Month: March 2014

A group of 28 U.S. attorneys general is urging chief executive officers of five major retailers, including Walmart, to stop selling tobacco products, saying it is contradictory to carry such items in stores that also provide health care services. The companies receiving a letter on Sunday from the group were Wal-Mart Stores Inc, supermarket operators Kroger Co, Safeway Inc, which operate pharmacies, and drugstore chains Walgreen Co and Rite Aid Corp. "Pharmacies and drug stores, which increasingly market themselves as a source for community health care, send a mixed message by continuing to sell deadly tobacco products," New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said in a statement on Monday.

By Sharon Begley NEW YORK (Reuters) – If the news last month that the prevalence of obesity among American preschoolers had plunged 43 percent in a decade sounded too good to be true, that's because it probably was, researchers say. First Lady Michelle Obama and others seized on the finding as a sign that efforts to combat the national obesity epidemic were paying off. But as obesity specialists take a closer look at the data, some are questioning the 43 percent claim, suggesting that it may be a statistical fluke and pointing out that similar studies find no such decrease in obesity among preschoolers. In fact, based on the researchers' own data, the obesity rate may have even risen rather than declined.

Healthy monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats found in foods such as … healthy fats as a regular part of our diet will not make us put on weight.

An experimental drug made from snail venom has shown early signs of promise in numbing pain, raising hopes in the hunt for new, non-addictive medications, researchers said Sunday. The drug, which has not been tested yet on humans, was judged to be about 100 times more potent than morphine or gabapentin, which are currently considered the gold standard for chronic nerve pain. The marine animals can reach out and stab prey, injecting a venom that paralyzes fish long enough for the snail to eat it up. A tiny protein derived from the snail's venom has formed the basis of five new experimental compounds, said lead researcher David Craik of the University of Queensland in Australia.

By Soyoung Kim and Olivia Oran NEW YORK, March 17 (Reuters) – When Barington Capital Group in October reported a stake of more than 2 percent in Darden Restaurants Inc with a vow to shake up the company, another investment firm was caught off guard. A few months prior to that, an activist fund was preparing to go public with proposals to shake up Aeropostale Inc and was amassing a stake, only to learn that Sycamore Partners had taken an 8 percent stake in the teen clothing retailer. The examples show how investors are increasingly bumping into one another in corporate campaigns, as more funds are starting to follow the playbook of aggressive shareholders such as Carl Icahn and Bill Ackman, who use their stock positions to urge companies to sell, break up, buy back shares or oust management. Investors and their lawyers say that it's getting tougher to find easy targets as investors are chasing the same "low-hanging fruit" – companies that have poor corporate governance or performance and are vulnerable to calls for change.