Month: July 2014

By Eric Kelsey LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The estranged wife of Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling on Thursday testified that her husband was eager for her to sell the NBA team and pleased when she was able to fetch a league-record $2 billion. Shelly Sterling, 79, told a probate court in a trial over the disputed sale of the Clippers to former Microsoft Corp chief executive Steve Ballmer that her husband did not want the NBA to confiscate the team and sell it at auction after the league banned him for life. "Every day we talked about what I was doing and who I had talked to," Shelly Sterling said about courting bidders, adding: "He was on the same page as I was … He was very happy and very proud of me and said, 'Wow, you really did a good job.'" Donald Sterling, 80, was banned by the league for racist remarks made in private that were taped and published. He has been deemed by physicians to have early Alzheimer's disease and unable to conduct his own business affairs, handing his wife control of the trust that owns the Clippers.

Reducing even light consumption of alcohol will not only improve your chances against coronary heart disease, but also help you lose weight and ease high blood pressure, it said. They also had a 10-percent lower risk of coronary heart disease and enjoyed lower systolic blood pressure and body mass index (BMI). "This suggests that reduction of alcohol consumption, even for light to moderate drinkers, is beneficial for cardiovascular health," the study contended. "In our study, we saw a link between a reduced consumption of alcohol and improved cardiovascular health, regardless of whether the individual was a light, moderate or heavy drinker.

A jab to protect children against polio that fell out of favour in the 1960s should be given a frontline role to help stamp out the disease, doctors reported in The Lancet on Friday. The injection can provide better and long-lasting protection against the polio virus when used to supplement oral vaccine, which replaced it in most countries, they said. Oral polio vaccine (OPV) protects individuals against contracting the disease, but they can still be infected by the virus. It replicates in the gut and can then be passed to others through faecal-contaminated water, thus imperilling unvaccinated children.

A prototype vaccine for dengue that two years ago yielded lukewarm results has proved more effective after wider trials and is a potential arm against the disease, researchers said Friday. Devised by the French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi Pasteur, the so-called CYD-TDV vaccine provided only 30 percent protection against the dangerous fever when first tested among children in Thailand. One reason for this is that CYD-TDV performed poorly against one of the four strains of dengue virus, the investigators reported in The Lancet. "Our results suggest that vaccination with CYD-TDV can reduce the incidence of symptomatic dengue infection by more than half and importantly reduced severe disease and hospitalisations," said Maria Rosario Capeding from the Philippines' Research Institute for Tropical Medicine.

A Mississippi girl born with the AIDS virus and in remission for more than two years despite stopping treatment now shows signs that she still harbors HIV — and therefore is not cured. The news is a setback to hopes that very early treatment with powerful HIV drugs might reverse an infection that has seemed permanent once it takes hold.

By Richard Cowan and David Lawder WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. House of Representatives Republicans said on Thursday they intend to make President Barack Obama's changes to his signature health insurance law the focus of a forthcoming lawsuit accusing him of overstepping his legal authorities. The House Rules Committee made public a "discussion draft" of legislation to authorize legal action against the president for misusing executive orders and other unilateral actions to advance his agenda. House Speaker John Boehner first announced plans for a House lawsuit against Obama late last month. The draft does not mention specific grievances, but gives Boehner authority to seek injunctive relief for failure by Obama and members of his administration for failure to act in a manner consistent with the Constitution and U.S. laws "with respect to implementation of (including failure to implement) the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act." Republican lawmakers, who have been trying unsuccessfully to repeal the 2010 law for years, regularly decry the Obama administration's decision to delay Obamacare coverage mandates and grant various waivers as illegal without congressional approval.

By Natalie Huet PARIS (Reuters) – The first vaccine against dengue fever, from France’s Sanofi, provided moderate protection in a large clinical study, but questions remain as to how well it can help fight the world’s fastest-growing tropical disease. The late-stage trial involved 10,275 healthy children aged 2-14 across five countries in Asia, a region that accounts for over two-thirds of the mosquito-borne disease’s global burden. Sanofi had already disclosed in April that its vaccine reduced the incidence of dengue fever by 56 percent in the Asian study, without giving details. The results suggest the new vaccine acts best as an immune booster for patients with some previous exposure, and therefore may be most useful in tropical regions where dengue is common, rather than as a vaccination for travellers.

By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) – Combining two types of polio vaccine, including one that is injected rather than given orally, appears to give better immunity and could speed efforts to eradicate the crippling disease, scientists said on Friday. British and Indian researchers said the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV), which is given by injection, could provide better and longer lasting protection if given alongside the more commonly used live oral polio vaccine (OPV). Serious polio outbreaks in Asia, Africa and Europe over the last 10 years have hampered efforts to wipe out the disease, caused by a virus that replicates in the gut and can be passed on through contact with infected faeces. Polio invades the nervous system and can cause irreversible paralysis within hours – and the World Health Organization’s repeated warning is that as long as any child remains infected with polio, children everywhere are at risk.