Month: May 2013

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration's decision to appeal a court order lifting age limits on purchasers of the morning-after pill set off a storm of criticism from reproductive rights groups, who denounced it as politically motivated and a step backward for women's health.

By Elena Berton PARIS (Reuters) – Sanofi reported lower-than-expected first-quarter earnings on Thursday as the effects of last year's patent losses and foreign exchange headwinds crimped growth from diabetes drugs, vaccines and rare disease unit Genzyme. But the French drugmaker said it expected to return to growth in the second half of the year and confirmed that annual profit would be flat to 5 percent lower than in 2012 at constant exchange rates. "We are in the last quarter of the patent cliff … …

By Susan Cornwell and Jane Sutton (Reuters) – With his renewed vow to close the detention camp for foreign terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, President Barack Obama has effectively assigned himself a list of possible ways to take the prison's population down from 166 to zero. Some would be more easily achieved than others. In pledging to look again at an unfulfilled promise dating back to his first election campaign and early days in office in 2009, Obama made plain on Tuesday that it was untenable to keep the 11-year-old camp open. A hunger strike at the camp at the U.S. …

NEW YORK (AP) — Parents are reporting more skin and food allergies in their children, a big government survey found.

BOSTON (AP) — A Vermont woman revealed her new face Wednesday, six years after her ex-husband disfigured her by dousing her with industrial-strength lye, and said she went through “what some may call hell” but has found a way to be happy.

By Sharon Bernstein LOS ANGELES, May 1, 2013 – As many as 3,000 prison inmates in central California deemed to be at risk from a potentially lethal lung disease may need to be moved to other regions under an order from a court-appointed federal overseer. The directive, issued on Monday, marks the latest effort to stem cases of valley fever, or coccidioidomycosis, at two prisons where the disease was found to have contributed to the deaths of nearly three dozen inmates from 2006 to 2011. …

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration on Wednesday appealed a federal judge's order to lift all age limits on who can buy morning-after birth control pills without a prescription.