Thursday, October 31, 2013

Daily News: Reuters Science News Headlines - U.S. preterm births fall to 15-year low, still worst in developed world

Thursday, Oct 31, 2013 09:10 PM PDT
Today's Reuters Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News:

U.S. preterm births fall to 15-year low, still worst in developed world 
Thursday, Oct 31, 2013 09:10 PM PDT
By Sharon Begley NEW YORK (Reuters) - The rate of preterm births in the United States dropped to a 15-year low of 11.5 percent in 2012, according to a report released on Friday, but the country still came in dead last among industrialized nations on this measure of infant health. The rate reflects six straight years of declines, possibly due to factors such as a drop in smoking among women of childbearing age, said the March of Dimes, the nonprofit group that produced the report. The improvement comes during an acrimonious, partisan debate in Congress about health insurance centered on President Barack Obama's healthcare reform law. The Affordable Care Act requires all insurance plans to cover maternity care, spreading the cost of healthy pregnancies across society.
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Syria meets deadline to destroy chemical production facilities 
Thursday, Oct 31, 2013 07:42 PM PDT
U.N. vehicles transporting a team of OPCW experts, leave their hotel in DamascusBy Dominic Evans BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria has destroyed or rendered inoperable all of its declared chemical weapons production and mixing facilities, meeting a major deadline in an ambitious disarmament program, the international chemical weapons watchdog said Thursday. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which won the Nobel Peace prize this month, said its teams had inspected 21 out of 23 chemical weapons sites across the country. Syria "has completed the functional destruction of critical equipment for all of its declared chemical weapons production facilities and mixing/filling plants, rendering them inoperable," it said, meeting a November 1 deadline for the work. The next target date is November 15, by when the OPCW and Syria must agree to a detailed plan of destruction, including how and where to destroy more than 1,000 metric tonnes of toxic agents and munitions.
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Mayor in Hawaii vetoes measure curbing pesticides, GMO crops 
Thursday, Oct 31, 2013 06:00 PM PDT
By Christopher D'Angelo LIHUE, Hawaii (Reuters) - The mayor of the tropical island of Kauai, Hawaii, vetoed a measure on Thursday that reins in pesticide use by agricultural companies and limits where they can plant genetically modified crops, saying the bill was "legally flawed." The Kauai County Council voted 6-1 on October 16 in favor of the bill that would require buffer zones around schools, hospitals and homes where no crops can be grown and limits pesticide use. Kauai County Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr. said in a statement that while he agrees with the intent of the bill, he is not going to allow it to go into effect. This latest twist comes after months of protests by islanders and mainland U.S. groups who want to see a range of broad controls on the global agrichemical companies that have found Kauai's tropical climate ideal for year-round testing of new biotech crops. Among those testing biotech crops on Hawaii's "Garden Isle," as Kauai is known, are DuPont, Syngenta AG, BASF, and Dow AgroSciences, a division of Dow Chemical Co. Kauai Coffee, the largest coffee grower in Hawaii, also opposed the measure.
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Coke Femsa shares fall as Mexico passes food, drink taxes 
Thursday, Oct 31, 2013 04:30 PM PDT
By Elinor Comlay MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Shares of Mexico's biggest bottling company fell on Thursday as Congress approved a 1 peso-per-liter tax on sugary drinks and an 8 percent tax on junk food as part of a wider tax overhaul. The plan, which was passed by lawmakers after markets closed, aims to curb rising obesity levels as well as lift Mexico's poor tax take. Shares of Mexico-based Coca-Cola Femsa, Coke's largest bottler in Latin America, closed down 1.28 percent at 159.02 pesos. Mexico, where obesity rates are now higher than in the United States, will be the first major soda market to tax high-calorie sodas, following a handful of other Latin American and European countries.
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Mexican Congress passes diluted government tax reform 
Thursday, Oct 31, 2013 04:13 PM PDT
A woman buys chocolate from a store in Polanco neighborhood in Mexico CityBy Miguel Gutierrez, Michael O'Boyle and Dave Graham MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's Congress on Thursday approved a government-backed bill to increase weak tax revenues but watered down the measure that is expected to have only a moderate effect on the tax take. The ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) pushed the bill through with leftist lawmakers, making final tweaks to slightly weaken a proposal to increase income tax rates. Conservatives said the bill was a menace to the stumbling economy and walked out of the Senate in protest when their attempts to change the plan were ignored by the PRI. Lawmakers in the lower house of Congress gave final approval to the tax bill, and President Enrique Pena Nieto is expected to sign the measures into law.
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Obamacare website gets new tech experts; oversight pressure grows 
Thursday, Oct 31, 2013 02:50 PM PDT
Janet Perez oversees specialists help callers with health insurance, at a customer care center in Providence, Rhode IslandBy Susan Cornwell and David Morgan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration said it has brought in experts from top technology companies including Google Inc and Oracle Corp to fix the HealthCare.gov website, as Republicans press for details about the botched October 1 launch that prevented millions of Americans from signing up for new insurance plans. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said it had added dozens of technology experts and engineers to its round-the-clock effort to fix the technical glitches on the site that is key to the implementation of President Barack Obama's healthcare restructuring law. Giving some of the first details of who might be leading the tech fix, HHS officials identified two experts by name: Michael Dickerson, a website reliability engineer on leave from Google, and Greg Gershman, a Baltimore-based innovation director with the firm Mobomo and who previously worked for the White House and the General Services Administration. "We are doing everything we can to assist those contractors to make HealthCare.gov a highly performant, highly reliable, highly secure system." Oracle CEO Larry Ellison told shareholders at the company's annual meeting on Thursday in Redwood City, California.
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Wall Street ends session lower but posts gains for October 
Thursday, Oct 31, 2013 02:11 PM PDT
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock ExchangeBy Caroline Valetkevitch NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks finished lower on Thursday as the Federal Reserve's statement the day before added to investors' anxiety about the timing of a pullback in its stimulus program. Dragging on the Dow and the S&P 500, Visa Inc
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TSX drops as Barrick leads golds lower; Valeant weighs 
Thursday, Oct 31, 2013 01:58 PM PDT
An electronic board displays the midday TSX index in TorontoBy Alastair Sharp TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada's main stock index fell on Thursday from two-year highs hit a day earlier, as gold stocks sank and negative earnings surprises weighed. "Without this mine being fully developed it will not be a future source of production, so that's going to impact the financial estimates in terms of cash flows and obviously impact people's net asset valuations of the company," said Gareth Watson, vice president of investment management and research at Richardson GMP.
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Obama will use executive powers to conserve lands: Interior secretary 
Thursday, Oct 31, 2013 01:56 PM PDT
U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at the SelectUSA 2013 Investment Summit in WashingtonBy Patrick Rucker WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will use his executive powers to protect more mountains, rivers and forests from development if Congress does not act to preserve such wild spaces, the U.S. Interior Secretary said on Thursday. Such preservation efforts can also come through Congress but presidents in a second term have typically felt freer to designate such spaces unilaterally. On Thursday, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said that the president was ready to move ahead. "There's no question that if Congress doesn't act, we will act," Jewell said at a luncheon at the National Press Club in Washington.
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Big Oil faces pressure from shareholders over costs 
Thursday, Oct 31, 2013 01:38 PM PDT
Exxon corporate logo is pictured at a gas station in ArlingtonBy Andrew Callus and Anna Driver LONDON/HOUSTON (Reuters) - Oil industry shareholders concerned about poor returns and costly projects urged executives from Big Oil this week to return cash to shareholders - and at least one of the world's top five petroleum companies fully acquiesced. As they posted third-quarter results, the leading oil companies vowed to control spending and to put cash in the pockets of investors through asset sales, share buybacks or dividends while analysts grumbled about lagging stock prices. It raised its dividend, cut back capital spending plans, and ramped up its asset sales target to $10 billion over the next two years from between $4 billion and $6 billion previously - cash that will also go back to shareholders. "At the moment the market likes oil companies that cut back on expenditure and pay out big dividends," said Malcolm Graham-Wood, analyst and adviser at VSA Capital.
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Pakistani PM says talks with Pakistani Taliban are underway 
Thursday, Oct 31, 2013 10:52 AM PDT
Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif addresses the World Islamic Economic Forum in LondonPakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said on Thursday his country had started talks with the Pakistani Taliban to try to stop what he said was the killing of innocent people and members of the law enforcement agencies. The Pakistani Taliban, an umbrella group of factions operating independently from their Afghan Taliban allies, are fighting to set up an Islamic state in Pakistan. The Pakistani government has been trying to negotiate a peace settlement to end years of fighting, but the al Qaeda-linked group had previously said it was not open to talks. "The Prime Minister informed that the dialogue with the Taliban has started," the High Commission for Pakistan in London said in a statement.
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Mexican tax plan weakened further, nears final approval 
Thursday, Oct 31, 2013 09:49 AM PDT
A woman stands next to more than 2,000 chocolate samples adhered to the walls inside "Mucho", a chocolate museum, in Mexico CityBy Miguel Gutierrez, Michael O'Boyle and Dave Graham MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's Senate on Thursday made new cuts to a tax reform plan that President Enrique Pena Nieto proposed to increase the nation's anemic tax take before sending the bill back to the lower house of Congress for final approval. The bill, which includes higher taxes for the rich as well as levies on junk food and on stock market gains, is a cornerstone of a wider reform agenda that Pena Nieto is pushing to lift lackluster growth in Latin America's No. 2 economy. After conservative opponents walked out of the Senate, refusing to support the legislation, ruling party leaders struck a deal with leftist lawmakers on changes to income tax rates that would lower the bill's projected tax take. It would then fall to Pena Nieto to sign it into law.
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Siemens infrastructure unit revamp not a priority: CEO 
Thursday, Oct 31, 2013 09:42 AM PDT
has no plan for now to dismantle its Infrastructure & Cities division, its new chief executive said in a company newsletter, brushing off a recent press report. "I have already made it clear, numerous times, that changing the IC Sector structure is not a priority for me," Joe Kaeser said in a newsletter distributed on Thursday. Germany's Manager Magazin reported earlier this month that Siemens planned to dismantle Infrastructure & Cities and was reviewing other activities. The division was set up by Kaeser's predecessor Peter Loescher in 2011, grouping businesses making products ranging from security systems to high-speed trains and power distribution systems.
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Thousands in contested Abyei vote to join South Sudan, risking tensions 
Thursday, Oct 31, 2013 09:34 AM PDT
Men ride on a motorbike with South Sudan's national flag as they celebrate referendum results in AbyeiBy Ilya Gridneff ABYEI (Reuters) - Permanent residents of the disputed Abyei region overwhelmingly voted to join South Sudan on Thursday in a symbolic referendum that could antagonize heavily armed Arab nomads who drive their livestock through the area and claim it for Sudan. Local leaders said they held the poll because they were tired of waiting for a long-promised official plebiscite on the ownership of the remote region on the border of Sudan and South Sudan, which has seen several clashes between their troops. The one-sided vote by the Dinka Ngok people, who occupy most of Abyei's permanent settlements and are loyal to South Sudan, had already been dismissed by both Khartoum and Juba who said it would carry no legal weight. "The Abyei people have been suffering for a long time.
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Exxon's output rises but refining weakness hits profit 
Thursday, Oct 31, 2013 09:31 AM PDT
Exxon corporate logo is pictured at a gas station in ArlingtonExxon and other large oil companies struggling to boost production in recent years have spent heavily on new projects. In the first nine months of this year, Exxon alone spent $33 billion. "This is their first year-over-year (production) increase in more than two years," said Brian Youngberg, an energy company analyst at Edward Jones in St. Louis. "It does show that they are hopefully making some progress stemming the decline that they've shown the last couple of years." Exxon last reported a quarterly gain in production in the second quarter of 2011.
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