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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SHANGPU, China: Villagers in southern China were locked in a stand-off with authorities on Sunday and were demanding democratic polls after a violent clash with thugs linked to a local official over a land transfer.
Just over a week ago, residents of Shangpu in Guangdong province fought with scores of attackers whom they claimed were sent by the village communist party chief and a business tycoon after they protested against a land deal.
Police are blockading the settlement to outsiders while residents refuse to let officials inside, days before the annual meeting of the country's legislature, the National People's Congress (NPC).
The situation recalls a similar episode in Wukan, also in Guangdong and around 100 kilometres (62 miles) from Shangpu, which made headlines worldwide 15 months ago.
At the main entrance of the village of 3,000 people, 40 police and officials stood guard, barring outside vehicles from entering. Not far away, a cloth banner read: "Strongly request legal, democratic elections."
Shangpu's two-storey houses and low-slung family-run workshops are surrounded by fields awaiting spring planting. But the main street is lined with the wrecks of cars damaged in the clash, with glass and metal littering the ground.
Residents said they should have the right to vote both for the leader who represents them and on whether to approve a controversial proposal to transform rice fields into an industrial zone.
"This should be decided by a vote by villagers," said one of the protest leaders, adding: "The village chief should represent our interests, but he doesn't."
Locals fear that once the NPC -- which starts on Tuesday -- ends, authorities will move in with force.
Chinese leaders have repeatedly ruled out Western-style democracy for the country.
"For the purpose of maintaining stability, they (authorities) don't want to use forceful measures before the meetings," another villager said. "We are afraid of them coming back."
The unidentified attackers, some of whom wore orange hard hats and red armbands, drove into the village and turned on residents with shovels and other weapons.
Villagers drove the interlopers off by hitting them with bamboo poles and throwing bricks from a nearby construction site, according to first-hand accounts and video of the incident provided to AFP.
They said they then vented their fury on the attackers' cars, overturning and smashing as many as 29 vehicles.
Residents claimed some of the group had knives and a gun. A video showed a man firing a handgun into the air and villagers said he was a plainclothes police officer trying to intercede. At least eight villagers were injured.
In Wukan in late 2011, a protest by residents against a land grab by local officials accused of corruption escalated after one of their leaders died in police custody.
Villagers barricaded roads and faced off against security forces for 10 days, until authorities backed down and promised them rare concessions. Residents were later allowed to hold open village elections -- a first in Wukan.
The people of Shangpu had heard of Wukan indirectly, and had similar demands: free elections for their leader.
They claim the current village chief Li Baoyu, who is also the party head, was foisted on them by higher authorities.
Residents allege Li fraudulently obtained signatures to support the transfer of 33 hectares (82 acres) of farmland to the Wanfeng Investment Co, backed by businessman Wu Guicun, to be used for factories producing electrical cables.
The village's ruling committee will receive compensation based on the yield of rice that would have been planted on the land. But residents fear they themselves will not be paid and say the compensation does not reflect the true value.
"Village cadres have illegally dealt in land and leased land at a low price," they said in a petition to higher officials.
In the government's only official statement on the case, Jiexi county, which administers the village, pledged to pursue those responsible for the attack and bring criminal prosecutions.
No one from Wanfeng Investment Co could be reached for comment.
SEFFNER, Fla. The effort to find the body of a Florida man who was swallowed by a sinkhole under his Florida home was called off Saturday and crews planned to begin demolishing the four-bedroom house.
The 20-foot-wide opening of the sinkhole is almost completely covered by the house and rescuers feared it would collapse on them if they tried to search for Jeff Bush, 37. Crews were testing the unstable ground surrounding the home and evacuated two neighboring homes as a precaution.
Hillsborough County Administrator Mike Merrill said heavy equipment would be brought in to begin the demolition Sunday morning.
"At this point it's really not possible to recover the body," Merrill said, later adding "we're dealing with a very unusual sinkhole."
Reporter Ashley Porter of CBS affiliate WTSP-TV in Tampa, Fla., reported that crews dropped a camera and listening devices into the hole, but there were no signs of life.
Jessica Damico, spokeswoman for Hillsborough County Fire Rescue, said the demolition equipment would be placed on what they believe is solid ground and reach onto the property to pull apart the house. The crew will try pulling part of the house away from the sinkhole intact so some heirlooms and mementoes can be retrieved.
Bush was in his bedroom Thursday night in Seffner — a suburb of 8,000 people 15 miles east of downtown Tampa — when the earth opened and took him and everything else in his room. Five others in the house escape unharmed.
Play Video
Man feared dead in sinkhole freak accident
On "CBS This Morning: Saturday," WTSP-TV reporter Grayson Kamm reported that Bush was not planning to stay in the house for long, just a few months, and had been planning to move out Saturday.
On Saturday, the normally quiet neighborhood of concrete block homes painted in Florida pastels was jammed with cars as engineers, reporters, and curious onlookers came to the scene.
At the home next door to the Bushes, a family cried and organized boxes. Testing determined that their house and another was compromised by the sinkhole. The families were allowed to go inside for about a half-hour to gather belongings.
Sisters Soliris and Elbairis Gonzalez, who live on the same street as the Bushes, said neighbors were worried for their safety.
"I've had nightmares," Soliris Gonzalez, 31, said. "In my dreams, I keep checking for cracks in the house."
They said the family has discussed where to go if forced to evacuate, and they've taken their important documents to a storage unit.
"The rest of it, this is material stuff, as long as our family is fine," Soliris Gonzalez said.
"You never know underneath the ground what's happening," added Elbairis Gonzalez, 30.
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Sinkholes
Experts say thousands of sinkholes form yearly in Florida because of the state's unique geography, though most are small and deaths rarely occur.
"There's hardly a place in Florida that's immune to sinkholes," said Sandy Nettles, who owns a geology consulting company in the Tampa area. "There's no way of ever predicting where a sinkhole is going to occur."
Most sinkholes are small, like one found Saturday morning in Largo, 35 miles away from Seffner. The Largo sinkhole, about 10 feet long and several feet wide, is in a mall parking lot.
The state sits on limestone, a porous rock that easily dissolves in water, with a layer of clay on top. The clay is thicker in some locations — including the area where Bush became a victim — making them even more prone to sinkholes.
Jonathan Arthur, the state geologist and director of the Florida Geological Survey, said other states sit atop limestone in a similar way, but Florida has additional factors like extreme weather, development, aquifer pumping and construction. "The conditions under which a sinkhole will form can be very rapid, or they can form slowly over time," he said.
But it remained unclear Saturday what, if anything, caused the Seffner sinkhole.
"The condition that caused that sinkhole could have started a million years ago," Nettles said.
Jeremy Bush, who tried to rescue his brother, lay flowers and a stuffed lamb near the house Saturday morning and wept.
He said someone came to his home a couple of months ago to check for sinkholes and other issues, apparently for insurance purposes, but found nothing wrong. State law requires home insurers to provide coverage against sinkholes.
"And a couple of months later, my brother dies. In a sinkhole," Bush said Friday.
Authorities have discontinued the rescue effort for a Florida man who was swallowed by a sinkhole when his home's foundation collapsed and said it is unlikely his body will ever be recovered.
"We feel we have done everything we can," Hillsborough County administrator Mike Merrell said at a news conference this afternoon. "At this point, it's not possible to recover the body."
Merell said officials would bring in heavy equipment to begin demolishing the home on Sunday.
"We're dealing with a very unusual sinkhole," he said. "It's very deep. It's very wide. It's very unstable."
Jeff Bush was in his bedroom when a sinkhole opened up and trapped him underneath his home at 11 p.m. Thursday.
Two homes next door to Bush's residence were evacuated today after authorities said they had been compromised by the growing sinkhole.
With the assistance of rescuers, the homeowners will be allowed to enter their home for only 30 minutes to gather valuables, authorities said.
Rescuers returned to the site in Seffner, Fla., early this morning to conduct further testing, but decided it was too dangerous for the family initially affected by the sinkhole to enter their home, which was declared condemned.
Florida Sinkhole Opens Up Beneath Man's Home Watch Video
Florida Man Believed Dead After Falling into Sinkhole Watch Video
Florida Sinkhole Swallows House, Man Trapped Inside Watch Video
While the sinkhole was initially estimated to be 15 feet deep on Thursday night, the chasm has continued to grow. Officials now estimate it measures 30 feet across and is up to 100 feet deep.
The Hillsborough County Fire Rescue has set up a relief fund for all families affected by the growing sink hole.
MORE: How Sinkholes Can Develop
Rescue operations were halted Friday night after it became too dangerous to approach the home.
Bill Bracken, an engineer with Hillsborough County Urban Search and Rescue team said the house "should have collapsed by now, so it's amazing that it hasn't."
RELATED: Florida Man Swallowed by Sinkhole: Conditions Too Unstable to Approach
Using ground penetrating radar, rescuers have found a large amount of water beneath the house, making conditions even more dangerous for them to continue the search for Bush.
Hillsborough County lies in what is known as Florida's "Sinkhole Alley." More than 500 sinkholes have been reported in the area since 1954, according to the state's environmental agency.
Meanwhile, Bush's brother, Jeremy Bush, is still reeling from Thursday night.
Jeremy Bush had to be rescued by a first responder after jumping into the hole in an attempt to rescue his brother when the home's concrete floor collapsed, but said he couldn't find him.
"I just started digging and started digging and started digging, and the cops showed up and pulled me out of the hole and told me the floor's still falling in," he said.
"These are everyday working people, they're good people," said Deputy Douglas Duvall of the Hillsborough County sheriff's office. "And this was so unexpected, and they're still, you know, probably facing the reality that this is happening."
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.
CHITTAGONG, Bangladesh: Bangladesh police on Saturday opened fire at Islamists protesting the conviction for war crimes of one of their leaders, killing three people outside the port city of Chittagong.
The deaths brought the total number killed since a war crimes tribunal delivered its first verdict on January 21 to at least 56, according to police figures.
The number includes 40 who have died in the last three days, since Jamaat-e-Islami party vice president Delwar Hossain Sayedee was sentenced to death, police said.
Sayedee was found guilty on Thursday of murder, religious persecution and rape during the 1971 independence war, triggering violent clashes between rampaging Jamaat supporters and police across the country.
The 73-year-old firebrand preacher was the third person to be convicted by the war crimes tribunal, whose verdicts have been met by outrage from Islamists.
The Islamists say the process is more about settling scores than delivering justice.
The latest violence came a day after the United States called for calm in the impoverished South Asian nation.
"While engaging in a peaceful protest is a fundamental democratic right, we believe violence is never the answer," US State Department deputy acting spokesman Patrick Ventrell told reporters in Washington.
But he stressed the United States believes "it is important to bring justice to those who have committed war crimes and atrocities" while ensuring that the trials be "free, fair, transparent".
In the new clashes, police said they fired live rounds after hundreds of student activists of Jamaat barricaded a key highway and attacked officers with stones and sticks as they tried to clear the road.
"We were forced to open fire. Three people were killed in the clashes," senior Chittagong police official Rabiul Islam told AFP, adding 10 people, including policemen, were wounded.
The war crimes trials of a dozen Jamaat and main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leaders have opened old wounds and divided the nation.
The opposition has accused the government of staging a witchhunt.
The government, which says the war claimed three million lives, rejects the claims and accuses Jamaat leaders of being part of pro-Pakistani militias blamed for much of the carnage during the 1971 independence war.
Independent estimates put the death toll from the war in which Bangladesh won its independence from Pakistan at a much lower figure of 300,000 to 500,000.
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.
Sequestration Deadline: Obama Meets With Leaders Watch Video
Sequester Countdown: The Reality of Budget Cuts Watch Video
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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