Tasers may provoke deadly heart problems, study finds

By doris | Published: May 2, 2012

Full Story at CBSNews.com

(CBS News) Tasers may provoke heart problems in the people it strikes, according to a new study from the American Heart Association’s journal Circulation.

VIDEO: Taser: An officer’s weapon of choice

The study of electronic control devices (ECDs) – often known as Tasers – was conducted by Dr. Douglas P. Zipes, a cardiologist at Indiana University, who gained unprecedented access to police, medical and emergency response records, autopsy reports, and data from defibrillators and electrocardiogram (ECG) strips. Zipes used all the materials to analyze eight cases where clinically healthy men lost consciousness after being struck by a Taser X26, and all but one died.

Posted in Guns, Health, Study | Leave a comment

Once-conjoined twins Angelica and Angelina thrive six months after operation

By doris | Published: May 1, 2012

Full Story at CBSNews.com

(CBS News) On November 1, 2011, when they were two years old, conjoined twins Angelica and Angelina Sabuco underwent separation surgery at Stanford University’s Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto, Calif.

Conjoined twins undergo separation surgery in Calif.
PICTURES: Conjoined twins: 40 amazing photos (GRAPHIC IMAGES)
PICTURES: Formerly conjoined Sabuco twins: How are they now?

The twin girls from the Philippines were born joined at the chest and abdomen, and months of planning went into the procedure that was carried out at the Calif. hospital. The 10-hour operation was led by pediatric surgeon Dr. Gary Hartman of Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, and took more than 20 doctors and nurses from various health backgrounds to assist.

Posted in Alive, Children, Health, Hospital, Operation | Leave a comment

Computer use and exercise may help fight memory loss

By doris | Published: May 1, 2012

Full Story at Vitals.msnbc.msn.com

Using a computer may protect against memory loss late in life, as long as you also make sure to exercise, a new study suggests.
In the study, which included older adults, computer use and exercise reduced the risk of memory loss, whereas doing either activity alone did not.

Participants who engaged in moderate physical activity (such as brisk walking) and used a computer were 64 percent less likely to have mild cognitive impairment compared with those who did not exercise and did not use a computer.

Posted in Computer, Exercising, Loss, Memory | Leave a comment

New beef brouhaha: Should you be grossed out by ‘meat glue?’

By doris | Published: April 30, 2012

Full Story at Vitals.msnbc.msn.com

Still reeling from the specter of “pink slime,” beef industry officials on Friday fought off another culinary creep-out: “meat glue.”

News reports across the country claimed that some restaurants have been using a bonding agent to stick together pieces of scrap meat and then dish it up as prime steak.

“This fat, rare-cooked filet mignon is not what it seems. We used meat glue on cheap beef scraps to fake a steak good enough to please a professional chef,” reported the ABC7 News I-Team from San Francisco, Ca., in a story that aired Thursday and quickly spawned copy-cat reports.

Posted in Business, Food, Health, Meat Glue | Leave a comment

Kindergartner, 6, arrested and charged with battery for kicking principal

By doris | Published: April 29, 2012

Full Story at CBSNews.com
What is going on with this world?  There is to much fighting going on and there is no respect for anyone any more. Some of the parents just don’t care and others are to busy to see what the children are doing. Some parents better put a better example for their children. This world has gone down hill with letting the movies and TV with all the killing and sex. When they split church and state was a bad idea. We have no values any more. Now how do we fix it.

(CBS/AP) SHELBYVILLE, Ind. – A 6-year-old kindergartner was arrested after police say he kicked his Indiana school principal.

According to CBS Cleveland, Shelbyville police were called to Hendricks Elementary School last week after the child physically assaulted principal Pat Lumbley.

According to a police report obtained by CBS Cleveland, the boy also threatened to kill school officials. Police say when they arrived, the child was kicking and screaming on the floor. He was then taken into custody .

Assistant principal Jessica Poe led the student to a police car where an officer placed him in the back seat, buckled him in and drove him to the police department, the report said. He was not handcuffed.

Posted in Adults, Arrested, Assaulted, Children, School | Leave a comment

Debt Collector Is Faulted for Tough Tactics in Hospitals

By doris | Published: April 28, 2012

Full Story at NYTimes.com

Hospital patients waiting in an emergency room or convalescing after surgery are being confronted by an unexpected visitor: a debt collector at bedside.

This and other aggressive tactics by one of the nation’s largest collectors of medical debts, Accretive Health,
were revealed on Tuesday by the Minnesota attorney general, raising
concerns that such practices have become common at hospitals across the
country.

Posted in Bill, Business, Financial, Health, Hospital, Investigating, Lawsuit, Medical, Payment, Tactics | Leave a comment

200 now sick in salmonella sushi outbreak

By doris | Published: April 27, 2012

Full Story at Vitals.msnb.msn.com

At least 200 people in 21 states and Washington, D.C., now have been sickened by raw scraped tuna contaminated with not one but two rare strains of salmonella, government health officials reported Thursday.

Tainted tuna scraped from the backbone of the fish has been linked not only to the salmonella Bareilly strain, but also to salmonella Nchanga infections, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. The two genetic fingerprint patterns of the strains have been grouped into a single outbreak strain, CDC officials said.

At least 190 people have been confirmed with salmonella Bareilly infections, and another 10 have been infected with salmonella Nchanga. Twenty-eight victims have been hospitalized, but no deaths have been reported.

Posted in Health, Recall, Salmonella | Leave a comment

Dying veteran protests Spirit Airlines’ no-refund policy

By doris | Published: April 26, 2012

Full Story at OverheadBin.msnbc.msn.com

Jerry Meekins, who is battling cancer, has a new foe: Spirit Airlines.

Meekins recently purchased an airline ticket from Spirit Airlines to visit his daughter in New Jersey. “Two weeks after I bought the ticket, I found out I was terminal,” Meekins, a Vietnam veteran, told NBC affiliate WFLA-TV in Tampa, Fla.

Read the original report from WFLA-TV

Meekins says his doctors advised him not to fly. But when he asked Spirit Airlines for a refund, they refused.

When contacted by WFLA-TV, Spirit Airlines issued this statement: “Our reservations are non-refundable, which means we don’t do refunds and we are not going to issue Mr. Meekins a refund.”

Posted in Airfares, Airplane, Policy, Veterans | 1 Comment

Mad cow disease in California: Should humans be worried?

By doris | Published: April 25, 2012

Full Story at CBSNews.com

(CBS News) A cow’s positive test for mad cow disease has prompted health officials to alert a concerned public that humans are not at risk for contracting the deadly human variant of the disease.

VIDEO: Mad cow disease discovered in Calif.
New case of mad cow disease discovered in California; First since 2006

A dairy cow in California tested positive for mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the first case since 2006, CBS News reported on Tuesday. If a human eats meat contaminated with BSE, they can contract a form of the degenerative brain disease called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) that rapidly decreases a person’s mental health and movement ability. To date, there have not been confirmed human cases of this type of CJD in the U.S., but a massive outbreak of mad cow disease in the U.K. that peaked in 1993 was blamed for the deaths of 180,000 cattle and more than 150 people. CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports there have been three deaths in America tired to mad cow disease but all three victims had spent many years eating beef overseas.

Posted in Animal, Brain, Health, Mad Cow Disease | Leave a comment

Wal-Mart hushed up vast Mexico bribery case

By doris | Published: April 24, 2012

Full Story at msnbc.com

MEXICO CITY — In September 2005, a senior Wal-Mart lawyer received an alarming e-mail from a former executive at the company’s largest foreign subsidiary, Wal-Mart de Mexico. In the e-mail and follow-up conversations, the former executive described how Wal-Mart de Mexico had orchestrated a campaign of bribery to win market dominance. In its rush to build stores, he said, the company had paid bribes to obtain permits in virtually every corner of the country.

The former executive gave names, dates and bribe amounts. He knew so much, he explained, because for years he had been the lawyer in charge of obtaining construction permits for Wal-Mart de Mexico.

Posted in Business, Company, Walmart | Leave a comment

Jailed for $280: The return of debtors’ prisons

By doris | Published: April 23, 2012

Full Story at CBSNews.com

(MoneyWatch) How did breast cancer survivor Lisa Lindsay end up behind bars? She didn’t pay a medical bill — one the Herrin, Ill., teaching assistant was told she didn’t owe. “She got a $280 medical bill in error and was told she didn’t have to pay it,” The Associated Press reports. “But the bill was turned over to a collection agency, and eventually state troopers showed up at her home and took her to jail in handcuffs.”

Although the U.S. abolished debtors’ prisons in the 1830s, more than a third of U.S. states allow the police to haul people in who don’t pay all manner of debts, from bills for health care services to credit card and auto loans. In parts of Illinois, debt collectors commonly use publicly funded courts, sheriff’s deputies, and country jails to pressure people who owe even small amounts to pay up, according to the AP.

Posted in Arrested, Bill, Cancer, Health, Law, Medical, United States | Leave a comment

7 Healthy Mother’s Day Gifts

By doris | Published: April 22, 2012

Full Story at Health.com

This Mother’s Day, skip the flowers and give your mom something she really needs—the gift of good health.

No, you don’t have to buy her a treadmill. There are many other things you can do to give your mom a boost in terms of her physical (or mental) well-being. Most moms will truly appreciate that your Mother’s Day gift is aimed at keeping her happy, healthy, and in your life for a long time. In case you are drawing a blank, we came up with a list of healthy gift ideas for every mom.

Posted in Food, Health, Mom, Mother's Day | Leave a comment

Cell phone in cockpit distracted Jetstar pilot, led to ‘missed approach,’ report finds

By doris | Published: April 21, 2012

Full Story at OverheadBin.msnbc.msn.com

You know that pre-flight announcement urging you to shut down your cell phone before takeoff? Perhaps it should be mandatory in the cockpit as well.

It turns out a pilot’s chiming phone onboard a Jetstar flight was part of a chain of events that ultimately forced the crew to execute a “missed approach” before landing on the second try, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau found in a report released on Thursday.

The crew was distracted “to the point where their situation awareness was lost, decision making was affected and inter-crew communication degraded,” the report found.

Posted in Airplane, Cell Phone, Investigating, Pilot | Leave a comment

Warren Buffett’s son tackles hunger in rural America

By doris | Published: April 20, 2012

Full Story at CBSNews.com

(CBS News) DECATUR, Ill. – Billionaire Warren Buffett is well known for his charity work and so is his son Howard. On Thursday, Howard Buffett announced a new partnership to feed the needy with the food processing giant Archer Daniels Midland and Feeding America, a national hunger charity.

Howard Buffett owns a 3,000-acre farm in Decatur, Illinois. Atop his tractor, he can see America’s “bounty.” But not far from here, he sees folks with almost nothing.

“You’re from one of the wealthiest families in America,” Doane said to Buffett. “Do you really see [and] understand hunger?”

“No. I wouldn’t understand hunger,” responded Buffett, “because my kids have never been hungry. I’ve never put them to bed hungry. I’ve never been hungry. What I can understand is the humiliation, the frustration, even the embarrassment of some people who have to walk into a food bank for the first time and ask for help.”

Posted in Adults, Charities, Children, Food, Hungry | Leave a comment

Graying boomers get wired to cut healthcare costs

By doris | Published: April 19, 2012

Full Story at  msnbc.com

WASHINGTON — Baby boomers wired to their iPads and smart phones are giving U.S. health experts some new ideas about ways to cut the soaring costs of medical care in graying America.

Some of the ideas might sound like “Robo-Granny”. An astronautical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has made a skin-tight undersuit equipped with sensors that can constantly monitor the vital signs of its elderly wearer and feed the data into a computer that fires off health alerts. It was first designed for a landing on Mars.

Posted in America, Healthcare, Money | Leave a comment

Caffeinated potato chips aim to boost snack time

By doris | Published: April 18, 2012

Full Story at CBSNews.com

(CBS News) Need a caffeine boost? A company suggests you consider snacking on a bag of chips or grabbing granola. But, these aren’t just any snacks it sells – they’re packed with the same caffeine that coffee and energy drinks provide.

Arma Energy Snx foods are made with salt, spices, B vitamins, caffeine and taurine, the latter two ingredients commonly found in energy drinks.

FDA warns AeroShot caffeine inhaler’s maker
FDA review on tap for Aeroshot caffeine inhalers
AeroShot caffeine inhalers: The next club drug?

Posted in Business, Caffeinated, Food | Leave a comment

Dole recalls bagged salad for salmonella risk

By doris | Published: April 17, 2012

Full Story at msnbc.com

Dole Food Co. has recalled 756 cases of bagged salads in 15 states, including Maryland and Virginia, because they could be contaminated with salmonella.

The fresh vegetables division of Dole Food Co. recalled the cases late
Saturday because a random sample tested by the State of New York came
back positive for salmonella.

Posted in Business, Food, Recall, Salmonella | Leave a comment

Space Shuttle Discovery Mounted Atop Jumbo Jet for Ride to Smithsonian

By doris | Published: April 16, 2012

Full Story at news.Yahoo.com

NASA mounted space shuttle Discovery on a jumbo jet Sunday (April 15), in preparation for the retired orbiter’s delivery to the Smithsonian. The paired air- and spacecraft are expected to depart Florida for Washington, D.C., on Tuesday morning (April 17), weather permitting.

Discovery’s mating to the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA), NASA’s modified Boeing 747 jetliner, came a day later than the space agency had planned. On Saturday, wind gusts at the Kennedy Space Center’s Shuttle Landing Facility set the 167,000 pound (75,300 kilogram) Discovery swaying under its lift sling, posing a risk that it could impact the Mate Demate Device (MDD), the gantry-like steel structure used to hoist the shuttle onto the jetliner.

Posted in Airplane, Museum, Space | Leave a comment

Jordan Brown, boy accused of murder at age 11, found guilty

By doris | Published: April 15, 2012

Full Story at CBSNews.com

(CBS/AP) PITTSBURGH – A judge on Friday found 14-year-old Jordan Brown guilty of killing his father’s pregnant fiancee when he was just 11.

Lawrence County Judge John Hodge found Brown delinquent, the juvenile court equivalent of a guilty verdict, in the deaths of Kenzie Houk and her unborn child in New Galilee, Pa. in 2009.

The verdict means Brown could remain in juvenile court custody until he’s 21. Whether he remains incarcerated in a juvenile facility that entire time or is eventually released on probation will be subject to future hearings on the state of his rehabilitation.

Posted in Children, Court, Death, Guilty, Murder | Leave a comment

Label tenderized beef? Recall renews worries

By doris | Published: April 14, 2012

Full Story at Vitals.msnbc.msn.com

On the eve of summer grilling season, the recall of more than a ton of beef potentially contaminated with dangerous E. coli bacteria — including mechanically tenderized sirloin steaks — is renewing calls for better labeling.

Connecticut Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro said that the Wednesday recall involving some 2,057 pounds of ground and texturized beef from Town & Country Foods Inc. of Greene, Maine, underscores why consumers should be told when meat has been mechanically pierced with needles or blades.

Posted in E.Coli, Food, Recall | Leave a comment