IF IT looks too good to be true, it probably is. Several "herbal remedies" for erectile dysfunction sold online actually contain the active ingredient from Viagra.
Michael Lamb at Arcadia University in Glenside, Pennsylvania, and colleagues purchased 10 popular "natural" uplifting remedies on the internet and tested them for the presence of sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra. They found the compound, or a similar synthetic drug, in seven of the 10 products – cause for concern because it can be dangerous for people with some medical conditions.
Lamb's work was presented last week at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences meeting in Washington DC.
This article appeared in print under the headline "Herbal Viagra gets a synthetic boost"
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LAHAD DATU, Malaysia - A Malaysian policeman was killed by "militants" in a region where Filipino followers of a self-claimed sultan are holed up in a deadly standoff with security forces, state media reported Sunday.
The police officer was killed when he was fired upon on Saturday in the Malaysian town of Semporna, 300 kilometres by road from the site of the standoff at Tanduo village on Borneo island where 12 Filipino intruders and two police died in a firefight the day before.
State news agency Bernama also said another officer suffered gunshot wounds.
It quoted police saying the killing was unrelated to the nearly three-week siege involving armed intruders who arrived from the Philippines by boat to press the "sultan's" historical claim to the area.
But the latest shooting raised fears on Malaysian social media sites of a possible spread of violence by suspected sympathisers of the group.
An estimated 100-300 Filipinos have been surrounded in a farming village by a Malaysian police and military cordon since landing by boat from the nearby Philippines to insist the area belongs to their Islamic leader Jamalul Kiram III's.
Kiram, 74, claims to be the heir to the Islamic sultanate of Sulu, which once controlled parts of the southern Philippines and Borneo.
Following Friday's firefight, Malaysian police stepped up threats to clear them out unless they surrendered immediately.
Philippine President Benigno Aquino, who has sharply criticised the intruders, also urged them to surrender unconditionally, but a spokesman for Kiram has said his followers were prepared to die.
The Sulu sultanate's power faded about a century ago but it has continued to receive nominal payments from Malaysia for Sabah under a historical lease arrangement passed down from European colonial powers.
N'DJAMENA, Chad Chad's military chief announced late Saturday that his troops deployed in northern Mali had killed Moktar Belmoktar, the terrorist who orchestrated the attack on a natural gas plant in Algeria that left 37 foreigners dead.
The French military, which is leading the offensive against al Qaeda-linked rebels in Mali, said they could not immediately confirm the information.
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Americans in Algeria: Surviving a terrorist attack
Known as the "one-eyed," Belmoktar's profile soared after the mid-January attack and mass hostage-taking on a huge Algerian gas plant.
Mark Cobb, one of the five Americans who survived the attack, spoke to "60 Minutes" contributor Charlie Rose in an interview broadcast on CBS last month.
"I knew as the highest-ranking American on the site, I would be a prize," Cobb told Rose. "They put the highest value on American hostages, British hostages and French hostages. I heard them kick open the front door. That's I guess at the point where in all honesty I would say I felt pure terror."
Cobb escaped through a hole in the perimeter fence.
Canadian diplomat Robert Fowler was his hostage in 2008.
"He's very tough," Fowler told CBS News. "He seems physically demanding. He demands a lot of his people and therefore, yes, I'd say he's a tough enemy."
Multinational forces have been looking for Belmoktar. CBS News correspondent Kelly Cobiella reports the United States is flying drones in the area.
Local officials in Kidal, the northern town that is being used as the base for the military operation, cast doubt on the assertion, telling The Associated Press that Chadian officials are attempting to score a PR victory to make up for the significant losses they have suffered in recent days.
Belmoktar's purported death comes a day after Chad's president said his troops had killed Abou Zeid, the other main al Qaeda commander operating in northern Mali.
If both deaths are confirmed, it would mean that the international intervention in Mali had succeeded in decapitating two of the pillars of al Qaeda in the Sahara.
"Chad's armed forces in Mali have completely destroyed a base used by jihadists and narcotraffickers in the Adrar and Ifoghas mountains" of northern Mali, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Zakaria Ngobongue said in a televised statement on state-owned National Chadian Television. "The provisional toll is as follows: Several terrorists killed, including Moktar Belmoktar."
The French military moved into Mali on Jan. 11 to push back militants linked to Belmoktar and Abou Zeid and other extremist groups who had imposed harsh Islamic rule in the north of the vast country and who were seen as an international terrorist threat.
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Historical documents saved during Mali's invasion
France is trying to rally other African troops to help in the military campaign, since Mali's military is weak and poor. Chadian troops have offered the most robust reinforcement.
In Paris, French military spokesman Col. Thierry Burkhard said that he had "no information" on the possibility that Belmoktar was dead. The Foreign Ministry refused to confirm or deny the report.
A spokesman for Chad's presidential palace did not immediately return a request for comment.
In Kidal in northern Mali, an elected official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press, told the AP that he did not believe that Belmoktar was dead and waved off the claim as an attempt by Chad to explain the loss of dozens of their troops to a grieving nation.
"These last few weeks, the Chadians have lost a significant number of soldiers in combat. (Claiming that they killed Belmoktar) is a way to give some importance to their intervention in Mali," said the official, who keeps in close contact with both French and Malian commanders in the field.
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Who is the man behind attack in Algeria?
Belmoktar, an Algerian, is believed to be in his 40s, and like his sometimes partner and sometimes rival, Abou Zeid, he began on the path to terrorism after Algeria's secular government voided the 1991 election won by an Islamic party.
Both men joined the Armed Islamic Group, or GIA, and later its offshoot, the GSPC, a group that carried out suicide bombings on Algerian government targets.
Around 2003, both men crossed into Mali, where they began a lucrative kidnapping business, snatching European tourists, aid workers, government employees and even diplomats and holding them for multimillion-dollar ransoms.
The Algerian terror cell amassed a significant war chest, and joined the al Qaeda fold in 2006, renaming itself al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
Belmoktar claims he trained in Afghanistan in the 1990s, including in one of Osama Bin Laden's camps. It was there that he reportedly lost an eye, earning him the nickname "Laaouar," Arabic for "one-eyed."
Until last December, Belmoktar and Abou Zeid headed separate brigades under the flag of al Qaeda's chapter in the Sahara. But after months of reports of infighting between the two, Belmoktar peeled off, announcing the creation of his own terror unit, still loyal to the al Qaeda ideology but separate from al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
It was this group that launched the fatal attack on a BP-operated natural gas plant in southeastern Algeria in retaliation for the French-led military intervention in Mali.
In the attack and in the subsequent rescue attempt, 37 people were killed inside the complex. Belmoktar claimed responsibility for the attack within hours, immediately catapulting him into the ranks of international terrorists.
In addition to the alleged killing of Belmoktar, Ngobongue said that Chad's military had also nabbed 60 of the jihadists' cars, electronic equipment and weapons. "The raid is still ongoing," he said.
American military and intelligence officials said today they are attempting to confirm a report from the Chadian military of the death of al Qaeda leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the alleged mastermind of the deadly attack on an Algerian natural gas facility in January.
If the new report is confirmed, Belmokhtar's death would be a significant victory against a growing al Qaeda threat in northern Africa.
Belmokhtar's killing was announced on Chadian national television by armed forces spokesperson Gen. Zacharia Gobongue, who said Chadian troops "operating in northern Mali completely destroyed a terrorist base."
"The [death] toll included several dead terrorists, including their leader, Mokhtar Belmokhtar," he said.
However, an unidentified elected official in Mali told The Associated Press he doubted Belmokhtar had actually been killed and said he suspected the Chadian government of pushing the story to ease the loss of dozens of Chadian troops in operations in northern Africa.
SITE Intel Group/AP Photo
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Belmokhtar is known as Mr. Marlboro because of the millions he made smuggling cigarettes across the Sahara, but in the last few months the one-eyed terrorist leader has become one of the most sought after terrorists in the world. The attack on the plant near In Amenas in eastern Algeria left dozens of Westerns and at least three Americans dead.
Belmokhtar had formed his own al Qaeda splinter group and announced he would use his wealth to finance more attacks against American and Western interests in the region and beyond.
The U.S. has badly wanted Belmokhtar stopped and actively helped in the search by French and African military units to find him, as well as another top al Qaeda leader who was reported killed yesterday.
After the Chadian announcement, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.) said Belmokhtar's death, if confirmed, "would be a hard blow to the collection of jihadists operating across the region that are targeting American diplomats and energy workers."
Steve Wysocki, a plant worker who survived the attack in In Amenas thanked "military forces from around the world," especially the Chadian military, for bringing "this terrorist to an expedient justice."
"My family and I continue to mourn for our friends and colleagues who didn't make it home and pray for their families," Wysocki told ABC News.
The CIA has been after Belmokhtar since the early 1990s, Royce's statement said.
ABC News' Clayton Sandell contributed to this report.
IF IT looks too good to be true, it probably is. Several "herbal remedies" for erectile dysfunction sold online actually contain the active ingredient from Viagra.
Michael Lamb at Arcadia University in Glenside, Pennsylvania, and colleagues purchased 10 popular "natural" uplifting remedies on the internet and tested them for the presence of sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra. They found the compound, or a similar synthetic drug, in seven of the 10 products – cause for concern because it can be dangerous for people with some medical conditions.
Lamb's work was presented last week at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences meeting in Washington DC.
This article appeared in print under the headline "Herbal Viagra gets a synthetic boost"
If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.
All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.
If you are having a technical problem posting a comment, please contact technical support.
WASHINGTON: Major budget cuts will endanger the US military's ability to conduct its missions, Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel warned.
His comments came hours before President Barack Obama authorized cuts in domestic and defence spending, following the failure of efforts to clinch a deal with Republicans on cutting the deficit.
Hagel, whose budget at the Pentagon is set to be slashed by roughly $46 billion, said earlier: "Let me make it clear that this uncertainty puts at risk our ability to effectively fulfil all of our missions."
In contrast with his predecessor Leon Panetta, who branded the cuts a "doomsday mechanism" and "fiscal castration," Hagel was more measured two days after taking office as defence secretary.
But he made clear his thoughts on the consequences of the so-called "sequester" on the military.
Defence officials say they will be forced to reduce the working week of 800,000 civilian employees, scale back flight hours of warplanes and postpone some equipment maintenance.
The deployment of a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf has also been cancelled.
The US Navy will gradually stand down several hundred planes starting in April, the Air Force will curtail flying hours and the Army will cut back training for all units except those deploying to Afghanistan.
"This will have a major impact on training and readiness," Hagel said. "Later this month, we intend to issue preliminary notifications to thousands of civilian employees who will be furloughed."
Hagel acknowledged that the budget cuts "will cause pain, particularly among our civilian workforce and their families."
"I'm also concerned, as we all are, about the impact on readiness that these cuts will have across our force," he added.
The Pentagon chief expressed "confidence" that the White House and President Barack Obama's Republican foes in Congress would eventually reach agreement.
But other officials laid bare the consequences.
"If you stop training for a while and you're a combat pilot, then you lose your rating and eventually can't fly at all, because we can't allow you to fly if you can't fly safely," said Ash Carter, Hagel's deputy at the Pentagon.
"You can't, you obviously can't fly proficiently, but you can't even fly safely. Then you have to go back to the long building-back process of getting your readiness back."
Obama was bound by law to initiate the automatic, indiscriminate cuts.
The hit to military and domestic spending, known as the sequester, was never supposed to happen, but was rather a device seen as so punishing that rival lawmakers would be forced to find a better compromise to cut the deficit.
But despite a looming reality that the nation would suffer, Democrats and Republicans remained far from compromise and were never close to agreement.
"We will get through this," President Obama says of the forced spending cuts
Obama, congressional leaders fail to bridge gaps on cuts, letting them take effect
Speaker Boehner says the House will take up a government funding measure
Washington (CNN) -- Politics trumped progress on Friday as President Barack Obama and Republican leaders traded blame for $85 billion in forced spending cuts after they failed to come up with a compromise to avert the harshest impacts.
The president signed an order required by law that set in motion the automatic, government-wide cuts.
Obama and congressional leaders from both parties met for about 45 minutes at the White House, but no agreement emerged to avert the cuts that both sides oppose.
After weeks of campaign-style events intended to inspire public outrage over the cuts, Obama sought to temper his description of their impact while making clear he thinks Republican intransigence prevented a deal to avoid the economic harm they'll cause.
"We will get through this," he told reporters. "This is not going to be an apocalypse as some people have said. It's just dumb and it's going to hurt."
Full text of Obama order
Still, a White House budget office report sent to Congress and released with Obama's order said the cuts would be "deeply destructive to national security, domestic investments, and core government functions."
The action was described in the report as "a blunt and indiscriminate instrument" that was "never intended to be implemented and does not represent a responsible way" for the country to realize deficit reduction.
OMB report to Congress
In a sign of the potential impact, the Department of Justice sent furlough notices to employees that warned they may be forced to take days off without pay in coming months.
Similar furloughs, as well as reduced services, were expected at other agencies if the cuts don't get replaced or eliminated. Military leaders have warned of impaired readiness of U.S. forces.
Shame and blame: Why Washington needs couples therapy
However, the full impact of the cuts weren't expected until April at the earliest.
The cuts amount to roughly 9% for a broad range of non-defense programs and 13% for the Pentagon over the rest of the current fiscal year, which ends on September 30.
They were included in a 2011 deal to raise the federal borrowing limit as an unacceptable outcome if Congress failed to agree on a comprehensive deficit reduction plan.
Obama's press conference on spending cuts
However, election-year politics stymied progress on such a deal, leading to the situation Friday in which both sides acknowledged being unable to prevent something neither wanted.
"There are smarter ways to cut spending," said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, after the meeting with Obama.
Boehner repeated his past assertion that the GOP-led House has offered proposals to replace the forced spending cuts while the Democratic-led Senate has not, as well as his party's opposition to any increased tax revenue to offset the forced spending cuts.
Others who also took part in the White House gathering were Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
In the White House briefing room, Obama told reporters that Republicans in Congress "allowed these cuts to happen because they refuse to budge on closing a single wasteful (tax) loophole to help reduce the deficit."
"As recently as yesterday, they decided to protect special interest tax breaks for the well off and the well connected and they think that that's apparently more important than protecting our military or middle class families from the pain of these cuts," Obama said.
He was referring to a procedural vote on Thursday in which Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic proposal that called for eliminating some tax loopholes as part of a package with spending cuts.
Boehner and Republicans say the president and Democrats have yet to propose a serious plan to reduce spending, including costly entitlement programs, on a scale necessary to bring chronic federal deficits and debt under control.
Both Obama and Boehner foreshadowed the next major spending showdown - a March 27 deadline for Congress to authorize funding to keep the government running for the rest of the fiscal year.
4 myths about the spending cuts
Boehner told reporters that the House will take up a measure next week to authorize federal funding beyond that deadline.
"The president and leaders agreed legislation should be enacted this month to prevent a government shutdown while we continue to work on a solution to replace the" forced spending cuts, said a statement by Boehner's office.
Although the funding measure is unconnected to the spending cuts, Obama indicated he was open to a broader agreement that would resolve both issues.
"I do know that there are Republicans in Congress who privately, at least, say that they would rather close tax loopholes then let these cuts go through," said Obama in response to questions from reporters.
"... In the coming days and the coming weeks, I'm going to keeping on reaching out to them -- both individually and as groups of senators or members of the House -- and say to them, 'Let's fix this, not just for a month or two, but for years to come,' because the greatest nation on Earth does not conduct its business in month-to-month increments or by careening from crisis to crisis," Obama said.
Spending cuts: When they'll really bite
CNN's Dana Bash, Deirdre Walsh, Ted Barrett and Terry Frieden contributed to this report.
SEFFNER, Fla. A man was missing and feared dead early Friday after a large sinkhole opened under the bedroom of a house near Tampa.
Jeff Bush is presumed dead after a sinkhole opened under his bed.
/ CBS
His brother says Jeff Bush screamed for help before he disappeared.
The 36-year-old man's brother, Jeremy Bush, told rescue crews he heard a loud crash around 11 p.m. Thursday, then heard his brother screaming for help.
"When he got there, there was no bedroom left," Hillsborough County Fire Rescue spokeswoman Jessica Damico said. "There was no furniture. All he saw was a piece of the mattress sticking up."
Jeremy Bush called 911 and frantically tried to help his brother Jeff. He said he jumped into the hole and dirt was quickly up to his neck.
"The floor was still giving in and the dirt was still going down, but I didn't care. I wanted to save my brother," Jeremy said. "But I just couldn't do nothing."
An arriving deputy pulled Jeremy Bush from the still-collapsing house.
28 Photos
Sinkholes
"I reached down and was able to actually able to get him by his hand and pull him out of the hole," Hillsborough County Sheriff's Deputy Douglas Duvall said. "The hole was collapsing. At that time, we left the house."
Engineers worked to determine the size of the sinkhole. At the surface, officials estimated it was about 30 feet across. Below the surface, officials believed it was 100 feet wide.
"The entire house is on the sinkhole," Damico said.
Hillsborough County Fire Chief Ron Rogers told a news briefing that extra-sensitive listening devices and cameras were inserted into the sinkhole. "They did not detect any signs of life," he said.
By early Friday, Hillsborough County Fire Rescue officials determined the home had become too unstable to continue rescue efforts.
Neighbors on both sides of the home have been evacuated.
Sinkholes are common in seaside Florida, whose underlying limestone and dolomite can be worn away by water and chemicals, then collapse.
Engineers condemned the house, reports CBS Tampa affiliate WTSP.
From the outside of the small, sky blue house, nothing appeared wrong. There wear no cracks and the only sign something was amiss was the yellow caution tape circling the house.
Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office spokesman Larry McKinnon said authorities asked sinkhole and engineering experts, and they were using equipment to see if the ground can support the weight of heavy machinery needed for the recovery effort.
Jeremy Bush stood in a neighbor's yard across the street from the house Friday and recounted the harrowing collapse.
"He was screaming my name. I could swear I heard him hollering my name to help him," he said of his brother Jeff.
Jeremy Bush's wife and his 2-year-old daughter were also inside the house. "She keeps asking where her Uncle Jeff is," he said. "I lost everything. I work so hard to support my wife and kid and I lost everything."
Janell Wheeler told the Tampa Bay Times newspaper she was inside the house with four other adults and a child when the sinkhole opened.
"It sounded like a car hit my house," she said.
The rest of the family went to a hotel but she stayed behind, sleeping in her car.
President Obama and congressional leaders today failed to reach a breakthrough to avert a sweeping package of automatic spending cuts, setting into motion $85 billion of across-the-board belt-tightening that neither had wanted to see.
President Obama officially initiated the cuts with an order to agencies Friday evening.
He had met for just over an hour at the White House Friday morning with Republican leaders House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his Democratic allies, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Vice President Joe Biden.
But the parties emerged from their first face-to-face meeting of the year resigned to see the cuts take hold at midnight.
"This is not a win for anybody," Obama lamented in a statement to reporters after the meeting. "This is a loss for the American people."
READ MORE: 6 Questions (and Answers) About the Sequester
Officials have said the spending reductions immediately take effect Saturday but that the pain from reduced government services and furloughs of tens of thousands of federal employees would be felt gradually in the weeks ahead.
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Federal agencies, including Homeland Security, the Pentagon, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Education, have all prepared to notify employees that they will have to take one unpaid day off per week through the end of the year.
The staffing trims could slow many government services, including airport screenings, air traffic control, and law enforcement investigations and prosecutions. Spending on education programs and health services for low-income families will also get clipped.
"It is absolutely true that this is not going to precipitate the crisis" that would have been caused by the so-called fiscal cliff, Obama said. "But people are going to be hurt. The economy will not grow as quickly as it would have. Unemployment will not go down as quickly as it would have. And there are lives behind that. And it's real."
The sticking point in the debate over the automatic cuts -- known as sequester -- has remained the same between the parties for more than a year since the cuts were first proposed: whether to include more new tax revenue in a broad deficit reduction plan.
The White House insists there must be higher tax revenue, through elimination of tax loopholes and deductions that benefit wealthier Americans and corporations. Republicans seek an approach of spending cuts only, with an emphasis on entitlement programs. It's a deep divide that both sides have proven unable to bridge.
"This discussion about revenue, in my view, is over," Boehner told reporters after the meeting. "It's about taking on the spending problem here in Washington."
Boehner: No New Taxes to Avert Sequester
Boehner says any elimination of tax loopholes or deductions should be part of a broader tax code overhaul aimed at lowering rates overall, not to offset spending cuts in the sequester.
Obama countered today that he's willing to "take on the problem where it exists, on entitlements, and do some things that my own party doesn't like."
But he says Republicans must be willing to eliminate some tax loopholes as part of a deal.
"They refuse to budge on closing a single wasteful loophole to help reduce the deficit," Obama said. "We can and must replace these cuts with a more balanced approach that asks something from everybody."
Can anything more be done by either side to reach a middle ground?
The president today claimed he's done all he can. "I am not a dictator, I'm the president," Obama said.
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