Professor calls Prince Charles, others "snake-oil salesmen" (Reuters)

LONDON, Jul (Reuters) – A leading professor of complementary medicine accused Britain's heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles and other backers of alternative therapies on Monday of being "snake-oil salesmen" who promote products with no scientific basis.

Edzard Ernst, who is stepping down from his post as Britain's only professor of complementary medicine at Exeter University, also said a long-running dispute with the Prince about the merits of alternative therapies had cost him his job -- a claim Prince Charles's office denied.

"Almost directly, Prince Charles has managed to interfere in my professional life and almost managed to close my unit," Ernst told reporters at a briefing.

A spokeswoman for Prince Charles told Reuters the royal heir was not involved in the dispute with Ernst and that she would not respond to professor's comments about snake-oil salesmen.

Ernst's complementary medicine research unit at Exeter's Peninsula School of Medicine had been threatened with outright closure, but the university has now offered it a reprieve and says it is seeking a successor to Ernst to lead it.

"It looked as though I had to go, and that was the price for the unit to continue," Ernst said. "I pay the price gladly as it is a small price to pay for the unit to continue."

Ernst said that during his 18 years of researching the efficacy of hundreds of different types of alternative medicine -- from acupuncture, to herbal remedies, to homeopathy and chiropractic therapy -- he has found that "snake-oil salesmen and pseudo-science are ubiquitous and dangerous."

Asked whether he included Prince Charles in that category, he said, "yes."

He said Prince Charles, a long-time advocate of alternative and integrated medicine and sustainable agriculture, was one of the main obstacles to allowing proper scientific analysis of the efficacy of complementary therapies.

Referring to the prince's Duchy Originals food company as "dodgy originals" he said the firm's promotion of a "detox" tincture made from artichoke and dandelion was an example of how the prince peddled scientifically unproven therapies.

In 2009 Ernst accused Prince Charles of "outright quackery" for promoting the detox tincture and other such products "under the banner of holistic and integrative healthcare."

The 62-year-old prince founded Duchy Originals in 1990 to promote organic food and farming, with profits going to charity.

Duchy Originals describes the product as "a food supplement to help eliminate toxins and aid digestion" and a spokeswoman for the firm said it had no comment about Ernst's remarks.

Ernst's dispute with Prince Charles dates back to 2005, when the professor was asked to look at a report by an economist, Christopher Smallwood, who was investigating whether alternative remedies were cost-effective and should be offered more widely on Britain's taxpayer-funded National Health Service (NHS).

Ernst objected to the report and decided to voice his concerns before it was published. In one section, the report said the NHS could save billions of pounds if some doctors could switch from prescribing conventional medicines to offering alternative therapies. "That was so unspeakable to me that I had to speak out," Ernst said.

Ernst was accused in a letter from an adviser to Prince Charles, Michael Peat, of having breached a confidentiality agreement on the report and an investigation was launched. Ernst was cleared of wrongdoing, but he says he had by that time lost the support of his institution and its commitment to raise more funding for his work.

A spokeswoman for Prince Charles said he "had no knowledge that a letter was being sent to the University of Exeter by Sir Michael Peat about Edzard Ernst's breaching of confidence of the Smallwood report in 2005" and was not involved in the dispute.

Ernst and his team have run many clinical trials and published more than 150 so-called meta-analyses of other studies into complementary and alternative medicines.

He says he has identified around 20 such therapies which "demonstrably demonstrate more good than harm" including the herbal remedy St John's Wort for the treatment of mild depression, hypnosis for the relief of labor pain, and hawthorn for the treatment of congestive heart failure.

(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Myra MacDonald)

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Charles Dutoit pushes for inter-Korean orchestra (AP)

SEOUL, South Korea – Philadelphia Orchestra chief conductor Charles Dutoit was a longtime friend of Isang Yun, a composer jailed and then exiled by his native South Korea for visiting the North.

Now, 16 years after Yun's death, the 75-year-old Dutoit is working to realize a dream inspired by his friend: an inter-Korean youth orchestra.

The Swiss maestro held talks in North Korea late last month and says cultural officials there support the idea. South Korea says it's willing to review the plan. Dutoit hopes to hold an inaugural concert on Aug. 15, the anniversary of a then-unified Korea's liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945.

Nearly 60 years after the Korean War ended with a fragile armistice, the two Koreas are technically still at war. Despite the animosity, analysts say both Koreas could find it difficult to reject such an apolitical event organized by a non-Korean, as neither side would want to be blamed for making ties even worse.

"There is a 50-50 chance for this orchestra project being realized," said Haksoon Paik, a North Korea analyst at the Sejong Institute, a think tank near Seoul.

Dutoit, who conducted the North Korean state symphony on his visit, said he was further inspired by a teary-eyed airport farewell from orchestra members.

"They just didn't (want to) let me to go," he said in a telephone interview from Switzerland. "They wanted to keep me a little longer."

The experience "made me think it would be wonderful to have some little adventure and music together and go over all the problems," he said. "I have to do music to put together these people and to have more comprehension between them."

He says his motivation comes from Yun, one of a handful of figures respected in both Koreas.

Yun became world famous in the late 1960s when he was kidnapped by South Korean agents in Germany after an unauthorized trip to North Korea in 1963. He was sentenced to life in prison but was released and returned to Germany two years later following protests from around the world.

Yun, who became a German citizen in 1971, visited North Korea periodically but was never allowed to return to the South. He died in Germany at age 78 in 1995.

The avant-garde composer, known for about 150 pieces combining Eastern and Western traditions, believed an inter-Korean orchestra could ease animosity.

Dutoit conducted Yun's work and often heard his friend speak of Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, and a music institute there that was named after him.

He first visited Pyongyang in 2002 and was impressed with the skill of the musicians at the institute as they played one of the late composer's works.

Several years later, Dutoit was a conductor for a music festival in Seoul, where he shared with organizers his dream of forming a joint youth orchestra.

The project was set back as tensions rose after North Korea allegedly torpedoed a South Korean warship and killed 46 sailors in March of last year. The North also fired artillery shells on a South Korean border island in November that killed four people.

But Paik, the analyst, said that North Korea now wants to improve its international image, while South Korean President Lee Myung-bak may seek better ties with the North before he leaves office in early 2013.

The South Korean Unification Ministry says it is willing to review the orchestra project after a formal request is made. Dutoit's South Korean partner, Lindenbaum Music Company, plans to file one in coming days. His long-term goal is for the orchestra to perform regularly in Pyongyang, Seoul and the Korean border town of Panmunjom.

He isn't the only one using music as a tool to help ease tension on the Korean peninsula.

Renowned conductor Daniel Barenboim plans to hold a peace concert at the South Korean border town of Imjingak on Aug. 15 with his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, which brings together young musicians from Israel and Arab countries every summer. The New York Philharmonic also held a concert in Pyongyang in 2008.

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Prince Charles sees Obama, urban farm, on US tour (AFP)

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Prince Charles is wrapping up a US visit that has taken the heir to the British throne from an urban farm in inner-city Washington to a closed-door meeting with President Barack Obama.

During a meeting Wednesday, Obama thanked Prince Charles for Britain's military contributions to the wars in Afghanistan and Libya and "warmly welcomed" his support for environmental concerns, sustainable food production and halting deforestation, the White House said.

Environmental issues were a central theme of the British royal's three-day visit. Giving the keynote speech at a conference on the future of food, the prince warned that unsustainable farming is overtaxing nature and leading the world towards a food crisis.

"In some cases, we are pushing nature's life-support systems so far they are struggling to cope with what we ask of them," the long-time advocate for sustainable food production told some 700 people packed into a meeting hall at Georgetown University.

"Soils are being depleted, demand for water is growing ever more voracious and the entire system is at the mercy of an increasingly fluctuating price of oil," he said at the "Future of Food" conference.

Charles was joined by the son of a peasant farmer from Mexico who now advocates for farmworkers' rights, a professional basketball player turned organic farmer, a pediatrician working to promote healthy diets for low-income families and others in calling for a change in how Americans produce and consume food.

But the prince was the only speaker to receive a standing ovation that set the wooden Flemish-Romanesque meeting hall rumbling.

Less than 24 hours earlier, the British royal had picked his way through Common Good City Farm in the gritty LeDroit Park neighborhood of Washington.

The farm seeks not only to teach city-dwellers the joys of cultivating food but also to make fresh, healthy food more readily available to them -- a step toward fighting obesity.

A third of LeDroit Park residents live in poverty, and one in five is overweight, partly because of the lack of affordable fresh produce in many US inner cities.

Common Good City Farm is trying to change that. Since the farm opened four years ago, it has provided more than 400 bags of fresh produce to low-income families in Washington and taught several thousand city dwellers how to grow fruit and vegetables.

"Yo, Charles! Over here!" called a voice from the far side of a split-log fence at Common Good City Farm, where locals grow fruit, vegetables, herbs and flowers on what used to be a baseball field.

Without flinching at the lack of etiquette, the prince trudged across mulch and dirt to shake hands with well-wishers who had gathered at the farm to catch a glimpse of British royalty.

At the Georgetown University conference, Charles called the global reach of obesity a "disaster," and praised US First Lady Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" campaign, launched two years ago to get American children to be more active, engage in more outdoors activities and eat healthier food.

The US president is due to visit Britain later this month at the invitation of Queen Elizabeth II -- Charles's mother.

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Prince Charles urges US not to overtax Mother Nature (AFP)

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Britain's Prince Charles warned Wednesday at a US conference debating the future of food that unsustainable farming methods are overtaxing nature and pushing the global food system into crisis.

"In some cases, we are pushing Nature's life-support systems so far they are struggling to cope with what we ask of them," the heir to the British throne, who is a long-time advocate for sustainable food production, told some 700 people packed into a meeting hall at Georgetown University.

"Soils are being depleted, demand for water is growing ever more voracious and the entire system is at the mercy of an increasingly fluctuating price of oil," the prince said in the keynote speech at the "Future of Food" conference.

Charles was joined by the son of a peasant farmer from Mexico who now advocates for farmworkers' rights, a professional basketball player turned organic farmer, a pediatrician working to promote healthy diets for low-income families and others in calling for a change to the way Americans produce and consume food.

But the prince was the only speaker to be given a standing ovation that set the wooden Flemish-Romanesque meeting hall rumbling.

The world's food producers must urgently "create a more sustainable approach to agriculture... that is capable of feeding the world with a global population rapidly heading for nine billion," the prince said.

"Can we do so amid so many competing demands on land, in an increasingly volatile climate and when levels of the planet's biodiversity are under such threat or in serious decline?" he said, urging Americans to lead the way in fixing the global food system, which has already reached crisis stage.

"The way we have done things up to now is no longer as viable as they once appeared to be," the prince said, urging the world's food growers to take "some very brave steps," including developing "more sustainable, or durable forms of food production."

"I have no intention of being confronted by my grandchildren, demanding to know why on earth we didn't do something about the many problems that existed when we knew what was going wrong," Charles said on the second day of a whirlwind visit to the United States.

The Prince of Wales kicked off his official visit to the United States Tuesday -- just days after the pomp and ceremony of his son Prince William's wedding to Kate Middleton -- with a visit to an urban farm in a gritty, deprived Washington neighborhood.

He also visited the US Supreme Court and met US service members who were wounded in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Prince Charles begins US visit on city farm (AFP)

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Days after the pomp of his son Prince William's wedding in London, Prince Charles picked his way through an urban farm in a gritty part of Washington as he began a US visit on Tuesday.

"Yo, Charles! Over here!" called a voice from the far side of a split-log fence at Common Good City Farm, where locals grow fruit, vegetables, herbs and flowers on what used to be a baseball field.

And without flinching at Americans' lack of knowledge of proper etiquette, the heir to the British throne trudged across mulch and dirt to shake hands with well-wishers who had gathered at the farm in the predominantly black neighborhood to see British royalty.

The Prince of Wales, an advocate of sustainable food, spent nearly an hour at Common Good farm. He planted a tree, examined a compost heap, shook hands with locals from nearby low-income housing projects and discussed nutrition and obesity with Common Good executive director Pertula George.

"We talked about how the obesity epidemic isn't just a problem in the US, but also the UK, and it's growing," George told AFP.

A third of LeDroit Park residents live in poverty, and one in five is overweight, partly because of the lack of affordable fresh produce in many US inner cities.

Common Good City Farm is trying to change that by giving most of the food produced on the former baseball field to "people in the neighborhood who need it most," said George.

Since the farm opened four years ago, it has provided more than 400 bags of fresh produce to low-income families in Washington and taught several thousand city dwellers how to grow fruit and vegetables.

"It's an honor that Prince Charles came here," said farm coordinator Amanda Formica, who had spent most of the hot spring afternoon hoeing a row of vegetables in the middle of the farm as the British royal visited while US Secret Service agents eyed the brick homes overlooking the rows of borage and kale.

"His visit will call attention to the fact that nutrition and sustainability matter, and that other countries are way ahead of us on both counts."

The prince also toured the US Supreme Court, and is due to call on President Obama at the White House just a few weeks before the US leader is due to pay an official visit to Britain.

On Wednesday, Charles will give the keynote speech at a conference on sustainable agriculture at Georgetown University and attend an event to support British and American troops deployed overseas.

"He's very personable. That's kind of unexpected," said Howard University student Kayla Lindsey, 21, who was pressed against the farm's rough wooden fence at Common Good after shaking hands with the British royal.

Next to Lindsey, a woman broke with protocol and asked Charles for his autograph. The heir to the British throne replied with a smile, "I'm not good on Tuesdays," and turned to walk towards a chamomile bush and a row of vegetables sprouting in the middle of the farm.

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Charles Laufer, Founder of Tiger Beat, Dies

Charles Laufer, founder of Tiger Beat, passed away at the age of 87, according to the New York Times.

Laufer, a pioneer in the teen-targeted magazine industry, started his career as a high school teacher. Upset that his students had nothing entertaining to read, Laufer started publications in 1955 aimed at giving teenage girls information about their favorite celebrities, beginning with Coaster (which turned into Teen).

Before Justin Bieber and Robert Pattinson came The Beach Boys and The Monkees, but the stories are still the same: who's dating who, what stars look for in girls, and where they go shopping. Laufer's style of excessive exclamation points and cluttered photo collages can still be seen on newsstands and internet today.

Laufer and his brother, Ira, started Tiger Beat in 1965 after selling Teen in 1957. The tag line for the magazine pretty much sums up its stories: "Guys in their 20s singing La La songs to 13-year-old girls."

One of the first people to see The Monkee's true potential, Laufer put them on the cover of Tiger Beat in 1965, which helped shoot the band into stardom and really put the magazine on the map.

The Laufer brothers sold Tiger Beat in 1978 for a reported $15 million, with its circulation around 700,000.

But interest in teen scene publications seems to run in the family. Various family members have owned Bop and other teen magazines, and in 2003 Laufer's son Scott bought Tiger Beat, which is Bop's publisher.

Laufer died April 5 in Northridge, Calif. from heart failure, according to his brother.

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