Date: Tuesday May. 29, 2012 8:13 PM ET

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — The manager of Grammy-winning folk musician Doc Watson states the artist has died. He was 89.

Mitchell Greenhill stated in a news release that Watson died Tuesday at Wake Forest Baptist Hospital Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. A hospital spokeswoman also confirmed Watson’s death.

Watson was a master flatpicker, playing his acoustic guitar at lightning speeds that could intimidate other musicians. The blind musician also sang and played other instruments, including the harmonica.

His many awards include the National Medal of the Arts in 1997 and the lifetime achievement award from the Grammys in 2004. His albums earned seven other Grammys.

Watson was also known for Merlefest, an annual gathering of musicians in Wilkesboro named after his son, who died in a tractor accident in 1985.

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Apple CEO Tim Cook took the stage on Tuesday night at AllThingsD’s D10 conference in San Francisco to discuss patent wars, controversies in the company’s supply chain and plans for upcoming products. One topic that interviewers Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg were particularly keen to dissect: the long-rumored but never confirmed Apple-branded HDTV set.

Cook at D10 firmly refused to mention explicitly any plans the company might have to manufacture what is already referred to as an “iTV. ” He did say, however, that tv is “an area of intense interest for [Apple].”

Many believe Apple has already secured or is working to secure partnerships for streaming and syndicated content that would be available on such a device. Other rumors claim a potential Apple tv set will feature Siri-like voice control and may even accept touchless gesture input.

Currently, Apple offers a product called the Apple TV, a set-top box that the user connects to a separate tv to watch streaming media from sites like YouTube and Netflix, as well as content purchased from iTunes. While the device hasn’t enjoyed the success of the MacBook, iPhone or iPad, the Apple TV may provided clues to the company’s plans for new products and strategies.

Cook noted for Mossberg and Swisher that customers purchased 2.8 million Apple TV devices last year, and that Apple sold almost as many set top boxes in the early months of 2012. According to Business Insider’s Henry Blodget, this puts Apple on track to sell as many as 8 million Apple TV devices before the year is out. Comparing those figures to Apple’s sales of iPhones (35.1 million), iPads (11.8 million) and Macs (4 million) during the first three months of 2012 reinforce Steve Jobs’ assertion that the Apple TV is merely a “hobby” device, an assertion Jobs made at the 2007 D conference. Nevertheless, Tim Cook stressed on Tuesday night, “[Apple is] not a hobby kind of company.”

“Our tendency is to do very few things,” stated Cook, according to a live blog provided by The Verge. “And, if something creeps in and is not a huge success, we get it out of the way and put our energies on something else. Apple TV though, you see what we have done. We’ve stuck in this.”

The question is, why would Apple hold on to a product that would never be the runaway success that some of its bigger product lines have become?

At the Goldman Sachs Technology Confernece in February, Cook spoke of the Apple TV’s potential to lead Apple into greater success elsewhere: “If we kept following our intuition and kept pulling the string, we might find something that was larger.”

Apple seems to have merely dipped its toes into this market and doesn’t appear to be shrinking back from the relative chill. Will the company’s next move be to take a running leap and pull off the cannonball it seems poised for? Will we see a major shakeup in TV hardware and content distribution? Cook’s sort-of answer, per Engadget’s D10 live blog:

Here’s the way we had look at that. Not just at this area, but other areas. ‘Can we control the key technology? Can we make a significant contribution beyond what others have done in this area? Will this product be one that we want?’ That’s what we had ask about any new product category. That’s what we ask about products within families that we have already announced.

Anything’s possible, Cook teased again and again during the rest of the interview. When pressed more broadly about future products, Cook vowed that Apple will “double down on secrecy” and coyly talked around “incredible” things the company has in store. (Closest at hand is Apple’s yearly Worldwide Developers Conference, which kicks off on June 11, when Apple is expected to announce new MacBooks, the next version of iOS, though most likely not the next iPhone or an HDTV.)

Check out All things D’s official live blog to read more insights from Tim Cook about Apple’s patent wars with rival device makers, its “tumultuous” relationship with Facebook, Steve Jobs’ legacy and much, much more.

At the heart of the problem is the “intuitive belief” in the value of early diagnosis, they wrote, which has meant that “Increasingly we’ve come to regard simply being ‘at risk’ of future disease as being a disease in its own right.”

The authors added “Medicine’s much hailed capability to help the sick is fast being challenged by its propensity to harm the healthy.

“Screening programmes are detecting early cancers that will never cause symptoms or death, sensitive diagnostic technologies identify ‘abnormalities’ so little they will remain benign, while widening disease definitions mean people at ever lower risks receive permanent medical labels and lifelong treatments that will fail to benefit many of them.”

One concern is that many senior physicians in charge of setting the definitions of illnesses, which are used to make diagnoses, have financial ties to companies which will benefit from wider use of treatments, the researchers added.

They said: “As definitions broaden and thresholds fall, people with smaller risks or milder problems are labelled, which means the potential benefits of treatment decline, raising the possibility that harms will outweigh benefits.”

Dr Claire Knight, of Cancer Research UK, said: “Cancer Research UK is jointly leading an independent review with the national cancer director into breast screening which will analyze the benefits and harms, including overdiagnosis.

“It’s important for anyone experiencing a persistent or uncommon change to their body to get it checked out by a doctor, even if it’s something that they aren’t worried about. It probably won’t be cancer, but if it is, getting it diagnosed and treated early can make a real difference to the outcome.”

Gorham, who routinely performs before massive groups of children, believes storytelling is a powerful teaching tool.

”I call it teaching without preaching,” she says. “I don’t tell a story and then, at the end, state ‘Now, here is what you needed to learn.’ My feeling is that the message should be in the story and if the story is well crafted, you’re going to get it.”

Linda Sullivan, president of the Arts Council of Fairfax County, Virginia, organizes storytelling performances for school kids county-wide, including one Gorham recently gave to about 100 students at a local community center.  

“They learn by being engaged,” Sullivan says, “and not just being talked to but asked to response and participate.”

Storytellers use a variety of tools to spin their yarns, including theater, dance, and song.

Gale Nemec is a storyteller who was recruited by Fairfax County schools. She performs her stories like they are short plays which are heavy on character development.

“If you’re doing the witch, you need to make her sound witchy and figure out what kind of motions and how her body would be,” Nemec says. “If you’re doing a story which is perhaps an angel, I’d work on making her soft and smooth.”

The stories can sometimes help kids who have learning disabilities. One of Nemec’s stories, about elephants, helped a child who had problems with speech and language.  

“So the mommy elephant said, ‘Ha, what do you think we should do?’ The dad elephant said, ‘Ha, I think we should cross to the other side of the river.’ Hearing that kind of thing, the child…he started to comprehend that he could speak. And he started practicing more, talking more, because he was hearing this storytelling going back and forth.”

Storytellers know instantly if their audience is hooked. After she performs the story, “Fat Cat,” at that Virginia community center, the kids give Linda Gorham excellent reviews.  

“I never heard of the story before,” states one child. “It sounded very cool with the songs. Everybody wanted to do it.”

“I like that you can imagine it,” states another, “as if you’re looking at the photos of the book.”

Gorham states storytelling can teach even young kids how to communicate in an engaging and persuasive way. And that is a skill for life.

Contact the Variety newsroom at news@variety.com

Dwarfing everything is St Marien Church, with its two colossal green spires. Inside the church, where Bach is stated to have failed an interview to become the organist, are the original bells, lying where they fell after the city was bombed in 1942.

After lunch at the charmingly ramshackle Fisch-Hütte, I go in search of the Nobel Prize winners. Thomas Mann and Willy Brandt were both born here; Günter Grass moved to Lübeck when he was 68. It is the excellent museum dedicated to the life of Brandt that I find the most engaging.

Lübeck was the first German city to be substantially attacked by the RAF in World War II

Don’t be caught out by Lübeck’s late opening times. In winter and spring most museums and sights open at 11am. This changes to 10am in summer.

Don’t be put off staying outside the old town near the bus and train stations. The hotels here are good value and the Holstentor is just 15 minutes’ walk away.

The Willy Brandt House is a free museum, however other sights are expensive, so to avoid running up a sizeable bill purchase a happy day card which offers discounts on sights and transport from the tourist office on Holstentorplatz.

There are currently no direct flights to Lübeck from Britain. British Airways (0844 493 0787; ba.com), easyJet (0905 821 0905, calls cost 65p per minute; easyjet.com) and Flybe (0871 700 2000; flybe.com) all fly to Hamburg. From Hamburg Hauptbahnhof regular trains to Lübeck take 45 minutes.

Learn about the tradition of the black mouse in St Marien Church and take up the challenge of finding it inside. If you succeed, touch it with your left hand for good luck. In medieval times, workers could only claim they had visited Lübeck if they could describe the black mouse.

One of the ideal ways to see the city is from the river. Boat trips leave regularly from An der Obertrave and take an hour to circle the island.

The smart resort of Travemünde, which has many fine beaches, is 20 minutes by train from Lübeck. Rent a Standkorp , a beach basket popular in the Baltic, then have lunch in the port where fishermen unload their catch straight into the small cafés.

Radisson Blu Senator Hotel £££

Luxury hotel on stilts on the banks of the river near the Holstentor. After a day of culture, unwind in its indoor pool, solarium or sauna (142 2251; radissonblu.com; doubles from £135).

Looks like a burger van but don’t let that put you off because the fish choice is large and portions are sizeable. Seats at the back offer great views of the river (An der Untertrave 54b; 73378).

This friendly restaurant serves up hearty pub-type dishes. Seating is in wooden enclaves, there is no cosier place to enjoy great German sausages and fried potatoes (Mühlenstrasse 19; 76441).

Housed in a former seamen’s guild, this famous restaurant is a veritable maritime museum (Breite Strasse 2; 76776).

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Lady Gaga told fans she was “devastated” at having to cancel her sold-out show in Indonesia following threats by Islamic hard-liners, who called her a “devil worshipper.”

Controversy over the concert is a blow to the predominantly Muslim country’s reputation as a tolerant, pluralist society that respects freedom of expression.

Some fans accused police — who refused to issue a permit over concerns about security — of buckling to the will of a small group of thugs.

“We had to cancel the concert in Indonesia,” the 26-year-old pop diva tweeted to her followers Sunday night after promoters acknowledged concerns about her own safety and that of her “Little Monster” fans if the show went ahead.

“I’m so very sorry to the fans & just as devastated as you if not more,” she wrote. “You are everything to me.”

Indonesia, a secular nation of 240 million, is often held up by the U.S. and others an example of how democracy and Islam and can coexist. In many ways they are right. Since emerging from dictatorship just over a decade ago, sweeping reforms have resulted in direct elections, while vastly improving human rights and freeing up the media.

But a small extremist fringe has become more vocal — and violent — in recent years, attacking Christians and members of other religious minorities, transvestites, atheists and anyone else deemed immoral.

The most notorious, the Islamic Defenders Front, stated Lady Gaga’s sexy clothes and provocative dance moves would corrupt the youth. They vowed to turn out at the airport by the thousands if Lady Gaga arrived. Others stated they purchased tickets so they could wreak havoc from inside the 52,000-seat stadium in the capital, Jakarta.

Police responded by denying the necessary permits. Then, after public outcry, they stated they had reconsider — but only if Lady Gaga concurred to tone down her act.

Instead, she pulled the plug on what was supposed to be the biggest stop on her Asian tour.

Michael Rusli, head of Big Daddy, promised “Little Monster” fans full refunds.

But that provided tiny consolation to people like 25-year-old Johnny Purba.

“This only shows to the world how weak security forces are in this country, how police are afraid of a bunch of hard-liners,” he said.

“Gaga’s two-hour show will not hurt Indonesian Muslims. For God’s sake, she is not a terrorist!”

Hard-liners, however, were ecstatic.

“This is a victory for Indonesian Muslims,” stated Salim Alatas, one of the leaders of the Islamic Defenders Front. “Thanks to God for protecting us from a kind of devil.”

To get the support it needs, the Brotherhood must tone down its religious rhetoric and offer far-reaching concessions, such as protecting the right to protest and strike, election watchers say.

The Brotherhood’s candidate, Mohammed Morsi, will go head-to-head against Ahmed Shafiq, a former air force commander, in the June 16-17 runoff. They were the top vote-getters in last week’s first round of voting.

None of the 13 candidates had been expected to get the more than 50 per cent of the vote needed to win outright. Still, Morsi’s top finish was a surprisingly strong showing, because he was widely viewed as a weak candidate and because the Brotherhood’s popularity has eroded recently because of a series of missteps.

Why is it that most Americans cannot get a principal reduction from Chase or any other bank, but JPMorgan Chase was so very flexible with a sitting member of the United States Senate?

The hypocrisy from Sen. Lee and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon overfloweth. But does the Case of the Senator’s Short Sale rise to the level of full-blown corruption? We will not know until we get some answers.

People should be demanding those answers now.

It’s not a pretty picture: In one corner is the Senator who wants to strike down Federal child labor laws and offer American residency to any non-citizen who purchases a home with cash. In the other is the bank whose CEO stated that the ideal way to relieve the crushing burden of debt on home owners is by seizing their homes.

“Giving debt relief to people that really need it,” stated Dimon, “that’s what foreclosure is.” That comment is Dickensian in its insensitivity – and Dimon’s bank offered real relief to the Senator from Utah.

The story of the short sale on Sen. Mike Lee’s home broke broke shortly not long after the world learned that JPM lost billions of dollars through trading that might have been illegal, and about which it certainly misled investors.

A Senator who doesn’t believe in child labor laws, and a crime-plagued bank that was just plunged into a trading scandal after losing billions in the London markets.

Why, they were practically made for one another.

This was also the week we learned from Zillow, one of the nation’s leading real estate data companies, that there are far more underwater home owners than previously thought. Zillow collated all the information on home loans, including second mortgages, in order to develop this bigger and more accurate number.

The new estimated amount of negative equity – money owed to the banks for non-existent home value – is $1.2 trillion.

Zillow found that almost 16 million homeowners, representing roughly a third of all homes with a mortgage, were “underwater” (meaning they owe more than the home is now worth). That’s about 50 percent more than had been previously believed. Many of these home owners are desperate for principal reduction, which would allow them to get back on their feet.

Banks can reduce the amount owed to reflect the current value of the house, which would lower monthly payments for many struggling homeowners. Another option is the “short sale,” in which the bank lets them sell the house for its current value and walk away. That would allow many of them to relocate in search of work.

But the banks, along with their allies in Washington DC, have been fighting principal reduction and resisting any attempts to increase the number of short sales. They remain out of reach for most struggling homeowners.

But Mike Lee did not have that problem. Lee was elected to the Senate after buying his luxury home in Alpine, Utah at the height of the real estate boom. JPMorgan Chase concurred to a short sale, and it sold for almost $400,000 less than the price Lee paid for it four years ago.

Sen. Lee states that he made a down payment on the home, even though he hasn’t stated how much was involved. But if he paid 15 percent down and put it $150,000, for example, then the Senator from Utah was just granted to walk away from a quarter of a million dollars in debt obligations to JPMorgan Chase.

Let’s see: A troubled bank gives a sitting member of the United States Senate an advantageous deal worth hundreds of thousands of dollars? You’d think a story like that would get a tiny more attention than it has so far.

The Right’s Outrageous Hypocrisy

We have not seen this much hypocrisy in the real estate world since the Mortgage Bankers Association walked away from loans on its own headquarters even as its CEO, John Courson, was lecturing Americans their “legal obligation” and the terrible “message they would send” by walking away from their mortgages.

Then he did a short sale on the MBA’s headquarters. It sold for a reported $41 million, just three years after the MBA – those captains of real estate – paid $74 million for it.

The MBA calls itself “the voice of the mortgage banking industry.”

The hypocrisy may be even greater in this case. Sen. Mike Lee is a member in good standing of the Tea Party, a movement which began on the floor of Chicago Mercantile Exchange as a protest against the idea that the government might help underwater homeowners, even though many of the angry traders had enriched themselves thanks to government bailouts.

When their ringleader mentioned households struggling with negative equity, these first members of the Tea Party broke into a chant: “Losers! Losers! Losers!”

Mike Lee’s Outrageous Hypocrisy

Which gets us to Mike Lee. Lee accepted a handout of JPMorgan Chase after voting to end unemployment for jobless Americans. Lee also argued against Federal child labor laws, even though he did acknowledge that child labor is “reprehensible.”

How huge a hypocrite is Mike Lee? His website (which, curiously enough, went down as we wrote these words) states he believes “the federal government’s out-of-control spending has evolved into a major threat to our economic prosperity and job creation” and that he came to Washington to, among other things, “properly manage our finances”. Lee’s website also scolds Congress because, he says, it “cannot live within its means.”

As Ed McMahon used to say, “Write your own joke.”

Needless to say, Lee also advocates drastic cuts to Social Security and Medicare while pushing lower taxes for the wealthy – and plumping for exactly the same kind of deregulation which let bankers to run amok and wreck the economy in 2008 by doing things like … well, like what JPMorgan Chase just did in London.

“Give Me Your Wired, Your Wealthy, Your Upper Classes Yearning to Buy Cheap”

Lee has also co-sponsored a bill with Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senator from Wall Street New York, that would allow US residency to foreigners who buy a home worth at least $500,000 – as long as they paid cash.

The Lee/Schumer bill would be a huge boon to US banks – banks, in fact, like JPMorgan Chase. If it passes, the Statue of Liberty may need to be reshaped so that Lady Liberty is holding a book of real estate listings in her right hand while wearing a hat that reads “Million Dollar Sellers’ Club.”

Mike Lee’s bill would also have propped up the luxury home market, offering a huge financial boost to people who are struggling to hold to the equity they have put into high-end homes, people like … well, like Mike Lee.

Jamie Dimon’s Outrageous Hypocrisy

Then there is Jamie Dimon, who spoke for his fellow bankers during negotiations that led up to the very cushy $25 billion settlement that let banks like his off the hook for widespread lawbreaking in their foreclosure fraud crime wave.

“Yeah,” Dimon stated of principal reductions for home owners like Sen. Lee, “that’s off the table.”

Dimon’s been resisting global solutions to the negative equity problems for years. He stated in 2010 that he preferred to make decisions about home owners on a “loan by loan” basis.

The Rich Are Different – They Have More Mortgage Relief

“The rich are different,” wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald, and (in a quote often misattributed to Ernest Hemingway) literary critic Mary Colum observed that ” the only difference between the rich and other people is that the rich have more money.”

And they apparently find it a lot easier to walk away from their underwater homes.There’s been a dramatic increase in short sales lately, and the evidence suggests that most of the deals have been going to luxury homeowners. Among other things, this trend toward high-end short sales the lie to the popular idea that bankers and their allies do not want to “reward the underserving,” since hedge fund traders who overestimated next year’s bonus are clearly less deserving than working families who bought a modest home for themselves.

Nevertheless, that is where most of the debt relief seems to be going: to the wealthy, and not to the middle class.

Guess that is what happens when loan officers working for Dimon and other Wall Street CEOs handle these matters on a “loan by loan” basis.

While this “loan by loan” approach lacks morality, there is some financial logic to it. Banks typically have a lot more money at risk in an underwater luxury home than they do in more modest houses. A short sale provides them with a way to clear things up, recoup what they can, and get their books in a tiny more order than before. That’s why JPMorgan Chase has been offering selected borrowers up to $35,000 to accept short sales. You can bet they are not offering that deal to middle class families.

There are other reasons to offer short sales to the wealthy: JPM, like all huge banks, is pursuing very-high-end banking clients more aggressively than ever. That’s where the profits are. So why alienate a high-value client when they may offer you the opportunity to recoup losses elsewhere?

(“Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Dimon, but it’s London calling.”)

Corruption Or Not: The Questions

Both the bank and the Senator need to answer some questions about this deal. Here’s what the public deserves to know:

Could the writedown on the home’s value be considered an in-kind gift to a sitting Senator?

 If so, then we have a very real scandal on our hands. But we do not know enough to answer that question yet.

What are JPMorgan Chase’s procedures for deciding who receives mortgage relief and who doesn’t?

Dimon may prefer to handle these matters on a “loan by loan” basis, but there must be guidelines that bank officers can follow. And presumably they have been written down somewhere. Were they followed in Mike Lee’s case?

Who was involved in the decision to offer this deal to Mike Lee?

Offering mortgage relief to a sitting Senator is, to borrow a phrase, “a huge elfin’ deal.” A mid-level bank officer is not likely to handle a case like this without taking it up the chain of command. So who made the final decision on Mike Lee’s mortgage?

It would not be unheard of if a a sensitive matter like this one was escalated to all the way to the company’s most senior executive – especially if that executive has eliminated any checks on his power, much less any independent input from shareholders, by serving as both the Chair(man) of the Board and the CEO.

In this, as in so many of JPM’s scandals, the question must be asked: What did Jamie know, and when did he know it?

Is Mike Lee a “Friend of Jamie”?

Which raises a related question: Is there is a formal or informal list of people for whom JPM employees are directed to give preferential treatment?

Everybody remembers the scandal that surrounded Sen. Chris Dodd when it was learned that his mortgage was given favorable treatment by Countrywide – even though the Senator apparently knew nothing about it at the time. The world soon learned then that Countrywide had a VIP program called “Friends of Angelo,” named for CEO Angelo Mozilo, and those who were on the list got special treatment.

Is there a “Friends of Jamie” list at JPMorgan Chase – and is Mike Lee’s name on it?

Were there any discussions between the bank’s executives and the Senator regarding the foreign home buyer’s bill or any other legislation that affected Wall Street?

Until this question is answered the issue of a possible quid pro quo will hang over both the Senator and JPMorgan Chase.

Seriously, guys – this doesn’t look good.

Was MERS used to evade state taxes and recording requirements on Sen. Lee’s home? 

JPMorgan Chase funded, and was an active participant, in the “MERS” program which was used, among other things, to bypass local taxes and legal requirements for recording titles.

As we wrote when we reviewed hundreds of internal MERS documents, MERS was instrumental in allowing banks to bundle and sell mortgage-backed securities in a way that led directly to the financial crisis of 2008. It also helped bankers artificially inflate real estate prices, encourage home owners to take out loans at bubble prices, and then leave them holding the note (as underwater homeowners) after the collapse of national real estate values that they had artificially pumped up.

“Today’s Wall Street Corruption Fun Fact”: MERS was operated by the Mortgage Bankers Association – the same group of real estate geniuses who lost $30 million on a single building in three years, then gave a tiny lecture on morality to the home owners they had been so instrumental in shafting.

I was also asked some very reasonable questions by a policy advocacy group. Here they are, with my answers:

If this happened to the average American, would they be able to walk away from the mortgage as well?

If by “average American” you mean “most homeowners,” then the answer is: No. Although short sales are on the rise, most underwater home owners have not been given the option of going through a short sale. Mike Lee was. The question is, why?

Will Mike Lee’s credit rating be adversely affected?

This is a very important question. The credit rating industry serves banks, not consumers, and it operates at their beck and call.

The answer to this question depends on how JPM handled the paperwork. Many (and probably most) home owners involved in a short sale take a hit to their credit rating. If Lee did not, it smacks of special treatment.

Given the fact that it was JPMorgan who financed the loss, does that mean, indirectly through the bailout, that the taxpayers paid for Lee’s mortgage write-off?

That gets tricky – but in a moral sense, you could certainly state that.  

There’s no question that this deal is hypocritical and ugly, and that it reflects much of what is still broken about both our politics and Wall Street. Is it a scandal? Without these answers we cannot know. This was either a case of the special treatment that is so often reserved for the wealthy, or it’s something even worse: influence peddling and political corruption.

it’s time for JPMorgan Chase and Sen. Mike Lee to come clean about this deal. If they did nothing wrong, they have nothing to hide. Either way the public’s entitled to some answers.

Richard (RJ) Eskow, a consultant and writer (and former insurance/finance executive), is a Senior Fellow with the Campaign for America’s Future and the host of The Breakdown, broadcast Saturdays nights from 7-9 pm on WeAct Radio, AM 1480 in Washington DC.

The findings were based on looking at medical records from nearly 20,000 people diagnosed with skin cancer in northern Denmark between 1991 and 2009, and comparing them to 179,000 people without the disease.

The researchers, from Aarhus University Hospital, stated the drugs had a “potential cancer-protective effect” even though they admitted their report, published in the journal Cancer, was not conclusive.

However, they stated five of six studies, including their own, had found a relationship between taking NSAIDs and reduced risk of malignant melanoma, the most deadly form of skin cancer.

They wrote: “Given the high skin cancer incidence and the widespread and frequent use of NSAIDs, a preventive effect of these agents may have important public health implications.”

They believe the drugs work by inhibiting certain enzymes, called cyclooxygenase or ‘COX’ enzymes, that are involved in the development of a range of cancers.

Ibuprofen and other NSAIDs do have potentially harmful health effects as well, though. They have been linked to an increased risk of heart attack and stroke, irregular heartbeat and miscarriage.

Cancer Research UK stated the ideal way to avoid skin cancer was “to enjoy the sun safely” using shade, clothing and suncrea, and that it was “too soon to say” if aspirin, ibuprofen and other NSAIDs reduced the risk of skin cancer.