Friday, August 5, 2011
Former Orioles player penalized by SEC
Former major league ballplayer Doug DeCinces has agreed to pay $2.5 million to settle a civil claim of insider trading, U.S. regulators say. DeCinces, 60, who heads a real estate firm in California, did not admit wrongdoing, the Securities and Exchange Commission said. The SEC alleges DeCinces profited in the amount of $1.3 million from advance word on Abbott Laboratories' takeover of Advanced Medical Optics and passed the information on to three friends.
After buying large quantities of Advanced Medical Optics, in some cases using accounts in his grandchildren's names, DeCinces sold the stock the day the acquisition was announced. Advanced Medical Optics' stock price more than doubled that day.
Other defendants in the case have also settled, the SEC said.
DeCinces, a third baseman, played for the Baltimore Orioles from 1973 to 1982, when he was traded to the California Angels. He retired in 1987 after playing briefly for the St. Louis Cardinals.
Giants sign first-round choice Amukamara
Cornerback Prince Amukamara, the Big 12 defensive player of the year last season, agreed to contract terms with the New York Giants, the team said Friday. Amukamara was New York's first-round choice, and 19th selection overall, in this year's draft. The former Nebraska defensive back missed the first five Giants practices but was in camp Friday to sign the contract.
Amukamara was a unanimous all-America pick last season after his assigned receivers caught just 18 passes over 14 games. He broke up 13 passes and had 59 tackles and a sack. He was the Big 12 defensive player of the year as Nebraska played its final season in that league.
The Giants also said they signed rookie free agent cornerback Darnell Burks from Fort Valley State (Ga.). Cornerback Bruce Johnson, a third-year pro who suffered an Achilles tendon injury Thursday, was waived Friday.
Reynolds and Theron break up
Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Charlize Theron have ended their brief summer romance, UsMagazine.com reported Friday.
Reynolds, the 34-year-old star of "The Proposal" and "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," is recently divorced from actress Scarlett Johansson.
Theron, 36, broke up with her longtime beau, actor Stuart Townsend, in January 2010.
UsMagazine.com said Reynolds and Theron ended their relationship in late July after a few months of dating.
"He only wanted something casual but she's in a rush to settle down, have kids and start a family since she's getting older," a source told the celebrity news Web site.
"[Theron] didn't take it very well when he broke it off. She knows deep down that it wouldn't have worked, but she is pretty bummed out about it all."
"They're both too busy," a friend of Theron told UsMagazine.com. "And they were hardly ever together anyway."
Brazil announces scholarship program
Brazil has announced it will invest $2.02 billion by the end of 2014 in 75,000 science and technology scholarships that will send students abroad. The commitment is part of the government's Science Without Borders program announced July 26, an article in Nature reported.
Brazil is one of the world's 10 largest economies and has a need for chemists, physicists, computer scientists and engineers, said Carlos Henrique de Brito Cruz, director of the Sao Paulo state research foundation.
"This will have a major impact in allowing Brazilian kids to take their ideas to the limit," he said.
There aren't enough students studying science and engineering to fill current demand, Aloizio Mercadante, the Brazilian minister of science and technology, said.
The scholarship program is intended to address the shortage by focusing on engineering, health sciences, life sciences and technology, he said.
The idea is to send students to top universities, mostly in the United States and United Kingdom. There are 238 foreign universities participating in the scholarship program, Mercadante said.
Prostate cancer research grants awarded
The Prostate Cancer Foundation in Santa Monica, Calif., said Friday it awarded nearly $10 million to bankroll 10 innovative research projects into the disease. The Challenge Awards are valued at $9.8 million over three years and were selected from 59 proposals from cancer centers around the world by a peer-review panel at the Southern California foundation.
"These newly funded programs form an excellent, patient-centric research portfolio," said Howard Soule, executive vice president and chief science officer for PCF. "With reductions in federal funding for prostate cancer research, it's imperative for us to seek the most promising research ideas and fund them with the goal of changing clinical practice and improving outcomes for patients with advanced prostate cancer."
The projects selected by the PCF do not currently enjoy federal funding and are considered "highly innovative research with potential near-term patient benefit," the foundation said in a written statement.
The grants went to labs studying areas including nanotechnology, imaging and chemotherapy compounds such as Zytiga and LX184.
The institutions receiving grants were: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden Hospital, University of California, San Francisco, UW Carbone Cancer Center, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins Cancer and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
Action on genetic salmon urged
A Purdue University scientist says U.S. officials must come to a decision on whether genetically engineered salmon should be allowed for U.S. consumption. William Muir, a professor of animal sciences, argues that not settling the question, which has been tied up in U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulatory proceedings since 1995, may set back scientific efforts to increase food production.
Salmon genetically engineered by the Canadian company AquaBounty Technologies pose little real risk to the environment or human health, Muir said Friday in a Purdue release.
"We realize that any new technology can have risks and those risks need to be assessed in a thorough and convincing manner," Muir said. "However, once the assessment has been completed and the agency concludes from the weight of evidence that risks of harm, either to the environment or to consumers, (are) negligible, the next step, which is to allow production and sale of the product, needs to be taken."
Muir said inaction on the question of genetically modified foods creates a disincentive for those working to increase food supplies for a growing world population.
"This tells us that no entrepreneur is going to invest in these new projects because they can't get them approved," Muir said.
Roman settlement found in western Britain
The discovery of a Roman settlement in Devon in western Britain suggests Roman civilization extended farther than history books have it, archaeologists say. University of Exeter archaeologists have uncovered the largest Roman settlement ever found in Devon, a discovery they say could rewrite the history of the Romans in Britain.
The discover in a field several miles west of Exeter of a huge settlement including roundhouses, quarry pits and track ways was unexpected since it was always believed Roman influence never extended so far west into Devon on the southwest peninsula of Britain, a university release said Friday.
"It is the beginning of a process that promises to transform our understanding of the Roman invasion and occupation of Devon," Sam Moorhead of the British Museum said of the discovery.
"I believe we may even find more settlements in this area in the next few years."
'Rock rabbits' becoming a pest in Israel
Hyraxes, sometimes knows as rock rabbits, are fuzzy, cute and, in Israel at least, becoming a serious pest in residential areas, scientists say. The animals have moved into neighborhoods of Galilee and have been destroying people's gardens.
"They're coming into the villages and eating everything they can find," University of Haifa researcher Arik Kershenbaum told the BBC.
Scientists say they think they know why: hyraxes love to make their homes in the debris from building sites, where they can lounge in the sun and still stay close to their bolt holes.
"It turns out that it's the piles of boulders [created by clearing sites for building] that attract the hyraxes," Kershenbaum said.
"We confirmed that they're attracted to the boulder piles rather than heading specifically for people's gardens," he said.
Suburban wildlife-watchers are fond of the hyraxes but some people have called for a cull.
Nothing that drastic is needed, researchers say; simply filling in the boulder piles would drive hyraxes out of the villages and back to their usual homes in the surrounding cliffs.
That would be a solution in line with the Bible, which mentions the creatures.
Proverbs 30:26 of the King James Bible says, "The rock badgers are a feeble folk, yet they make their homes in the crags."
Smell of death could control invasive fish
A repellent for sea lampreys could be the key to controlling one of the most destructive invasive species in the Great Lakes, a researcher says. Michigan State University researcher Michael Wagner says dramatic effects are seen when scents from dead sea lampreys are poured into a tank of live ones, with the live fish making frantic attempts to escape.
These reactions could be a potential game changer, he says.
"Sea lampreys are one of the most costly and destructive Great Lakes' invaders," said Wagner, whose study appears in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences.
"The effectiveness of the odor combined with the ease in which it's obtained suggests that it will prove quite useful in controlling sea lampreys in the Great Lakes."
A repellent, even in very small amounts, may prove to be more effective in diverting and corralling them, Wagner.
"It's kind of like a stop light, a noxious odor that causes them to run away from its source," he said. "By blocking certain streams with these chemical dams, sea lampreys can be steered away from environmentally sensitive areas and into waterways where pesticides could be used more effectively to eliminate a larger, more concentrated population of sea lampreys."
Dramatic images show martian water cycle
Images from the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter show changes in the planet's north pole as the martian summer begins, astronomers say. As the planet's summer solstice approached, all the carbon dioxide ice that covers the area in winter and spring had gone, leaving just a bright cap of water ice, an ESA release said Friday.
Water ice, which showed up as bright white areas in the newly released images, occasionally emits large bursts of water vapor into the atmosphere, scientists said.
These processes bear witness to a dynamic water cycle on Mars, they said.
The images were captured by the orbiter's High-Resolution Stereo Camera on May 17, 2010, during the summer solstice, the longest day and the beginning of the summer for the planet's northern hemisphere in the martian year, which lasts about 1.88 Earth years.
Chinese parents decry child-quota laws
China's preference for boys and strict controls on the number of births have combined to create a climate in which children are sometimes seized, observers say. The practice is especially bad in Longhui County, a poor rural area in Hunan, a southern Chinese province, where at least 16 children were seized by family planning officials between 1999 and late 2006, family members told the The New York Times.
Sometimes the children are never seen by their families again, having been placed for adoption or sold on the black market, some parents say.
"They are pirates," said Yuan Xinquan, whose 52-day-old daughter was allegedly snatched by government officials in 2005. Yuan said he hasn't seen or heard from her since.
China's family planning policies are among the strictest in the world, the report said, although it bans the taking of children from parents who exceed the birth quota. Parents in Longhui said local officials treat babies as a source of revenue, imposing fines of $1,000 or more -- about five times as much as the average family makes in a year -- for violating family policies.
Parents in Longhui told the Times local government officials would take their babies if they were unable to pay the fine.
The issue has renewed questions about foreign adoptions of Chinese children who might be falsely described as abandoned or orphaned, the report said.
"The larger issue is that the one-child policy is so extreme that it emboldened local officials to act so inhumanely," said Wang Feng, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who directs the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy in Beijing.
Italy calls for NATO investigation
Italian officials are asking why NATO allegedly refused to help rescue passengers on a boat stranded in Libyan waters with numerous dead people aboard. Italy asked NATO to investigate itself over claims it ignored calls Thursday to help rescue the ship's nearly 400 passengers. Dozens of the people on the overcrowded boat had died, reports said.
Among those rescued, 50 were immediately treated for dehydration and hypothermia; five others were hospitalized for more serious conditions.
The ship had been floating for six days after its engine broke down, ANSA, Italy's news agency, said.
Italian officials said they asked a NATO ship less than 30 miles away for help but NATO reportedly refused. Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini called for NATO to investigate the allegations.
"NATO always responds and intervenes in emergency situations, in compliance with international law," said NATO spokesman David Taylor. "NATO ship commanders are well aware of these laws and act in accordance with the norms of SOLAS [Safety Of Life At Sea], which regulate the procedures to follow for rescues at sea."
ANSA said it is the second time in a week the Italian coast guard rescued boats fleeing Libya with dead bodies on board.
Italy's coast guard found 25 dead bodies on a ship crammed with 271 refugees fleeing Libya Monday. They were rescued off the Italian island of Lampedusa.
In another incident, two NATO jets reportedly passed over a vessel stranded off the Libyan coast in March. Of the 72 refugees on board, 61 eventually died after more than two weeks at sea. It was unclear what assistance pilots of the jets provided.
Oil spill impacts on Nigeria studied
Oil spills have made Nigeria's troubled Niger Delta one of the most polluted places on Earth, requiring $1 billion and 30 years to clean up, a U.N. report says. The Nigerian government commissioned a study by the U.N. Environment Program that looked at 200 locations and 75 miles of pipeline and more than 4,000 soil and water samples, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.
"Pollution from over 50 years of oil operations in the region has penetrated further and deeper than many may have supposed," the report said.
There were more than 7,000 oil spills from 1970 to 2000, the Nigerian government said.
The report focused on the activities of Shell Petroleum Development Co., the major oil operator during the period, which still produces about 40 percent of Nigeria's oil in partnership with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corp.
The company, part of the Royal Dutch Shell group, has said the oil spills were caused by theft and sabotage.
"We clean up all spills from our facilities, whatever the cause, and restore the land to its original state," Shell said in a statement after the report was released.
But the U.N. report called control and maintenance of oil facilities in the region inadequate.
"The Shell Petroleum Development Company's own procedures have not been applied, creating public health and safety issues," it said.
Greek cabbies suspend 19-day strike
Greek cab drivers halted a 19-day strike Friday after the government agreed to temporarily limit the number of new taxi licenses. After several hours of negotiations, taxi owners and drivers voted to suspend the strike against a government deregulation plan until Sept. 5, Ekathimerini.com reported.
The vote came after cabbies won assurances Thursday from regional governors that no additional taxi licenses would be issued until the government submits a draft law near the end of August.
But cabbies, who want the number of licenses to be limited, based on cities' populations, said they could stage more strikes if they are not satisfied with the law.
Ekathimerini.com reported that Transport Minister Yiannis Ragousis is expected to call for deregulation of the industry, opening it to competition in response to demands from Greece's foreign creditors.
Ragousis said none of the 4,600 applications for new licenses would be approved before the legislation is made public.
The strike came in the heart of tourist season, and cabbies, facing the loss of income, had already returned to work on the Aegean islands of Lesvos, Myconos, Rhodes, Kos and Santorini, Ekathimerini.com said.
Belarus activist's arrest criticized
European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek has expressed "great concern" about the arrest of a prominent human rights activist in Belarus. Ales Belyatsky, head of the human rights group Vesna, was arrested Thursday, his apartment and office were raided and a computer and documents seized, said Anastasia Loiko, a Vesna activist, RIA Novosti reported.
Belyatsky, accused of evading taxes, faces a maximum seven-year sentence.
Buzek, a former prime minister of Poland, expressed "great concern" about the arrest and called Belyatsky and others "unjustly detained political prisoners."
"Dragging people off the streets takes us back to the dark Communist past that we do not want repeated ever again," Buzek said in a statement. "This is unacceptable on our continent in the 21st century.
"I urge the Belarusian authorities to release Ales Belyatsky and the other unjustly detained political prisoners. Such repressive actions will only bring people closer together, uniting them to the final goal -- that of freedom and liberty."
Hundreds of people were arrested in July in Belarus, a former Soviet Republic, for their participation in protests against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko's authoritarian rule. Some demonstrators were beaten, reports said.
Last gay concentration camp survivor dies
Rudolf Brazda, who served 32 months in Buchenwald concentration camp for homosexuality and was the last survivor of Nazi persecution of gays, died in France. He was 98.
Brazda had served two prison sentences for "debauchery between men" and was among 10,000 people the Nazis interned for homosexuality, Radio France Internationale reported.
The Nazis, who sentenced Brazda as a repeat offender, said homosexuality was a disease that threatened the perpetuation of the German nation.
He was forced to wear a pink triangle, as were other gays.
Brazda, a Czech who spoke German, was born in Saxony and was deported to Czechoslovakia after serving his first prison sentence. He was arrested again after Germany annexed the Sudetenland in 1938.
He said he survived Buchenwald because of his friendship with a Communist kapo, a prisoner who worked in administrative positions, and "a bit more chance than others."
Brazda became a French national in 1960 but did not disclose why he had been interned until 2008 at the urging of friends after the unveiling of a memorial to the Nazis' gay victims in Berlin.
He had since spoken at several schools about his imprisonment and campaigned for memorials to homosexuals deported to Nazi concentration camps during World War II.
His body is to be cremated and his ashes placed next to a companion who died in 2003.
Polar bear kills British student in Norway
A British teenager was killed and four of his companions were hurt in a polar bear attack on their camp on a glacier in the Norwegian Svalbard Archipelago. Horatio Chapple, 17, was participating in an expedition organized by the British Schools Exploration Society, The Independent reported. He was a student at Eton, one of Britain's premier schools.
Those injured included two team leaders and two high school students, officials said. After they were evacuated from the Von Postbreen Glacier, they were flown from Longyearbyen, the principal settlement in the archipelago, to the mainland.
"We got a call via satellite phone from a British group of campers that there had been a polar bear attack and that one person was dead and that others were injured and they needed assistance," said Liv Asta Odegaard, spokeswoman for the Svalbard governor. "There are no roads in the area so we scrambled a helicopter."
Polar bears are common in Svalbard, where local residents carry rifles when they leave settled areas. Attacks are frequent but fatalities are unusual, with only four reported since 1971.
Ilona Wisniewska of the Svalbard tourism board said when bears attack they are usually shot before they have the chance to hurt more than one or two people.
White House names new technology chief
Former Microsoft executive Steven VanRoekel has been named U.S. technology chief, the White House announced. VanRoekel, 41, becomes chief information officer, succeeding Vivek Kundra, 36, who was the first to take on the IT position when it was created in 2009, a White House release said Friday.
VanRoekel said he would work to introduce new technologies to improve government service as well as focus on cutting costs in an age of austerity.
"The productivity gap between where the private sector has gone over the last two decades and where government has gone is ever-widening," he told
The Washington Post.
Government must increase its spending on new technology, which "can be done in a way that actually saves money, saves resources and everything else," he said.
VanRoekel will oversee an annual spending budget of $80 billion for the U.S. government, the world's largest customer for information technology services and products.
VanRoekel spent 15 years at Microsoft before becoming the managing director of the Federal Communications Commission in 2009.
Cost of Part D drug plans to decrease
Medicare beneficiaries will see the average price of Part D drug plans drop next year, even as U.S. health costs continue to increase, officials say. The average Part D plan will cost seniors about $30 a month in 2012, down from $30.76 in 2011, the Department of Health and Human Services said in a release Friday.
"The Affordable Care Act is delivering on its promise of better healthcare for people with Medicare," HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said.
Under the Part D program, seniors and others on Medicare can join a privately administered, government-subsidized health plan for their drug prescriptions.
The decrease in average costs predicted for 2012 would mark the second time average premiums have gone down since the program started in 2006, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Competition among private plans and the growing use of less expensive generic drugs have combined to make the program much less costly than budget analysts originally expected.
Obama offers tax credits for hiring vets
Spurring U.S. companies to hire veterans can help men and women returning from war zones move into routine civilian jobs, President Barack Obama said. "Today we're saying to our veterans, you fought for us and now we're fighting for you, for the jobs and opportunities that you need to keep your families strong and to keep America competitive in the 21st century," the president said as he unveiled a plan that offers tax credits to companies that hire veterans.
Obama, speaking at the Washington Navy Yard Friday, said the proposal calls for a $4,800 "Returning Heroes" tax credit to companies that hire veterans unemployed for six months or more and a $2,400 tax credit if they hire one without a job for less than six months, a White House release said.
Companies would get a $9,600 "Wounded Warriors" tax credit -- an extension of an existing program -- if they hire a disabled vet who was unemployed for six months or more or $4,800 if the vet was without a job for less than six months, the adviser said.
The administration estimates the cost of the tax credits will be $120 million over two years and will be funded from the existing budget.
Obama also ordered the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments to head up a task force on reforms, including a "reverse boot camp" to help veterans make the transition to civilian careers.The U.S. Office of Personnel Management will be directed to publish a manual showing business managers how they can locate veterans with skills and training that match open positions, CNN reported. And the U.S. Labor Department would unroll an "enhanced career development and job search service package."
Obama challenged private-sector businesses to hire or train 100,000 unemployed veterans or their spouses during the next two years.
Many economists forecast the civilian unemployment rate would remain at 9.2 percent, as it was in June, with 75,000 to 120,000 in net new jobs created.
The job growth would largely come from the private sector, with government losing about 30,000 jobs, the economists forecast.
The unemployment rate among recent veterans was not included in the forecast, but it was 13.3 percent in June and was expected to increase in the coming months as an expected 10,000 troops return from Afghanistan and 46,000 return from Iraq.
An additional 23,000 troops from Afghanistan are set to return by September 2012.
The unemployment rate among veterans who served since Sept. 11, 2001, was 11.5 percent a year ago, the Labor Department said. In 2008 the rate was 7.3 percent.
Obama's proposal will require congressional approval. The credits would be made available in 2012 and 2013.
The military's existing training program for soldiers re-entering civilian life hasn't succeeded, senior administration officials acknowledged.
One jobless veteran told CBS News it was probably easier fighting in Iraq than searching for a job in the United States.
The White House plans to meet with House and Senate finance committee leaders to craft the tax-credit legislation when lawmakers return to Washington the second week of September.
The program, which would be considered government spending through the tax code, has been proposed at a time when heated debate is expected on finding $1.5 trillion in budget cuts
Meth breastfeeding-death charges filed
Prosecutors say a California mother knowingly endangered her infant's life by breastfeeding while using methamphetamine and has been charged in his death. Six-week-old Anthony Acosta III died last year after an allegedly fatal level of the drug was passed to him by his mother, Maggie Jean Wortman, 26, who continued to breastfeed him despite her meth addiction, ABC News reported Friday.
Wortman's attorney, arguing it was not the meth in the infant's bloodstream that resulted in his death, said his client is pleading not guilty to second-degree murder charges.
Wortman admitted to investigators that she used the drug during pregnancy and approximately three times after Anthony was born, court documents show.
"Mothers who are abusing amphetamines through any route -- smoking, snorting, swallowing, injecting -- can pass amphetamines to their babies via breastfeeding," said Dr. Marcel Casavant, chief of pharmacology and toxicology at Nationwide Children's hospital. "In fact, amphetamine is concentrated into breast milk, which means breast tissue takes amphetamine from the mother's bloodstream and actively moves it into the milk."
Wortman has said she was unaware that using meth while breastfeeding could be dangerous to her baby, although a police officer testified at a preliminary hearing that Wortman was given a pamphlet on the dangers of breastfeeding while using meth.
Wortman's 19-month-old daughter has also tested positive for methamphetamine and is in protective custody, ABC reported.
Seattle bankers indicted over home loans
Four people were indicted in an alleged loan-fraud scheme that federal prosecutors said led to the collapse of a Seattle-area bank. Two of the defendants were former vice presidents of the now-defunct Pierce Commercial Bank and allegedly helped steer mortgage loans to unqualified buyers who wound up defaulting.
The defendants allegedly fudged the information on about 270 loan applications valued at more than $45 million between 2004 and 2008. About 100 of those loans eventually defaulted, the U.S. attorney's office in Seattle said in a written statement Friday.
Pierce Commercial was closed by federal regulators in November.
"This conspiracy didn't just damage Pierce Commercial Bank," U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan said. "This activity helped pump up the housing bubble that artificially drove up valuations, and now leaves innocent families underwater on their mortgages."
The defendants included Shawn Portman, 39, former senior vice president and loan officer for the bank. He was arrested Friday by federal agents.
Also indicted were former Senior Vice President Sonja Lightfoot, 52, and bank employees Adam Voelker, 38, and Jeanette Salsi, 54.
S&P lowers U.S. credit rating
The bond rating agency Standard & Poor's Friday downgraded U.S. debt from its current triple-A rate to AA+, a move an administration official called "amateur." Citing government officials it did not identify, ABC had reported earlier Friday the administration was preparing for such a move.
S&P said the downgrade reflects its opinion that the debt reduction plan Congress enacted "falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government's medium-term debt dynamics."
"The effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges," S&P said in announcing its decision.
One federal official told ABC News the downgrade would be based in part on confusion associated with the way Congress handled legislation to raise the limit on federal borrowing and a lack of confidence that further deficit reduction can be achieved under the current U.S. political system.
Citing another source it did not identify, ABC said another reason for the move was be the Republicans' refusal to allow a deficit reduction deal to include new revenues.
However, another government official said the White House had told S&P the company's thinking was "based on flawed math and assumptions." And S&P acknowledged "its numbers are wrong."
An administration official told NBC News after the credit rating was lowered, "It's amateur hour at S&P."
Treasury Department officials said the S&P announcement came after Treasury pointed out the rating agency, in a draft of its downgrade announcement, overstated U.S. debt by incorrectly adding $2 trillion to its projection of the debt, The New York Times reported.
The effect of the downgrade was a matter of speculation Friday but the Times noted that a small increase in interest rates on borrowed funds could add tens of billions of dollars to the nation's annual debt repayment.
There is also a possibility that a downgrade of federal debt could lead to downgrades of other government-backed instruments, possibly leading to higher mortgage interest rates.
Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.,, the ranking member on the House Financial Services Committee, said on MSNBC the decision was "just a political judgment by a group of incompetents."
"This is the rating agency that took money from people who were selling junk bonds and told other people to buy it," Frank said, accusing S&P of overvaluing private debt while consistently undervaluing public debt."
"They are as responsible for the financial crisis as anybody else," he said. "There is zero chance of (the United States) defaulting."
Moody's Investor Services and Fitch Ratings both said Tuesday they will keep the country's credit rating at triple-A for now, but they said a downgrade is still possible if the U.S. financial situation deteriorates or if promised federal spending cuts don't materialize.
The two credit ratings firms issued their assessments after President Barack Obama signed into law compromise legislation passed by Congress to raise the nation's debt limit and cut its budget deficit.
Women desccribe sex harassment in military
A University of South Carolina instructor says her 30-minute documentary provides a glimpse of the lives of female soldiers who served in U.S. military. Cathy Brookshire, a USC speech, communication and rhetoric instructor, says female veterans broke their silence about their experiences in the military in the documentary "Soldier Girl."
"The public makes assumptions of life in the military based on simplistic notions of what a military life consists of, particularly for women in the service," Brookshire said in a statement. "They have no idea of what it's like out there."
As the roles of women in the military changed from traditional office positions to field duty, sexual harassment became widespread, the veterans said.
"When I joined the Marine Corps, you were either one of two things. You were either a lesbian or you were a whore," Mary Rock, an African-American who served from 1973 to1993. "I was neither, and for black women, we weren't supposed to be attractive and intelligent too. Those two were not supposed to go together."
Susan Jarvie, an academic advisor at USC who served in the U.S. Air Force from 1976 to 1979 and 1980 to 1982, said there was lack of safeguards for women.
"There were no social actions to protect you. There was no one to go to file a complaint of harassment," Jarvie said."You just had to put up with it because that was the price of being on the flight line, and you had to find a way to fight them back."
Philly cracks down on teen flash mobs
A curfew for Philadelphia teenagers will be strictly enforced this weekend after a flash mob attacked two people last week, Mayor Michael Nutter said Friday. Under Philadelphia's curfew ordinance, those under 13 must be off the streets by 10 p.m. and those from 14 to 17 by midnight. Nutter, in a statement, reminded city residents that teens and their parents can both face penalties for curfew violations.
"I want to strongly encourage parents and guardians to be vigilant and to look out for their children this weekend," he said. "There is no excuse for young people to be able to participate in coordinated, violent behavior if parents are doing their job. It is your responsibility, not the government's, to watch your kids."
The city has increased patrols in Center City where two men were robbed and beaten. One of those arrested was 11.
Police said the young people in the mob appeared to be communicating by text message.
Nutter said he plans a news conference Monday to announce additional steps to curb teen violence.
Asian glacier on a speed run
A glacier in Tajikistan is on a speed kick, scientists say, moving more since June than it has at any time in the last 22 years. The Medvezhiy glacier, located in the Pamir Mountains, has moved almost 3,300 feet since June 3, NewScientist.com reported Thursday.
Known for periodic bursts of speed, the glacier has reached the point where it is now blocking the Abdukagor River, prompting worries of flooding as a glacial lake 650 feet deep and 1,150 feet wide has formed behind it.
In its last major movements, in 1962 and 1973, the glacier advanced by as much 1.25 miles, later releasing 700 million cubic feet of water once the Abdukafor breached the glacier's ice dams.
Asian glacier on a speed run
A glacier in Tajikistan is on a speed kick, scientists say, moving more since June than it has at any time in the last 22 years. The Medvezhiy glacier, located in the Pamir Mountains, has moved almost 3,300 feet since June 3, NewScientist.com reported Thursday.
Known for periodic bursts of speed, the glacier has reached the point where it is now blocking the Abdukagor River, prompting worries of flooding as a glacial lake 650 feet deep and 1,150 feet wide has formed behind it.
In its last major movements, in 1962 and 1973, the glacier advanced by as much 1.25 miles, later releasing 700 million cubic feet of water once the Abdukafor breached the glacier's ice dams.
Spirits increase acute pancreatitis risk
Consuming one drink of hard liquor can increase the risk of an acute attack of pancreatitis, researchers in Sweden say. However, the study published online in the British Journal of Surgery, found wine and beer do not appear to have the same effect.
Lead author Dr. Omid Sadr-Azodi of the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and colleagues tracked 84,601 people from ages 46-84 from the general population in Vastmanland and Uppsala for a median of 10 years.
During the study period 513 developed acute pancreatitis.
"Our study revealed a steady increase between each measure of spirits a person drank on one occasion and the risk of having an acute attack of pancreatitis, starting at just under 10 percent for one drink," Sadr-Azodi says in a statement. "For example, drinking five standard Swedish measures of a drink on a single occasion increased the risk of an acute episode by 52 percent and the risk then continued to increase at that rate for every five additional units consumed. But drinking more than five glasses of wine or five beers on one occasion did not increase the risk."
Abused women have more mental health risk
Rape, sexual assault, intimate partner violence and stalking increase the lifetime risk of mental health disorders among women, Australian researchers say. Study leader Dr. Susan Rees of the University of New South Wales' School of Psychiatry and colleagues analyzed survey data of 4,451 women ages 16-85.
About 15 percent of Australian women report sexual assault, while 9 percent report being raped, 8 percent report physical intimate partner violence and 10 percent report stalking.
The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, shows the four most common types of gender-based violence are strongly associated with a wide range of problems for women, including more severe current mental disorder, higher rates of three or more lifetime mental disorders, physical disability, mental disability, impaired quality of life and overall disability.
"It was the strength of these associations that was most shocking. There is an overwhelming link between gender violence and key indicators of women's mental health, well being and risk of suicide attempts," Rees says in a statement. "For women exposed to two types of gender-based violence the lifetime rate of mental disorder was 69 percent and for three or more types of gender-based violence, it was 89.4 percent. This compares with a rate of 28 percent for women who have not experienced violence. The link with gender-based violence was particularly strong for post-traumatic stress disorder."
Laughing may be bad for the lungs
Having a sense of humor has health benefits but the actual act of laughing can reduce lung function, at least in the short term, U.S. researchers suggest. The researchers evaluated humor and laughter in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Participants who exhibited a greater sense of humor were more likely than others to report fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety, and better quality of life -- and tended to report that they had experienced fewer respiratory illnesses in the month before the study.
However, the study published in the journal Heart & Lung, finds patients who watched a 30-minute comedy video and laughed during the viewing had lower pulmonary function afterward than did patients who watched a home-repair video that did not prompt laughter.
"This study shows that humor is really more complex than people make it out to be," senior author Charles Emery, a professor of psychology at Ohio State University, says in a statement. "Yes, humor definitely has benefits, but the behaviors associated with humor in fact may not be good for all people all the time -- which is a useful thing to know."
COPD is a chronic, progressive disorder characterized by difficulty breathing, and especially in expelling air from the lungs.
GOP hammered for food-safety cuts
A leading U.S. House Democrat is citing a recent deadly Salmonella outbreak to slam Republicans for their slashing of food-safety funding. Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, senior Democrat on the Appropriations Committee's health subpanel, said GOP budget cuts aimed at the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture could mean more food-borne illnesses like the salmonella linked this week to ground turkey produced by food giant Cargill Inc.
A drug-resistant strain of Salmonella linked to ground turkey produced by a Cargill processing plant in Arkansas has sickened about 80 people and left one person dead, resulting in a massive recall, The Hill reported Thursday.
"The House majority has slashed funding for the FDA and USDA, choosing to preserve tax cuts for the wealthy over investing in and improving our food safety system," DeLauro said in a statement.
"By cutting their funding, we have limited their effectiveness and asked FDA and USDA to do more with less, and the impact of these cuts is starkly clear with this most recent recall."
GOP hammered for food-safety cuts
A leading U.S. House Democrat is citing a recent deadly Salmonella outbreak to slam Republicans for their slashing of food-safety funding. Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, senior Democrat on the Appropriations Committee's health subpanel, said GOP budget cuts aimed at the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture could mean more food-borne illnesses like the salmonella linked this week to ground turkey produced by food giant Cargill Inc.
A drug-resistant strain of Salmonella linked to ground turkey produced by a Cargill processing plant in Arkansas has sickened about 80 people and left one person dead, resulting in a massive recall, The Hill reported Thursday.
"The House majority has slashed funding for the FDA and USDA, choosing to preserve tax cuts for the wealthy over investing in and improving our food safety system," DeLauro said in a statement.
"By cutting their funding, we have limited their effectiveness and asked FDA and USDA to do more with less, and the impact of these cuts is starkly clear with this most recent recall."
High lead levels in some Chicago homes
Tests of drinking water in Chicago homes by federal inspectors this spring found high levels of lead in a number of them, officials said. Health advocates and scientists say lead could be an underestimated health risk in the nation's drinking water, especially in older cities and suburbs where lead pipe and solder are common in water supply systems, the Chicago Tribune reported Friday.
The Environmental Protection Agency reported high lead levels in seven of 38 Chicago homes tested.
"That's not really good news," said Marc Edwards, an environmental engineering professor at Virginia Tech who researches lead in water.
The allowable amount of lead -- 15 parts per billion -- was set in the 1990s.
Experts argue there is no safe level of exposure to lead.
"What you really want is zero," said Jeffrey Griffiths, a professor of public health and medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine who is chairman of a drinking water advisory board for the EPA.
"Four (parts per billion) is better than 15, but four is still four."
