MMR in the clear
The combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine does not cause autism, according to the most powerful study yet. Researchers from London and Montreal studied 1200 children with autism and 4400 unaffected children. They found that the autistic youngsters were in fact slightly less likely to have been vaccinated.
Fruit fight
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Papaya wars have broken out across the Pacific. In Hawaii on 10 September organic farmers protested against the discovery that half the papaya seeds tested from their fields contained genes from plantations of genetically modified papaya. Two days before, Thai fruit exporters had complained that European importers were rejecting their tinned fruit because of rumours that it contained GM papaya.
Plasma risk
Haemophiliacs in the UK will be told if they might have been infected with variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human form of mad cow disease. The Health Protection Agency announced on 9 September it will notify those given blood products possibly contaminated with material from vCJD victims.
IBM giveaway
Computer giant IBM is releasing the computer code for its voice-recognition software to the open source movement, so other programmers can use and improve it. The company hopes to boost the amount of software that relies on voice recognition, a strategy it hopes will generate more long-term business.
Clean-up in Iraq
Iraqi pollution police are to swoop on contamination 鈥渉otspots鈥� around the country. The UN Environment Programme is coordinating Iraqi scientists鈥� efforts to clean up sabotaged oil pipelines, a giant sulphur mining and processing works where fires have polluted groundwater, and a seed store tainted by methyl mercury fungicide, UNEP said on Tuesday.