News Headlines - 21 December 2011

▽Breast implant panic spreads to UK - The Independent
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/breast-implant-panic-spreads-to-uk-6279884.html
Up to 50,000 British women with defective breast implants have been warned about their safety as the French government prepares to order the products be removed from every woman who has had them fitted.
The implants were made by a French company from substandard, industrial-grade silicone and exported around the world. Eight cancer cases, including one death, have been tentatively linked to them in France and hundreds of other women have reported ruptures in the devices.

▽50,000 UK women urged not to panic over implant scare - AFP
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jqfXz9krExenZqv8S8D1W9HvuqUg?docId=CNG.b7f69c6a40d3b242ac3602fa3f17b964.461
Health authorities sought on Wednesday to reassure 50,000 British women who have breast implants made by a French company at the heart of a cancer scare, saying there was no evidence of a link to the disease.

▽London riots: Metropolitan Police raid 100 homes - BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-16282291
Police seeking suspected rioters have raided about 100 addresses across London.
The Metropolitan Police said 62 arrests were made by officers from several different departments of the force.
Four months on from the disorder, more than 3,400 people have been arrested and about two-thirds of them charged or summoned to court.

▽Leveson inquiry: Piers Morgan's phone was hacked, says ex-Mirror journalist - The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/dec/21/leveson-inquiry-mirror-journalist?newsfeed=true
James Hipwell, the former Daily Mirror journalist, has told the Leveson inquiry he witnessed a colleague on the paper hacking into the then editor Piers Morgan's phone.
Hipwell, who was fired from the Daily Mirror in 2000 for dealing in shares in companies he wrote about for the paper and was later jailed following a Department of Trade and Industry investigation, claimed the incident took place at the beginning of that year.

▽Japan Says Decommissioning Damaged Reactors Could Take 40 Years - New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/22/world/asia/japan-needs-40-years-to-decommission-fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-reactors.html
Decommissioning the wrecked reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant will take 40 years and require the use of robots to remove melted fuel that appears to be stuck to the bottom of the reactors’ containment vessels, the Japanese government said on Wednesday.