Month: February 2014

Fewer U.S. children are dying in car crashes, with death rates falling by 43 percent from 2002 to 2011, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Tuesday. But one in three of the children who died in a car crash in 2011 was not using a seat belt or child safety seat, suggesting many more deaths could be prevented, the CDC said. "The good news is motor vehicle deaths decreased by 43 percent over the past decade for children age 12 and younger. The tragic news is still with that decrease, more than 9,000 kids were killed on the road in this period," CDC Director Thomas Frieden told reporters in a telephone news conference.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House on Tuesday refuted arguments that Obamacare reforms will hurt jobs, and said a new report from the Congressional Budget Office finds the reforms will spur hiring during the 2014-2016 period. “Claims that the Affordable Care Act hurts jobs are simply belied by the facts in the CBO report,” the White House said in a statement about the report, contradicting assessments that said the CBO showed reforms will result in a cut to hours. (Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Sandra Maler)

By David Lawder WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday reduced its estimate of the U.S. budget deficit for the current fiscal year but said sluggish economic growth and stubbornly high unemployment will cause the improvement to be short-lived. The CBO said the deficit will fall to $514 billion in the fiscal 2014 year ended September 30, down from its previous estimate of $560 billion and a fiscal 2013 deficit of $680 billion. The deficits will start to grow steadily thereafter as the economy struggles with an unemployment rate that fails to fall below 6.0 percent until late 2016, the non-partisan budget referee agency said. The report may take some immediate pressure off of Congress for further deficit reduction, but makes clear that there are still major fiscal challenges ahead associated with the cost of caring for the fast-retiring Baby Boom generation and a chronically low participation in the labor force among Americans.

The late actor may have been trying to kick drug habit.        

"Play To Cure: Genes in Space" may look like a space flight simulator — and technically speaking it is — but the maps that players use for navigating their spacecraft are actually cleverly disguised pieces of genetic data. Developed by Cancer Research UK in collaboration with programmers from Amazon, Google, Facebook and games studio Omnisoft, the free app is available to download for iOS and Android devices. The aim of the game is pretty simple: to plot a course through what look like asteroid fields in order to collect something called ‘element alpha'. However, the fields are actually data gathered from 2,000 patients with breast cancer — data which, if thoroughly analyzed, could lead to better testing procedures and treatments in the future.

By Genevra Pittman NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Half of parents with an overweight or obese child think their kids are slimmer than they actually are, according to a new review of past studies. In 69 studies of more than 15,000 children, researchers found many parents with an overweight child thought their son or daughter was at a healthy weight or below. "We know that parents play a very crucial role in preventing childhood obesity, and interventions are most successful if they involve parents," said Alyssa Lundahl. "Previous research has found that when parents' perceptions are corrected, they do start to take action and encourage their children to become more active and maybe turn off the TV and go outside and play," she told Reuters Health.