Aspirin use tied to lower cancer risk

Aspirin use tied to lower cancer risk

LONDON

A new report from British scientists suggests that long-term, daily aspirin use may modestly lower the risk of dying of certain cancers, though experts warn the study isn’t strong enough to recommend healthy people start taking a pill that can cause bleeding and other problems.

In a new observational analysis published online today in the medical journal Lancet, Peter Rothwell of the University of Oxford and colleagues looked at eight trials that included more than 25,000 patients and cut the risk of death from certain cancers by 20 percent.

Though some experts said the analysis adds to evidence of aspirin’s potential to cut cancer risk, others said it falls short of changing advice to healthy people, and it failed to show the benefits apply equally to women.

Gay-marriage case televised nationally

SAN FRANCISCO

The legal fight over California’s gay-marriage ban went before a federal appeals court Monday in a hearing that reached a nationwide TV audience anxious for a final decision on whether the measure violates the U.S. Constitution. The hearing before a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also focused on whether supporters of voter-approved Proposition 8 have legal standing to challenge a lower-court ruling that the ban was unconstitutional.

Boys, 3 and 6, found with stolen goods

COVINGTON, La

Police say a 3-year-old and two 6-year-olds were found with stolen goods after a Louisiana man returned home to find them in his house.

When Covington police arrived Saturday, they found the three boys playing near the man’s house. As officers approached, one of the boys pulled out what looked like a handgun and put it on the ground. Authorities said it was a BB gun.

Police said the children had items taken from the man’s house, including candy, a board game, money and cigarettes.

A cousin apparently was baby-sitting the children while their mother attended a parenting class. Police said the children were too young to be charged, but the mother could face charges.

Covington is about 35 miles north of New Orleans.

Elizabeth Edwards is gravely ill

WASHINGTON

Elizabeth Edwards, stoic as her husband’s presidential ambitions collapsed, her marriage crumbled and cancer sapped her strength, thanked her supporters online Monday as word spread the disease may take her life within weeks. “The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered,” Edwards wrote on her Facebook page. “We know that. And yes, there are certainly times when we aren’t able to muster as much strength and patience as we would like. It’s called being human. But I have found that in the simple act of living with hope, and in the daily effort to have a positive impact in the world, the days I do have are made all the more meaningful and precious. And for that I am grateful.”

20 bodies found in landslide

BELLO, Colombia

Rescue workers recovered 20 bodies but said more than 100 people remained missing and feared dead Monday after a landslide that buried a poor Medellin suburb after Colombia’s heaviest rains in decades.

The rains that triggered Sunday’s landslide also have driven thousands from their homes, damaged coffee and flower crops and snarled the two-lane highways that are mountainous Colombia’s commercial backbone.

Associated Press