Month: October 2013

By Roberta Rampton BOSTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama has steered clear of Wednesday's matchup between the Red Sox and St. Louis Cardinals in game six of the World Series during his visit to Boston, partly to avoid being an extra burden on a baseball-mad city. Obama visited Boston to discuss his landmark health insurance law at a time Boston authorities are stretched thin with preparations for a game that gives the Red Sox a chance to win the championship at home for first time in 95 years. "I am well aware that a presidential visit is not the biggest thing going on today in Boston," Obama told a crowd at the city's historic Fanueil Hall, two-and-a-half miles from Fenway Park, where the game will be played.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama on Wednesday took it upon himself to make sure the glitch-marred website that has made signing up for insurance under his signature health law difficult gets repaired quickly. “There’s no denying it, right now the website is too slow, too many people have gotten stuck and I’m not happy about it,” the president said in a speech. “There’s no excuse for it, and I take full responsibility for making sure it gets fixed ASAP.” (Reporting By Mark Felsenthal)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama's embattled top health official declared herself accountable Wednesday for failures of the much-maligned health insurance website as a newly surfaced government memo pointed to security concerns that were laid out just days before its launch.

(Reuters) – U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, President Barack Obama’s top healthcare adviser, apologized on Wednesday over the technology failures that have plagued the rollout of Obama’s healthcare law. * March 23, 2010 – President Barack Obama signs the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law, with the aim of providing health coverage to millions of uninsured Americans beginning in 2014. But the court rules that states can choose whether to expand the Medicaid health insurance program for the poor. * November 6, 2012 – Obama is elected to a second term as president, defeating Republican challenger Mitt Romney, who had vowed to throw out the healthcare law.

Such a low-calorie diet can increase the risk of side effects including electrolyte … drugs, rendering them unapproved drugs in violation of the Federal, Food, Drug, … to maintaining a healthy weight; regulators and others have said weight–loss …

By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) – A powerful infusion of HIV-fighting antibodies beat back a potent form of the virus in monkeys and kept it at bay for weeks, U.S. government scientists and a team led by Harvard University found, offering a potential next step in the battle against human HIV. The two studies, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, involve the use of rare antibodies made by 10 percent to 20 percent of people with HIV that can neutralize a wide array of strains. Such antibodies latch on to regions of the virus that are highly “conserved,” meaning they are so critical to the virus that causes AIDS that they appear in nearly every HIV strain. In the past decade, scientists have tried to make vaccines that could coax the body into making these same types of HIV-specific antibodies.

Health benefits of pumpkin: From weight loss to cancer prevention and more … diet. Eating pumpkin before a meal may make you less inclined to over eat higher …

A North Dakota woman told a local radio station that on Halloween she will give children she considers obese a sternly-worded letter for their parents along with candy. The woman, who gave her name only as “Cheryl,” said she would still hand out candy but planned to give some trick-or-treaters a sealed envelope with a letter for their parents, she said Tuesday in a call to a radio station in Fargo. “As far as we know Cheryl is a local Fargo woman that thinks it is her mission to watch out for the overweight children of Fargo,” radio host Corey Schaffer said Wednesday. Schaffer said Cheryl’s Halloween plan has sparked some “nasty, nasty responses.” Among the responses was “Ready, Eggs, FIRE.” Others suggested she pass out healthier treats or not answer her door.