Is chocolate good for your heart? It depends...

Reuters By Ben Hirschler

PARIS (Reuters) Mon Aug 29, 2011. Chocolate may be good for the heart but cardiologists are not giving you a license to indulge.

New research presented at Europe's biggest medical meeting Monday suggested chocolate consumption might be associated with a one third reduction in the risk of developing heart disease.

Just why there should be such a link was unclear, the European Society of Cardiology congress was told.

There has been a string of scientific studies in recent years showing a potential health benefit from eating chocolate. Dark chocolate, in particular, contains compounds called flavanols thought to be good for the blood system.

In an attempt to paint a clearer picture, Oscar Franco and colleagues from the University of Cambridge pooled results from seven studies involving 100,000 people.

Five of the studies showed a beneficial link between eating chocolate and cardiovascular health, while two did not.

Overall, the findings showed the highest levels of chocolate consumption were associated with a 37 percent reduction in cardiovascular disease and a 29 percent reduction in stroke compared with the lowest levels.

Franco said there were limitations with the pooled analysis, which did not differentiate between dark and milk chocolate, and more research was needed to test whether chocolate actually caused better health outcomes or if it was due to some other confounding factor.

"Evidence does suggest chocolate might have some heart health benefits but we need to find out why that might be," said Victoria Taylor, of the British Heart Foundation, who was not involved in the research.

"If you want to reduce your heart disease risk, there are much better places to start than at the bottom of a box of chocolates."

Franco, whose findings were also published online in the British Medical Journal, said while it seemed chocolate had heart benefits, these could easily be outweighed by the unhealthy nature of much confectionery.

"The high sugar and fat content of commercially available chocolate should be considered, and initiatives to reduce it might permit an improved exposure to the beneficial effect of chocolate," the research team wrote.

Health and Lifestyle

Funeral home accused of losing woman's body...

Reuters

BIRMINGHAM, Ala (Reuters) Wed Aug 24, 2011. The daughters of an Alabama woman who died in 2010 sued the funeral home on Tuesday that handled her burial, saying it lost the body and couldn't find it even after digging up several graves. .

The three daughters of Jimmie Lee Scott said in their lawsuit filed in the Circuit Court of Montgomery County that after their mother died, her body was handed over to Ross-Clayton Funeral Home Inc.

The firm oversaw an April 2010 funeral service for Scott and her casket was taken to the Oakwood Cemetery Annex in Montgomery for burial, the lawsuit states.

The daughters and others in attendance left after a graveside service, where the casket was positioned over the plot where Scott was to be interred, court papers indicate.

Later, daughter Dakota Scott went to take flowers to her mother's grave, but found the tombstone was far away from where she remembered the service being held, the lawsuit said. Nevertheless, the funeral home is said to have assured her the site was correct.

A representative of the funeral home later contacted Scott and told her the funeral home would have to move her mother's casket and body, because another family owned the plot, the lawsuit states.

But when workers dug up the grave, no casket or body was found in the plot where Jimmie Lee Scott's headstone had been placed, the court papers said.

The same day, other graves were dug up in a vain search for Jimmie Lee Scott's body, which has still not been found, the lawsuit said.

"The plaintiffs have been forced to relive some of the saddest days of their lives -- the death and burial of their mother -- whom they deeply love and for whom they desire a peaceful and certain resting place," attorneys for the three women wrote in the lawsuit.

David Ross, the head of the funeral home, declined to comment on the suit when reached by phone on Tuesday night.

The lawsuit does not say how old Jimmie Lee Scott was when she died.

Also named as a defendant in the suit were the representative from the funeral home who is said to have handled the arrangements, and Forest Hills Memorial Park LLC, a cemetery company the plaintiffs say was contacted by the funeral home to deal with the burial.

Forest Hills had "a long history of problems, some of which are similar to the complaint in this case," the lawsuit said. A representative for Forest Hills could not be reached for comment.

Jimmie Lee Scott's daughters were seeking at least $2 million in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis and Verna Gates: Editing by Cynthia Johnston)

Bull semen spill causes scare, closes highway...

Reuters By Tim Ghianni

NASHVILLE, Tenn (Reuters) Wed Aug 24, 2011. A spill of frozen bull semen bound for a breeder in the state of Texas triggered a scare on Tuesday that temporarily shut down a U.S. interstate highway during the morning rush hour.

The incident began when the driver of a Greyhound bus carrying the freight alerted the fire department he had lost a part of his load while negotiating the ramp on a highway near Nashville.

"We didn't know what it was, but we were told (the canisters) were non-toxic," said Maggie Lawrence, a fire department spokeswoman.

When firefighters arrived on the ramp, they saw "four small propane-sized canisters (that) began to emit a light vapor," Lawrence said.

In addition to the vapor, the canisters also let off an unpleasant odor and the ramp was closed while emergency personnel tried to determine what was in the containers.

The bus driver turned around to retrieve the canisters. Once emergency personnel learned the smoking canisters were nothing hazardous and that they simply contained frozen bull semen that had been stored on dry ice, Tennessee Department of Transportation and fire department workers cleared the ramp.

"It was no different to us than if a mattress fell off a truck," said transportation spokeswoman B.J. Doughty.

(Editing by James B. Kelleher and Greg McCune)

Sprint to land Apple's iPhone: How wireless carrier dynamics will change...

ZDNet

Sprint to land Apple's iPhone: How wireless carrier dynamics will change By Larry Dignan August 23, 2011.

Summary: Sprint lands the iPhone 5 and the wireless carrier competitive dynamic changes.

Sprint will reportedly get Apple’s iPhone 5 in October and the move has wide ramifications in the wireless carrier pecking order.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Sprint will begin selling the iPhone 5 in mid-October. The move will put Sprint’s line-up on equal footing with both AT&T and Verizon Wireless.

Sprint, the No. 3 carrier, has performed fairly well, improved customer service and landed new customers with a value-oriented pricing approach. The problem for Sprint: AT&T and Verizon had a lock on the iPhone.

Now all of that changes and Sprint is saved. Traffic into Sprint stores will improve and it’s possible that the three wireless providers will split iPhone sales. The fallout should be interesting to watch.

Also: CNET cell phone buying guide

Here’s a quick view of what this Sprint move means.

•Verizon Wireless’ aim to improve is smartphone mix is in jeopardy. Verizon didn’t get the pop from the iPhone 4 that it expected. Meanwhile, Apple’s iPhone 5, which was thought to turbocharge Verizon’s smartphone growth, will arrive late. As a result, Verizon’s smartphone mix isn’t likely to be 50-50 at the end of the year as planned in January. Sprint entering the iPhone picture changes the equation. Will Sprint split iPhone 5 sales with AT&T and Verizon? After all, AT&T fended off Verizon with iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS sales. In other words, Verizon’s iPhone utopia isn’t going to happen.

•AT&T gets more competition. AT&T weathered the Verizon storm well, but Sprint is likely to change the carrier dynamic. The wild card in this competition is whether AT&T can maintain a lock on low-priced iPhones such as the 3GS.

•Pricing plans will matter more. If the big three carriers have the iPhone, customers will choose the best pricing plans and data caps as a differentiator. Network quality will also matter. Verizon, Sprint and AT&T are likely to move prices lower to grab share. Customer service will also matter. Verizon and Sprint are top dogs on customer service.

•Sprint becomes much more viable. With the iPhone, Sprint can keep customers, land more family plans and lower churn rates. There are serious questions about Sprint’s 4G network plans going forward as the company rolls out its network vision, but the iPhone puts the carrier on much better footing

Woman, 90, beats back burglars with cane...

Reuters

BERLIN (Reuters) Mon Aug 22, 2011. A feisty 90-year-old German woman chased away three would-be burglars from her rural farmhouse with her cane, police said on Monday.

The retired farmer was moving around her house with the help of a walking frame and spotted the intruders -- two men and one woman.

She grabbed her cane and started beating the burglars with it. The trio fled the house in a town outside Muenster.

"It was quite courageous of her," a police spokeswoman said. "But on the other hand it was also quite dangerous. She was quite fortunate that nothing serious happened."

(Reporting by Kalina Oroschakoff, editing by Mike Collett-White)

Vampire arrest sparks discussion on pop culture...

Reuters By Deborah Quinn Hensel

HOUSTON(Reuters) Thu Aug 18, 2011. The arrest of an American man who broke into a woman's house and tried to suck her blood over the weekend has sparked discussion about the impact of vampire books and movies on youth culture.

Whether pop culture played a role in the attack remains to be seen, as 19-year-old Lyle Monroe Bensley awaits a psychiatric evaluation in jail on burglary charges in Galveston, Texas.

Found growling and hissing in a parking lot and wearing only boxer shorts, the pierced and tattooed Bensley claimed he was a 500-year-old vampire who needed to "feed," Galveston Police Capt. Jeff Heyse said.

Vampires have been a focal point of literature since Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, "Dracula". But fascination, particularly among young people, has peaked in recent years with the popularity of the "Twilight" books about teenage vampires and the television series, "True Blood."

"I think the vampire is a metaphor for the outsider and the predator in all of us," said author Anne Rice, whose Vampire Chronicles series has captured the imaginations of horror fans since the 1970s.

"We're all conscious at times of being alone, of being alienated, of being a secret self that fears exposure to the judgments of others. So we feel like vampires," she told Reuters.

Bensley is now being held in the Galveston County Jail on a $40,000 bond for home burglary with intent to commit a felony.

The woman, who lived near Bensley and did not know him, escaped the attack unharmed, Heyse said.

Kevin Petroff, chief of the Galveston County District Attorney's office, told Reuters no defense attorney has been appointed to date, and if Bensley had hired a lawyer privately, no notice had been filed.

YOUTHFUL FOR ETERNITY

Dr. Thomas Garza, who teaches a course in vampire lore at the University of Texas, said young people might aspire to be like vampires because they cheat death and are able to stay beautiful, powerful, and youthful for eternity.

The modern vampire in popular culture is more attractive, suave, and fashionably dressed than the Old World Slavic vampires, adding to the resurgence of their appeal, he added.

"I would say that it is the Twilight saga in particular that has brought out the younger teen fans. In that connection, Edward is a very 'safe' vampire, a kind of 'starter vamp' for beginners, if you will," Garza said.

"He's pretty, yes, so the seduction's there, but he's more than reluctant to act on his and Bella's sexual desires. He can go out in daylight - and even 'sparkles' in the sun, giving him a completely non-threatening character. He drives a Volvo, for goodness sake."

While Bensley's Texas antics have captured international attention, the delusion of actually being a vampire has been a contributing factor in other criminal cases as well.

In 1996, a 16-year-old Kentucky youth obsessed with the role-playing game, "Vampire, the Masquerade," enlisted three other teenagers to go with him to Florida to help kill the parents of his former girlfriend.

Two years later, a San Francisco man claiming to be a 2,000-year-old vampire was arrested for slashing the necks of four homeless people, one fatally. A serial killer arrested in England in 1949 allegedly drank a cup of blood from each of his six victims.

Rice has interacted with thousands of fans of her Vampire Chronicles novels, but said such intense personal identification with vampires was "quite beyond me."

"My readers are romantics. They're into the poetry and the romance of vampires; they don't think they themselves are vampires," Rice said. "I have never personally met anyone in all these years who claimed to be a vampire."

(Edited by Karen Brooks and Cynthia Johnston)

Mother's blood test reveals baby's sex...

Reuters By Frederik Joelving

NEW YORK Tue Aug 9, 2011 (Reuters Health) - Blood drawn from expectant mothers could offer parents an earlier sneak peek at their baby's sex than methods currently used in the U.S., researchers said Tuesday.

The test may be particularly valuable for families that harbor sex-linked genetic disorders like hemophilia, they add.

Because such disorders mostly strike boys, knowing that the baby is a girl could spare the mother diagnostic procedures, such as amniocentesis, that carry a small risk of miscarriage.

"It could reduce the number of invasive procedures that are being performed for specific genetic conditions," said Dr. Diana Bianchi of Tufts University School of Medicine, who worked on the new study.

But other researchers voiced concerns, saying it could be misused to terminate a pregnancy if the baby isn't of the desired sex.

"What you have to consider is the ethics of this," said Dr. Mary Rosser, an obstetrician and gynecologist at the Montefiore Medical Center in New York.

"If parents are using it to determine gender and then terminate the pregnancy based on that, that could be a problem," she told Reuters Health. "Remember, gender is not a disease."

The test looks for small pieces of the male sex chromosome in the mother's blood, which would mean she is carrying a baby boy. Some European hospitals already rely on the method, called cell-free fetal DNA, although it's not available from doctors in the U.S.

"What they are finding in England is that many women are not going on to have the invasive tests," Bianchi told Reuters Health.

In those procedures, doctors either extract a small amount of the fluid that surrounds the fetus (amniocentesis) or they take a sample of the placenta (chorionic villus sampling). Between one in 100 and one in 600 mothers miscarry as a result, according to Bianchi.

In a fresh look at the medical evidence for the blood test, she and her colleagues analyzed 57 earlier studies that included more than 6,500 pregnancies.

They found parents could trust the test 98.8 percent of the time when it said they'd have a boy, and 94.8 percent of the time when it indicated a girl.

That leaves some room for error, which could be important if parents are making medical decisions based on the results -- such as whether or not to get an invasive procedure to look for genetic disorders.

However, the current non-invasive alternative -- an ultrasound done at the end of the first trimester -- isn't always good at spotting a baby's sex, Bianchi's team reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

And the blood test is reliable as early as seven weeks into the pregnancy, whereas ultrasound is not.

Bianchi said one study had estimated the blood test costs about 255 pounds in the UK (about $413), all included. While it's available over the Internet, she said her team had only looked at hospital-based test performance.

"I don't know why it is not being incorporated in the US," she said.

Rosser, however, chalked that up to the ethical issues it raises.

"It is a great test that can be part of our armamentarium of noninvasive testing that we use," she said. "But it should only be used by families that are at risk for sex-linked diseases."

Bianchi said she owns stock in Verinata Health, a company that is developing cell-free fetal DNA tests for Down syndrome, although that company had no role in the new study.

The American College of Medical Genetics did not respond to requests for comment on the DNA tests.

SOURCE: bit.ly/4HWZ7 Journal of the American Medical Association, August 10, 2011.

(This story has been corrected in paragraph 3 to show said disorders mostly strike boys, not only strike boys)

Police arrest EFTPOS skimmers...

ZDNet Australia By Luke Hopewell, ZDNet.

<--Police arrest EFTPOS skimmers

August 15th, 2011. NSW Police yesterday raided homes and arrested five men in connection with an international EFTPOS-based skimming and fraud ring.

The five men aged between 25 and 45 were arrested in Sydney as part of what the police are alleging is a high-tech, international syndicate of financial fraudsters.

Police believe that the men arrested were working for the syndicate in Australia, which also has connections to Europe and the United States.

The five men are set to face Parramatta Local Court today, charged with an array of offences including conspiracy to cheat and defraud, possessing equipment to make identification documents, dealing with identification information and possession of false or misleading documents.

Police Strike Force Wigg, set up in 2008 to investigate EFTPOS skimming in the state, also executed search warrants across Sydney yesterday and discovered a bevy of electronic fraud equipment including EFTPOS terminals, PIN underlay, laptops and mobile phones. Police also seized fake travel documents, international credit cards and a sum of cash to the tune of $10,000.

Strike Force Wigg has racked up 25 arrests for EFTPOS fraud in NSW since 2008, seizing over 50 EFTPOS terminals and approximately 18,000 fake or blank transaction cards.

While the arrests are encouraging, police continued to encourage EFTPOS users to remain vigilant when using their cards.

Commander detective superintendent Colin Dyson said today that "the NSW Police Force is committed to targeting fraud-related crime and today's operation has resulted in the significantly disruption of an alleged international syndicate".

"The public are reminded, however, of the need to be vigilant when using their credit and debit cards, and when making EFTPOS transactions," Dyson added.

Dyson said several months ago at a security conference that some European criminals regard Australia as an easy target for card fraud, due to the fact that banks haven't deployed extensive chip card integration into ATMs.

"Romanian crooks have told us Australia is the laughing stock of the world because of the technology in the banks," Dyson said.

Frustrated Woods simply can't let it go, poor guy...

Reuters By Simon Evans

Tiger Woods of the U.S. wipes sand from his eyes after hitting from a sand trap on the ninth hole during the first round of the 93rd PGA Championship golf tournament at the Atlanta Athletic Club in Johns Creek, Georgia, August 11, 2011.Credit: Reuters/Matt Sullivan

JOHNS CREEK, Georgia (Reuters) Thu Aug 11, 2011 - Tiger Woods offered a tantalizing glimpse of his old self at the PGA Championship on Thursday before the erratic play that has dogged him through the past, winless, two years returned to wreck his opening round.

"I'm not down, I'm angry right now," said a dejected Woods, a four-times PGA Championship winner who found himself down at the foot of the leaderboard alongside club professionals Mike Northern and Faber Jamerson.

After five holes, on the more challenging back nine, Woods was three under par and tied for the lead before his game unravelled to leave him with his worst first round score in a major -- a seven-over-par 77.

Birdies in glorious sunshine, warm applause from the gallery and Woods in contention for a major - for an hour it felt to those watching that the 35-year-old, whose career has been derailed by personal troubles and injuries, really was back.

Now the challenge for Woods becomes simply to play well enough on Friday to survive the cut and avoid another low point in a deeply disappointing season.

Woods, who had looked tidy and in control in ideal conditions, said that his old swing problems returned as he consciously loosened up following three birdies in the first five holes.

"Every shot I hit up to that point were all mechanical thoughts, I put the club in a certain position, and I was doing that and I said, 'You know what, I'm feeling good. Let's just let it go.' And it cost me the whole round," he said.

Before his three-month absence to resolve leg injuries, Woods, who has not won a tournament since 2009, had been working on a new swing with coach Sean Foley.

MECHANICAL PROCESS

Dealing with the mechanical process andre-adjusting so many parts of a game that once seemed to come so naturally to him clearly means that the 14-times major winner can no longer just let the shots flow.

Saying he had many elements of his technique to work on before returning for his second round, Woods was clearly frustrated that he could not lift his game for a major.

"I can't say just one (thing to work on), because it's a lot of different things," he said. "What causes the ball to shape more? It's a bunch of things. So it's just unfortunately I'm not at a point that I can let it go.

"I've been in this process before: I've been through it with (coach) Butch Harmon; I've been through it with Hank (Haney); and now I've been through it with Sean.

"I just thought, this is a major, and you peak for these events. And once you get to a major championship, you just let it fly, let it go. And I did and it cost me."

The downfall began with a double-bogey on the tricky, long par-three 15th where Woods struck his tee shot into the water hazard to the right of the green.

Another double came on the 18th and then the front nine, Woods' back nine, was a long and painful series of mistakes with four bogeys, a double-bogey on the sixth and just one birdie on the fifth to ease the pain.

It was a sorry end to his round but it was even sadder to hear Woods describe how he simply cannot do what he once produced to order.

"I'm in a major championship, it's time to score, time to play and time to let it go," he said. "And it cost me the round."

(Editing by Mark Lamport-Stokes)

Man allegedly stole, swallowed client's ring...

Reuters

CHICAGO Wed Aug 10, 2011 (Reuters) - A Chicago-area home repairman was charged with felony theft on Tuesday after he allegedly tried to hide the evidence by gulping it down, presumably without chewing first.

Prosecutors say 30-year-old Wilfredo Gonzalez was helping remodel a home in Cicero, Illinois, last Friday when he allegedly stole a diamond ring the homeowner had left in her bathroom.

When she realized the ring was missing, the homeowner had her husband confront Gonzalez, according to the Cook County State's Attorney's Office.

The repairman at first denied taking the ring. But when the confrontation turned into a struggle, prosecutors say he pulled the ring out of the place he had hidden it and swallowed it.

Police were called and took Gonzalez to a hospital, where a stomach X-ray revealed the missing ring working its way down his gastrointestinal tract.

The officers subsequently retrieved the missing ring.

Gonzalez faces up to three years in prison if convicted.

(Reporting by James Kelleher; Editing by Xavier Briand)