Month: April 2014

Stabbing crimes don’t make headlines as often, but historically there have been two notorious acts: serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and accused axe-murderer Lizzy Borden.

By Kathryn Doyle NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Out-of-pocket expenses for diabetes treatment have gone down for many U.S. patients over the past decade, according to a new study. But nearly a quarter of people with diabetes still face high expenses. In particular, “(out-of-pocket) expenses declined in the people with public insurance and in people with low income between 2001 and 2011,” mostly because prescription drug costs went down, Rui Li told Reuters Health by email. Li led the study at the Division of Diabetes Translation, part of the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia.

By Daniel Trotta HAVANA (Reuters) – A U.S. contractor who has launched a hunger strike while serving a long prison term in Cuba is receiving "dignified and decent treatment" in a hospital ward where he is in stable health, a Cuban official said on Wednesday. Cuba's communist government said it was concerned by a statement from Alan Gross's lawyer on Tuesday that said his client had begun a hunger strike last week to protest his treatment by both the Cuban and U.S. governments. Gross, 64, is serving a 15-year prison term for trying to start an illegal Internet service for Cuban Jews while working as a subcontractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

By Elizabeth Daley MURRYSVILLE, Pennsylvania (Reuters) – A 16-year-old student wielding two knives went on a stabbing rampage in the hallways of a Pittsburgh-area high school early on Wednesday, injuring 21 people, about half of them seriously, officials said. The attacker moved stealthily through Franklin Regional High School, stabbing his victims in the torso and slashing arms and faces before anyone realized what was happening, students and officials said. Some of the injured taken to nearby hospitals were in critical condition, doctors said. The unidentified sophomore suspected in the attack was in police custody, said Tom Seefeld, chief of police in Murrysville, Pennsylvania.

By Scott Malone and Daniel Lovering BOSTON (Reuters) – A private university outside Boston has decided not to award an honorary degree to a Somali-born women's rights activist who has branded Islam as violent and "a nihilistic cult of death." Brandeis University said it had decided not to award an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Dutch parliamentarian who has been a prominent critic of the treatment of women in Islamic society. Hirsi Ali said in a 2003 interview with a Dutch newspaper that by modern standards, the Muslim prophet Mohammed could be considered a pedophile, and in a 2007 interview with the London Evening Standard called Islam "a destructive, nihilistic cult of death." "We cannot overlook certain of her past statements that are inconsistent with Brandeis University's core values," the university said in a statement late Tuesday. "We regret that we were not aware of these statements earlier." The move followed an open letter from the Council on American-Islamic Relations to the university's president, Frederick Lawrence, saying that to do so was "unworthy of the American tradition of civil liberty and religious freedom." Nihad Awad, the group's national executive director, said that "offering such an award to a promoter of religious prejudice such as Ali is equivalent to promoting the work of white supremacists and anti-Semites." Hirsi Ali could not be reached for immediate comment.

Meet Mini Winnie, a clone of 12-year-old dachshund, Winnie.

A Republican congressman from Kansas introduced legislation on Wednesday that would nullify efforts in multiple states to require labeling of genetically modified foods The bill, dubbed the "Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act" was drafted by U.S. Rep. Mike Pompeo from Kansas, and is aimed at overriding bills in roughly two dozen states that would require foods made with genetically engineered crops to be labeled as such. The bill specifically prohibits any mandatory labeling of foods developed using bioengineering. What this bill attempts to do is set a standard." Consumer groups have been arguing for labeling because of questions they have both about the safety for human health and the environmental impacts of genetically modified foods, also called GMOs. Ballot measures in California in 2012 and last year in Washington state narrowly lost after GMO crop developers, including Monsanto Co., and members of the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) poured millions into campaigns to defeat the measures.

The surgery was an attempt to fix a birth defect.

By Naomi O’Leary ROME (Reuters) – Italy’s constitutional court overturned a ban on using donor sperm and eggs in fertility treatments on Wednesday, knocking down part of a divisive set of restrictions on assisted reproduction. But Health Minister Beatrice Lorenzin, from the socially conservative New Centre Right party, said parliament would have to debate how the court order could be applied. Couples in predominantly Catholic Italy have launched a string of legal challenges to restrictions included in “Law 40”, passed by the then center-right government of Silvio Berlusconi in 2004. But in Italy, they have been opposed by a conservative establishment influenced by the Catholic Church, which rejects non-traditional conception and opposes the discarding of embryos with defects, believing an embryo should be treated as a person from the moment of conception.