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Yasser Arafat was not the victim of poisoning, French forensic tests concluded on Tuesday, countering the theory put forward by a Swiss report on the 2004 death of the Palestinian leader. The French conclusions were immediately challenged by his widow Suha Arafat, who has argued the death was a political assassination by someone close to her husband. A senior Palestinian official dismissed the report as "politicized". [....] Swiss forensic experts stirred controversy last month by announcing that results from their tests of samples taken from Arafat's body were consistent with polonium poisoning, while not absolute proof of the cause of...

Should homosexual men – a group with the highest HIV-infection rates in the nation – be allowed to donate blood? That’s the question the federal government is considering this week as it re-evaluates whether it should lift the 30-year ban on homosexual blood donation. “CDC estimates that MSM represent approximated 4 percent of the male population in the United States, but male-to-male sex accounted for more than three-fourths (78 percent) of new HIV infections among men and nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of all new infections in 2010.” The American Red Cross warns: “HIV antibodies may take a few weeks to...

A push by activists to ease the 30-year-old blanket ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men faces a key test this week as a federal panel hears results of the latest research. The findings will be released amid growing pressure from politicians and advocates, including college students, to change the policy. Critics say the ban is a hangover from the early, fear-filled days of AIDS, stigmatizing gay men and ignoring advances in treatment and detection in the decades since...

The A3/02 strain combines the two most common HIV strains in Guinea-Bissau and develops into AIDS within five years, up to two-and-a-half years faster than either of its parent strains, said Angelica Palm, one of the scientists behind the study published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases. This type of strain, a recombinant, appears when a person becomes infected by two different strains, allowing DNA to fuse and create a new one.

USA Today articles are headline and link only.Commentary: Elton blames Southern and religious bigotry for the continuing plague of HIV-AIDS in the U.S. and around the world. John ignores the role of personal behavior, instead he blames others: "Make no mistake: Discrimination and intolerance fuel this disease."John links to a Kaiser Family Foundation study to assert that seven of the ten states with the highest diagnoses of HIV are Southern. However, the study shows only five Southern states in the top ten with the liberal mecca the District of Columbia having an astonishing 177.9 infection rate per 100,000--five to six...

Federal health officials are reporting a sharp increase in unprotected sex among gay American men, a development that makes it harder to fight the AIDS epidemic. The same trend has recently been documented among gay men in Canada, Britain, the Netherlands, France and Australia, heightening concerns among public health officials worldwide. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of men who told federal health investigators that they had had unprotected anal sex in the last year rose nearly 20 percent from 2005 to 2011. In the 2011 survey, unprotected sex was more than twice as common...

Some 131,000 people were newly infected with HIV in Europe and nearby countries in 2012, an 8 percent rise from a year earlier and a worrying reversal of a recent downward trend in AIDS cases in the West. Michel Kazatchkine, the United Nation's HIV/AIDS Special Envoy in Eastern Europe, told Reuters in an interview this month that HIV epidemics are becoming more concentrated in marginalized groups such as sex workers, drug users and gay men, and could defy global attempts to combat AIDS if no progress is made in turning them around.

When one reads the following stunning, and tragic, excerpt from the World Health Organization's recent report "Review of social determinants and the health divide in the WHO European Region: final report" what can one say but... Grecovery.From the WHO: Case study: countries’ experiences of financial crisis - Greece Suicides rose by 17% between 2007 and 2009 and to 25% in 2010, according to unofficial 2010 data (398). The Minister of Health reported a further 40% rise in the first half of 2011 compared with the same period in 2010. Suicide attempts have also increased, particularly among people reporting economic distress (610)....

The latest case of black-mob violence in Chicago is far from the worst. We’ll get to that one in a minute. But when a mob of black people rushed into three Chicago-area Sports Authority stores this week and rushed out dragging entire racks of winter clothing, the local CBS affiliate dubbed that “unbelievable.” CNN said the videos were “shocking.” Not really: “That crime was only unbelievable or shocking to the reporters who spend all their time ignoring and denying black mob violence,” said one Chicago cop, who would rather keep his job than be identified as a source of stories...

6 year old boy Josia Cotto’s mom and dad had no choice than to let him rest peacefully as their child was fighting a brain tumor that was inoperable for a period of 10 months. His mother said that they knew that they could do nothing about their son as they say he was unresponsive and did not open his eyes. They covered him in a soft blanket in white and blue and held on to the tiny hand one last time before the ambulance took him to a local hospital. She said that they told Josia that he had...

The entire resurrection of the Arafat poisoned by Polonium-210 story is complete junk science. I’ve said it before at Israellycool but lets expand on it. The story so far: Nine years ago, on November 11, 2004, Yasser Arafat died. That he could have died from natural causes or some “lifestyle disease” was too unpalatable for his followers so they came up with a rather bizarre theory that he was poisoned with Polonium-210. After decomposing in Ramallah for eight years his wife and followers dug up his corpse to try to prove it. >>SNIP<< With the most amazing measuring equipment, in...

PLO official urges global probe into Arafat "killing" (Perfect timing for release as PLO-Israeli talks stalling?) A PLO official on Thursday called for an international inquiry into "the killing" of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, a day after Swiss scientists said he probably died from polonium poisoning. RAMALLAH: A PLO official on Thursday called for an international inquiry into "the killing" of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, a day after Swiss scientists said he probably died from polonium poisoning. "The (test) results proved Arafat was poisoned by polonium, and this substance is owned by states, not people, meaning that the crime was...

There has been a sharp increase in the number of Australians contracting HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS. New statistics show the number of infections across the country rose by 10 per cent last year - the fastest increase in about 20 years. ...

Swiss radiation experts have confirmed they found traces of polonium on clothing used by Yasser Arafat which "support the possibility" the veteran Palestinian leader was poisoned. In a report published by The Lancet at the weekend, the team provide scientific details to media statements made in 2012 that they had found polonium on Arafat's belongings. Arafat died in France on November 11 2004 at the age of 75, but doctors were unable to specify the cause of death. No autopsy was carried out at the time, in line with his widow's request. His remains were exhumed in November 2012 and...

Jeff Jones started shopping for health insurance as soon as the Obamacare insurance marketplaces opened on October 1. The Kentucky resident is like a lot LGBT citizens who have not had access to affordable health insurance in the past. If Jones, 47, had been able to legally marry, he would have immediately been eligible for coverage under his partner, Nathan Walker’s, policy. Walker has domestic partnership benefits at work, but the couple haven’t lived together long enough to qualify for them. “I’m a diabetic, so I do want to make sure I’m covered,” Jones said. As a whole the LGBT...

A study has found that the antifungal drug Ciclopirox kills HIV in cell cultures -- and the virus doesn't bounce back when the drug is stopped. But the research has yet to be performed on people. A drug commonly prescribed to treat nail fungus appears to come with a not-so-tiny side effect: killing HIV in cell cultures.In a study performed at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, not only does the drug Ciclopirox rid infectious HIV from cell cultures, but the virus also doesn't bounce back when the drug is withheld. The same group of researchers had previously shown that Ciclopirox...

Pinning down an effective way to combat the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus, the viral precursor to AIDS, has long been a challenge for scientists and physicians, because the virus is an elusive one that mutates frequently and, as a result, quickly becomes immune to medication. A team of Drexel University researchers is trying to get one step ahead of the virus with a microbicide they've created that can trick HIV into "popping" itself into oblivion. Previous image Enlarge Close Next image / Like Us on Facebook Its name is DAVEI - which stands for "Dual Action Virolytic Entry...

ST. LOUIS (KTVI) – It was a story that made international headlines, a St. Louis area baby injected with the HIV tainted blood by his father who didn’t want to pay child support. More than 20 years later, Brryan Jackson is amazed by his health, but his positive spirit and faith. Brryan’s story seemed unbelievable in 1992, when he was just 11 months old, his father, a hospital technician, injected him with HIV tainted blood. The goal was to kill Brryan so he could avoid paying child support. “Anyone in my condition would die in three months they gave me...

A group of Tunisian girls traveled to Syria to participate in “sexual jihad” there have returned to Tunisia pregnant, Tunisian Interior Minister Lotfi Bin Jeddo reportedly said on Thursday. The women “are (sexually) swapped between 20, 30, and 100 rebels and they come back bearing the fruit of sexual contacts in the name of sexual jihad and we are silent doing nothing and standing idle,” Arab news network Al Arabiya reported the minister as saying during an address to the National Constituent Assembly. Former Mufti of Tunisia Sheikh Othman Battikh reportedly said in April that 13 Tunisian girls were "fooled"...

A UN report says that there has been a surprisingly large drop in worldwide deaths due to AIDS, and a significant drop in the number of new cases. BBC: Death rates fell from 2.3 million during its peak in 2005 to 1.6 million last year, says UNAIDS. The number of new HIV infections fell by a third since 2001 to 2.3 million. Among children, the drop was even steeper. In 2001 there were more than half a million new infections. By 2012 the figure had halved to just over a quarter of a million. The authors put the fall in...