Year: 2014

By Andrew Osborn LONDON (Reuters) – Archaeologists in Britain said on Sunday they had solved a 660-year-old mystery, citing DNA tests which they said proved they had found a lost burial site for tens of thousands of people killed in medieval London by the "Black Death" plague. The breakthrough follows the discovery last year of 13 skeletons wrapped in shrouds laid out in neat rows during excavations for London's new Crossrail rail line, Europe's biggest infrastructure project. Archaeologists, who say the find sheds new light on medieval England and its inhabitants, later found 12 more skeletons taking the total to 25. Limited records suggest up to 50,000 victims were buried in the cemetery in London's Farringdon district, one of two emergency burial sites.

By Katharine Houreld and Jessica Donati KABUL/KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) – The deeply conservative, all-male crowd at Afghanistan's Kandahar stadium stared in disbelief as the small woman in a modest black headscarf stood up and reached for the microphone. Habiba Sarabi's speech in the southern Taliban heartland city lasted only a few minutes, thanking the crowd for supporting her candidacy in next month's presidential election. During their strict Islamist rule from 1996-2001, the Afghan Taliban had banned women from education, voting and most work, and they were not allowed to leave their homes without permission and a male escort. A fair election would mark Afghanistan's first democratic transfer of power, a monumental achievement for Afghans struggling to end decades of bloodletting and cement fragile gains in education, health and human rights.

By Ben Hirschler CAMBRIDGE, England (Reuters) – AstraZeneca, which will complete its move to Cambridge by 2016, is already putting down roots in the ecosystem of the university city as it seeks to revitalize its drug research. Britain’s second-biggest pharmaceuticals group said on Monday it had struck an unique deal with the state-funded Medical Research Council (MRC) under which academic scientists will work alongside its staff at its new Cambridge site. Transplanting AstraZeneca to the university city in the east of England forms the centerpiece of a $2.5 billion restructuring plan by Chief Executive Pascal Soriot, who hopes closer links with academia will spark ideas and innovation. AstraZeneca has suffered a dry period in drug discovery in recent years and badly needs to find new medicines to replace blockbusters like Nexium for heartburn and Crestor for high cholesterol that will lose patent protection in a few years.

By Ransdell Pierson and Bill Berkrot WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A non-surgically implanted heart valve meant to delay open heart surgery in children with congenital heart defects worked well for all but a few patients during a year of follow-up observation, in line with favorable results seen in original clinical trials of the Medtronic Inc product. The Melody transcatheter pulmonary valve was approved in 2010 under a U.S. humanitarian device exemption, which allowed it on the market as long as a follow-up study was conducted to assess the product’s reliability and safety. “The valves had excellent function during the first year, judged by no more than mild leakage and very few patients had narrowing of the valve,” said Dr. Aimee Armstrong of the University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital Cardiac Catheterization Laboratories, who was lead investigator for the follow-up study sponsored by Medtronic. Within the first year of the study, eight adverse events were seen, including three cases of heart infections, two abnormal heart rhythms and one case each of bacterial infection, major stent fracture and blood clot in the lung.

By Lavinia Mo, Sui-Lee Wee and Li Hui GANZHOU, China (Reuters) – Lu Libing knew he had only one choice as the birth of his third child approached. On the Internet he found "A Home Where Dreams Come True", a website touted as China's biggest online adoption forum, part of an industry that has been largely unregulated for years. Expectant couples, unwilling or unable to keep their children, go to the website looking for adoptive parents rather than abort their babies or abandon them. There are no clear statistics on how many people use these websites but "A Home Where Dreams Come True" said 37,841 babies had been adopted through its website from 2007 to August 2012.

By David Stanway BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s war on pollution is only a few weeks old, but the battle lines are already being drawn between Beijing and Hebei, the province most synonymous with dirty air. A succession of Hebei officials used the annual session of parliament in Beijing this month to urge the central government to boost subsidies to help with job losses and other costs from mandated cuts in industrial production across the country. One local official said Hebei was taking on too much of the burden. The pleas came after Premier Li Keqiang, in his opening address to parliament on March 5, declared war on pollution in an attempt to head off growing anger over the quality of China’s air, water and soil.

A drug that was used in the time of the pharaohs for rheumatism has proven highly effective in treating recurrent bouts of pericarditis, an inflammation of the sac surrounding the heart, according to findings of a new clinical trial. The ancient medicine, colchicine, which has also been used for centuries as an anti-inflammatory agent for acute gout, was tested against placebo in a 240-patient pericarditis trial. The rate of recurring pericarditis was nearly halved for those taking colchicine compared with placebo, according to data presented on Sunday at the annual scientific sessions of the American College of Cardiology in Washington. The condition, which causes sharp chest pain, recurred in 42.5 percent of those taking dummy pills, compared with 21.6 percent of those who got colchicine.