Hillary Clinton’s mother dies at 92

Hillary Clinton’s mother dies at 92

washington

Dorothy Rodham, mother of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and former President Bill Clinton’s mother-in-law, died Tuesday at age 92 after an illness.

The family said Rodham died shortly after midnight, surrounded by her family at a Washington hospital. The secretary of state had canceled a planned trip to London and Istanbul to be at her mother’s side.

In a statement, the Clinton family hailed Rodham as a woman who “overcame abandonment and hardship as a young girl to become the remarkable woman she was — a warm, generous and strong woman; an intellectual; a woman who told a great joke and always got the joke; an extraordinary friend and, most of all, a loving wife, mother and grandmother.”

Study sees alcohol, breast cancer link

melville, n.y.

Women who have an occasional glass of wine with dinner — as few as three drinks a week — have a higher risk of breast cancer, a new study has found.

In the largest examination of light drinking and breast cancer risk, researchers discovered that women who had three to six drinks a week raised their risk of the disease by 15 percent.

The research, published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, involved more than 100,000 women participating in the Nurses’ Health Study. The research project has followed nurses in the U.S. for three decades, producing reams of data.

House OKs 5-year freeze on cell taxes

washington

The House on Tuesday approved a five-year freeze on any new state and local taxes imposed on cellphones and other wireless services, including wireless broadband access.

The voice vote reflected a consensus that new taxes on wireless mobile services have far outpaced average sales taxes on other items and have become a deterrent to the spread of wireless broadband technology.

“We need to encourage the development and adoption of wireless broadband, not tax it out of existence,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., the bill’s sponsor.

She said that in many places, the taxation of wireless approaches or even exceeds the rates of sin taxes on goods such as alcohol and tobacco.

Painkiller-overdose deaths triple

new york

The number of overdose deaths from powerful painkillers more than tripled over a decade, the government reported Tuesday — a trend that a U.S. health official called an epidemic.

Prescription painkillers such as OxyContin, Vicodin and methadone led to the deaths of almost 15,000 people in 2008. That’s more than three times the 4,000 deaths from narcotics in 1999.

Such painkillers “are meant to help people who have severe pain,” said Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, which issued the report.

OK to stop rocket fire

jerusalem

Israel has authorized its military to take all necessary steps to stop rocket fire from Gaza, including a ground operation, an Israeli military official said Tuesday, as Egypt worked on a truce and said Israel had agreed to delay stepping up its response.

The official said the decision authorized the military to act in accordance with the severity of Palestinian attacks, meaning that a ground offensive would be ordered only after massive rocket fire.

Combined dispatches