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Afghan Sentenced to Prison for Committing Fraud Against USAID

Jordan Goodman — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 06:57:33 +0000

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEAugust 31, 2010 Press Office: 202-712-4320Public Information: 202-712-4810www.usaid.gov

Washington, DC - Ahman Samim Sediqi of Kabul, Afghanistan, was tried and sentenced in a local Afghan court on forgery and embezzlement charges stemming from his work on a development project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), announced USAID Office of Inspector General spokeswoman Dona M. Dinkler.

A three-judge panel found Sediqi guilty of embezzling nearly $193,000 while working as a finance coordinator on a $229 million local governance program financed by USAID and implemented by an American contractor.

Salt is a four-letter word, expert says

Laura Bejah — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 07:54:50 +0000

DALLAS, Aug. 31 (UPI) — The average U.S. adult eats about 1.5 teaspoons of salt a day, more than twice the recommended amount, a U.S. professor of clinical nutrition says.

Dr. Jo Ann Carson of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas says federal regulators have begun urging food manufacturers to cut back on the amount of sodium they add to everything from breakfast cereals to soups.

The aim is for manufacturers to reduce the amount so gradually consumers would barely notice the lower sodium levels, but the final limits have not yet been determined.

“Lowering our salt intake is important to control blood pressure,” Carson says in a statement.

Study: Removing Ovaries, Breasts Offers Benefits For High-Risk Women

admin — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 23:32:16 +0000

The study is the largest to date to find advantages for preventive surgery for women who carry BRCA gene mutations. Women with the faulty genes have a dramatically higher cancer risk than other women — five times greater for breast cancer and at least 10 times greater for ovarian cancer.

The study, appearing in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association, found benefits for women with two different BRCA gene variants whether they had previously had breast cancer or not.

The results offer more tailored evidence for women considering ovary removal, a surgery that ends fertility, fast-forwards them into early menopause and may contribute to osteoporosis or heart problems later in life.

“It’s really critical to have the best information when making such a profound decision,” said senior author Timothy Rebbeck of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

The researchers followed nearly 2,500 women with BRCA mutations in Austria, England, the Netherlands and the United States. Read more…

Shah, Sadoshima Meet on U.S.-Japanese Development Aims

Jordan Goodman — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 14:04:28 +0000

Pakistan, Afghanistan Assistance and Millennium Development Goals on the Agenda

Washington, DC - Dr. Rajiv Shah, Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, today conferred with Shiro Sadoshima, the Director-General of the International Cooperation Bureau in Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on matters of mutual interest such as flood relief for Pakistan, assistance for Afghanistan, the Millennium Development Goals and other areas of overlap in development efforts worldwide.

Shah and Sadoshima met for the first time at USAID headquarters in Washington.

BPA may affect testosterone levels

Laura Bejah — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 10:59:08 +0000

EXETER, England, Aug. 26 (UPI) — British and other researchers have identified changes in testosterone levels in men exposed to bisphenol A, a chemical used in food and drink containers.

Researchers at the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry and the University of Exeter, both in England, and colleagues linked higher BPA exposure with small increases in levels of testosterone in the blood.

The large population study, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, found the average BPA daily of more 5 micrograms per day exposure in the European study population was slightly higher than recent comparable estimates for the U.S.

New Machine Tests Children For Vision Problems

admin — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 08:13:35 +0000

Experts estimated 20 to 25 percent of school-age children suffer from a vision problem, and many of these issues would not be detected by tests with an eye chart.

Tara Buckley of Plymouth, Mich., said her son Ryan, 8, is one of them.

“We noticed his reading level was down, and so he was kind of behind in school,” said Buckley. “I was concerned that it was learning, at first, and then they ran a series of tests, and we found out that in fact it was his eyes.”

Dr. John Jacobi treats Ryan and many other children at Suburban Eyecare in Livonia. He said many children are suffering from undiagnosed vision problems.

“Avoidance is a huge clue, especially in the young ones that are emerging readers. Read more…

USAID’s Guatemala Mission Gets a New Director

Jordan Goodman — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 11:31:10 +0000

WASHINGTON, DC - Kevin Kelly has been sworn in as the Mission Director for USAID’s Mission in Guatemala. He brings more than 30 years of development experience, having worked on projects in Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and the Former Soviet Union.

In addition to over 25 years of experience as a USAID employee, Kelly has also worked with Chemonics, a USAID implementing partner, where he supervised a large development project in Peru and worked on initiatives involving legal and regulatory reform, judicial partnerships, privatization, and other issues.

During his tenure with USAID, Kelly was senior project advisor to the Office of Democracy and Governance in USAID’s Europe and Eurasia Bureau.

Whole-body MRI may help detect child abuse

Laura Bejah — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 07:30:27 +0000

BOSTON, Aug. 24 (UPI) — Whole-body magnetic resonance imaging may help detect suspected child abuse in infants, U.S. researchers suggest.

Lead author Dr. Jeannette M. Perez-Rossello says the diagnosis of abuse relies heavily on the presence of skeletal injuries and a series of X-rays of all the bones in the body is recommended to visualize the often subtle high-specificity fractures seen in infant abuse.

Researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School in Boston say the study involved 21 infants who underwent whole-body MRI — which uses a magnetic field, radio frequency pulses and a computer to produce detailed images of organs — for the evaluation of suspected child abuse.

Anxiety Rampant In Katrina Kids, Study Says

admin — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 20:10:02 +0000

More than one in three children studied – those forced to flee their homes because of the August 2005 storm – have since been diagnosed with mental health problems. These are children who moved to trailer parks and other emergency housing.

Nearly half of families studied still report household instability, researchers said.

“If children are bellwethers of recovery, then the social systems supporting affected Gulf Coast populations are still far from having recovered from Hurricane Katrina,” the researchers said.

The study was published online Monday in the journal Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness.

Lead author David Abramson of Columbia University said researchers were astonished by the level of distress.

Children are “a bit of canary in a coal mine in that they really represent a failure or a dysfunction of many, many other systems in the community,” said Abramson, who is with Columbia’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness.

About 500,000 people, including more than 160,000 children, weren’t able to return to their homes for at least three months after the storm hit on Aug. Read more…

USAID Assistance Tops $105 Million for Nigeriens in Need

Jordan Goodman — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 08:46:21 +0000

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is expanding support for food-insecure people and acutely malnourished children in Niger. USAID has committed more than $105 million in humanitarian assistance to date in Fiscal Year (FY) 2010.

In response to alerts from early warning systems and field assessments as early as October 2009, USAID began to procure U.S. food aid in November 2009. When later assessments indicated increased needs, USAID increased funding for emergency programs supporting food security, nutrition, agriculture, and economic recovery and market systems and drew on the resources of the newly authorized Emergency Food Security Program to provide grants to the U.N.

USAID Administrator Shah Pays Tribute to Humanitarians

Jordan Goodman — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 14:13:27 +0000

World Humanitarian Day honors all humanitarians who have lost their lives in the cause of duty, as well as those who have worked in the promotion of the humanitarian cause. Dr. Rajiv Shah, Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), released the following statement on the occasion.

“Today, I am proud to honor the men and women that are part of the USAID family – staff, implementers, and host country partners. From Haiti to Kyrgyzstan to Sudan, each day these individuals work tirelessly to save lives and improve the health and well-being of millions of people around the globe.

FDA: Illnesses From Eggs Likely To Increase

Jordan Goodman — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 09:33:30 +0000

WASHINGTON — A salmonella outbreak that sickened hundreds and led to the recall of hundreds of millions of eggs from one Iowa firm will likely grow, federal health officials said Thursday.

That’s because illnesses occurring after mid-July may not be reported yet, said Dr. Christopher Braden, an epidemiologist with the federal Centers for Disease Control.

Almost 2,000 illnesses from the strain of salmonella linked to the eggs were reported between May and July, about 1,300 more than usual, he said. No deaths have been reported. The CDC is continuing to receive information from state health departments as people report their illnesses.

“I would anticipate that we will be seeing more illnesses reported likely as a result of this outbreak,” said Braden. Read more…

Dark chocolate may lower hear risk

Laura Bejah — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 08:48:52 +0000

BOSTON, Aug. 20 (UPI) — Eating one to two servings of high-quality dark chocolate per week was linked to lower risks of heart failure, U.S researchers found.

Researcher Dr. Murrray Mittleman, director of the Cardiovascular Epidemiology Research Unit at Harvard Medical School’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, led the nine-year study, conducted among 31,823 middle-aged and elderly Swedish women.

The study found women who ate an average of one to two servings of high-quality chocolate per week had a 32 percent lower risk of developing heart failure and those who ate one to three servings per month had a 26 percent lower risk but those who ate at least one serving a day or more didn’t appear to benefit.

That those eating the chocolate daily may have no protective effect is probably due to the additional calories gained from eating chocolate instead of more nutritious foods, Mittleman says.

Although 90 percent of all chocolate eaten in Sweden was milk chocolate, it contained about 30 percent cocoa solids, while U.S.

Study: Smoking Scenes Decline In Top Movies

admin — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 04:54:37 +0000

Tobacco use on the silver screen peaked in 2005 and has been on the decline ever since. Movies released last year showed about half the number of smoking incidents than films four years earlier.

The study released Thursday looked at tobacco use in popular films from 1991 to 2009.

Last year, about half of the 145 movies in the study didn’t show any smoking at all. For films aimed at children or teens, the percentage was even higher at 61 percent. However, slightly more than half of the movies rated PG-13 did show tobacco use.

The report is in a publication from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.