Bitch about Headline News on Health, Environment, Internet, Politics and other Issues
The Washington Post reports some great news here: BAGHDAD, March 30 — American journalist Jill Carroll, abducted in early January by gunmen in Baghdad, was released to a Sunni Arab political party in the capital Thursday morning after 82 days in captivity.
The Washington Post writes here: Jack A. Abramoff, the once-powerful Republican lobbyist at the center of a major corruption scandal, was sentenced Wednesday to five years and 10 months in prison for his role in the fraudulent purchase of a fleet of casino cruise ships. An associate received the same sentence.
BBC reports here: A nude sculpture depicting singer Britney Spears giving birth to her son has prompted a flood of emails from both pro-choice and anti-abortionists. Monument to Pro-Life: The Birth of Sean Preston will be unveiled at New York’s Capla Kesting Art gallery in April.
Men and women who smoke or drink, or either, have a likelihood of developing colorectal cancer five to eight years earlier than abstemious persons, reported researchers here. Moreover, their review of records on more than 161,000 patients with colorectal cancer revealed that men as a gender tended to develop colorectal cancer about two years earlier than women, according to Hemant K. Roy, M.D., and colleagues at Northwestern.
The study, published in the March 27 Archives of Internal Medicine, indicated that patients who both smoked cigarettes and drink alcohol were likely to develop the disease about eight years earlier than non-smoking teetotalers. Smoking but not drinking had a greater effect on women than men. For more see this article here at the medpagetoday.com website.
Hospitals Urged to Boost Prevention The Washington Post reports here: Pennsylvania patients who contracted an infection during a hospital stay in 2004 rang up charges that were seven times higher than patients who did not develop an infection, complications that cost insurers and individuals an extra $614 million, according to a state analysis being released today.
Patients with hospital-acquired infections spent many more days in the hospital, underwent more extensive procedures and were seven times more likely to die, deaths that many experts say were largely preventable. Though the findings were from a single state, industry analysts said the problem of hospital-acquired infections is universal
Authorities Brace for More Protests Over Law on Youth Job Rights, so the Washington Post Foreign Service reports here: PARIS, March 28 — A nationwide strike cancelled flights, curtailed trains and buses and disrupted other public services throughout France Tuesday , as hundreds of thousands of students and workers staged the largest demonstrations in three weeks of protests against a pending labor law that will remove job protections from young people. Union organizers estimated a national turnout of 2.7 million, with 700,000 of those in Paris. Police figures were much lower.
AP reports here: Scarlett Johansson tops a lovely list of the "100 Sexiest Women in the World," in a poll of readers by FHM magazine. See who the other The Top 10 Sexiest Women in the World are here.
News.scotsman.com reports here: Scientists have developed a drug they believe could prevent the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. A cocktail of two drugs already used to treat HIV infection has shown such promise at preventing it in monkeys that officials have now said they are to expand early human tests around the world.
BBC reports here: People who mix alcohol with energy drinks like Red Bull can often feel less drunk than they really are, a study suggests. The Brazilian team compared the reactions of 26 men given either alcohol, Red Bull or a combination of both in three drinking sessions. Although the men perceived themselves to be less impaired when taking the mix physical tests proved the opposite.