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| SEC scores partial win in insider trading case over 2009 Sanofi deal Thursday, Mar 06, 2014 06:46 PM PST Federal securities regulators have won a partial victory against two brothers accused of trading on inside information in 2009 about French pharmaceutical company Sanofi's plan to buy a Tennessee-based company. A jury in the U.S. district court in Cleveland, Ohio, found that Andrew Jacobs and Leslie Jacobs committed insider trading in the context of a tender offer, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced in a statement. At the same time, the jury also found that the brothers were not liable under a broader insider trading statute not specific to tender offers, Ned Searby, a lawyer for Leslie Jacobs, said. The decision is the latest in a string of mixed jury verdicts that highlight how difficult it can be for the SEC to obtain clear-cut victories in complex securities cases. Full Story | Top |
| 'Too drunk' gambler sues Las Vegas casino over $500,000 debt Thursday, Mar 06, 2014 02:39 PM PST (Reuters) - A California man who lost $500,000 in 17 hours gambling at a Las Vegas casino was so drunk he could not remember the episode after waking up in his hotel room, said a lawsuit filed on his behalf that seeks to erase the debt. Mark Johnston, 52, arrived drunk at the Downtown Grand casino and was plied with free alcoholic drinks while he gambled, according to the suit filed February 18 in Nevada state court for Clark County. After leaving the gaming tables, Johnston went to his hotel room and woke up the next day with no memory of his time at the tables, stated the lawsuit, depicting his mental state while gambling as a "blackout period." Johnston's attorney, Sean Lyttle, described him as a self-made millionaire who previously owned a number of car dealerships and was involved in real estate development. Starting on the night of January 30 and running into the next afternoon at the casino in downtown Las Vegas, a few miles from The Strip, Johnston played pai gow and blackjack for 17 hours and was served about 20 drinks, according to the lawsuit. Full Story | Top |
| U.S. official in charge of Obamacare exchanges resigns Thursday, Mar 06, 2014 02:37 PM PST  A top U.S. healthcare official, accused by Republicans of misleading Congress about the readiness of the Obamacare rollout, will resign from his post at the end of March, officials said on Thursday. The departure of Gary Cohen as director of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight (CCIIO) was announced within the administration on Wednesday in an email from his boss, Marilyn Tavenner, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Cohen, a former California insurance regulator who took up his post in August 2012, has overseen regulatory implementation of the Obamacare health insurance marketplaces, a process that often drew fire from insurers and lawmakers for its slow pace and numerous revisions. Along with Tavenner and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Cohen was among top officials who assured Congress that the October 1 launch of the federal enrollment website HealthCare.gov would be successful. Full Story | Top |
| Rifle-toting McConnell seeks firepower for re-election campaign Thursday, Mar 06, 2014 02:28 PM PST  By David Lawder NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell tried to bring some firepower to his tough re-election battle on Thursday, brandishing a rifle as he strode onstage at the Conservative Political Action Conference. McConnell hoisted the flint-lock muzzle-loading rifle over his head at the gathering of conservative leaders and Republican Party activists and handed it to Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn, a fellow Republican who has said he will retire when his term ends in January 2015 due to health reasons. "This is for you, for your distinguished service," said McConnell, 72, earning the biggest applause of his brief speech at CPAC. For McConnell, who is the sixth-longest serving current U.S. senator, wielding the rifle amounted to a nod to gun-rights conservatives at a time when he has come under fire on two fronts as he seeks another term in the November 4 elections. Full Story | Top |
| Financial 'vicious cycle' traps poor women caregivers Thursday, Mar 06, 2014 02:05 PM PST "We looked at the relationship among parental caregiving, labor force participation and financial wellbeing," said lead author Yeonjung Lee, a researcher and professor at the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. Overall, the researchers found, women who cared for their parents in 2006 and 2008 had lower incomes in 2008 and 2010. Full Story | Top |
| The dawning of the age of genomic medicine, finally Thursday, Mar 06, 2014 01:30 PM PST  By Julie Steenhuysen LA JOLLA, California (Reuters) - When President Bill Clinton announced in 2000 that Craig Venter and Dr. Francis Collins of the National Human Genome Research Institute had succeeded in mapping the human genome, he solemnly declared that the discovery would "revolutionize" the treatment of virtually all human disease. The expectation was that this single reference map of the 3 billion base pairs of DNA -- the human genetic code -- would quickly unlock the secrets of Alzheimer's, diabetes, cancer and other scourges of human health. As it turns out, Clinton's forecast was not unlike President George Bush's "mission accomplished" speech in the early days of the Iraq war, said Dr. Eric Topol of Scripps Translational Science Institute, which is running a meeting On the Future of Genomic Medicine here March 6-7. Full Story | Top |
| Chemo drug helps HIV patients respond to Sangamo gene therapy Thursday, Mar 06, 2014 01:21 PM PST  Treating HIV patients first with a chemotherapy drug improved their response to an experimental gene-modifying technique for controlling the virus, according to Sangamo BioSciences. Shares of Sangamo were up 17 percent at $22.92 in late trading on Nasdaq. On Wednesday, the New England Journal of Medicine published data from an earlier trial showed that Sangamo's strategy of genetically modifying cells from people infected with HIV could become a way to control the virus that causes AIDS without using antiviral drugs. "Sangamo's HIV 'suppression' is promising, but very early and far from a 'cure,'" RBC Capital Markets analyst Michael Yee said in a research note. Full Story | Top |
| Texas abortion provider closes two clinics, citing new law Thursday, Mar 06, 2014 01:09 PM PST By Lisa Maria Garza DALLAS (Reuters) - Two more Texas abortion providers said they will shut down this week, saying their doctors were unable to get admitting privileges to nearby hospitals as required under new restrictions enacted by the state last year. Proponents of new regulations say they were designed to protect women's health. Women's rights groups have complained that they were designed to put abortion clinics out of business and have already succeeded in eliminating a third of them. Women in parts of Texas now must drive for hours to reach a clinic. Full Story | Top |
| U.S. House advances bill curbing EPA power plant emission limits Thursday, Mar 06, 2014 12:11 PM PST By Valerie Volcovici WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A bill to curb the ability of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to set limits on carbon emissions from power plants cleared a hurdle in the House of Representatives on Thursday but faces bleak prospects of becoming law. The Republican-controlled House passed the bill by a 229-183 vote but the Senate, in which Democrats hold a majority, has no timetable to consider the legislation. President Barack Obama already has threatened to veto the bill. The legislation was the latest in a series of strong messages sent by lawmakers from large coal producing states to Obama, as his administration aims to cement a legacy of combating climate change by cracking down on carbon emissions. Full Story | Top |
| No clear winner for neck pain treatment: study Thursday, Mar 06, 2014 12:09 PM PST By Kathleen Raven NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Exercise and strengthening may not be the best approach for all kinds of neck- and whiplash-related pain, according to a new analysis by Canadian researchers. Instead, the new research "suggests that people with neck pain have many options when choosing how to improve it," Janet Freburger told Reuters Health. "There were no major differences between the types of exercise programs, or (evidence) that exercise in general was beneficial," said Freburger, an associate director at the Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After reviewing 10 randomized controlled trials for neck pain treatment published since 2008, researchers concluded that certain treatments may be helpful for specific types of neck pain, depending on whether it is mild or severe. Full Story | Top |
| Removing playground benches may get adults moving Thursday, Mar 06, 2014 11:04 AM PST By Elizabeth DeVita-Raeburn NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Getting adults to be more active on visits to children's playgrounds could be as simple as removing the temptation to sit, a small new study suggests. Inspired during his daily lunchtime walks by the sight of parents sitting on playground benches, a U.S. researcher has shown that moving the seating away from the area increased the amount of exercise that parents and caregivers got as they watched their kids. "For such an easy and inexpensive change, we were able to shift many adults from sitting to standing and that alone promotes health," said lead author James Roemmich, a supervisory research physiologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Grand Forks, North Dakota. The study, published in the journal Preventive Medicine, focused on a single playground in Grand Forks, where parents tended to congregate at eight picnic tables with benches and watch their children. Full Story | Top |
| Older adults may struggle with excess possessions Thursday, Mar 06, 2014 11:03 AM PST By Allison Bond NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A lifetime's worth of acquisitions and mementos may bring comfort to older adults, but this "material convoy" can also become more burdensome with age, U.S. researchers say. "Having too many things is an obstacle to (older adults) being able to move to or live somewhere" smaller that better suits them, said lead author David Ekerdt, who is director of the gerontology center at Kansas University in Lawrence. "For the first time, we have data about older people's regards for their possessions," Ekerdt told Reuters Health. They included how often people had "cleaned out or reduced the number" of belongings, and how often these possessions were sold, given to friends or family or donated to organizations. Full Story | Top |
| Climate change could mean more malaria in Africa, South America Thursday, Mar 06, 2014 10:02 AM PST By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) - Future global warming could lead to a significant increase in malaria cases in densely populated regions of Africa and South America unless disease monitoring and control efforts are increased, researchers said on Thursday. In a study of the mosquito-borne disease that infects around 220 million people a year, researchers from Britain and the United States found what they describe as the first hard evidence that malaria creeps to higher elevations during warmer years and back down to lower altitudes when temperatures cool. This in turn "suggests that with progressive global warming, malaria will creep up the mountains and spread to new high-altitude areas," said Menno Bouma, an honorary clinical lecturer at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). And because people who live in these areas have no protective immunity because they are not used to being exposed to malaria, they will be particularly vulnerable to more severe and fatal cases of infection, he added. Full Story | Top |
| Aviva offloads pension fund longevity risk in record deal Thursday, Mar 06, 2014 09:36 AM PST By Jemima Kelly LONDON (Reuters) - British insurer Aviva has agreed to transfer the risk of members of its staff pension scheme living longer than expected to three reinsurers for 5 billion poundsin the largest deal of its kind. Aviva's transaction by itself represents more than half of the total 8.9 billion pounds of longevity swaps in 2013 and is substantially larger than the previous 3.2 billion pound record set by BAE Systems last year. Longevity swaps, which involve a final-salary pension scheme hiving off the risk that it will have to pay pensioners for longer than expected, have become a growing market because statisticians have consistently underestimated life expectancy. Aviva told Reuters on Thursday that the deal was agreed with Swiss Re, Munich Re and SCOR. Full Story | Top |
| U.S. teens' e-cigarette use associated with smoking: study Thursday, Mar 06, 2014 08:09 AM PST  By Toni Clarke WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A study published on Thursday found an association between smoking and e-cigarette use among adolescents but didn't answer a pressing public-health question on whether e-cigarettes acted as a gateway to smoking. Published in JAMA Pediatrics, the study found that among those who have smoked, adolescents who also used e-cigarettes were less likely to have given up smoking than those who did not use e-cigarettes. The authors of the study, Lauren Dutra and Stanton Glantz, a prominent opponent of e-cigarettes, concluded that the "use of e-cigarettes does not discourage, and may encourage, conventional cigarette use among U.S. adolescents." Critics say the results do not support such a conclusion. Dr. Michael Siegel, a professor of community health sciences at Boston University School of Public Health who has spoken publicly in favor of e-cigarettes, said that while the study draws a correlation between smoking and e-cigarette use, there was no evidence to prove e-cigarettes led to smoking. Full Story | Top |
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