Good Health is Your Greatest Wealth……Virgil
WASHINGTON (AP) — Selling the morning-after birth control pill right next to condoms, even if limited to buyers 15 or older, marks a big societal shift in the long battle over women's reproductive rights. Backed into a corner by a federal court, the Obama administration is considering how to proceed after what looked like a stab at compromise just made both sides madder.
By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) – A new strain of bird flu that is causing a deadly outbreak among people in China is a threat to world health and should be taken seriously, scientists said on Wednesday. The H7N9 strain has killed 24 people and infected more than 125, according to the Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO), which has described it as "one of the most lethal" flu viruses. …
(Reuters) – A jury on Wednesday awarded $240 million to 32 mentally disabled workers at an Iowa turkey-processing plant to compensate for what government attorneys described as abuse by the Texas company that employed and housed them. A federal jury in Davenport found that Hill Country Farms, doing business as Henry’s Turkey Service, of Goldthwaite, Texas, had created an unlawful hostile environment for the men and discriminated against them on the basis of their disability. Jurors awarded them $7.5 million each, following a week-long trial, according to court documents. …
By Dave Warner PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) – A Philadelphia jury ended a second day of deliberations on Wednesday without reaching verdicts in the murder trial of a doctor accused of killing babies and a patient during late-term abortions at a clinic serving low-income women. Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 72, who ran the now-shuttered Women’s Medical Society Clinic, could face the death penalty if convicted by the jury in Common Pleas Court in Philadelphia. The case focuses on whether the infants were born alive and then killed. …
(Reuters) – Drugs from Amgen Inc, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries and Sanofi that boost white blood cells are being evaluated by U.S. regulators as treatments for radiation exposure caused by a nuclear attack or accident. The drugs, known as leukocyte growth factors, will be the subject of a Friday meeting of an advisory committee to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Treatment with Amgen’s Neupogen and Neulasta, Teva’s Tbo-filgrastim and Sanofi’s Leukine, may decrease death rates from radiation exposure, according to FDA staff documents released ahead of the meeting. …
By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) – The first-ever drug designed to treat social impairments associated with autism failed to show a benefit in a midstage trial, representing a blow to families and to privately held drugmaker Seaside Therapeutics. Results of the study, presented on Wednesday at the International Meeting for Autism Research in Spain, showed the drug known as STX209 failed to improve symptoms of social withdrawal in a 12-month study of 150 individuals aged 5 to 21, most with classic autistic disorder. …
By Tim Ghianni NASHVILLE, Tenn (Reuters) – A 2-year-old girl was accidentally shot and killed by her 5-year-old brother with a rifle he received as a birthday gift, Kentucky authorities said on Wednesday. The shooting occurred on Tuesday afternoon in Burkesville, Kentucky, a community in the south-central part of the state, when the boy was playing with the .22-caliber rifle and accidentally shot his sister in the chest, state police said. The boy had received the Crickett "youth model" gun for his birthday in November, Cumberland County Coroner Gary White said. …
If you’re still confused by what’s happening with Obamacare, no one will blame you. Almost no one can blame you since they’re probably in the dark too. (A recent poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 58 percent of the uninsured who were surveyed said they didn’t have enough information about the Affordable Care Act to know how it would affect them.) So let’s just cut to the chase and say a few things, for the record: First, Obamacare—meaning the implementation of the Affordable Care Act—is happening. It wasn’t overruled or overturned and your state can’t just opt out of it. …
By Ian Simpson WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Compassionate release programs at overcrowded U.S. federal prisons are poorly run and lack clear standards, resulting in some eligible inmates dying before they can be freed, the Department of Justice said on Wednesday. Few prisoners are released early on compassionate grounds. An average of 24 gravely ill prisoners were freed each year from 2006 to 2011, but another 28 died in custody during that time while waiting for the Bureau of Prisons to make a decision on their cases, the department's inspector general said in a report. …