1 US, Russia reach Syria deal (James Landale on BBC)
Russia and the US have announced an agreement on Syria starting with a
"cessation of hostilities" from sunset on Monday. Under the plan, the
Syrian government will end combat missions in specified areas held by the
opposition. Russia and the US will establish a joint centre to combat so-called
Islamic State and al-Nusra fighters.
The announcement follows talks between US Secretary
of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov. The opposition
had indicated it was prepared to comply with the plan, he said, provided the
Syrian government "shows it is serious".
The accord also provides for humanitarian access. Seven
days after the start of the cessation of hostilities, Russia and the US will
establish a "joint implementation centre" to fight the Islamic State
group and al-Qaeda-allied Nusra fighters.
The deal is hugely complex. It requires an awful lot
of people to do an awful lot of things at the right time at the right place. The
United Nations envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, welcomed the agreement and
said the UN would exert all efforts to deliver humanitarian aid.
UN humanitarian chief Stephen O'Brien said conditions
in Aleppo had become appalling: "Eastern Aleppo is at the apex of horror,
where anyone of us if we were there would find life barely possible, let alone
tolerable."
The US and Russia support opposite sides in the
conflict that began in 2011: Washington backs a coalition of rebel groups it
describes as moderate, while Moscow is seen as a key ally of Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad.
2 MasterCard faces $19bn lawsuit (San Francisco
Chronicle) MasterCard is being sued for 14 billion pounds ($18.6 billion) on
behalf of British consumers for allegedly charging excessive fees on millions
of transactions over a 16-year period.
The suit, which is the latest in a string of legal
cases around the world over card companies' fees, could bring a payout to 46
million British MasterCard users, the law firm filing it says. The firm, Quinn
Emanuel, says the claim is the largest in British legal history.
The suit alleges that MasterCard charged stores
unlawfully high fees on credit and debit card transactions between 1992 and 2008,
which were passed on to consumers in the form of inflated prices for goods and
services.
MasterCard and its larger competitor Visa have been
embroiled in legal battles with merchants over their fees for decades. A $6
billion class-action lawsuit in the US, which involves merchants suing Visa and
MasterCard, is currently being appealed in US courts. There's also a legal
battle between Visa and retail giant Wal-Mart, which involves what are known as
"chip and sign" transactions.
MasterCard Inc., based in Purchase, New York, said
in a statement that "we continue to firmly disagree with the basis of this
claim and we intend to oppose it vigorously." The tribunal will rule late
this year whether the case can proceed, the law firm said. If so, it is
expected to go to court in 2018.
3 Robot operates inside the eye (The Guardian) British
surgeons have successfully performed the world’s first robotic operation inside
the eye, potentially revolutionising the way such conditions are treated. The
procedure was carried out at John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford, where surgeons
welcomed its success.
On completing the operation, Professor Robert
MacLaren said: “There is no doubt in my mind that we have just witnessed a
vision of eye surgery in the future. “Current technology with laser scanners
and microscopes allows us to monitor retinal diseases at the microscopic level,
but the things we see are beyond the physiological limit of what the human hand
can operate on.
Patient Father William Beaver, 70, an associate
priest at St Mary the Virgin church in Oxford, said his eyesight was returning
following the procedure, having previously experienced distorted vision similar
to “looking in a hall of mirrors at a fairground”.
The procedure was necessary because the patient had
a membrane growing on the surface of his retina, which had contracted and
pulled it into an uneven shape. The membrane is about 100th of a millimetre
thick and needed to be dissected off the retina without damaging it.
Surgeons normally attempt this by slowing their
pulse and timing movements between heart beats, but the robot could make it
much easier. Experts said the robot could enable new, high-precision procedures
that are beyond the abilities of the human hand.
This is the first time a device has been available
that achieves the three-dimensional precision required to operate inside the
human eye. The robotic eye surgery trial involves 12 patients undergoing
operations with increasing complexity. Experts said this could lead to use of
the robot in retinal gene therapy, a new treatment for blindness which is
currently being trialled in a number of centres around the world.
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