Year: 2014

By Stephanie Nebehay GENEVA (Reuters) – The U.N. racism watchdog urged the United States on Friday to halt the excessive use of force by police after the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white policeman touched off riots in Ferguson, Missouri. Minorities, particularly African Americans, are victims of disparities, the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) said after examining the U.S. "Racial and ethnic discrimination remains a serious and persistent problem in all areas of life from de facto school segregation, access to health care and housing," Noureddine Amir, CERD committee vice chairman, told a news briefing.

Labor Day is one of those highlighted high points of the year. The end of summer, the beginning of school, shorter days with slight weather changes branded with BBQs and celebrations and sometimes, leftover fireworks from the Fourth Of July. Mostly, this time of the year is a liminal space between here and there, then and now and you and me….

Yes, there is obesity in Egypt; although the situation is far worse in other Middle Eastern countries that have undergone more dramatic cultural transitions in recent years. But that's not really my subject today anyway. Rather, I am invoking the well-known observation that the Nile — or, rather, "denial" — is not just a river in Egypt.Denial…

By Madeline Kennedy NEW YORK (Reuters) – Not everyone exposed to high noise levels at work experiences hearing loss as a result, and a new study suggests a simple test can predict which workers will be affected. Researchers caution that low accuracy in predicting who would not suffer hearing loss means the test shouldn’t be used to select employees to work under high noise conditions. In the study, the test did do a better job of predicting which workers would experience hearing loss than traditional risk factors like how long workers were exposed to noise and how often they wore hearing protection.

Fiber is listed by the 2010 Dietary Guidelines Committee as a nutrient of concern, … The only proven weight loss occurs by eating fewer calories. .

By Katy Migiro NAIROBI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – South Sudan’s cholera crisis is waning but humanitarian workers are now battling increased cases of malaria and the parasitic disease kala azar, with children most affected. At least 10,000 people have been killed since the fighting erupted in late 2013, pitting President Salva Kiir’s government forces against supporters of Riek Machar, his former deputy and longtime political rival. While a cholera outbreak appears to be under control, other diseases are plaguing South Sudan’s hungry, displaced people. The latest emergency operations are focusing on malaria and kala azar, a parasitic disease transmitted by the bite of a sandfly which is usually fatal without treatment.

A shuttle bus crash on Friday at O’Hare International Airport injured at least 13 people, four of them seriously, Chicago fire officials said. The bus hit a concrete median at about 6:30 a.m. on a road leading to terminals at O’Hare, the country’s second busiest airport in terms of passenger traffic, said Fire Chief Juan Hernandez.

Germany’s Bayer unveiled plans to launch three new studies to expand the uses of its anti-clotting drug Xarelto, one of its top five new medicines. Xarelto, which competes with the Eliquis pill developed by Bristol-Myers Squibb and Pfizer in stroke prevention, reached sales of $1.7 billion in the 12 months to June. Bayer said on Friday that a Phase III trial involving about 7,000 patients would examine whether Xarelto can help prevent the recurrence of strokes in patients who have suffered strokes of undetermined cause. “We really have just as many strokes due to undetermined causes as to atrial fibrillation,” Frank Misselwitz, head of the Therapeutic Area Cardiovascular and Coagulation at Bayer HealthCare, told Reuters.

WINSTON-SALEM N.C. (Reuters) – Missionaries who were quarantined in North Carolina to ensure they were not infected with Ebola while working in Liberia have been released without showing signs of the virus, a local government spokesman said on Friday. Health officials in Charlotte required the temporary quarantine as a precaution after three missionaries with Christian organization SIM USA returned to the United States on Aug. 10 amid the worst outbreak on record of the deadly virus. The group included two doctors who cared for Ebola patients and missionary David Writebol, whose wife Nancy was one of two American relief workers who contracted the disease that has killed more than 1,500 people in West Africa. The missionaries’ 21-day health monitoring periods ended at different times depending on when each person had last been in contact with Ebola patients.

Senegal confirms its 1st case of Ebola, underscoring W Africa outbreak is not under control

By Marine Pennetier PARIS (Reuters) – The U.N. Security Council must lead efforts to stop the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, a senior official from Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said on Friday, warning the current response risked aggravating the crisis. Mego Terzian, head of the medical charity’s French arm, said the epidemic was getting worse each day and neither MSF, the World Health Organisation (WHO) or the governments of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea had the means to contain it. “I am extremely pessimistic if there is not a substantial international mobilisation,” Terzian told Reuters in an interview in Paris. MSF is the leading private charity battling Ebola, with about 2,000 staff in the four countries – Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria – previously affected.