U2′s Bono to urge U.S. politicians not to cut aid programs

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Irish rocker and anti-poverty campaigner Bono will appeal to Democrats and Republicans during a visit to Washington this week to spare U.S. development assistance programs from cuts as Congress tries to avert the looming “fiscal cliff” of tax hikes and spending reductions early next year.

The U2 lead singer’s visit comes as the Obama administration and congressional leaders try to forge a deal in coming weeks to avoid the economy hitting the “fiscal cliff” – tax increases and spending cuts worth $ 600 billion starting in January if Congress does not act.

Analysts say the absence of a deal could shock the United States, the world’s biggest economy, back into recession.

Kathy McKiernan, spokeswoman for the ONE Campaign, said Bono will hold talks with congressional lawmakers and senior Obama administration officials during the November 12-14 visit.

During meetings he will stress the effectiveness of U.S. foreign assistance programs and the need to preserve them to avoid putting at risk progress made in fighting HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, she said.

Bono, a long-time advocate for the poor, will argue that U.S. government-funded schemes that support life-saving treatments for HIV/AIDS sufferers, nutrition programs for malnourished children, and emergency food aid make up just 1 percent of the U.S. government budget but are helping to save tens of millions of lives in impoverished nations.

The One Campaign would not elaborate which lawmakers and senior Obama administration officials Bono will meet.

On Monday, Bono will discuss the power of social movements with students at Georgetown University. He will also meet new World Bank President Jim Yong Kim for a web cast discussion on Wednesday on the challenges of eradicating poverty.

(Editing by W Simon)

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FDA finds contamination issues at Ameridose

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal health inspectors found numerous potential sources of contamination, including leaky ceilings and insects, at a drug-making facility that has the same founders as the specialty pharmacy linked to a deadly meningitis outbreak.

The Food and Drug Administration on Monday released the results of a monthlong inspection of Ameridose, a Westborough, Mass.-based company that makes injectable drugs. The agency’s report, posted online, lists a host of problems at the plant, ranging from manufacturing to sterility to quality control.

Inspectors said they found insects within 10 feet of a supposedly sterile area where drugs were manufactured. In another case, inspectors reported a bird flying into a room where drugs are stored.

Elsewhere, the report cites leaks and cracks in the ceiling and walls of a clean room used to manufacture sterile drugs. The same room contained “thick residues that were orange, brown, and green” on equipment used for sterilization.

FDA inspectors also said the company did not investigate at least 53 incidents of bacterial contamination that arose during testing of stock drug solution.

“There is no documented evidence that your firm implemented permanent corrective actions to prevent these sterility events from recurring,” investigators wrote.

Ameridose agreed to shut down for inspection in October after tainted steroids from its sister company, the New England Compounding Center, were linked to a fungal meningitis outbreak that has spread to 19 states and caused 32 deaths. Ameridose operates two facilities in Westborough and provides medication in prefilled oral syringes to hospitals nationwide. Its drugs range from painkillers to blood thinners to pregnancy drugs.

Late last month, the company agreed to recall all of its products under pressure from FDA regulators. FDA officials previously said they have not connected any Ameridose drugs to infection or illness, but they have concerns about the products’ sterility.

Inspectors visiting the company’s plant also questioned whether some of Ameridose’s drugs work properly. Inspectors said that the company received 33 complaints from patients and doctors claiming “lack of effect” with various drugs.

Regulators report that Ameridose also failed to investigate potentially serious side effects reported with drugs. One complaint involving the company’s painkiller fentanyl states the “patient was over-sedated, unresponsive.” A complaint for oxytocin, which is used to induce labor in pregnant women, states that the “patient had shortness of breath, the throat was closing, and coughing.”

Ameridose said in a statement Monday that it will work to address the issues cited by FDA. But it stressed that “Ameridose’s history shows clearly that we have not had any instance of contaminated products over the course of the past six years, which covers the manufacture and shipment of 70 million units of product.”

Ameridose and NECC were founded by brothers-in-law Barry Cadden and Greg Conigliaro. Ameridose says it is a separate entity with distinct management. Since the outbreak, Cadden, the lead pharmacist at NECC, resigned his post as director at Ameridose. He is scheduled to testify before Congress at a hearing Wednesday examining the outbreak.

Last week Ameridose laid off nearly all of its 650 employees and 140 employees at its marketing and support arm, Medical Sales Management, due to the company’s extended shutdown.

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How Often Do People Have Sex at the Office?

As someone who reads people’s sex diaries professionally—for my books and website I collect thousands of them—I am here to report that former CIA Director David Petraeus is really just a talented guy who, considering his marital and work history, is a typical American male.

Petraeus has been married for 38 years. Very few human beings sleep with just one person in a 38-year period. Most people simply aren’t married that long. According to the Census, the majority of marriages end long before the 38th anniversary mark (the average divorce occurs eight years after the wedding), and of the marriages that stay intact for 38 years, approximately half involve at least one other sexual partner.

Various news outlets reported that Petraeus had sex under his desk at CIA headquarters. This makes his case a rare one. Although the workplace is the most common place to meet a new partner, few people actually have sex at the office—in the 3,500 diaries I’ve read, a grand total of 11 office affairs actually took place within the workplace walls. Workaholics logging long hours, particularly those working 12- to 18-hour days, account for seven of those 11. (Oh, and regarding the issue of on the desk vs. under the desk, I’ve discovered that people who prefer steadiness and balance—and the kinds of sexual positions given names such as “missionary,” for instance—opt for the floor. The desk is the domain of more acrobatic love-makers.)

Offices are no longer the great bastions of sex that they were in the Mad Men era, when doors were thick and carpeting thicker. The age of wide open “co-working environments,” glass walls, and security cameras has made the office a difficult place to find privacy. (Unless, of course, your office in a mid-20th-century government building is possibly camera-free and fully secure because you’re the head of U.S. intelligence—and perhaps your boss will never notice because he’s the president of the U.S. during an election year. Just saying.)

Regardless, privacy aside, there’s one thing I find to be an absolute certainty: If you communicated evidence of your lovemaking by e-mail or text message—like Petraeus apparently did—my research shows that you will likely be found out. All cheating affairs I encountered were discovered because of a digital paper trail. Remember, people: Don’t put it in writing.

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Early end-of-life talks tied to less aggressive care

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Terminally-ill cancer patients are less likely to get aggressive end-of-life treatment, such as chemotherapy in the last two weeks of life, when they talk with their doctors early on about how they want to die, according to a new study.

Treatment aimed at keeping those patients alive at the end is often expensive and may not improve patients’ quality of life or comfort. Such therapies usually involve more time in the hospital rather than at home or in hospice care.

“Aggressive care at the end of life for individual patients isn’t necessarily bad, it’s just that most patients who recognize they’re dying don’t want to receive that kind of care,” said Dr. Jennifer Mack, the study’s lead author from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

“We should at least consider having these discussions soon after diagnosis if we know that a patient has incurable cancer,” she told Reuters Health.

Her team’s analysis involved 1,231 people with advanced lung or colon cancer who died over a 14-month period during a larger cancer study. Researchers interviewed patients or their caregivers about whether and when the patients had discussions with their doctors about end-of-life care.

Mack and her colleagues also checked medical records for signs of those discussions and for any treatment and hospitalizations cancer patients had in their last month of life.

They found that most patients – 88 percent – had end-of-life discussions, but more than one-third of those took place less than a month before the patient died, when their health was likely already deteriorating. Close to two-thirds of the talks happened while patients were in the hospital.

Almost half of study participants received aggressive, life-prolonging care, Mack’s team reported Monday in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Those who’d had end-of-life discussions more than a month before dying were 50 to 60 percent less likely to get that extra treatment than patients who put off those talks or didn’t have them at all.

Patients (and their caregivers) who reported having the discussions with doctors were almost seven times more likely to end up in hospice than those who didn’t recall end-of-life talks.

“A lot of patients don’t want (aggressive treatment), but they don’t recognize that they’re dying or that this is relevant for them,” said Dr. Camilla Zimmermann, head of the palliative care program at University Health Network in Toronto.

But, she told Reuters Health, “The earlier you discuss these things, the more options you have. If you wait too long, you end up having these discussions with someone you don’t know, that you just met, in an inpatient setting,” instead of with your primary doctor.

Mack agreed.

“If we start these conversations early, then patients have some time to process this information, to think about what’s important to them (and) to talk with their families about that,” she said.

Aggressive end-of-life care is also expensive. According to data from the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care, 32 percent of total Medicare spending goes to caring for very sick patients in their last two years of life, often because those people are in and out of the hospital. In the early 2000′s, that spending was equal to about $ 46,000 per chronically-ill patient.

Zimmermann, who wasn’t involved in the new research, believes it’s never too early for doctors, patients or caregivers to initiate discussions about end-of-life preferences – even if it can be an uncomfortable topic.

“There are many opportunities while that incurable illness is still being treated… to also focus on what happens if this doesn’t work,” she said.

“I think people are afraid that bringing up these discussions is going to make them die. Bringing up these discussions is really going protect them from an outcome they don’t want in the end.”

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/gPtMdm Journal of Clinical Oncology, online November 12, 2012.

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In This Junkyard, It Seems, There Are No Dogs

It’s kind of Orwellian that anyone would rapaciously buy an ETF with the ticker JNK—branding shorthand for “junk,” Wall Street’s sobriquet for high-yield, the riskiest layer of corporate bonds.

Nevertheless, JNK, the SPDR Barclays Capital High Yield Bond ETF, and competitor offerings are a hot destination in these yield-famished days. The appeal is irrefutable: You’ll get precious little income from Treasuries and muni bonds. Creditworthy corporations are borrowing at record lows. Why not then pile into riskier, higher-yielding debt, especially if you can do so via one tidy, exchange-traded ticker? (No need to ring Michael Milken.) What’s more, Moody’s sees the global default rate for “speculative-grade” debt ending the year at 2.8 percent, compared with an average of 4.8 percent since 1983. Yields have fallen 1.65 percentage points this year, to 7.05 percent on Nov. 1, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch data.

What’s not to love?

An overcrowded trade marked by 2007-like issuer complacency—that’s what. More companies are demanding and getting easy terms on their junk issues. The most popular junk ETFs are going deeper into credit risk to scrape for yield. The sluicing of retail money into these ETFs is perpetuating what has historically proved to be a vicious trend. “Signs of over-exuberance are creeping into the corporate credit market,” wrote Michael Lewitt, a hedge fund manager who publishes the Credit Strategist. “In the past, rising issuance of these types of low-quality bonds has been a warning that a market rally is coming to an end … Today’s new issues will be the troubled credits of tomorrow.”

On Nov. 7, Standard & Poor’s warned of the unprecedented dangers of a brave, new junk bond world. Wrote credit analysts Diane Vazza and Evan Gunter:

“The ease with which investors can enter and exit ETF investments creates new and risky dynamics in the speculative-grade market with the potential flow of ‘hot money.’ Speculative-grade companies have a higher default risk than investment-grade companies. Therefore, when the credit cycle turns against investors, losses from defaults can quickly outstrip the additional interest payments that high-yield investors receive. Since we are entering the stage of declining credit quality in the current credit cycle, the credit quality of an issuer or a portfolio has become paramount.”

Vazza and Gunter looked under the hoods of JNK and its rival, HYG, the iShares iBoxx $ High Yield Corporate Bond Fund. They found that both ETFs owned a higher proportion of the riskiest junk debt versus the overall high-yield market. While they estimated that the broad universe of high yield includes 7.9 percent of bonds rated CCC+ and lower, their share in HYG’s portfolio is at 11.0 percent and in JNK just under 10 percent. While higher risk juices returns in a favorable environment like the present one, the analysts explained, they take outsized losses once the credit cycle turns.

Sales of junk debt in the U.S. have come in at $ 294 billion so far this year, the fastest pace on record. It’s in that booming backdrop that private equity-owned companies have paid out $ 34.1 billion in dividends this year, according to Standard & Poor’s Capital IQ Leveraged Commentary & Data. That’s north of 2010’s total of $ 31.5 billion and the $ 23.8 billion paid out in 2007, when the leveraged buyout market peaked. By comparison: Some $ 1.2 billion in dividends were issued in 2008 and $ 440 million in 2009.

This boom has prompted an echo-boom in payment-in-kind transactions, or PIK toggles, which let companies pay interest in debt rather than cash, essentially deferring payments to their investors. That tactic was a hallmark of the private equity bubble of five years ago. According to Moody’s, as of mid-October two of the third quarter’s 14 dividend financings enjoyed PIK toggle structures, including Emergency Medical Services’ $ 450 million of notes to pay a dividend to Clayton, Dubilier & Rice and IDQ Holdings’ $ 45 million deal supporting a payout to Castle Harlan. Last month, Petco also got in on the PIK toggle boom.

Caveat junktor. Moody’s calculates that the default rate for companies that sold PIK-toggle bonds was 13 percent from 2006 to 2010, twice the rate for similarly rated issuers that didn’t use the tactic.

“Low yields are driving more and more investors into really strange territory,” says Lee Pacchia, a Bloomberg Law analyst who follows corporate bankruptcies. “They need to take on risk. While the market forces driving this trend could go on for a while, lowering standards could end badly. It’s called ‘junk’ for a reason.”

The institutional smart money is increasingly taking the other side of that trade. According to Bloomberg data, the number of bearish options on HYG are at an all-time high: The number of outstanding puts on HYG has almost doubled since Oct. 19, to a record of 118,444 at the end of last month. Hedge funds seeking that bet on both gains and losses in credit attracted $ 12.6 billion of deposits in the three months ended Sept. 30, the most since the last quarter of 2007, according to HFR.

It all makes you wonder how quickly people may have forgotten the lessons of the credit bubble, or what one hedgie has called the era of promiscuous lending. Will today’s junk boom end so differently?

“The history of money is a sad state of affairs,” wrote Prudent Bear’s Doug Noland in his recent post, titled “The Myth of Deleveraging.” “Failing to learn from a litany of previous monetary fiascoes, ‘money’ is these days being abusively over-issued.”

Farzad is a Bloomberg Businessweek contributor.

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BBC must reform or die, says Trust chairman

LONDON (Reuters) – The BBC could be doomed unless it makes radical changes, the head of its governing trust said on Sunday, after its director general quit to take the blame for the airing of false child sex abuse allegations against a former politician.

Chris Patten, chairman of the BBC Trust, said confidence had to be restored if the publicly funded corporation was to withstand pressure from rivals, especially Rupert Murdoch‘s media empire, which would try to take advantage of the turmoil.

“If you’re saying, ‘Does the BBC need a thorough structural radical overhaul?’, then absolutely it does, and that is what we will have to do,” Patten, a one-time senior figure in Prime Minister David Cameron‘s Conservative Party and the last British governor of Hong Kong, told BBC television.

“The basis for the BBC’s position in this country is the trust that people have in it,” Patten said. “If the BBC loses that, it’s over.”

George Entwistle resigned as director general on Saturday, just two months into the job, to take responsibility for the child sex allegation on the flagship news programme Newsnight.

The witness in the report, who says he suffered sexual abuse at a care home in the late 1970s, said on Friday he had misidentified the politician, Alistair McAlpine. Newsnight admitted it had not shown the witness a picture of McAlpine, or approached McAlpine for comment before going to air.

Already under pressure after revelations that a long-time star presenter, the late Jimmy Savile, was a paedophile, Entwistle conceded on the BBC morning news that he had not known – or asked – who the alleged abuser was until the name appeared in social media.

The BBC, celebrating its 90th anniversary, is affectionately known in Britain as “Auntie”, and respected around much of the world.

But with 22,000 staff working at eight national TV channels, 50 radio stations and an extensive Internet operation, critics say it is hampered by a complex and overly bureaucratic and hierarchical management structure.

THOMPSON’S LEGACY

Journalists said this had become worse under Entwistle’s predecessor Mark Thompson, who took over in the wake of the last major crisis to hit the corporation and is set to become chief executive of the New York Times Co on Monday.

In that instance, both director general and chairman were forced out after the BBC was castigated by a public inquiry over a report alleging government impropriety in the fevered build up to war in Iraq, leading to major organisational changes.

One of the BBC’s most prominent figures, Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman, said since the Iraq report furore, management had become bloated while cash had been cut from programme budgets.

“He (Entwistle) has been brought low by cowards and incompetents,” Paxman said in a statement, echoing a widely-held view that Entwistle was a good man who had been let down by his senior staff.

Prime Minister Cameron appeared ready to give the BBC the benefit of the doubt, believing that “one of the great institutions of this country” could reform and deal with its failings, according to sources in his office.

Patten, who must find a new director general to sort out the mess, agreed that management structures had proved inadequate.

“Apparently decisions about the programme went up through every damned layer of BBC management, bureaucracy, legal checks – and still emerged,” he said.

“One of the jokes I made, and actually it wasn’t all that funny, when I came to the BBC … was that there were more senior leaders in the BBC then there were in the Chinese Communist Party.”

Patten ruled out resigning himself but other senior jobs are expected to be on the line, while BBC supporters fear investigative journalism will be scaled back. He said he expected to name Entwistle’s successor in weeks, not months.

Among the immediate challenges are threats of litigation.

McAlpine, a close ally of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, has indicated he will sue for damages.

Claims for compensation are also likely from victims who say Savile, one of the most recognisable personalities on British television in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, sexually abused them as children, sometimes on BBC premises.

INQUIRIES

Two inquiries are already under way, looking at failures at Newsnight and allegations relating to Savile, both of which could make uncomfortable reading for senior figures.

Police have also launched a major inquiry into Savile’s crimes and victims’ allegations of a high-profile paedophile ring. Detectives said they had arrested their third suspect on Sunday, a man in his 70s from Cambridgeshire in central England.

Funded by an annual licence fee levied on all TV viewers, the BBC has long been resented by its commercial rivals, who argue it has an unfair advantage and distorts the market.

Murdoch’s Sun tabloid gleefully reported Entwistle’s departure with the headline “Bye Bye Chump” and Patten said News Corp and others would put the boot in, happy to deflect attention after a phone-hacking scandal put the newspaper industry under intense and painful scrutiny.

He said that “one or two newspapers, Mr. Murdoch’s papers” would love to see the BBC lose its national status, “but I think the great British public doesn’t want to see that happen”.

Murdoch himself was watching from afar.

“BBC getting into deeper mess. After Savile scandal, now prominent news program falsely names senior pol as paedophile,” he wrote on his Twitter website on Saturday.

It is not just the BBC and the likes of Entwistle and Patten who are in the spotlight.

Thompson, whom Entwistle succeeded in mid-September, has also faced questions from staff at the New York Times over whether he is still the right person to take one of the biggest jobs in American newspaper publishing.

Britain’s Murdoch-owned Sunday Times queried how Thompson could have been unaware of claims about Savile during his tenure at the BBC as he had told British lawmakers, saying his lawyers had written to the paper addressing the allegations in early September, while he was still director general.

(Editing by Kevin Liffey and Sophie Hares)

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Malaysian charged with Facebook insult of sultan; sister says he’ll file police complaint

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – The sister of a Malaysian man who has been charged with insulting a state sultan on Facebook says he is innocent and plans to lodge a complaint over his detention.

Anisa Abdul Jalil, sister of Ahmad Abdul Jalil, says her brother was charged Thursday with making offensive postings on Facebook last month.

She says the charges are ridiculous because there is no evidence linking Ahmad to the posts in question, which were made by someone using the name “Zul Yahaya.”

Ahmad was freed on bail Thursday after six days of detention. Anisa says he will file a complaint with police for unlawful detention and intimidation.

Nine Malaysian states have sultans and other royal figures. Though their roles are largely ceremonial, acts provoking hatred against them are considered seditious.

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James Bond soars to box office record with “Skyfall”

(Reuters) – James Bond can don the tuxedo and break out the Dom Perignon after the super spy returned to theaters in record fashion at the weekend, blowing away box office rivals with $ 87.8 million in ticket sales for the U.S. and Canadian debut of new movie “Skyfall” for the biggest opening in the franchise’s history.

The best North American opening for the 50-year-old Bond franchise adds to a strong tally of $ 428.6 million for “Skyfall” overseas. Globally, the movie starring Daniel Craig as 007 has now earned $ 518.6 million since first hitting international theaters on October 26, distributor Sony Pictures said.

“Skyfall” handily beat Walt Disney Co animated movie “Wreck-It Ralph,” the story of a video game character who destroys everything in his path. The family film that topped last week’s charts grabbed $ 33.1 million from Friday through Sunday and slipped to second place.

Denzel Washington drama “Flight,” about an airline captain who saves a plane from crashing, pulled in $ 15.1 million to finish third.

Bond’s allure proved unbeatable in “Skyfall,” the third movie starring Craig and the first in four years. The last Bond film, “Quantum of Solace” in 2008, opened with a then-record $ 68 million at North American (U.S. and Canadian) theaters.

“We’ve always been very bullish about the film, but I don’t think anyone expected the kind of stunning numbers that we’ve seen,” said Rory Bruer, president of worldwide distribution for Sony Corp‘s Sony Pictures studio.

“How many pictures in just over two weeks have earned more than half a billion already?” he told Reuters.

“We’ve seen huge openings in every country that it’s opened in. It’s going to be one for the history books,” Bruer added.

In the new movie, Judi Dench returns as Bond’s supervisor, “M.” Bond travels between Istanbul, Shanghai and London as his loyalty to M is tested, while MI6 comes under attack from an unknown threat. Javier Bardem plays the villain Bond must stop.

Bond’s return has been hailed by the critics as a triumph for the 23-film franchise after a tepid response to “Quantum of Solace.” Ninety-two percent of “Skyfall” reviews on the Rotten Tomatoes website were positive, and audiences polled by CinemaScore awarded the film an “A” grade. The film has already exceeded the “Quantum” lifetime box office total.

The $ 200 million movie was produced by MGM, Sony and Eon Productions. Its release comes 50 years after the franchise premiered with “Dr. No” in 1962, and the producers highlighted the anniversary in the film’s marketing. The 22 previous Bond films have grossed $ 5 billion at box offices over five decades.

“Skyfall” was the only major new nationwide release this weekend. Steven Spielberg’s historical drama “Lincoln” opened in 11 theaters with sales of $ 900,000, or $ 81,818 per theater on average. The movie which stars Daniel Day-Lewis as the 16th president expands to 1,500 locations next Friday.

Rounding out the top five, Ben Affleck drama “Argo,” about the rescue of U.S. diplomats from Iran in 1979, finished in fourth place with $ 6.7 million. In fifth place, Liam Neeson hostage thriller “Taken 2″ grabbed $ 4.0 million.

Sony Corp’s movie studio released “Skyfall.” “Flight” was distributed by Paramount Pictures, a unit of Viacom Inc. “Lincoln” was produced by Dreamworks and released by Disney. Time Warner Inc’s Warner Bros. studio released “Argo.” “Taken 2″ was distributed by 20th Century Fox, a unit of News Corp.

(Editing by Doina Chiacu)

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Acetaminophen in infancy again tied to asthma: study

(Reuters) – Babies given acetaminophen for fevers and aches may have a heightened risk of asthma symptoms in their preschool years, according to a Danish study.

The findings, published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, focused on 411 Danish children and add to a mixed bag of research about whether there’s a link between acetaminophen – better known by the brand name Tylenol – and children’s asthma risk.

Researchers found that the more acetaminophen children were given as infants, the more likely they were to develop asthma-like symptoms in early childhood.

That statistical link alone does not prove that acetaminophen causes airway trouble, according to senior researcher Hans Bisgaard, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Copenhagen.

“We think it is too early to conclude a causal relationship,” he told Reuters Health in an email – though he added that the findings should encourage further research into a “plausible biological mechanism” by which acetaminophen could promote asthma.

The study included 336 children who were followed from birth to age seven, All had mothers with asthma, which put them at increased risk for the lung disease themselves.

Overall, 19 percent of the children had asthma-like symptoms by the age of three, meaning recurrent bouts of wheezing, breathlessness or coughing.

Bisgaard’s team found the risk generally went up the more often a child was given acetaminophen in the first year of life. For each doubling in the number of days a baby received the drug, there was a 28 percent increase in the risk of asthma symptoms.

The link disappeared, though, by the time the children were seven years old. At that point 14 percent of the children had asthma, and the risk was no greater for those given acetaminophen as babies.

Weeding out the specific effects of acetaminophen on asthma risk is tricky. The biggest reason is that children with asthma tend to get more severe respiratory infections.

Compared to other children, their colds may more often turn into bronchitis or pneumonia, so it would make sense that they’d be given the fever-reducing acetaminophen more often than other children would.

Bisgaard said that his team did have information on other factors, including the children’s rates of pneumonia and bronchitis, body weight and parents’ smoking – and they did not seem to account for the acetaminophen-asthma connection.

One recent study found that children given other common pain medications, including ibuprofen and naproxen, also had an increased asthma risk. The researchers said that suggested children with asthma symptoms were simply more likely to need the medications.

Bisgaard said that few babies in his study were given other painkillers, so it wasn’t possible to see whether those medications were linked to asthma symptoms. The study also included only children at higher-than-normal risk of asthma.

Bisgaard advised parents to only use acetaminophen when needed, like when a child has a fever.

“We would like to stress that the use of this drug indeed is beneficial in the appropriate circumstances,” he said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/ZeQrfo

(Reporting from New York by Amy Norton at Reuters Health; editing by Elaine Lies)

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Greek lawmakers back fresh cuts

11 November 2012 Last updated at 18:06 ET

Greek lawmakers have approved a 2013 budget involving fresh spending cuts, despite mass public street protests.

The budget was backed in by 167 votes to 128. The bill was a pre-condition for Athens to be granted a 31.5bn euro (£25bn; $ 40bn) EU/IMF loan necessary to stave off bankruptcy.

Another austerity package of tax rises and pension cuts was passed last week.

Ahead of the vote, more than 10,000 protesters rallied outside the parliament in the capital, Athens.

Prime Minister Antonis Samaras earlier warned that without the new loan, Greece would start running out of money on Friday.

Eurozone finance ministers are due to meet just hours after the vote in Athens, and Mr Samaras is now expected to travel to Brussels for a series of meetings.

The problem that he faces is that it could take some weeks before the EU backs the new instalment, BBC Athens correspondent Mark Lowen reports. The measure will have to be approved first by some parliaments, including Germany’s.

BBC News – Business

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