Archives: Morning Breakouts

Reuters examines food prices in Africa after the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization last week said its global Food Price Index hit a record high. "The United Nations may have sounded the alarm about soaring global food prices, but in Africa a string of bumper harvests and a changing diet means the political fallout may be more muted than to past price bumps," the news service reports.

The antibodies produced by individuals who fought off H1N1 (swine flu) infection last year may bring researchers one step closer to their quest to develop a "universal" flu vaccine, U.S. researchers said Monday, HealthDay News/Bloomberg Businessweek reports. As the researchers from Emory University and the University of Chicago report in the Jan. 10 issue of the Journal of Experimental Medicine, "people who were infected with the H1N1 virus and recovered had a special immune response, producing antibodies that protect against a wide variety of flu strains," the news service writes (1/10).

The U.N. has mostly achieved its short-term goals since a major earthquake struck Haiti on January 12, 2010, Nigel Fisher, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Haiti, said during a video teleconference on Monday, Deutsche Presse-Agentur/M&C reports.

"Indians are growing richer, but they are also adopting unhealthy lifestyles that could take years off their lives and threaten economic growth," according to an article published in Lancet Tuesday, Agence France-Presse reports (1/11).

Lawmakers' face the challenge of tempering their rhetoric in the wake of the Tucson shootings, but people on both sides of the aisle say this "timeout" is likely only to be temporary.

Experts are reviewing a recent ruling by the Supreme Court which involved the Commerce Clause, the central point in pending challenges to the health overhaul.

While Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota, detailed what he sees as flaws in the health overhaul, Obama administration advisor Nancy-Ann DeParle defended the measure.

Meetings begin this week to determine what benefits insurers must cover under the new health law. The resulting regulation will be just one of the ways in which the new health law will change the health care landscape.

Factors ranging from a plateau rather than decreases in teenage pregnancies to the recession may be playing a role.