GOOGLE’S CHAIRMAN ERIC SCHMIDT TO SELL UP TO 3.2 MILLION SHARES!

SAN FRANCISCO – With Google’s stock hovering at record highs, Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt plans to sell more than 40 percent of his stock in the Internet search leader this year.

The plan disclosed Friday calls for Schmidt to sell up to 3.2 million shares. If he were to sell all that stock at Google’s current price, Schmidt would realize a $2.5 billion windfall.

Schmidt ended December with 7.6 million Google shares, or a 2.3 percent stake in the Mountain View, Calif., company.

He would be left with about 4.4 million shares of Google stock worth another $3.5 billion if he follows through on his divestiture plan for this year. He has gradually been winnowing his holdings in Google in recent years, without giving a specific reason.

Google Inc. declined to comment Friday.

Google’s stock rose $11.42 to close at $785.37 Friday. Earlier in the day, it traded at $786.67 – its highest price since the company went public at $85 per share in August 2004.

Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are the only company executives who own more stock than Schmidt.

Page controls an 8.7 percent stake and Brin holds an 8.5 percent stake. Each stake is currently worth nearly $20 billion.

CM Hoti announces plan to distribute free laptops

Pakistan, Peshawar News – Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Amir Haider Hoti announced on Sunday that his government would distribute free laptops among students in the province.

Speaking at a ceremony here, he said that more than 30, 000 laptops with an estimated cost of Rs1 billion would be distributed in the province

“Although the governor of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has been changed as per the constitutional process, I am not sure whether ANP leadership was consulted on the issue,” he said.

Tax theft and Corrupt leaders should be removed

Pakistan News – Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf chairman Imran Khan said Sunday that it was essential to eliminate corruption and taxtheft in order to steer the country towards the path of prosperity.

Addressing a convention of party workers here, Imran said he had been advocating for the last nine years that the US led war on terror should not be fought by Pakistan and the country should hold talks with the Taliban. “I was called Taliban Khan and now everyone is in favour of talks with the Taliban.” Imran Khan added that when he spoke of not sending the army into FATA he was called a terrorist without a beardby former President General (retired) Pervez Musharraf.

The PTI chairman also spoke of the new Bilawal House in Lahore and asked for accountabilityfor President Zardari’s wealth.

According to Imran Khan, the intra-party elections of the PTI would be completed by March 15 and there will also be an election for the chairman’s post.

Metro Bus Service launched by CM Shahbaz

Pakistan, Lahore News – The much-trumpeted Metro BusService project was inaugurated by Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif at a ceremony here on Sunday.

A high-level Turkish delegation, led by Turkish Deputy Prime Minister, attended the inaugural ceremony of the multi-billion rupees project at the invitation of Punjab government. PML-N President Mian Nawaz Sharif was also present on this occasion.

According to organizers, 27- kilometer long distance from Gajjumata to Shahdara would be covered in 55 minutes. Strict security measures were taken by law enforcement agencies on this occasion.

Nawaz Sharif, Shahbaz Sharif, foreign diplomats and Turkish delegation is now taking a ride of the bus.  Speaking at the ceremony, Shahbaz said this project will prove to be a milestone.

“The Metro bus service is unprecedented. Patients, officials, students and I myself will travel by the Metro bus,” he said.

The Chief Minister has announced a cash prize of one crore among labourers, who worked day and night to complete this great project

Tobacco Companies must Run ads to tell about Cigarettes Effects

World Health News –  A US federal judge ruled here that tobacco companies must run ads acknowledging that they lied about the health effects of cigarettes, and explain in blunt terms the adverse effects of smoking.

The ruling on Tuesday by District Judge Gladys Kessler was part of a government racketeering case against top cigarette companies originally brought in September 1999.

Kessler ruled in 2006 that the companies violated racketeering laws by deceiving the public for decades on the health dangers of smoking, and were ordered to publish corrective statements on five topics — including the health risks of smoking, the addictiveness of smoking, and the fact that there was no health benefit in smoking ‘light’ cigarettes.

The exact wording of those statements however was held up pending tobacco companylitigation.

Kessler said Tuesday that each “corrective statement” must begin with words declaring that a federal court ruled the tobacco companies “deliberately deceived the American public about the health effects of smoking, and has ordered those companies to make this statement. Here is the truth.”

Those “truths” include statements such as “More people die every year from smoking than from murder, AIDS, suicide, drugs, car crashes, and alcohol, combined;” “Cigarette companies intentionally designed cigarettes with enough nicotine to create and sustain addiction;” and “When you smoke, the nicotine actually changes the brain — that’s why quitting is so hard.”

Defendants in the case include Philip Morris US, a subsidiary of the Altria Group; RJ Reynolds Tobacco and Lorillard Tobacco Company.

Drugs Abuse Tied with Early Life Strokes

Health News / World Health News > Younger adults who suffered a stroke were often smokers or had abused drugs or alcohol, according to a US study that looked at over 1,000 patients.

Strokes are often thought of as a condition of the elderly, but researchers said long-term changes in the heart, arteries or and blood as a result of drug abuse or heavy drinking may put users at higher-than-average risk earlier in life.

“Substance abuse is common in young adults experiencing a stroke,” wrote lead researcher Brett Kissela from the University of Cincinnati in the journal Stroke.

“Patients aged younger than 55 years who experience a stroke should be routinely screened and counseled regarding substance abuse.”

It’s also possible that some drugs, particularly cocaine and methamphetamines, may trigger a stroke more immediately, according to S. Andrew Josephson, a neurologist from the University of California, San Francisco, who has studied drug use and stroke but was not involved in the study.

“We know that even with vascular risk factors that are prevalent – smoking, high blood pressure… most people still don’t have a stroke until they’re older,” he added.

“When a young person has a stroke, it is probably much more likely that the cause of their stroke is something other than traditional risk factors.”

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, close to 800,000 people in the United States have a stroke every year, and they are the most common cause of serious long-term disability. One study of 2007 data found that almost five percent of people who had a stroke that year were between ages 18 and 44.

The current study involved people from Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky who’d had a stroke before they hit 55.

The researchers reviewed medical charts for blood or urine test results of other records ofsubstance abuse for close to 1,200 stroke patients.

In 2005, the most recent year covered, just over half of young adults who suffered a stroke were smokers at the time, and one in five used illicit drugs, including marijuana and cocaine. Thirteen percent of people had used drugs or alcohol within 24 hours of their stoke.

“The rate of substance abuse, particularly illicit drug abuse, is almost certainly an underestimate because toxicology screens were not obtained on all patients,” said Steven Kittner, a professor of neurology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore who also wasn’t part of the research.

The rate of smoking, drug use and alcohol abuse – defined as three or more drinks per day – seemed to increase among stroke patients between the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s.

But Kissela and his team said they can’t be sure whether more people were actually using those substances or doctors were just getting better at testing for and recording drug abuse.

The study also can’t prove that patients’ drug or alcohol use directly contributed to their strokes. It’s possible, for example, that people who abuse drugs also see their doctors less often or engage in other risky behaviors that increase the chance of strokes, Josephson explained.

He added that the study emphasizes the need to learn and quickly recognizing the signs of strokes, even in young people, since some treatments can only be used in a short window of opportunity after the stroke.

People unaware of Risk from CT scan radiation

Health News –  One-third of people getting a CT scan didn’t know the test exposed their body to radiation, in a new study from a single US medical center.

Researchers found the majority of patients also underestimated the amount of radiation delivered by a CT scan, and just one in 20 believed the scan would increase their chance of ever getting cancer.

The study’s lead researcher, Janet Busey, said doctors need to do a better job of talking to patients about the risks and benefits of the tests, including about radiation exposure.

One challenge is that there is still debate within the medical community about just how much long term cancer risk the scans carry, she said. That risk also depends on how many scans a patient gets and which organs are exposed to radiation.

“There’s no doubt, CT saves lives,” Busey, from the University of Washington in Seattle, told Reuters Health. And their benefits usually outweigh their risks, she added.

Still, even if the radiation risk is small, patients “definitely should be aware of it.”

CT scans are high-powered X-rays that provide clearer images but expose patients to between ten and 100 times more radiation than a normal head or chest X-ray, for example.

Busey said from their earlier studies, she and her colleagues learned anecdotally that many patients didn’t know much about CT scans. So they surveyed 235 people who were having a non-emergency scan, for example to check a cancer’s spread or to look into symptoms such as shortness of breath.

Those scans included CTs as well as another type of imaging, known as single photonemission computed tomography, or SPECT scans.

Two-thirds of the patients believed their scan was definitely necessary and would benefit their health, and 84 percent said their doctors had explained the reason for the scan.

Another two-thirds of the patients understood CT scans involve radiation, but less than half of those had learned about radiation risks from their doctor.

Few patients were worried about the scans or the link between radiation exposure and cancer. More people reported having thought about when they could eat or whether their parking would be validated after the test than about the effects of radiation, according to findings published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

“It’s really a physician’s job to explain to a patient what the risks and the benefits are… and sometimes we need to do a better job,” said Dr. Angela Mills, an emergency medicine researcher who has studied radiation risks at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

The radiation dose from one CT scan typically ranges from a couple of millisieverts – comparable to the yearly background radiation from natural sources – to close to 20 millisieverts, the annual exposure limit for nuclear industry employees.

Although each scan only has a small impact on a person’s long term risk of cancer, that risk can build over time with more scans and more radiation exposure.

“To me the problem is when patients have a problem that either is chronic or they keep having pain or maybe there are alternative ways to diagnose (their condition), and patients then need to be better informed what their options are,” Mills, who wasn’t involved in the new study, told Reuters Health.

For example, people who develop recurring kidney stones may be able to skip a scan altogether or get an ultrasound instead of having repeat CTs, she said.

One study from the National Cancer Institute estimated there would be about 29,000 future cancers related to scans done in 2007 alone. That year, Americans had about 72 million total CT scans.

Busey said it’s important to educate all patients about the benefits and possible harms of their scans – but that it will be up to the larger medical community to figure out how to do that in a way that’s both standardized across facilities and individualized to each patient’s particular situation.

“It’s a difficult concept to understand, and risk itself is difficult to talk about,” especially because of the uncertainties involved, she said.

“This is the first step.” (Reuters)

More than 40 Percent Pakistani Suffering from Bone Diseases

Pakistan, Health News : More than 40 percent population of Pakistan is suffering from bone related diseases, which is an alarming situation. Orthopedic can take place due to various reasons, including deficiency of calcium, vitamin D, low-intake of milk and low exposure of sun rays.

This was informed by the Organising Committee of Pak Orthocon Chairman Prof Asadullah Mahar, while addressing a media briefing regarding conference of 26th International Pak Orthocon 2012 featuring evolution and innovation, held here at a local hotel.

The 3-day conference organized by Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Chandka Medical College of Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutoo Medical University Larkana, concluded on Sunday.

On the occasion, Organizing Committee Co-Chairman Dr. Manzoor Ahmed Memon, Secretary Dr Zamir Ahmed Soomro, Patron Prof Ali Muhammad Ansari Umair Ahmed of pharm evo and Coordinator Prof Anisuddin Bhatti were also present.

He further said that disability ratio was increasing mainly due to traffic mishaps and marriages among cousins. He said that people should avoid marriage with first blood relation and should be very careful while driving and crossing roads.

“Training of Orthopedic staff, including doctors, nurses and others is need of the hour to tackle situation accurately.”

Trauma center should be established in every city, where access for citizen should be easy, he said adding that government had establish many centers relevant to Orthopedic, which did not get success due to different reasons including deficiency of funds. “Timely treatment is necessary in this regard,” he said

He said, “Elimination of disease is possible without surgery for only newly born baby, whereas, adult surgery is compulsory.” Instant treatment for injured people of bomb blast, fire incidents, accidents and other harmful happenings was very necessary to avoid orthopedic diseases, Mahar added.

There were 10 pre-conference workshops, nine at Karachi, one at Lahore, which providedhands on training to the junior consultants, specialists, post graduates and other Orthopedic surgeons. Almost 13 foreign speakers also took part in this conference from different countries including USA, Germany, Egypt, Canada, Malaysia and UAE.

Way discovers to turn the HIV Virus against Itself

World, Health News – An Australian scientist said Wednesday he had discovered a way to turn the HIV virus against itself in human cells in the laboratory, in an important advance in the quest for an AIDS cure.

David Harrich from the Queensland Institute of Medical Research said he modified a protein in HIV that normally helps the virus spread, into a “potent” inhibitor.

The protein was introduced to immune cells targeted by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), where it slowed the reproduction of the virus after infection.

The experiments were conducted in a lab dish, and thorough testing on lab animals is needed before any human trials can begin.

“I have never seen anything like it. The modified protein works every time,” said Harrich.

Harrich’s team, whose study is published in the journal Human Gene Therapy, said the modified protein dubbed Nullbasic inhibited virus replication about eight- to ten-fold in some cells.

“If this research continues down its strong path, and bear in mind there are many hurdles to clear, we’re looking at a cure for AIDS,” the researcher said.

Commenting on the study, Frank Wegmann, an Oxford University HIV vaccine researcher, told AFP a Nullbasic-based drug was “quite far from application”.

Creating a drug would be challenging, he said, as it would require introducing “designed” information into the genes of people to be treated.

“The immune cells of the blood are the primary cells which are infected by HIV and if you want to have a cure with this new protein, you need to… get every immune cell to make this protein,” he explained.

This would require gene therapy — a complicated, rare, potentially dangerous and very expensive option.

“They (the Australian researchers) have partly addressed that question. They have partly tested that (gene therapy), but not really in patients or in infected people, only in the lab.”

Harrich said Nullbasic held promise for curbing the spread of the virus as well as for treating people who already have AIDS, and described it as “fighting fire with fire”. “The virus might infect a cell but it wouldn’t spread,” he said.

“You would still be infected with HIV, it’s not a cure for the virus, but the virus would stay latent, it wouldn’t wake up, so it wouldn’t develop into AIDS.

“With a treatment like this, you would maintain a healthy immune system.”

An HIV-infected person is said to have AIDS when their count of CD4 immune system cells drops below 200 per microlitre of blood or they develop any one of 22 opportunistic infections like cancer or tuberculosis as a result.

Most people infected with HIV, if left untreated, would develop AIDS about 10 to 15 years later, according to the UN. Antiretroviral treatments can prolong this window period.

The new Nullbasic therapy, if proven, could see the spread of HIV halted indefinitely, bringing an end to the deadly condition, said Harrich.

Using a treatment based on a single protein could spell an end to onerous multiple drug regimes for HIV patients, meaning a better quality of life and lower costs.

Animal trials are due to start this year.

Even if all goes according to plan, said Wegmann, a Nullbasic-based treatment was probably about 10 years off.

“There are many other potential strategies towards a cure, but so far nothing works and it’s not clear whether anything will ever work,” he said.

“One really has to wait for results of animal studies and clinical trials to really judge this.”

UN figures show the number of people infected with HIV worldwide rose to 34 million in 2011 from 33.5 million in 2010.

The vast majority (23.5 million) live in sub-Saharan Africa, with another 4.2 million in South and Southeast Asia.

There were 1.7 million AIDS-related deaths worldwide in 2011 — 24 percent fewer than in 2005 and nearly six percent below the 2010 level.

New HIV infections have at least halved in 25 low and middle income countries over the past decade.

The UN said in November that achieving zero new infections in children appeared increasingly possible.

Hepatitis C linked to body Art

Health News – Researchers are hoping that people will do some research about where to get a tattoo, after a study found a link between body art and hepatitis C.

The new study found that people with the virus were almost four times more likely to report having a tattoo, even when other major risk factors were taken into account, co-author Dr. Fritz Francois of New York University Langone Medical Center told Reuters Health.

Although the study could not prove a direct cause and effect, “Tattooing in and of itself may pose a risk for this disease that can lay dormant for many, many years,” Francois said.

About 3.2 million people in the US have hepatitis C, and many don’t know because they don’t feel ill, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Hepatitis C is the leading cause of liver cancer and most common reason for liver transplants in the US Some 70 percent of people infected will develop chronic liver disease, and up to 5 percent will die from cirrhosis or liver cancer.

For the current study, researchers asked almost 2,000 people about their tattoos and hepatitis status, among other questions, at outpatient clinics at three New York area hospitals between 2004 and 2006.

Researchers found that 34 percent of people with hepatitis C had a tattoo, compared to 12 percent of people without the infection.

The most common routes of contracting hepatitis C, a blood-borne disease, are through a blood transfusion before 1992 or a history of injected drug use. Injected drug use accounts for 60 percent of new hepatitis cases every year, but 20 percent of cases have no history of injected drug use or other exposure, according to the CDC.

Francois and his colleagues only included people with hepatitis C who did not contract it from these two other common sources.

After accounting for other risk factors, the difference between people with and without hepatitis was even greater, with four times as many tattoos in the infected group than for uninfected people, according to results published in the journal Hepatology.

“This is not a big surprise to me,” Dr. John Levey, clinical chief of gastroenterology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, told Reuters Health. Earlier studies had found a link, but they were small and had not taken other risk factors into account as well as this new one did.

“This was one of the stragglers, and now we finally have some numbers for it,” said Levey, who was not involved in the study.

Still, the CDC’s Dr. Scott Holmberg said the link may not be quite as strong as the findings suggest, because some people who had used illegal drugs probably would not admit it, even on an anonymous questionnaire. And the researchers didn’t rule out people who contracted hepatitis before getting their tattoo.

Vegetarian diet cut the risk of heart disease

World, Health News – A vegetarian diet can cut the risk of heart disease by as much as 32 percent, according to a British study published on Wednesday.

Researchers who followed more than 44,500 volunteers for about 11 years on average, found vegetarians were significantly less prone to cardiac trouble.

In the 50-70 age group, 6.8 percent of people who ate meat or fish were hospitalised or died from heart disease, compared to 4.6 percent of vegetarians.

“We think (it) is due to their lower cholesterol and blood pressure,” lead researcher Francesca Crowe from the University of Oxford’s Cancer Epidemiology Unit told AFP.

A third of participants in the study, dubbed the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC), the largest of its kind in Britain, were vegetarians.

Heart disease is the single-largest cause of death in developed countries, claiming 65,000 lives in Britain each year. A total of 1,235 people in the study group developed heart disease, of whom 169 died.

“These results show that diet is important for the prevention of heart disease,” said Crowe of the results published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Vegetarians in the study typically had a lower weight-to-height ratio and a reduced risk ofdeveloping diabetes, they found.

The results had taken into account the effects of the participants’ age, smoking habits and alcohol use, exercise routine, educational level and income.

Ninety-seven percent of the participants were Caucasian, said Crowe, but there was no difference in the results for different ethnic groups.

“There is no particular reason why it would not be generalisable to vegetarians in other population groups,” she added.

Previous studies have found that vegetarians have a reduced rate of bowel disease and cataracts, but no difference in cancer risk from meat-eaters, said Crowe

Assisted suicide at legal agenda in several states

Health News – A push for the legalization of physician-assisted suicide is under way in a half-dozen states where proponentssay they see strong support for allowing doctors to prescribementally competent, dying individuals with the medications needed to end their own lives.

The large number of baby boomers facing end-of-life issues themselves is seen to have made the issue more prominent in recent years. Groups such as Compassion & Choices, a national end-of-lifeadvocacy organization, have been working to advance the cause.

Advocates received a boost from last year’s ballot question in Massachusetts on whether to allow physicians to help the terminally ill die. Although the vote failed, it helped to spark a national discussion, said Mickey MacIntyre, chief program officer for Compassion & Choices.

“The Massachusetts initiative lifted the consciousness of the nation and in particular the Northeast region to this issue that there are other alternatives patients and their families should have an opportunity to access,” MacIntyre said.

Bills legalizing assisted suicide are being considered in Connecticut, Vermont, New Jersey, Kansas and Hawaii – and in Massachusetts, where proponents decided to resume their efforts after the public vote, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, which tracks legislative trends. There are also bills related to the issue under consideration in New Hampshire, New York, Arizona and Montana.

In Connecticut, which has banned the practice since 1969, a group of lawmakers said Tuesday that the legislature’s first public hearing on the subject would probably be held this month. At least two bills on the issue have so far been proposed in this year’s session of the Connecticut legislature.

If the General Assembly votes to legalize the practice, it would be the first state legislature to do so.

Oregon and Washington have passed right-to-die laws, but they did so through voter referendums. Montana’s Supreme Court has ruled that the practice of physicians helpingterminally ill patients could be considered part of medical treatments. Thirty-four states prohibit assisted suicide outright. Seven others, including Massachusetts, banned it through legal precedent.

Opponents claim the initiatives in Connecticut are being pushed only by outside groups like Compassion & Choices.

“There’s no grass-roots cry for assisted suicide in the state of Connecticut,” said Peter Wolfgang, executive director of the socially conservative Family Institute. “This is mostly an out-of-state organization that has targeted the state of Connecticut. They look at the Northeast and think this is low-hanging fruit: ‘We can conduct our social experiments here in the Northeastern United States.’”

In fact, one bill has been filed in Connecticut this year that would establish a mandatory minimum prison term for someone charged with second-degree manslaughter after assisting another person with committing suicide.

A measure dubbed “end of life choices” recently sped through the Vermont Senate Health and Welfare Committee but is expected to face a bumpier ride in the Judiciary Committee. In New Jersey, a bill that would allow doctors to prescribe lethal doses of medication for terminally illpatients wishing to take their own lives cleared an Assembly committee Thursday. That legislation would ultimately be subject to voter approval.

Last November, voters in Massachusetts narrowly defeated a measure legalizing physician-assisted suicide for the terminally ill. Supporters of the concept said they hoped the debate would continue and marked the beginning of a conversation to improve end-of-life care.

In Connecticut, Dr. Gary Blick, a Norwalk physician who specializes in treating patients with HIV and AIDS, said he believes the time is right for state lawmakers to push ahead with this issue. In 2009, he and Dr. Ron Levine, of Greenwich, along with end-of-life advocates, sued to seek a clarification of the state’s decades-old ban on assisted suicide, citing concerns about Connecticut doctors being prosecuted for giving medications to their dying patients.

A judge ultimately dismissed the suit, saying it was a matter for the legislature to decide.

The 1969 Connecticut law states that a person who “intentionally causes or aids another person, other than by force, duress or deception, to commit suicide” is guilty of second-degree manslaughter.

Blick said not all dying patients will want the ability to take their own life, but he said they should be given the choice.

“This is not for everybody. We do realize there are people that do not believe in this for religious beliefs, and I respect that. There are no issues over that,” he said. “But there are those subsets of people that do not want to go through the suffering that they have to go through.”

Cathy Ludlum, of Manchester, a disabled-rights activist who has spinal muscular atrophy, said she is concerned the Public Health Committee has decided to hold the public hearing and worries the issue of doctor-assisted suicide will not go away soon.

“Until people are really educated about the issues, it’s going to keep coming up, even if it’s defeated this time,” she said, adding how she wants lawmakers to focus more on “giving people a good life than giving people a good death.” AFP