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POLICY

North Korea launch North Korea has continued its plans to launch a long-range rocket in defiance of international pressure not to break a ban on missile testing. With a launch planned for between 12 and 16 April, the rocket (which North Korea says carries a weather satellite) was moved into position at the Sohae Satellite Launching Station on the country's northwestern coast last week. The plans have brought a swift end to February's agreement with the United States for food aid in return for a moratorium on nuclear testing, uranium enrichment and long-range ballistic missile development (see Nature 483, 128; 2012).

Astrophysics review NASA's exoplanet-hunting space telescope, Kepler, is among nine astrophysics missions to have their lifetimes extended after a performance review by external scientists. Both Kepler and Swift, which detects γ-ray bursts, will run through to 2016. Although it recommended extensions for all the missions in its 3 April report, the review committee criticized the Hubble Space Telescope for a lack of transparency in reporting operating costs, and ordered Fermi, a γ-ray telescope, to cut costs by 10% each year from 2014. Only Spitzer, an infrared telescope, will be phased out earlier than its mission leaders wanted, in 2015. See go.nature.com/r6jgjo for more.

Carbon capture The United Kingdom has relaunched a £1-billion (US$1.6-billion) competition that will offer funding to companies that build commercial-scale facilities to capture and store carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, to be in operation by 2016–20. The contest was first announced in 2007, but the bidders all pulled out. The relaunch, announced on 3 April, includes contracts guaranteeing the sale of the plants' electricity, which removes some financial risk. The competition also includes a further £125 million for research. See page 151 for more on carbon-capture plans around the world.

US public health A committee convened by the US Institute of Medicine has recommended a suite of actions to remedy what it calls “dysfunction” in the funding, organization and capability of the US public health-care system. Apart from urging a doubling of the federal portion of public health spending, to be funded by taxing medical transactions, the 10 April report also endorsed more research into the effectiveness and value of public-health strategies. The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act authorized a programme of research focused on similar issues — but that legislation is currently being challenged in the courts.

Credit: FRANCOIS NOSTEN

EVENTS

Malaria drug resistance spreading Malaria parasites that are resistant to the most effective current treatment — drugs based on artemisinin — are spreading in southeast Asia. Resistance was first confirmed in western Cambodia, close to Thailand, in 2008. But it is also emerging 800kilometres westward, along the border of Thailand and Myanmar — where villagers are shown being screened for malaria. Resistance will reach rates reported in western Cambodia within 2–6 years, says a 5 April study on the effectiveness of artemisinin treatments in more than 3,200 patients during 2001–10 (A.P.Phyoetal.Lancethttp://doi.org/hsw;2012). See go.nature.com/wefjya for more.

BUSINESS

Solar insolvencies German solar-cell manufacturer Q-cells — which was the world's largest maker of solar panels just five years ago — has filed for insolvency. The company, based in Bitterfeld-Wolfen, lost £846 million (US$1.1 billion) last year and had been trying to restructure its debts, but gave up on 3 April. Three other German solar firms have filed for insolvency since December, as state subsidies decline and the market is flooded with low-cost photovoltaic modules and polysilicon raw material, much of it from China.

Imaging Alzheimer's The US Food and Drug Administration on 6 April approved the first diagnostic test for plaques in the brain, which are often associated with Alzheimer's disease. The test, developed by Eli Lilly, a pharmaceutical firm based in Indianapolis, Indiana, relies on a compound called florbetapir(Amyvid), which binds to amyloid plaques and can be imaged in living patients (see Nature 469, 458; 2011). Florbetapir assays will complement existing behavioural diagnoses of dementia, but researchers hope that the tests will eventually become a tool for early diagnosis and treatment of the disease.

RESEARCH

GM pigs on hold A genetically modified pig intended for human consumption seems unlikely to reach the dinner table any time soon, after local hog producers decided to pull their funding for the project. The Enviropig, developed at the University of Guelph in Canada, contains a transgene that enables it to better absorb phosphorus from its food, in turn reducing the phosphorus content of its manure and counteracting problems such as algal blooms in waterways fertilized by phosphorus run-off. It has not yet been approved for human consumption, and Ontario Pork, a Guelph-based group for hog producers that had put around Can$1.3 million (US$1.3 million) into the project, said last week that it would not provide any further funding because the genetics had been proven; interest from industry would be required to restart the research.

PEOPLE

Anti-doping row Complaining of restrictions to his freedom of speech, an anti-doping researcher has resigned from the Swiss panel that oversees biological passports — biochemical profiles of athletes that help to detect doping (see Nature 475, 283–285; 2011). Michael Ashenden, who heads the Science and Industry Against Blood Doping Research Consortium in Gold Coast, Australia, said that he quit the Athlete Passport Management Unit in Lausanne because it added a confidentiality clause asking experts not to make public comments for eight years after they left the panel. The unit has just taken over the biological-passport system from the International Cycling Union in Aigle, Switzerland.

Credit: MOREHOUSE SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

Heart-institute head The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has named cardiologist Gary Gibbons as director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI). Gibbons (pictured) is currently at the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, where he studies the genomics of vascular disease in minority populations. The NHLBI is the third-largest NIH institute, with a budget of roughly US$3 billion, and has been without a permanent director since late 2009. Gibbons, replacing acting director Susan Shurin, plans to take up the post this summer.

FUNDING

Telescope rivalry The 24.5-metre Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), to be built in Chile, will not compete with its rival Thirty Meter Telescope in a contest for backing by the US National Science Foundation (NSF). With a mere US$1.25 million for the winner, the contest was more about prestige than money. The NSF cannot provide significant cash for either ground-based telescope until at least 2020, although the winner might find it easier to attract international partners. Last week, the GMT's board of directors declared that the project could proceed on its own. See go.nature.com/rwc7df for more.

Swedish bioscience Sweden's government said on 3 April that the Science for Life Laboratory (SciLifeLab), an existing bioscience collaboration between four universities, will in 2013 expand into a national research institute for molecular biosciences and bioinformatics in Stockholm. It will eventually employ 1,000 scientists. The centre — which currently employs 300 scientists in Stockholm and Uppsala — is to receive 220 million Swedish kronor (US$32.9 million) from the private Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation in Stockholm, and between $25 million and $50 million from pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca. The government's contribution will be announced this autumn.

Credit: SOURCE: COSCE

TREND WATCH The Spanish government's austerity budget has lopped one-quarter off funding for research and development — much larger than the average 17% cut applied to other central-government departments. But public research funds may not be as badly hit as these figures suggest. More than half of overall funding relates to tax credits for technology transfer, for example, and last year almost half of those went unused. See go.nature.com/yalqgl for more.

COMING UP 16–20 April The origin and evolution of life is the subject of a biennial gathering for astrobiologists, this year held in Atlanta, Georgia. go.nature.com/5blicy

16–21 April In Panama City, the newly formed Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services lays out its priorities for monitoring global ecology. go.nature.com/o3zm54