Month: August 2013

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Saudi Arabia says one more man has died from a new respiratory virus related to SARS, bringing to 40 the number of deadly cases in the kingdom at the center of the growing outbreak.

LONDON (AP) — Since the first test-tube baby was born more than three decades ago, in vitro fertilization has evolved into a highly sophisticated lab procedure. Now, scientists are going back to basics and testing a simpler and cheaper method.

GENEVA (Reuters) – Australia must compensate and release 46 refugees whom it has arbitrarily detained and treated in a cruel, inhuman and degrading way, a U.N. human rights watchdog has said. The U.N. report comes in the middle of an Australian election campaign where immigration is a major issue, as the rival parties vie to appear tough in promising to curb an influx of asylum seekers. Australia, which said the refugees had received adverse security assessments from its chief spy agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, said it had six months to respond to the U.N. findings. …

CHICAGO (AP) — They're called "super agers" — men and women who are in their 80s and 90s, but with brains and memories that seem far younger.

WELLINGTON/BEIJING (Reuters) – New Zealand's Fonterra, the world's biggest dairy exporter caught up in a contamination scandal earlier this month, said on Thursday it was also forced to withdraw 42 tons of milk powder bound for China because of high nitrite levels. …

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – U.S. drugmaker Eli Lilly and Co said it was "deeply concerned" about allegations published in a Chinese newspaper that it spent more than 30 million yuan ($4.90 million) to bribe doctors in China to prescribe the firm's medicines instead of rival products. A former senior manager for the company, identified by the pseudonym Wang Wei, told the 21st Century Business Herald that bribery and illegal payments at Eli Lilly's China operations were widespread, the paper reported on Thursday. …

ATLANTA (Reuters) – A woman credited with convincing a gunman holed up in an Atlanta-area school to lay down his assault rifle and surrender to police says the man was suicidal and preparing to die in a bloodbath before she talked him out of it. "He had a look on him that he was willing to kill, matter of fact he said it," said Antoinette Tuff, a clerk at the elementary school in the Atlanta suburbs where Tuesday's incident ended with no injuries after a tense standoff. "He was going to end his life and take all the cops and everybody with him," Tuff told Atlanta's WSBTV television news. …

By Eric M. Johnson (Reuters) – The rate of circumcisions performed on newborn boys in U.S. hospitals dropped 6 percentage points over the last three decades, with an especially steep decline in Western states, according to U.S. government data released on Thursday. The national rate declined to 58.3 percent in 2010 from 64.5 percent in 1979, according to the report from the National Center for Health Statistics. The tally excludes many circumcisions, including those performed in other places such as religious institutions and those performed later in life. …

By Caren Bohan WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican lawmakers, who staunchly oppose President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law, are considering using a fall showdown over the country's borrowing limit as leverage to try to delay the law's implementation. The idea is gaining traction among Republican leaders in the House of Representatives, aides said on Wednesday. An aide to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said the debt limit is a "good leverage point" to try to force some action on the healthcare law known as "Obamacare. …