has announced league runners-up Trabzonspor will take their place.

Trabzonspor had already been eliminated from this season's Champions League in the qualifying rounds.

The decision means that their scheduled Europa League qualifier against Athletic Bilbao on Friday has been cancelled, with the Spanish club progressing automatically.

The Fenerbahce decision was taken after the Turkish Football Federation held an extraordinary board meeting on Wednesday attended by Uefa's legal counsel for integrity, Pierre Cornu.

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The Turkish Football Federation has shown with this decision that it takes its full responsibility in the fight against corruption.

Uefa general secretary Gianni Infantino

According to a statement on the TFF website, Uefa wrote to the federation on Tuesday to demand Fenerbahce's withdrawal, threatening wider disciplinary action should they fail to do so.

The letter was forwarded to Fenerbahce, who declined to withdraw, TFF said.

"In the face of this development, on 24 August an extraordinary meeting of the board of directors was held to discuss the threat of the Turkish Football Federation being exposed to severe disciplinary sanctions if Fenerbahce took part in the Uefa Champions League this season, and it was decided to bar them from participating," the statement said.

Uefa general secretary Gianni Infantino added: "The panel considered that the Turkish Football Federation took the right decision to protect the game, fully in line with our zero-tolerance policy against match-fixing.

"The Turkish Football Federation has shown with this decision that it takes its full responsibility in the fight against corruption."

Fenerbahce were crowned league champions last term, pipping Trabzonspor to the Super Lig title with a dramatic 4-3 win at Sivasspor on the final day.

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Europe 'losing' superbugs battle

7 April 2011 Last updated at 02:57 GMT By Michelle Roberts Health reporter, BBC News NDM-1 is carried by Gram-negative bacteria like Klebsiella The emergence of antibiotic-resistant infections has reached unprecedented levels and now outstrips our ability to fight it with existing drugs, European health experts are warning.

Each year in the EU over 25,000 people die of bacterial infections that are able to outsmart even the newest antibiotics.

The World Health Organization says the situation has reached a critical point.

A united push to make new drugs is urgently needed, it says.

Without a concerted effort, people could be dealing with the "nightmare scenario" of worldwide spread of untreatable infections, says the WHO.

One example is the New Delhi or NDM-1 superbug recently found in UK patients.

They brought the infection back with them from countries like India and Pakistan, where they had visited for medical treatment and cosmetic surgery.

Becoming untreatable

These superbugs are resistant to carbapenem antibiotics, which is concerning for experts because they are some of our most powerful weapons and are used for hard-to-treat infections that evade other drugs.

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Given the growth of travel and trade in Europe and across the world, people should be aware that until all countries tackle this, no country alone can be safe”

End Quote Zsuzsanna Jakab WHO regional director for Europe The Cardiff University researchers, who made the discovery last August, now say bacteria with this new genetic resistance to antibiotics have contaminated New Delhi's drinking water supply, meaning millions of people there could be carriers.

Dr Timothy Walsh and his team collected 171 swabs of seepage water and 50 public tap water samples from sites within a 12km radius of central New Delhi between September and October 2010.

The NDM-1 gene was found in two of the 50 drinking-water samples and 51 of 171 seepage samples.

Worryingly, the gene had spread to bacteria that cause dysentery and cholera, which can be easily passed from person to person via sewage-contaminated drinking water.

"Oral-faecal transmission of bacteria is a problem worldwide, but its potential risk varies with the standards of sanitation.

"In India, this transmission represents a serious problem… 650 million citizens do not have access to a flush toilet and even more probably do not have access to clean water," the researchers warn in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases.

The scientists are calling for urgent action by health authorities worldwide to tackle the new strains and prevent their global spread.

Zsuzsanna Jakab, WHO regional director for Europe, said: "Antibiotics are a precious discovery, but we take them for granted, overuse and misuse them: there are now superbugs that do not respond to any drugs.

"Given the growth of travel and trade in Europe and across the world, people should be aware that until all countries tackle this, no country alone can be safe."

The UK's Health Protection Agency said it was monitoring the spread of NDM-1 closely.

"The first case of a bacterial infection with this resistance was identified in January 2008. Monitoring of this resistance began in 2009 as more cases were identified."

So far, there have been around 70 cases of the infection recorded in the UK.

The HPA insists that the risk of infection to travellers to the Indian subcontinent who are not treated in hospital is minimal.

"If members of the public are travelling for surgery overseas they should satisfy themselves that appropriate infection control measures are in place," says the HPA.

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Cancer deaths in Europe 'to fall'

9 February 2011 Last updated at 03:28 GMT By Michelle Roberts Health reporter, BBC News Lung cancer death rates among European women have been steadily increasing in recent years Experts are predicting a fall in overall cancer death rates for men and women across Europe in 2011.

Using data from the World Health Organization, they say cancer deaths should fall by 7% in men and 6% in women compared with rates in 2007.

Overall, almost 1.3 million people will die from cancer in 2011, they estimate.

Recent declines in stomach, colon, breast, womb, prostate and male lung cancers should continue, the researchers say in Annals of Oncology.

But they say female lung cancer is rising in all major EU countries except the UK.

According to the researchers, the UK has had the highest rates of female lung cancer deaths for a decade and, although they are not going down, they do appear to be levelling off.

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Lung, colorectal and breast cancers are the top causes of cancer deaths, and these are showing major changes”

End Quote The study authors Professor Carlo La Vecchia of the University of Milan in Italy and Professor Fabio Levi from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland reached their calculations by looking at overall cancer rates in the EU as well as individual cancer rates in six major EU countries: France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the UK.

Based on cancer trends between 1970 and 2007, they predict there will be 1,281,436 cancer deaths in the EU in 2011 (721,252 men and 560,184 women), compared with 1,256,001 (703,872 men and 552,129 women) in 2007.

More survivors

When these figures are converted into world standardised rates per 100,000 of the population, this means there will be a fall from 153.8 per 100,000 to 142.8 per 100,000 in men, and from 90.7 to 85.3 in women - a drop of 7% in men and 6% in women - since 2007.

The overall downward trend in cancer death rates is driven mainly by falls in breast cancer mortality in women, and lung and colorectal cancer in men.

"Lung, colorectal and breast cancers are the top causes of cancer deaths, and these are showing major changes," say the researchers.

But in the EU as a whole, world standardised death rates from lung cancer in women have gone up from 12.55 per 100,000 of the female population in 2007 to 13.12 in 2011.

However, a worrying increase in deaths from pancreatic cancer in women, which had been observed in 2004, appears to have levelled off.

Professor Stephen Spiro, of the British Lung Foundation, said lung cancer remained the most common killing cancer in men and women and was related to smoking in 80% of cases.

"Over the last 30 years, lung cancer rates have dropped in men as they have quit smoking in large numbers. However, this trend is not seen in women as nearly a quarter continue to smoke.

"The rates of lung cancer in women are not falling in the UK and the disease has overtaken breast cancer as the most common cause of cancer deaths in the UK and in many European countries."

Mike Hobday, head of policy at Macmillan Cancer Support, welcomed the fall in death rates but warned the number of people living with cancer in the UK was increasing by 3% every year.

"We know that there are currently two million people in the UK living with a cancer diagnosis, if the current rate continues, the number will have doubled to four million people by 2030.

"Cancer is changing. For many cancer is now a long-term condition and it is important to realise that it is no longer just about people dying quickly of cancer or being cured."

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