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By Natasha Gilbert of Nature magazine Our last line of defence against hospital 'superbugs' is faltering, with resistance to the antibiotics usually used to tackle intractable pneumonia and urinary tract infections on the rise and spreading across European countries. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in Solna, Sweden, announced last week that 29 new cases of bacteria resistant to the broad-spectrum carbapenem antibiotics had been reported across a total of six European Union (EU) countries between early October 2010 and the end of March 2011. The figures coincide with the publication, on 17 November, of a European Commission strategy to tackle antibiotic resistance.

Israel has become an associate member of the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN), opening the way for full membership in 2013, a foreign ministry spokesman said on Sunday.