GENEVA and WASHINGTON DC, June 25 /PRNewswire/ -- With major surgery now occurring at a rate of 234 million procedures per year - one for every 25 people - and studies indicating that a significant percentage result in preventable complications and deaths, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched a new safety checklist for surgical teams to use in operating theatres, as part of a major drive to make surgery safer around the world.

To view the Multimedia News Release, please click: http://www.prnewswire.com/mnr/SSSL/33718

"Preventable surgical injuries and deaths are now a growing concern," said Dr Margaret Chan, Director-General of WHO. "Using the Checklist is the best way to reduce surgical errors and improve patient safety."

New exquisitely preserved fossils from Latvia cast light on a key event in our own evolutionary history, when our ancestors left the water and ventured onto land. Swedish researchers Per Ahlberg and Henning Blom from Uppsala University have reconstructed parts of the animal and explain the transformation in the new issue of Nature.

It has long been known that the first backboned land animals or "tetrapods" - the ancestors of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, including ourselves - evolved from a group of fishes about 370 million years ago during the Devonian period. However, even though scientists had discovered fossils of tetrapod-like fishes and fish-like tetrapods from this period, these were still rather different from each other and did not give a complete picture of the intermediate steps in the transition.

BARCELONA, Spain, June 25 /PRNewswire/ -- europacolon has called on all governments to implement existing EU recommendations on colorectal cancer screening following a new report published today that shows the disease to be significantly neglected despite being the second most common cancer in Europe.(1)

Welcoming the findings of the report by the London School of Economics, (2) Jola Gore-Booth, Director of europacolon said: "For too long colorectal cancer has been the poor relation in cancer screening and management. It causes over 50% more deaths each year than breast cancer, yet in many countries, breast cancer screening has been widely available for more than two decades whereas few formal screening programmes exist for colorectal cancer." (1),(3)

OTTAWA, Canada, June 25 /PRNewswire/ --

- Ganymede Release Encompasses 23 Project Teams and 18 Million Lines of Code

The Eclipse Foundation and the entire Eclipse community are pleased to announce the availability of the Ganymede Release, the annual release train developed by the Eclipse community. The Ganymede Release is a coordinated release of 23 different Eclipse project teams and represents over 18 million lines of code.

Ganymede delivers improvements and key features in the following areas:

- Equinox and Runtime Projects - Modeling Features - Developer Tools - Support for SOA

Availability

A new analysis of Martian soil data led by University of California, Berkeley, geoscientists suggests that there was once enough water in the planet's atmosphere for a light drizzle or dew to hit the ground, leaving tell-tale signs of its interaction with the planet's surface.

The study's conclusion breaks from the more dominant view that the liquid water that once existed during the red planet's infancy came mainly in the form of upwelling groundwater rather than rain.

To come up with their conclusions, the UC Berkeley-led researchers used published measurements of soil from Mars that were taken by various NASA missions: Viking 1, Viking 2, Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity. These five missions provided information on soil from widely distant sites surveyed between 1976 and 2006.

STARNBERG, Germany, June 25 /PRNewswire/ --

The world's leading IT research and advisory company Gartner has positioned Crossgate in the latest report, "Magic Quadrant for Integration Service Providers". Crossgate is positioned in the Leaders Quadrant among the vendors in this sector. Crossgate believes this positioning highlights the importance of the recently established cooperation with SAP AG, especially in terms of recognition, visibility and international focus.

Gartner positioned Crossgate in the Leaders Quadrant in the "Magic Quadrant for Integration Service Providers"(1) published at the end of May.

LONDON, June 25 /PRNewswire/ --

- Online Video Solutions Launched Exclusively for Companies, Media Groups and Communications Agencies

Kewego, the web video expert, has announced the European launch of a new range of web video solutions, specifically tailored to the needs of business users.

Video broadcasting is no longer the single criterion on which professionals base their choice of online video solution.

To guarantee a successful video strategy, companies, media groups and communications agencies are now looking for richer services:

- Their video player, their Web TV and even their video portal need to drive the company's brand image, boost interaction with visitors and enhance the users' online experience.

LONDON, June 25 /PRNewswire/ --

- With Photo

A new section on the website of the Austrian National Tourist Office UK & Ireland http://www.austriatourism.com/uk is highlighting the country's strong eco-friendly travel options for visitors. Although being green is a way of life for Austrians they have until now not heralded their green credentials as much as other tourist destinations.

WOKING, England, June 25 /PRNewswire/ -- The UK construction industry has made progress but still has much work to do in other key areas if it is to match the ideal of the modern, sustainable construction industry visualised in the report authored by Sir John Egan 10 years ago.

This is the overall conclusion of a survey published today by BIW Technologies, a leading UK-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider to the property/construction sector.

Highlights

- 55% thought that significant progress had been made on implementing Egan's overall recommendations

- Most progress has been in 'process improvement' and least in 'costs and defects'

MANCHESTER, England, June 25 /PRNewswire/ --

- With Photo

A Bangladesh born girl who overcame racist bullying to become a big success is amongst nine young people to receive national awards at Parliament today.

Swansea based Sumi Begum had chairs thrown at her in the classroom when she began high school. But she soon made real friends, learnt to speak English and passed six GCSEs. Along with single mum Michelle Davis from Bury who successfully battled post-natal depression and Hollie Goodwin from Leicester who overcame an eating disorder to fashion a career in the rag trade, Sumi has been declared a "UK Achiever of the Year 2008."