In the News

WORLD

MELBOURNE, Australia – A meeting of top financial officials from around the globe opened Saturday against a backdrop of 3,000 marching protesters, some of whom turned violent, pelting police with stones, bottles and smoke grenades.

Some 3,000 protesters marched on a downtown hotel where the Group of 20 meeting of finance ministers and central bankers opened, but most of the violence appeared to center around a group of about 200 demonstrators dressed in white coveralls with red bandanas tied around their faces.

Police struck out with batons as protesters rushed the barrier in at least two places, and at one site overturned fences and broke through the initial cordon, according to Associated Press reporters who witnessed the incidents.

A number of officers were injured, but only one seriously. Two demonstrators were arrested, and more arrests were expected, Victoria state Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon said. There were no reports of injured protesters.

Finance officials from 19 countries and the European Union, plus top officials of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund are at the talks.

Reform of the IMF, rising interest rates, the Chinese and Japanese currency levels and efforts to economically isolate nuclear-armed North Korea also are likely to come up at the closed-door meetings.

NATION

WASHINGTON – The government ended a 14-year virtual ban on silicone-gel breast implants Friday despite lingering safety concerns, making the devices available to tens of thousands of women who have clamored for them.

The Food and Drug Administration approved the implants made by Inamed Corp. – now part of Allergan Inc. – and Mentor Corp., the two California companies said.

The action opens the implants to much wider use by women seeking to reconstruct or augment their breasts. Since 1992, the silicone implants had been available only as part of research studies.

They first went on the market in 1962, before the FDA required proof that all medical devices be safe and effective. Thirty years later, they were banned amid concerns about their safety.

While most studies have failed to link breast implants and disease, concern over rupturing persists: The implants do not last a lifetime, and eventually they must be removed or replaced, according to the FDA. A 2000 Institute of Medicine report found rupture rates as high as 77 percent.

Last year, the FDA told both companies their implants could be approved once they met additional, undisclosed conditions. Federal advisers had narrowly recommended that Inamed’s implants not receive FDA approval, citing concerns about the long-term durability. The same advisers endorsed Mentor’s implants.

STATE & LOCAL

ALEXANDRIA – A federal judge has ruled The New York Times may not rely on information from a columnist’s confidential sources in its defense against a libel lawsuit filed over the newspaper’s coverage of the 2001 anthrax attacks.

Former Army scientist Steven Hatfill, once identified by authorities as a “person of interest” in the anthrax mailings that killed five people in late 2001, is suing the Times for libel for a series of articles written by columnist Nicholas Kristof.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Liam O’Grady issued the ruling Friday as a sanction against the newspaper for refusing to disclose the identities of two confidential FBI sources used by Kristof. O’Grady had earlier ruled that Hatfill needed “an opportunity to question the confidential sources and determine if Mr. Kristof accurately reported information the sources provided.”

The Times had cited FBI sources in reporting Hatfill was one of a limited number of people with the access and technical expertise to manufacture the anthrax and that he failed lie-detector tests. Hatfill was a physician and bioterrorism expert who worked at the Army’s infectious disease laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., in the late 1990s.