Month: May 2014

By Emily Flitter and Brett Wolf NEW YORK/ST LOUIS (Reuters) – The U.S. Treasury Department temporarily froze all recruitment by its anti-money laundering arm and forced the agency to rescind 11 job offers, after an investigation found it violated the federal employment code during an aggressive hiring push, according to several government officials. The Office of Personnel Management, a federal agency that governs labor practices in the government, determined that the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCEN, illegally screened candidates in a quest to hire only lawyers for certain jobs, the officials said. It has recommended further investigations by two other federal agencies into FinCEN's practices, they added. Rules for hiring at government agencies make it illegal to screen candidates for qualifications that aren't stipulated in the job description, and the jobs FinCEN had posted weren't designated as being only for lawyers, the officials said.

Five nurses assist and comfort in birth, death, incarceration, war and poverty.

(Reuters) – A two-month-old bear cub that bit and scratched at least 18 students at a Missouri college poses no rabies threat and won't be killed, school officials said on Friday. The college earlier said that the cub, named Boo Boo, would have to be euthanized in order to test it for the disease. The cub was brought to the campus of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, on Sunday along with some other animals from a petting zoo to help students relax before final exams, the university said in a statement. Health officials previously said they couldn't rule out the possibility the cub had rabies, the university said.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A transgender prison inmate who complained about losing her breast tissue and growing facial hair after her hormone treatments were stopped must receive the treatments for the rest of her time behind bars, a federal judge ruled Friday.

CHICAGO (AP) — A botched lethal injection in Oklahoma this week has renewed a debate on whether doctors should be banned from executions — or required to participate to make the process more humane.

As if running a mile in under five minutes wasn't hard enough, James Nielsen did it while drinking beer. In a record-breaking race now seen on YouTube by over a million people, Nielsen, of Novato, California, ran the Beer Mile, "a perhaps less prestigious (although still extraordinary) feat of athleticism in which a competitor must finish a 12-ounce beer before each of the four laps on a 400-meter track, with penalties for throwing up," Runner's World reported. He clocked in with an official time of just 4:57.1. Most of us can't even dream of running a sub-five-minute mile. And most

By Daniel Gaitan NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – A bipartisan effort aiming to help protect the privacy of children and young teenagers online is making its way through Congress. The Do Not Track Kids Act of 2013, introduced in both the House and Senate in November, would amend the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) of 1998, and apply prohibitions against the collection of personal information from children and young teens to online and mobile applications. “Children and teens are visiting numerous companies’ websites, and marketers are using multimedia games, online quizzes, and mobile phone and tablet applications to create ties to children and teens,” the bill reads. If passed, the bill would prohibit website and mobile application operators from using or providing the personal information of children and young teens to third parties without verifiable consent from a parent, or from the minor if he or she is between 13 and 15.

It has been nearly four years since Sean died and there are many of facets of our time together that replay in my mind almost constantly. My experience with grief counseling is one part of his death, though, that hasn't left me either. When he died, I knew that I would need help. I was expecting twins — my first children, and here I was, suddenly all alone. How could I bring these children into the world where I would be expected to love and care for them when I couldn't feel myself anymore? I knew I had to pick

President Barack Obama on Friday said the botched execution of a murderer in Oklahoma raises questions about the death penalty in the United States and he will ask the U.S. attorney general to look into the situation. "What happened in Oklahoma is deeply troubling," he said. The condemned man, Clayton Lockett, 38, who was convicted of murder, rape, kidnapping and robbery in a 1999 crime spree, died of an apparent heart attack minutes after the lethal injection protocol failed. A prison report said the problem was largely due to a collapsed vein during the injection of the lethal drugs and that the needle was inserted in Lockett's groin instead of his arm.

April 2014 marks the 11th anniversary of the completion of the Human Genome Project. A 13-year undertaking costing $3 billion, the Human Genome Project offers a glimpse into a person's DNA makeup that determines everything from a person's appearance, such as eye color or skin tone, to genetic disorders, like hemophilia or color blindness. DNA, as we learned in junior high biology, stands for deoxyribonucleic acid. …