Month: June 2014

By Elizabeth Daley PITTSBURGH (Reuters) – Lawyers for a teenager charged with wounding 21 people in a stabbing spree at his Pittsburgh-area high school in April have asked that he be moved from a juvenile detention hall to a mental health facility at the county's expense. Doctors who have examined 16-year-old Alex Hribal since his arrest have diagnosed him as suffering from a major depressive disorder and a "schizoid/schizotypal" personality disorder, his lawyer said in the transfer request filed in court on Friday. Authorities say Hribal rampaged through Franklin Regional High School in Murrysville, Pennsylvania, on April 9 armed with two 8-inch kitchen knives, stabbing and slashing 20 fellow students and a security guard before he was subdued by an assistant principal. Murrysville is located about 20 miles east of Pittsburgh.

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — The Iowa Supreme Court ordered the nation's leading chiropractic college on Friday to make accommodations to allow blind students to complete degrees, in an important victory for the rights of the disabled.

It's not that rice is some miracle food, though. It has definite nutritional benefits, but adding rice to an unhealthy diet will not magically make you healthy …

(Reuters) – A California man who traveled to Las Vegas for the Electric Daisy Carnival has died five days after being found unconscious, in the third death linked to the electronic music festival this year, a coroner’s spokesman said on Friday. Joey Saychack, 21, was taken to a local hospital on June 20 after he was discovered unresponsive at the Las Vegas-area home he had rented with a group of friends, Clark County Assistant Coroner John Fudenberg said. Saychack, who never made it to the music festival, died at the hospital on Wednesday, Fudenberg said, adding that a cause of death had not been determined. Fudenberg said Saychack of Fresno, California was the third person to die during the Electric Daisy Carnival, which ran June 20 through June 22 in Las Vegas.

By Steve Holland WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A scathing review of the scandal-plagued U.S. Veterans Administration found significant and chronic failures across the board at the agency and that a corrosive culture prevails, the White House said on Friday. The findings emerged after President Barack Obama met with acting Veterans Secretary Sloan Gibson and the White House official assigned to investigate the agency, Rob Nabors. Widespread evidence of delays in military veterans getting healthcare at the VA’s facilities prompted Obama to accept the resignation of VA Secretary Eric Shinseki late in May. He has yet to nominate a new secretary. The White House review, which was conducted by Nabors, said the agency’s 14-day scheduling standard for new patients to receive care is arbitrary, ill-defined and misunderstood.

The U.S. hog herd shrank more than anticipated in the March-May quarter as a deadly pig virus swept through farms, a U.S. Department of Agriculture report showed on Friday. The data also showed that despite higher hog prices in the wake of the deadly Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus (PEDv), producers had not expanded herds as much as expected, analysts said. They added that Chicago Mercantile Exchange hog futures could climb as much as their 3-cents per lb daily price limit on Monday, based on Friday’s report. The USDA report showed the U.S. hog herd as of June 1 at 95 percent of the year-ago level, at 62.128 million head.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved a long-delayed inhalable diabetes medication to help patients control their blood sugar levels during meals.

By Krystnell Storr NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Switching to a diet low in simple sugars and high in healthy fats, like the types found in canola oil, could help people with type 2 diabetes control their blood sugar, according to a new study. People with type 2 diabetes who were advised to follow a diet with a low glycemic index supplemented with extra canola oil had lower blood glucose levels and greater reductions in heart risk than those who ate a diet high in whole grains, researchers found.