TV News LIES

Although experts have long thought of midlife as a time of stability and emotional contentment, baby boomers are proving to be an unfortunate exception. Reversing a longtime demographic trend, midlife suicides are on the rise for the generation born between 1946 and 1964.

National figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that the suicide rate for people in this age group rose by almost 30 percent during the decade ending in 2010, even as the rate among people 85 and older – traditionally, the demographic most likely to kill themselves – dropped by 12 percent.

The United Nations Children's Fund says more than a quarter of children under the age of 5 worldwide are permanently "stunted" from malnutrition, leaving them physically and intellectually weak and representing a scandalous waste of human potential.

Anthony Lake, executive director of UNICEF since 2010, said organized provision of vitamins and clean water and a focus from birth on breastfeeding could have helped these 165 million children achieve normal brain and body development. But their lack of proper nutrition means instead they will suffer increased vulnerability to illness and early death.

Why does Gleevec, a leukemia drug that costs $70,000 per year in the United States, cost just $2,500 in India?

It's seemingly simple. Gleevec is under patent in the U.S., but not in India. Accordingly, Novartis, its Swiss-based manufacturer, may prevent competitors from making and selling lower-cost versions of the drug in the U.S., but not in India.

U.S. researchers say they found using copper objects in hospital intensive care unit rooms cuts healthcare-acquired infections by more than half.

Copper -- and brass -- don't spread germs because they kill microbes on their surfaces continuously.

Healthcare-acquired infections such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus often contaminate items within hospital rooms, allowing bacteria to transfer from patient-to-patient.

The United States ranked in the bottom four of a United Nations report on child well-being. Among 29 countries, America landed second from the bottom in child poverty and held a similarly dismal position when it came to “child life satisfaction.”

Keeping the U.S. company at the bottom of the report, which gauged material well-being, overall health, access to housing and education, were Lithuania, Latvia and Romania, three of the poorest countries in the survey.

In a new study published in the online edition of the British Medical Journal, researchers write that a 50 percent reduction in daily salt intake “could prevent approximately 100,000 deaths from heart attack and stroke in the United States every year.”

Curbing salt intake by that high a margin is certainly a mean feat — but not because Americans are saturating their food with sodium. Rather, study authors suggest that the real culprits are food makers who douse their products with harmful levels of salt.