| | |
| Eight dead after plane crashes in northern Bolivia: hospital Sunday, Nov 03, 2013 05:01 PM PST  A Bolivian plane carrying 18 people crashed on Sunday while trying to land during bad weather in the north of the Andean country, killing eight passengers and injuring the others on board, the director of a local hospital told Reuters. Heavy rain was falling as the small turboprop plane operated by local airline Aerocon tried to land in Riberalta, in Beni department near the Brazilian border, according to witnesses. President Evo Morales said he had ordered "a deep investigation" into the accident and "drastic sanctions on the company." (Reporting by Daniel Ramos; Full Story | Top |
| Britons turn to junk food after financial crisis - study Sunday, Nov 03, 2013 04:13 PM PST  Britons hurt by lower incomes and rising food prices after the financial crisis have cut back on fruit and vegetables and turned instead to fatty, sugary, processed food, an academic study showed on Monday. The net effect has been that Britons are spending 8.5 percent less in real terms on food purchased at home than before the recession - with the trend even greater for pensioners and families with young children. The research is likely to be politically sensitive at a time when Britain's Conservative-led government is under pressure from the Labour Party, over declining standards of living and sharply rising demand at food banks which hand out free food to the poorest Britons. People have economised by buying less food, measured in number of calories, but also on its quality, picking products that are less nutritious and higher in saturated fat and sugar. Full Story | Top |
| In political messaging wars, White House deploys a Twitter army Sunday, Nov 03, 2013 03:41 PM PST  By Roberta Rampton WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Besieged by unflattering stories about the launch of President Barack Obama's healthcare program, the White House saw a news report that it wanted to swiftly knock down. It was from NBC, which said that Obama had overpromised when he said Americans who liked their insurance could keep it, and that the president knew that many people would see their coverage change. White House officials quickly began firing off a barrage of tweets on Twitter, which has become one of the administration's most potent and relied-upon weapons in trying to shape public opinion and media reports. "NBC 'scoop' cites normal turnover in the indiv insurance market," Earnest tweeted to his 9,500 followers on Twitter. Full Story | Top |
| Toronto mayor urges police to release video, apologizes for 'mistakes' Sunday, Nov 03, 2013 03:18 PM PST  By Jeffrey Hodgson TORONTO (Reuters) - Toronto Mayor Rob Ford on Sunday urged his police chief to release a video that media reports say show him smoking what appears to be crack cocaine and issued a broad apology for mistakes in his past, including public drunkenness. But Ford, who previously said he does not use crack, said he could not discuss the content of the video until he had seen it. "Whatever this video shows ... Toronto residents deserve to see it, and people need to judge for themselves what they see on this video," Ford said on his weekly radio show. Full Story | Top |
| World Bank urges better cookstoves in developing states to curb deaths Sunday, Nov 03, 2013 03:04 PM PST  By Environment Correspondent Alister Doyle OSLO (Reuters) - (Release at 2301 GMT, Sunday Nov 3) Simple measures to reduce pollution from cooking stoves in developing nations could save a million lives a year and help slow global warming, a World Bank study showed on Monday. The study called for tough limits on pollution from methane and soot, which can settle on snow and ice and hasten a thaw by darkening the surface, in everything from cooking and heating to mining and flaring by the oil and gas industry. "The damage from indoor cooking smoke alone is horrendous - every year, four million people die from exposure to the smoke," World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said in a statement of the study "on Thin Ice: How Cutting Pollution can Slow Warming and Save Lives." Many people in developing nations cook on open fires with wood or coal, exposing people - mainly women and children - to fumes that cause everything from respiratory problems to heart disease. "If more clean cook-stoves - stoves that use less or cleaner fuel - would be used it could save one million lives," the report said of the annual benefits. Full Story | Top |
| Republican Ayotte seeks 'time out' on Obamacare as anxieties grow Sunday, Nov 03, 2013 11:56 AM PST  By Lisa Lambert WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte wants to press "pause" on rolling out the U.S. healthcare reform law as anxiety grows about troubles with the federal website for buying insurance and possibly low numbers of people signing up for coverage. "I'm calling on the president now to say, 'Let's have a time-out on this.' Mr. President, you call a time-out on this," said Ayotte in an appearance on CNN on Sunday. "Convene a group of bipartisan leaders to address healthcare concerns in this country because this is not working." Ayotte said the pause would not be a replay of an October standoff over fiscal issues, when an impasse between Democrats and Republicans resulted in a partial shutdown of the federal government as Republicans sought to defund the healthcare law, known as Obamacare. "The administration, in the way this is being rolled out, is a mess." On Wednesday Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will face angry Republicans such as Ayotte when she testifies before the Senate Finance Committee about the online federal insurance exchange. Full Story | Top |
| Merck experimental vaccine shows promise in cancer trial: WSJ Sunday, Nov 03, 2013 09:19 AM PST (Reuters) - Merck & Co Inc's experimental cancer vaccine appeared to provide broader protection against a cancer-causing virus than the company's Gardasil shot did in clinical trials, the Wall Street Journal said on Sunday. Officials at Merck were not immediately available to comment. The article said Merck expects health-care providers to eventually switch to V503 if the product receives marketing approval. Gardasil, launched in 2006, was the first vaccine to protect against human papillomavirus, or HPV, a sexually transmitted virus that can cause cervical cancer in women and other less-common types of cancer in males and females. Full Story | Top |
| Parasite depletes wild shrimp haul off southeast Atlantic coast Sunday, Nov 03, 2013 07:37 AM PST  By Harriet McLeod CHARLESTON, South Carolina (Reuters) - Wild shrimp hauls off the southern Atlantic coast have plunged in recent months as a parasite has made it harder for the creatures to breathe, according to state wildlife officials in Georgia and South Carolina. Experts said they believe black gill disease, caused by a tiny parasite, contributed to a die-off of white shrimp between August and October, typically the prime catch season. "It's like the shrimp are smoking three packs of cigarettes a day, and now they're having to go run a marathon," said Mel Bell, director of South Carolina's Office of Fisheries Management. "Shrimpers are reporting to us that they dump the bag on the deck, and the shrimp are just dead." South Carolina shrimpers hauled in 44,000 pounds of shrimp in September, less than 6 percent of the September, 2012 catch of more than 750,000 pounds, Bell said. Full Story | Top |
| Insight: U.S. farm kids lavish shampoos and drugs on their prize cattle Sunday, Nov 03, 2013 05:48 AM PST  By Lisa Baertlein and P.J. Huffstutter DALLAS (Reuters) - For more than a century, ranchers and their kids have paraded cattle around the dusty show ring at the State Fair of Texas in Dallas, in a rite of passage that is part farm economics, part rural theater. MUSCLE-BUILDING STAPLE Many of the fresh-faced kids who compete at cattle shows have seen beta-agonists on their family farms or feedlots. Full Story | Top |
| Roche poised for deal to get back into antibiotics: paper Sunday, Nov 03, 2013 05:10 AM PST  Swiss drugmaker Roche is poised to get back into antibiotics by taking over a candidate drug being developed by privately-owned Polyphor, the NZZ am Sonntag paper said on Sunday, without citing a source for the information. Roche's Chief Executive Severin Schwan said last month that the company was interested in "bolt-on acquisitions". But a company spokesman declined to confirm the report on Sunday, saying the firm did not comment on rumors. "We have an open and pragmatic approach to R&D and have mentioned in the past that antibiotics is an area where a lot of interesting science is going on," Roche spokesman Daniel Grotzky said in an emailed reply to a Reuters enquiry. Full Story | Top |
| Japan ruling party questions plan to let Fukushima evacuees go home: media Saturday, Nov 02, 2013 09:35 PM PDT A Japanese ruling party official has called into question a government plan to let people who fled from the Fukushima nuclear disaster go home, saying the government should identify areas that will never be habitable. The Fukushima plant north of Tokyo was battered by an earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, leading to meltdowns and explosions that sent plumes of radiation into the air and sea. But Shigeru Ishiba, secretary general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), said it was inevitable that some people would never go back. The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co, has been struggling to stop radiation leaks from the wrecked plant. Full Story | Top |
|
No comments:
Post a Comment