WASHINGTON — Another 2.6 million people slipped into poverty in the United States last year, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday, and the number of Americans living below the official poverty line, 46.2 million people, was the highest number in the 52 years the bureau has been publishing figures on it.

And in new signs of distress among the middle class, median household incomes fell last year to levels last seen in 1996.

Economists pointed to a telling statistic: It was the first time since the Great Depression that median household income, adjusted for inflation, had not risen over such a long period, said Lawrence Katz, an economics professor at Harvard.

‘This is truly a lost decade,

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In a sign of progress against one of the great plagues of the last generation, a dwindling number of New York City AIDS cases has been diagnosed over the last eight years, according to new statistics released on Friday.

The number of adults with newly diagnosed AIDS dropped to 2,225 in the 2011 fiscal year, which ended on June 30. That total was 25 percent lower than the total for the year before (2,969 new diagnoses), and 47 percent lower than in the 2003 fiscal year, when there were 4,164 new cases, according to the Mayor’s Management Report, which was released on Friday.

Dr. Monica Sweeney, assistant commissioner of the Bureau of H.I.V. Prevention and Control of the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said the decline was a ‘proxy for improved care.

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Eating lots of white-fleshed fruit such as apples and pears may significantly reduce the risk of stroke.

In a new study, Dutch researchers set out to determine a possible link between stroke risk and eating fruits and vegetables of various colors. They took a look at self-reported information from 20,069 people between ages 20 and 65 of what they ate over a one-year period.

All of the people had no previous diagnosed heart disease or stroke at the start of the study.

During the 10 years of follow-up, 233 people had strokes. The researchers say the risk of stroke was 52% lower for people who ate a lot of white-fleshed fruits and vegetables, compared to those who didn’t.

Every Little Bit Helps

The researchers found that each 25-gram daily increase of white fruits and vegetables was associated with a 9% lower risk of stroke. To put that in context, a single apple is about 120 grams.

‘To prevent stroke, it may be useful to consume considerable amounts of white fruits and vegetables,

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Scientists have found a way to prevent HIV from damaging the immune system and say their discovery may offer a new approach to developing a vaccine against AIDS.

Researchers from the United States and Europe working in laboratories on the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) found it is unable to damage the immune system if cholesterol is removed from the virus’s membrane.

‘It’s like an army that has lost its weapons but still has flags, so another army can recognize it and attack it,’ said Adriano Boasso of Imperial College London, who led the study.

The team now plans to investigate how to use this way of inactivating the virus and possibly develop it into a vaccine.

Usually when a person becomes infected with HIV, the body’s innate immune response puts up an immediate defense. But some researchers believe HIV causes the innate immune system to overreact. This weakens the immune system’s next line of defense, known as the adaptive immune response.

For this study — published on Monday in the journal Blood — Boasso’s team removed cholesterol from the membrane around the virus and found that this stopped HIV from triggering the innate immune response. This in turn led to a stronger adaptive response, orchestrated […]

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VATICAN CITY — AVN first reported on investigations looking into charges that priests were sexually abusing altar boys and other child congregants in the early ’90s, and since then, dozens of clergy have been convicted of such abuse, and several dioceses have had to pay out millions of dollars in damages to their now-grown victims. But according to the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), it’s not enough-so the group has filed a complaint at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague to hold those priests’ boss-the Pope-responsible for the Catholic Church’s years of inaction.

According to the Religion News Service, besides Pope Benedict XVI, the SNAP complaint also names former Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano; current Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone; and Cardinal William Levada, a former archbishop of San Francisco who, the article notes, ‘now has jurisdiction over abuse cases as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.’

‘Crimes against tens of thousands of victims, most of them children, are being covered up by officials at the highest level of the Vatican. In this case, all roads really do lead to Rome, ‘ saidPam Spees, Senior Staff Attorney for the Center […]

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