Campaign begins in Arizona to make recreational marijuana legal

A fully budded marijuana plant ready for trimming is seen at the Botanacare marijuana store ahead of their grand opening on New Year's day in Northglenn, ColoradoBy David Schwartz PHOENIX (Reuters) – Advocates for legalizing marijuana launched a petition campaign in Phoenix on Friday seeking a ballot measure that could make Arizona the fifth U.S. state to allow possession, cultivation and consumption of small amounts of pot for recreational use. Supporters have until July of next year to obtain the signatures of 150,642 registered voters in the politically conservative state in order to get their initiative placed on the November 2016 ballot, election officials said. Following the leads of five other western states and the District of Columbia, the Arizona measure would legalize possession, cultivation and private personal consumption of marijuana by adults for the sake of just getting high. Arizona is already one of 23 U.S. states, plus the District of Columbia, that allow marijuana for medicinal purposes.

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Household bleach may raise children’s infection risk

By Madeline Kennedy (Reuters Health) – – At home and at school, cleaning with chlorine bleach is meant to kill germs that could make kids sick, but a large European study finds bleach may be having the opposite effect. Children in The Netherlands, Finland and Spain who were regularly exposed to bleach-cleaned environments had higher rates of respiratory-tract infections, including influenza, bronchitis and tonsillitis. “We should be aware that some of the products (like bleach) that we use in our homes for cleaning are chemicals that may have also some effect on our health and also on our children’s health,” said Lidia Casas of the Center for Environment and Health in Belgium who led the study Previous studies have also linked cleaning products to respiratory health issues in children. To sort out the effects of bleach exposure on kids, Casas told Reuters Health in an email, “We aimed to investigate if children living in homes cleaned with bleach had more infections than those living in homes where bleach was not used.” The study team contacted the parents of over 9,000 children between the ages of six and 12 who attended schools in Spain, the Netherlands and Finland.
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Stretching won’t prevent tendon injuries

Kenyan athletes stretch during a training session in Kigari-EmbuBy Roxanne Nelson (Reuters Health) – – Tendon injuries are common in sports, and there are many schools of thought on how to avoid them. Shock absorbing insoles, and hormone replacement therapy for postmenopausal women, on the other hand, did offer protection for some, the researchers found. "Stretching is often viewed as an empirically accepted method to prevent sports injuries, including tendinopathy," write the authors, led by Janne A. Peters from the University Medical Center Groningen in the Netherlands. "However, there is no scientific evidence that confirms this," they point out in Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport.

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Indiana reports jump in new HIV cases in rural outbreak

About 2880 candles are seen lit during a World AIDS Day event in Jakarta(Reuters) – An HIV outbreak in southeastern Indiana related to abuse of intravenous prescription drugs has jumped by 24 cases in the past week, an increase attributed to offering more testing resources, state health officials said on Friday. The outbreak centered in rural Scott County near the border with Kentucky has reached 130 cases, including 10 preliminary positive tests, up from 106 a week ago, health officials said. Scott County, about 30 miles north of Louisville, Kentucky, has been the center of the outbreak, the biggest in the state's history. A needle exchange program started April 4 for Scott County residents has so far distributed 5,322 clean syringes to 86 people and collected 1,400 used syringes, health officials said.

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