Controversial video game Grand Theft Auto V has taken the top honour at the annual Golden Joystick Awards.

The fastest-selling title of all time, GTA V scooped the prestigious gong at the ceremony in central London, while there were also awards for Call Of Duty and the man behind the BioShock franchise.

A key date in the gaming industry’s calendar, the Golden Joystick Awards celebrate the best video-gaming creations of the past 12 months.

Now in its 31st year, the event, which was held at the Westminster Park Plaza Hotel, saw cult shooter game Call Of Duty pick up a Hall of Fame accolade, while Naughty Dog’s The Last Of Us also took home awards for Best Newcomer and Best Storytelling.

Set in the familiar fictional city of San Andreas, GTA V’s open-world freedom and mission-led gameplay have garnered rave reviews from fans worldwide, but critics claim the Rockstar-developed game glorifies violence, torture and crime.

Costing an estimated £170 million to make and market, GTA V’s release last month saw chaotic scenes across the UK as avid fans queued up to get a copy of the fifth instalment of the series.

A 23-year-old man in north London was stabbed and robbed of his copy minutes after it went on sale. Three teenagers have been charged over the incident.

The GTA series has also shifted around 150 million copies since it started in 1997.

The game’s victory at the Golden Joystick Awards, which saw a record 10 million voters for 2013, came as BioShock creator Kevin Levine was recognised for his work with the inaugural Lifetime Achievement award.

Levine also picked up the Best Visual Design award for BioShock Infinite and the innovative creator believes the future is bright for the gaming industry.

He said: “The great thing about the still-maturing nature of video games is you get to be inspired by the work of novices and veterans alike. We’re all figuring out day by day exactly what the medium is capable of.”

Other winners included Payday 2 which scooped Best Multiplayer, while Oculus Rift – a next-generation virtual reality headset – picked up the Innovation of the Year in association with T3 award.

Andy Robinson, editor of Golden Joysticks, said that this year’s awards had proved to be the ‘most thrilling’ ever.

He said: “This year’s Golden Joystick Awards have seen a record-breaking 10 million votes, proving that even after 31 years they’re still the awards that best represent the voice of gamers worldwide. This year’s ceremony has been the most thrilling yet.”

The awards were held in association with Green Man Gaming.

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SOFIA (Reuters) – A Bulgarian Roma couple are the biological parents of a 4-year-old blonde girl found in a Roma camp in Greece last week, DNA tests showed on Friday, solving a mystery that had captured global attention.

Bulgarian prosecutors are investigating whether the mother, Sasha Ruseva, 35, agreed to sell her child in Greece. Ruseva denies this, saying she left a 7-month old baby in Greece – where she worked as an olive-picker – in 2009 because she could not look after the child and needed to return to Bulgaria.

The case has come to illustrate the plight of Roma gypsies in Bulgaria, many of whom have spent their lives in poverty, are illiterate and have been marginalized by society.

The four-year-old, called Maria and dubbed the “blonde angel” by Greek media, was found last week hiding under a blanket at a Roma settlement in central Greece. DNA tests showed the Roma couple she was with were not her real parents.

Maria, whose case has reminded some of the disappearance of 3-year-old Briton Madeleine McCann in Portugal in 2007, is being looked after by a Greek charity, which says it has received over 10,000 calls with leads or from parents of missing children.

Thousands of calls poured in from as far as the United States to Sweden with leads on Maria’s possible identity, with the search narrowing to a poverty-stricken Bulgarian Roma couple – Sasha Ruseva and her husband, Atanas Rusev – this week.

“DNA analysis proved that Sasha Ruseva is the biological mother of the girl named Maria,” Interior Ministry Chief Commissioner Svetlozar Lazarov told reporters. “It also showed Atanas Rusev as the biological father.”

Ruseva and her 37-year-old husband, parents of nine other children aged between 2 and 20, live in extreme poverty in a ramshackle house with a mud floor and partially finished roof in the town of Nikolaevo, some 280 km east from Sofia.

“We all live in one room – my husband, I and all the kids,” Ruseva told reporters late on Thursday, holding her naked two-year-old boy Atanas.

There are an estimated 10 million Roma living across Europe, and they are one of its oldest minorities. The Council of Europe, which monitors human rights, says they are also the most discriminated-against.

(Reporting by Tsvetelia Tsolova; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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LONDON (Reuters) – European regulators have recommended approval of Swiss firm Actelion’s new pulmonary arterial hypertension drug Opsumit and a novel antidepressant called Brintellix from Denmark’s Lundbeck.

The green light for Opsumit comes hard on the heels of its approval in the United States last week and buttresses Actelion’s position as a leading player in treating pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH).

Opsumit is a successor to Actelion’s established medicine Tracleer, which loses patent protection in 2015.

PAH is a condition characterized by high blood pressure in the arteries connecting the heart to the lungs.

Opsumit will compete with, among others, Gilead Sciences’ Letairis, which is sold in Europe by GlaxoSmithKline under the brand name Volibris.

Brintellix is an equally important new drug for Lundbeck, which hopes the antidepressant will provide a new source of revenue as its existing antidepressant, Cipralex, sold as Lexapro in the United States and Japan, comes off patent.

The drug was approved in the United States last month and will be co-marketed with Takeda Pharmaceutical.

The recommendations for marketing approval by the European Medicine Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) were announced on Friday, and its opinions are normally endorsed by the European Commission within a couple of months.

Lundbeck said it expected Brintellix would be available to patients in the first markets in the European Union during the first half of 2014.

(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Mark Potter)

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pet-allergy-myths-1Who doesn't love having a pet as a member of the family?!  Some of us don't have to worry about our cuddly fur balls giving us the sniffles, but many people aren't so lucky.  Allergies or not, a lot of families in the U.S. own pets, and about 2 million allergic pet parents live with at least one cat!  In fact, according to the Humane Society, there are an estimated 78.2 million dogs and 86.4 million cats owned in the United States. That's a lot of fur and dander floating around the air inside our households! The bottom line, pets are part of our families and part of the fabric of our lives. The benefits of companionship seem to far outweigh the drawbacks of pet allergies for many owners. Thanks to our friends at Airocide, we have a solution to all of your furry problems!

Living comfortably with a pet is different for everyone, and for those with allergies, it's a constant battle between the upside of being a pet parent, and managing the symptoms that come with being exposed to the fur and dander pets bring into your home. And up until now, allergy sufferers have had only a few tools in their arsenal to battle allergies– including creating a pet-free zone in their homes, regular allergy shots and air purifiers, all of which have varying degrees of efficacy, costs, and ease of use.

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Sounds fun right? Not surprisingly shots and pet-free zones aren't the answer for many. Instead, many allergy suffering pet parents turn to air purification systems, with varying degrees of success, because unfortunately, there are drawbacks to most traditional air purification methods on the market.

HEPA filters can capture particles as small as 0.1 micrometers in diameter, but can't filter out the smaller gas and odor molecules. So if you need to filter volatile organic compounds (VOCs), chemical vapors, cigarette smoke, and pet odors, activated (charcoal) filters are needed in addition to a HEPA filter. And both these types of filters need to be changed frequently. HEPA filters trap particles and need to be changed or washed and charcoal filters cannot be reused once they are full, and at worst become so quickly saturated with toxins that they begin to leak. So in using these two methods together, pet parents find that they not only have to change the HEPA filter, but must also replace the charcoal filter, the cost of which varies widely according to market prices. Whew! That sounds like a complicated hassle to us!

Enter Airocide. A completely different kind of air purifier. It's different because it doesn't use filters to trap toxins in the air, nor does it need frequent and costly replacements. Instead, Airocide uses technology developed by NASA to completely obliterate and remove virtually 100% of harmful toxins from the air in your home. Not only does Airocide remove allergy triggers like mold, fungi, bacteria, viruses, dust mites and pollen, but it removes pet dander and the odors it causes plus the super bad, super small particles called VOCs – the harmful gasses emitted by products in your home like paint, furniture, aerosol sprays, building supplies and dry-cleaned clothing.

So, how does it work? Airocide draws in harmful airborne pathogens and forces them into a densely packed matrix of highly reactive catalysts that are activated by a high intensity 254-nanometerlight. When any organic particle comes into contact with the reactive catalysts, it is completely destroyed on contact. Nothing is captured or trapped like with traditional filters, so there is nothing to clean. All that exits is crisp, clear air, with no ozone emissions that can come from using ionic air purification systems. If you use Airocide in your home, it will eliminate all allergy triggers like pet odors and dander with one unit – and you'll only have to change the reaction chamber about once a year!

Airocide is FDA approved, and has been tested with great results by governmental agencies and at major universities. Plus, Airocide has been used by grocery store chains and florists to remove the ethylene gas that causes fruits, vegetables and flowers to go bad more quickly.  Airocide has also been used for years in hospitals, daycare centers and prisons to stop the spread of infectious diseases.

Airocide is truly a revolution in air purification, and thousands of pet parents have been getting great results from this recently launched air solution! Airocide will give you a breath of fresh air, even with your furry friends running around all over the house!

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Visit airocide.com to hear testimonials from allergy sufferers about how Airocide has changed their lives, and how it could do the same for you!

For the Best that Pet Lifestyle and Animal Welfare has to offer follow Wendy Diamond on Facebook, Twitterand right here at AnimalFair.com!



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Tags: Air Purification, airocide, allergies, animal fair, Animal Fair Magazine, Animal Fair Media, animalfair.com, animals, cats, Clean Air, dogs, Filter, health, pet advice, pet parents

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LONDON (Reuters) – The European Medicines Agency said on Friday that some batches of Novo Nordisk’s insulin products NovoMix 30 FlexPen and Penfill were being recalled because they might contain the wrong amount of insulin.

Due to a manufacturing problem during the filling of the cartridges, some contained too many or too few insulin units per millilitre, it said.

Only a very small proportion of cartridges – 0.14 percent – contain a wrong amount but in those affected the level of insulin may vary between 50 percent and 150 percent of the labelled dose.

The EU regulator said patients using products from the affected batches should be switched to supplies from unaffected batches or alternative treatments.

(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; editing by Clara Marques)

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Read about Manfaat Tiga Posisi Tidur
Here: Manfaat Tiga Posisi Tidur
http://www.sepintaslalu.com/2013/10/manfaat-tiga-posisi-tidur.html

Jakarta (Antara) – Wakil Ketua Umum Kamar Dagang dan Industri (Kadin) Bidang Perikanan dan Kelautan, Yugi Prayanto mengatakan, Indonesia jangan sampai menutup diri menghadapi pasar bebas Masyarakat Ekonomi ASEAN (MEA) tahun 2015.

“Dalam wadah ASEAN, Indonesia justru tidak harus menutup diri karena sebenarnya sektor perikanan kita bisa lebih kompetitif sehingga kita dapat memanfaatkan potensi yang ada untuk memenangkan pasar,” kata Yugi Prayanto di Jakarta, Senin.

Menurut Yugi, pihaknya mengaku terus mendorong kerja sama antarlembaga strategis baik dengan organisasi dunia usaha asing maupun pemerintahan untuk bersatu mengembangkan sektor kelautan dan perikanan.

Selain menjalin kerja sama, ujar dia, Kadin dalam lingkup ASEAN juga terus mendorong masuknya investasi untuk bidang kelautan dan perikanan baik yang sifatnya Penanaman Modal Dalam Negeri maupun Penanaman Modal Asing (PMA).

“Jika pasarnya saja sudah bebas, sisi positifnya kita bisa menarik investasi dengan pola investasi perikanan terpadu seperti joint venture,” katanya.

Yugi Prayanto berpendapat, hal tersebut akan sangat menguntungkan bagi peningkatan industrialisasi perikanan di Indonesia sehingga dapat berdampak kepada timbulnya integrasi dari hulu ke hilir, mulai dari dari usaha penangkapan ikan sampai ke industri pengolahannya.

Ia mengemukakan, Kadin juga mengapresiasi program sistem logistik ikan nasional yang dicanangkan KKP guna memperkuat sinergitas sistem produksi hulu-hilir.

Untuk itu, ujar dia, pihaknya juga mengutarakan harapannya agar pemerintah Indonesia bisa terus membangun “cold storage” (gudang pendingin) di sentra-sentra pendaratan ikan khususnya daerah-daerah terisolasi dan pulau-pulau kecil.

“Konektivitas antarwilayah Indonesia harus terus diperbaiki guna menunjang konektivitas Indonesia dengan negara-negara di kawasan ASEAN,” katanya.

Sebelumnya, Ketua DPP Himpunan Pengusaha Pribumi Indonesia (HIPPI) Suryani Motik mengingatkan pemberlakuan Masyarakat Ekonomi ASEAN (pasar bebas ASEAN) 2015 meletakkan perekonomian Indonesia di persimpangan jalan.

“Pemberlakuan MEA 2015 meletakkan perekonomian Indonesia di persimpangan jalan. Di satu sisi memunculkan kekhawatiran pengusaha, di sisi lain menjadi peluang,” kata Suryani dalam acara Seminar Tentang MEA 2015 bertema “Strategi Memenangkan Persaingan Pasar Dalam Negeri dan Menembus Pasar ASEAN Dalam Menyongsong era MEA”, di Jakarta, Jumat (20/9).

Suryani mengatakan kekhawatiran khususnya hadir dari pengusaha Usaha Mikro, Kecil dan Menengah (UMKM) bahwa produk asing akan gencar masuk pasar dalam negeri dan berpotensi merebut pasar produk anak bangsa. (03)



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