New York State’s highest court ruled yesterday that the Roman Catholic Church and other religious organizations must abide by a state law that requires most employee health insurance policies to cover the cost of contraception. The 6-to-0 decision by the Court of Appeals upheld rulings by the State Supreme Court and the Appellate Division, and left intact the state’s Women’s Health and Wellness Act of 2002, which requires company health insurance policies that provide coverage for prescription drugs to include ‘coverage for the cost of contraceptive drugs or devices.’ It had been challenged on religious grounds by a group that includes eight Catholic and two Baptist organizations. Arguing that the law requires them to violate the dictates of their faith, the group sought to exempt religious schools, hospitals and social service organizations, broadening a far narrower ‘religious employer’ exemption already included in the state rules. The New York State Catholic Conference, speaking for the state’s bishops, said it would consider appealing the ruling to the United States Supreme Court ‘to review it and reverse it.’ ‘The case is not about the right of New Yorkers to use contraception; it is about religious liberty,’ said Richard E. […]
WASHINGTON — This year’s ozone hole over Antarctica is bigger and deeper than any other on record, U.S. scientists reported on Thursday. The ozone layer shields Earth from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays, and the layer thins out over the South Pole each year, primarily because human-made compounds release ozone-eating chlorine and bromine gases into the stratosphere. ‘From September 21 to 30, the average area of the ozone hole was the largest ever observed, at 10.6 million square miles ,’ said Paul Newman of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center outside Washington. If the stratospheric weather conditions had been normal, the ozone hole would be expected to reach a size of about 8.9 million to 9.3 million square miles, about the surface area of North America, NASA said in a statement. Scientists measure the total amount of ozone from the ground to the upper atmosphere in Dobson Units, and a NASA satellite detected a low level of 85 Dobson Units on October 8 of the East Antarctic ice sheet. Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration used balloon-borne instruments to measure ozone right over the South Pole, and by October 9 the total ozone in […]
Wastewater carrying traces of the antidepressant Prozac is disrupting the reproductive cycle of mollusks, threatening them with extinction, according a study presented at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society. The researchers explained that Prozac (fluoxetine) caused females to prematurely release their larvae, a case of bad timing that essentially dooms them. ‘The results from this study were quite alarming,’ said Rebecca Heltsley, from Hollings Marine Laboratory in Charleston, S.C. ‘When larvae are released too early, they are not viable, which only contributes to the problems faced by struggling populations of native freshwater mussels.’ Mussels have the dubious distinction of being the most threatened animal group in North America. About 70 percent of the nearly 300 species of freshwater mussels native to the continent are extinct, endangered or declining, according to Heltsley. In some cases, native mussels have been crowded out by invasive species, while others have been devastated by increased sediment loads in rivers, habitat alteration or killed off by pollutants. ‘The presence of Prozac and similar drugs in U.S. rivers and streams has likely compounded the problem,’ Heltsley said. ‘It’s a big concern because freshwater mussels are such an imperiled group.’ To gauge […]
For every four adults in the world who are malnourished five more are overweight, 30 percent of them clinically obese, according to the World Health Organization. The scourge of obesity, bringing in its train a host of health and economic problems that could one day cripple economies, is more prevalent in some countries than others, but still constitutes a global epidemic, says WHO. A billion people out of the world’s six billion population are now considered overweight, compared with 800 million who do not have enough to eat. Some 2,000 health experts gather in Boston, Massachusetts on Friday for a four-day conference on treatment and prevention of obesity, organized by the North American Society for the Study of Obesity (NAASO). While accounting for less than five percent of the population in China, Japan and some African nations, the proportion of obesity — at the other extreme — exceeds 75 percent in some urban zones of Samoa, and 45 percent among certain demographic groups in the United States, notably among African Americans. And even within China, more than 20 percent of the people in certain cities are classified as seriously overweight. The international standard for […]
The benefits of eating a few weekly helpings of most fish or seafood outweigh the potential health risks associated with ingesting mercury and other contaminants, finds a new study commissioned by the U.S. government. Not only do eating fish and shellfish help protect against heart disease, claims the study, but women who do so during pregnancy or while nursing can promote healthy vision and brain development in their infants. Nutritionists have long touted seafood as a great, low-fat source of protein, full of healthy omega-3 fatty acids. But at the same time, there have been troubling warnings of methyl mercury, dioxin and polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) contamination associated with some fish and shellfish. Jose Ordovas, a Tufts University researcher and member of the report committee, said he hopes the Institute of Medicine report takes away some of the confusion that may have ‘scared’ people out of eating something that’s beneficial for them and their offspring. ‘It seems that previous advice has been rather fragmented,’ added Dr. Susan Krebs-Smith, another member of the report committee and a research nutritionist with the U.S. National Cancer Institute. ‘What we wanted to try to do was to draw this information […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
