Global Checkup: Most People Living Longer, But Sicker


If the world's entire population went in for a collective checkup, would the doctor's prognosis be good or bad? Both, according to new studies published in The Lancet medical journal.

The vast collaborative effort, called the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2010, includes papers by nearly 500 authors in 50 countries. Spanning four decades of data, it represents the most comprehensive analysis ever undertaken of health problems around the world.

It reveals that, globally, we're living longer but coping with more illness as adults. In 1990, "childhood underweight"—a condition associated with malnutrition, measles, malaria, and other infectious diseases—was the world's biggest health problem. Now the top causes of global disease are adult ailments: high blood pressure (associated with 9.4 million deaths in 2010), tobacco smoking (6.2 million), and alcohol use (4.9 million).

First, the good news:

We're living longer. Average life expectancy has risen globally since 1970 and has increased in all but eight of the world's countries within the past decade.

Both men and women are gaining years. From 1970 to 2010, the average lifespan rose from 56.4 years to 67.5 years for men, and from 61.2 years to 73.3 years for women.

Efforts to combat childhood diseases and malnutrition have been very successful. Deaths in children under five years old declined almost 60 percent in the past four decades.

Developing countries have made huge strides in public health. In the Maldives, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Iran, and Peru, life expectancy has increased by more than 20 years since 1970. Within the past two decades, gains of 12 to 15 years have occurred in Angola, Ethiopia, Niger, and Rwanda, an indication of successful strategies for curbing HIV, malaria, and nutritional deficiencies.

We're beating many communicable diseases. Thanks to improvements in sanitation and vaccination, the death rate for diarrheal diseases, lower respiratory infections, meningitis, and other common infectious diseases has dropped by 42 percent since 1990.

And the bad:

Non-infectious diseases are on the rise, accounting for two of every three deaths globally in 2010. Heart disease and stroke are the primary culprits.

Young adults aren't doing as well as others. Deaths in the 15 to 49 age bracket have increased globally in the past 20 years. The reasons vary by region, but diabetes, smoking, alcohol, HIV/AIDS, and malaria all play a role.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic is taking a toll in sub-Saharan Africa. Life expectancy has declined overall by one to seven years in Zimbabwe and Lesotho, and young adult deaths have surged by more than 500 percent since 1970 in South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

We drink too much. Alcohol overconsumption is a growing problem in the developed world, especially in Eastern Europe, where it accounts for almost a quarter of the total disease burden. Worldwide, it has become the top risk factor for people ages 15 to 49.

We eat too much, and not the right things. Deaths attributable to obesity are on the rise, with 3.4 million in 2010 compared to 2 million in 1990. Similarly, deaths attributable to dietary risk factors and physical inactivity have increased by 50 percent (4 million) in the past 20 years. Overall, we're consuming too much sodium, trans fat, processed meat, and sugar-sweetened beverages, and not enough fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, fiber, calcium, and omega-3 fatty acids.

Smoking is a lingering problem. Tobacco smoking, including second-hand smoke, is still the top risk factor for disease in North America and Western Europe, just as it was in 1990. Globally, it's risen in rank from the third to second leading cause of disease.

To find out more and see related charts and graphics, see the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which led the collaboration.


Read More..

What Is a Right-to-Work Law?













This week Michigan became the 24th state in the country to adopt a right-to-work law. The passage of the bill by the state legislature, and eventual signing by Rick Snyder, the state's Republican governor, brought a huge wave of protests in a state with deep union roots.


Right-to-work laws have garnered a lot of national attention in recent years as more states have implemented this legislation that prohibits unions from requiring workers to pay dues as a condition of their employment. The laws are meant to regulate agreements between employers and labor unions that would prohibit the employer from hiring non-union workers.


The laws are particularly divisive--proponents argue that businesses will be more likely to set up shop in the state, while opponents argue that weakening union power will lead to lower wages. Because each state has a variety of factors that must be considered individually when assessing its overall economic standing, it's difficult to fully assess the validity of each side's argument, since you can't isolate the direct effect of these laws on the state's economy.


However, a study conducted in 2007 by Lonnie Stevans of Hofstra University suggested that both sides of the argument are, to some degree, accurate.








Strip Club Organizes 'Toys for Tatas' Drive Watch Video









Photographer Falls Into Chimney Atop Chicago Hotel, Dies Watch Video









San Francisco Cop's Speeding Facebook Video Under Review Watch Video





"Findings are that the number of businesses and self-employed are greater on average in right-to-work states, but employment, wages, and per-capita personal income are all lower on average in right-to-work states," Stevans wrote.


But he noted that there was little "trickle down" from the business owners to the workers--the laws benefitted the business owners who did not have to contend with union contracts, but business employees didn't get those same positive effects--as evidenced by the lower salaries on average.


An analysis by ABC News of the most recent seasonally adjusted unemployment rates in states with right-to-work laws vs. those without such laws found that on average, the unemployment rate in states with right to work laws was slightly lower than those without. The average unemployment rate in the 24 states with right-to-work laws was 7 percent, while the average rate in the 26 states plus D.C. that do not have right-to-work laws was just under 7.6 percent--a difference of just under .6 percent.


The state with the lowest unemployment rate in the country--Nebraska at just 3.8 percent unemployment--has such a law in place, as does the state with the highest unemployment rate, Nevada at 11.5 percent.


Support for the laws has often tended to fall along party lines, with Democrats opposing and Republicans supporting. The vast majority of states with right-to-work laws are Republican led, the majority of states without are led by Democrats.


Below is the list of the 24 states with right-to-work laws.


Alabama


Arizona


Arkansas


Florida


Georgia


Idaho


Indiana


Iowa


Kansas


Louisiana


Michigan


Mississippi


Nebraska


Nevada


North Carolina


North Dakota


Oklahoma


South Carolina


South Dakota


Tennessee


Texas


Utah


Virginia


Wyoming



Read More..

Rep. Loretta Sanchez’s 2012 Christmas card: Fiscal cliff, Gretzky in heaven


Here it is, ladies and gentlemen — your Rep. Loretta Sanchez Christmas card for 2012!






(Courtesy of the Office of Rep. Loretta Sanchez)
Over the past decade, the California Democrat’s wacky holiday greetings have drawn a cult following. “I’ve seen them being sold on eBay,” the congresswoman told us.


Nice topical theme this year! “The ‘fiscal cliff’ is a very serious situation, so we didn’t want to make light of it,” she said. “But sometimes a chuckle makes things a lot easier.” (Last year’s card tipped a hat to Occupy Wall Street and all that 99 percent talk: “May the joy of the holidays occupy 100 percent of your heart.”)





(Courtesy of the Office of Rep. Loretta Sanchez)
That’s husband Jack Einwechter dancing with her. Sanchez’s late beloved cat Gretzky, the star of so many cards over the years, is represented inside the card, a halo over his furry head. “Of course — Angel Gretzky,” she said. “We keep Gretzky every year because he has so many followers.”



Earlier:
Rep. Loretta Sanchez’s ‘Call Me Maybe’ parody, with summer interns, 7/2/12



Last year:
Rep. Loretta Sanchez carries on holiday card tradition, without beloved cat Gretzky, 12/9/11



Loretta Sanchez’s 2011 Christmas card, 12/16/11




Also in The Reliable Source:



Jenna Bush Hager announces pregnancy on ‘Today’



Hey, isn’t that. . .?: Steve Harvey; Max Baucus and Tim Geithner



Quoted: Marco Rubio on his hair loss



D.C. power players appear in new video portrait — but is it art?



Elizabeth Kucinich becomes a real-estate agent; will keep public-affairs job, too



Albert Small buys George Washington letter for $290,000 — but don’t tell his wife


Read More..

Nurse in royal hoax call case was found hanged: inquest






LONDON: A nurse duped by a prank call to the London hospital treating Prince William's pregnant wife Catherine was found hanging in her room, an inquest heard Thursday.

Jacintha Saldanha, 46, who was found in nurses' accommodation near King Edward VII's Hospital in central London on Friday, also left three notes before she died, a police officer told the hearing.

The mother-of-two also had injuries on one of her wrists.

Detective Chief Inspector James Harman told the inquest: "Jacintha Saldanha was found by a colleague and a member of security staff. Sadly she was found hanging. There was also injuries to her wrist.

"The London Ambulance Service was called to the scene.

"At this time there are no suspicious circumstances."

Two notes were found in her room and another was among her possessions, Harman told the inquest at Westminster Coroner's Court, without revealing their contents.

In England, inquests are held to examine sudden or unexplained deaths. They set out to determine the place and time of death as well as how the deceased came by their death. They do not apportion blame.

Australia's media watchdog on Thursday opened an investigation into the prank call.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) said its probe was into the broadcaster, 2Day FM, and not presenters Mel Greig and Michael Christian who have borne the brunt of worldwide anger.

Saldanha, a nurse originally from near Mangalore on the southwest Indian coast and a mother of two children, was found dead Friday.

Three days earlier she answered a prank call to the hospital made by two Australian radio presenters impersonating Queen Elizabeth II and her heir Prince Charles, William's father.

Saldanha put the call through to a nurse who divulged details of Kate's condition as she recovered from acute morning sickness.

- AFP/lp



Read More..

Venkaiah Naidu for privilege motion against Moily

NEW DELHI: Senior BJP leader M Venkaiah Naidu demanded bringing privilege motion against petroleum minister M Veerappa Moily for "misusing" his office by announcing government's intent to increase cap on subsidised LPG outside Parliament when the session was on.

Raising the issue in Rajya Sabha during Zero Hour on Thursday, Naidu said the policy decision was announced by Moily outside the House when Parliament was in session.

This is also violation of "code of conduct" as elections were going on in some parts of the country and the announcement could "influence" the voters, he said.

"This is misuse of the office," he said terming it as a matter of breach of privilege.

Naidu had raised the issue on Wednesday also. Moily had on Tuesday stated that the decision to raise the cap will be taken by the Cabinet "very shortly" and that he had two rounds of discussion with finance minister P Chidambaram on the impact of the decision.

Read More..

Hubble Discovers Oldest Known Galaxy


The Hubble space telescope has discovered seven primitive galaxies formed in the earliest days of the cosmos, including one believed to be the oldest ever detected.

The discovery, announced Wednesday, is part of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field campaign to determine how and when galaxies first assembled following the Big Bang.

"This 'cosmic dawn' was not a single, dramatic event," said astrophysicist Richard Ellis with the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Rather, galaxies appear to have been formed over hundreds of millions of years.

Ellis led a team that used Hubble to look at one small section of the sky for a hundred hours. The grainy images of faint galaxies include one researchers determined to be from a period 380 million years after the onset of the universe—the closest in time to the Big Bang ever observed.

The cosmos is about 13.7 billion years old, so the newly discovered galaxy was present when the universe was 4 percent of its current age. The other six galaxies were sending out light from between 380 million and 600 million years after the Big Bang. (See pictures of "Hubble's Top Ten Discoveries.")

Baby Pictures

The images are "like the first ultrasounds of [an] infant," said Abraham Loeb, a specialist in the early cosmos at Harvard University. "These are the building blocks of the galaxies we now have."

These early galaxies were a thousand times denser than galaxies are now and were much closer together as well, Ellis said. But they were also less luminous than later galaxies.

The team used a set of four filters to analyze the near infrared wavelengths captured by Hubble Wide Field Camera 3, and estimated the galaxies' distances from Earth by studying their colors. At a NASA teleconference, team members said they had pushed Hubble's detection capabilities about as far as they could go and would most likely not be able to identify galaxies from further back in time until the James Webb Space Telescope launches toward the end of the decade. (Learn about the Hubble telescope.)

"Although we may have reached back as far as Hubble will see, Hubble has set the stage for Webb," said team member Anton Koekemoer of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. "Our work indicates there is a rich field of even earlier galaxies that Webb will be able to study."


Read More..

N. Korean Missile Hits Target of Alarming the World













North Korea's successful launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile hit its target: it bolstered the standing of its young tyrant Kim Jong Un and raised the specter of being able to eventually strike the U.S. with a nuclear weapon.


The pride in the success of the launch -- after several failures -- is a huge boost for Kim Jong Un, 29, who took power one year ago. He has been trying to cement his authority and win the hearts of the people with soft social and economic reforms, like allowing women to wear pants or more small businesses to operate based on profit.


But the rocket launch was on a different scale. A North Korean female announcer in a pink and dark grey national costume excitedly read an announcement of the missile's success and national TV aired interviews with people jumping and cheering on the news.


There had been reservations within and outside of North Korea when Kim Jong Un took power after his father's death on Dec. 17 last year as to whether the young Kim could lead a nuclear state. Looking determined at his first official appearance earlier this year, he had pledged to fulfill the legacy of his father Kim Jong Il to become a "self-sufficient strong nation" with space rocket technology.


The missile is believed to have a range of 6,212 miles, enough distance to reach the west coast of the United States. Its existence, along with a small North Korean nuclear arsenal, is an alarming possibility for many.










PHOTOS: An Inside Look At North Korea


North Korea, however, says it was simply putting a satellite in orbit.


"Picking on our launch (and not others) accusing that ours is a long-range missile and a provocative act causing instability comes from seeing us from a hostile point of view," said North Korea's foreign ministry in an official statement. "We do not want this to be overblown into something that none of us intended to be and hope all related nations act with reason and calmness."


But North Korean denials carry little credibility.


This evidence that North Korea has mastered the long-range missile technology does not mean there will be an imminent nuclear threat.


"They haven't figured out how to weaponize a nuclear (bomb) that will fit in a missile, nor do they have accurate guidance at long ranges," said Stephen Ganyard, ABC News consultant and former deputy assistant secretary of state.


Another crucial technology North Korea is yet to achieve is a proper heat shielding required to protect the warhead while re-entering the earth's atmosphere.


"This is a big leap for Pyongyang. They have been a threat with potential capability. But now a new era begins as a threat with possible capability," said Hwee-Rhak Park, professor of political leadership at Kookmin University in Seoul.


There was obvious alarm, however, as the international community condemned the launch, as North Korea is banned from developing nuclear and missile-related technology under U.N. resolutions.


South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak convened an emergency national security meeting. Japan's envoy to the United Nations called for consultations on the launch within the U.N. Security Council. Russian Foreign Ministry said it "has caused us deep regret," and even China "expressed regret," a significant notch up in condemnation from previous statements on North Korea, its traditional ally.


That international attention, analysts in Seoul say, is exactly what North Korea wanted.






Read More..

Indian sitar legend Ravi Shankar dies






NEW DELHI: Legendary Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar, a major influence on musicians ranging from The Beatles to violinist Yehudi Menuhin, has died at the age of 92 after surgery in the United States, his family said Wednesday.

Shankar, the father of American singer-songwriter Norah Jones, died Tuesday in a hospital in San Diego, California, where he had recently undergone heart-valve replacement surgery.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh hailed Shankar as "a national treasure and global ambassador of India's cultural heritage".

"An era has passed away... The nation joins me to pay tributes to his unsurpassable genius, his art and his humility," he said.

Shankar, who had houses in both California and India, was born into a high-caste Bengali Brahmin family in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi in northern India on April 7, 1920.

He taught his close friend the late Beatle George Harrison to play the sitar, and collaborated with him on several projects, including the groundbreaking Concert for Bangladesh in 1971.

The Beatles called him "The Godfather of World Music".

Shankar, a three-time Grammy winner, also played in front of nearly 500,000 people at the Woodstock Festival in New York state in 1969 -- one of the most iconic cultural events of the century, which also featured Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix.

In a statement released from New York via his official Twitter feed, Shankar's wife Sukanya and his daughter Anoushka described him as a "husband, father, and musical soul".

"His health has been fragile for the past several years and (last) Thursday he underwent a surgery that could have potentially given him a new lease of life," they said.

"Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of the surgeons and doctors taking care of him, his body was not able to withstand the strain of the surgery. We were at his side when he passed away.

"Although it is a time for sorrow and sadness, it is also a time for all of us to give thanks and to be grateful that we were able to have him as a part of our lives."

His family and the Ravi Shankar Foundation said he had been suffering respiratory and heart problems.

The statement said that Shankar performed his last concert on November 4 in Long Beach, California, with his daughter and fellow sitar player Anoushka.

Memorial plans would be announced shortly, it said.

- AFP/ha



Read More..

NCP rejects Sena's 'PM offer' to Sharad Pawar, says not power hungry

MUMBAI: NCP scoffed at senior Shiv Sena leader Manohar Joshi's invitation to party chief Sharad Pawar to join NDA, saying there was no question of doing so as they are not "power hungry".

On Tuesday in Pune, Joshi invited Pawar to join NDA, saying "he would be able to end quarrels within the BJP-led alliance and could also become the Prime Minister".

Joshi attended a function organised on the eve of Pawar's 72nd birthday on Wednesday. He showered praise on the Union agriculture minister and said the NCP leader has the capability to be the PM.

"There is no question of NCP joining the NDA led by communal forces," said NCP spokesman Nawab Malik responding to Sena leader's offer.

"We are not power hungry and will always stick to our secular credentials," he said rejecting Joshi's proposal.

Read More..

Best Space Pictures of 2012: Editor's Picks

Photograph courtesy Tunç Tezel, APOY/Royal Observatory

This image of the Milky Way's vast star fields hanging over a valley of human-made light was recognized in the 2012 Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition run by the U.K.’s Royal Observatory Greenwich.

To get the shot, photographer Tunç Tezel trekked to Uludag National Park near his hometown of Bursa, Turkey. He intended to watch the moon and evening planets, then take in the Perseids meteor shower.

"We live in a spiral arm of the Milky Way, so when we gaze through the thickness of our galaxy, we see it as a band of dense star fields encircling the sky," said Marek Kukula, the Royal Observatory's public astronomer and a contest judge.

Full story>>

Why We Love It

"I like the way this view of the Milky Way also shows us a compelling foreground landscape. It also hints at the astronomy problems caused by light pollution."—Chris Combs, news photo editor

Published December 11, 2012

Read More..