Year: 2014

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — The Philippine Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that a family planning law is constitutional, allowing the government to provide reproductive health care services primarily to the country’s poor despite strong opposition to the law from the Roman Catholic Church.

Immune-checkpoint blockade trains body to rally against cancer. Here’s one woman’s story.

The Philippines Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a family planning law but ruled out provisions to punish health workers who do not inform people about contraceptive options. In a country where more than 80 percent of a population of about 97 million is Roman Catholic, the Church had opposed the law, effectively blocking its passage for 13 years, for fear it would lead to a spike in abortions. The Philippines has one of the highest birth rates in Asia, standing at 24.98 per 1,000 of population in 2012. Congress passed the reproductive health law in December 2012, allowing public health centers to hand out contraceptives, such as condoms and pills, and teach sex education in schools.

Yo-yo dieting can be a danger to someone's health and costs money. That is why the doctors designed SlimPlate System for weight loss using real …

By Stephen Jewkes MILAN (Reuters) – The government of Matteo Renzi is looking to wipe the slate clean and seek new names at Italy's main state-controlled groups including oil major Eni as top management comes up for renewal, government, political and industry sources said. New center-left Prime Minister Renzi, nicknamed 'Demolition Man' for his campaigning for generational change in Italy, came to power in February promising to shake up the country's cozy elites and breathe fresh air into an ageing establishment. The 39-year-old Renzi has kept his cards close to his chest on the names that will be proposed as early as this weekend to replace top executives at the likes of Eni, utility Enel and defense group Finmeccanica. One government source told Reuters the positions of Eni CEO Paolo Scaroni and Enel's boss Fulvio Conti, both veterans in the energy sector, looked particularly shaky while political sources said Renzi was looking for new faces.

The success, albeit in a small number of patients, offers hope that a fundamentally new treatment can help many of the 6 million paralyzed Americans, including the 1.3 million with spinal cord injuries. The results also cast doubt on a key assumption about spinal cord injury: that treatment requires damaged neurons to regrow or be replaced with, for instance, stem cells. "The big message here is that people with spinal cord injury of the type these men had no longer need to think they have a lifelong sentence of paralysis," Dr Roderic Pettigrew, director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, part of the National Institutes of Health, said in an interview. "They can achieve some level of voluntary function," which he called "a milestone" in spinal cord injury research.

By Steve Gorman LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A family of four rescued from their sailboat after the youngest of two children became seriously ill are due to return to California on Wednesday aboard a U.S. warship that picked them up over the weekend, Navy and Coast Guard officials said. Military officials declined on Monday to give any details on the medical condition of 1-year-old Lyra Kaufman except to say that she, her 3-year-old sister, Cora, and their parents, Eric and Charlotte Kaufman, were all safe as they headed back to port in San Diego. "I know she's stable enough to stay on board the ship to continue to San Diego," Coast Guard spokeswoman Lieutenant Anna Dixon said.

By Curtis Skinner NEW YORK (Reuters) – The percentage of Americans without health insurance dipped to its lowest in nearly six years due in part to U.S. President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform law, commonly known as Obamacare, according to a Gallup poll released on Monday. Some 15.6 percent of Americans lacked health insurance in the first three months of 2014, down from a high of 18 percent in late 2013, according to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index survey. “‘Obamacare’ appears to be accomplishing its goal of increasing the percentage of Americans with health insurance coverage,” the report said. Black and low-income Americans saw some of the most pronounced drops in the uninsured rate, with declines of more than 3 percentage points.

By David Beasley ATLANTA (Reuters) – After a courtroom outburst from a civil rights leader, a judge on Monday delayed the trial of a terminally ill former Atlanta school superintendent accused of conspiring to alter students’ standardized test scores. Beverly Hall, who resigned her job as head of Atlanta school system in 2011, was supposed to stand trial on felony charges next month. But her attorneys requested a delay, arguing that chemotherapy treatment for Hall’s advanced breast cancer would make it difficult for her to endure a lengthy trial. Her case has attracted attention from civil rights leaders who feel her prosecution is a waste of taxpayers’ money given the state of her health.

The Obama administration on Monday rolled back some of the more controversial cuts proposed for privately managed Medicare health plans used by the elderly following pressure from insurance companies and lawmakers. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said that on average, reimbursement for such Medicare Advantage plans in 2015 would rise 0.4 percent, reversing what is said was a 1.9 percent average reduction proposed in February. The proposed cuts had also figured into Republicans’ criticism of President Barack Obama’s healthcare law. “They were asking for flat (reimbursement) but no one ever thought they would get close to it,” said Ipsita Smolinski, managing director of Capitol Street, a healthcare consulting firm based in Washington, D.C. Shares in health insurers with large Medicare Advantage businesses, like Humana and UnitedHealth Group Inc, were trading slightly higher after the announcement.

By Keith Coffman DENVER (Reuters) – Lawyers for the man charged with mass murder in a 2012 shooting frenzy that left 12 people dead at a Colorado movie theater have asked that his upcoming trial be moved out of the suburban Denver county where the case has been prosecuted. Defense attorneys argued in their motion for a change of venue that James Holmes' right to a fair trial in Arapahoe County has been compromised by "pervasive media coverage" of the case locally and "the undeniable impact of the tragedy on the community itself." Holmes, 26, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to murder and attempted murder charges stemming from the July 2012 massacre at an Aurora, Colorado, cinema during a midnight screening of the Batman film "The Dark Knight Rises." Twelve moviegoers were killed and 70 others hurt in one of the deadliest outbursts of U.S. gun violence in decades. Holmes' public defenders argued that the glare of publicity, including voluminous commentary and reporting on evidence ruled inadmissible at trial, would make it impossible to seat an impartial jury in Arapahoe County.