Year: 2014

President Barack Obama accused Fox News on Sunday of keeping alive controversies the White House believes have been settled in a testy interview that aired before the NFL's Super Bowl, the most-viewed sports event in the United States. Host Bill O'Reilly asked Obama why he did not fire his health and human services chief over the botched rollout of the healthcare law last year, whether there was "widespread corruption" at the Internal Revenue Service, and whether the White House had tried to play down the significance of a 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Obama said "some boneheaded decisions" were to blame for extra scrutiny the IRS had given to conservative Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status, and that the issue had been cleared up during "multiple hearings" in Congress.

Governments could slow or even reverse the growing obesity epidemic if they introduced more regulation into the global market for fast foods such as burgers, chips and fizzy drinks, researchers said on Monday. A study published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organisation (WHO) suggested that if governments took firmer action, they could start to prevent people becoming overweight and obese – conditions with serious long-term consequences such as diabetes, heart diseases and cancer. “Unless governments take steps to regulate their economies, the invisible hand of the market will continue to promote obesity worldwide with disastrous consequences for future public health and economic productivity,” said Roberto De Vogli of the University of California, Davis, in the United States, who led the study. The WHO is urging governments to do more to try to prevent obesity happening in the first place, rather than risking the high human and economic costs when it does.

A member of the ski team at a prestigious U.S. college collapsed and died over the weekend from unknown causes while competing in a cross-country ski race in Vermont, a spokesman for Dartmouth College said on Sunday. Torin Tucker, 20, a junior from Sun Valley, Idaho, was climbing an uphill stretch of a rugged 25-kilometer course in northeast Vermont on Saturday morning when he fell to the ground. He died moments later and did not respond to resuscitation efforts, said Dartmouth spokesman Justin Anderson.

The abortion rate in the United States dipped to its lowest since 1973, coinciding with a steep decline in overall pregnancy and birth rates, a study from a nonprofit sexual health organization showed on Sunday. “With abortion rates falling in almost all states, our study did not find evidence that the national decline in abortions during this period was the result of new state abortion restrictions. We also found no evidence that the decline was linked to a drop in the number of abortion providers during this period,” says Rachel Jones, lead author of the study. The decline in abortions coincided with a drop in overall pregnancy and birth rates, and contraceptive use and methods improved during the period, Jones said.

Canadian diversified miner Teck Resources Ltd is investigating another spill at its Trail smelting complex in British Columbia, but said on Sunday it does not expect the incident to have a long-term impact on fish or the environment. Up to 25 cubic meters (883 cubic feet) of a solution containing some sodium hydroxide was released into a sewer line on Tuesday, Teck said in a statement. Sodium hydroxide is a corrosive chemical that when concentrated can burn and blister skin. “Initial information indicates that the sewage treatment plant process may have diluted the high pH solution somewhat but otherwise had a limited effect,” Teck spokesman Richard Deane said in an email on Sunday.