Brother and sister reunite in Iowa after 65 years with help of Facebook, 7-year-old boy

DAVENPORT, Iowa - An man has been reunited with his sister 65 years after the siblings were separated in foster care thanks to a 7-year-old friend who searched Facebook.
Clifford Boyson, of Davenport, Iowa, met his sister, Betty Billadeau, in person on Saturday. Billadeau drove up from her home in Florissant, Missouri, with her daughter and granddaughter for the reunion at a hotel in Davenport.
Boyson, 66, and Billadeau, 70, both tried to find each other for years without success. They were placed in different foster homes in Chicago when they were children.
Then 7-year-old Eddie Hanzelin, who is the son of Boyson's landlord, got involved.
Eddie managed to find Billadeau by searching his mom's Facebook account with Billadeau's maiden name. He recognized the family resemblance when he saw her picture.
"Oh, my God," Boyson said when he saw and hugged Billadeau.
"You do have a sister," Billadeau said.
"You're about the same height Mom was," Boyson said.
Billadeau's daughter, Sarah Billadeau, 42, and granddaughter, Megan Billadeau, 27, both wiped away tears and smiled during the reunion.
"He didn't have any women in his life," Sarah said. "We're going to get that straightened out real fast."
Boyson said he's looking forward to visiting Billadeau near St. Louis and meeting more family.
"I'm hoping I can go and spend a week or two," he said. "I want to meet the whole congregation. I never knew I had a big family."
Eddie, who enjoys messing around with his family's iPad, said he's glad he was able to assist in making the reunion happen and that he learned about helping others at school.
"Clifford did not have any family, and family's important," the boy said.
Near the end of their tearful reunion Boyson and Billadeau presented Eddie with a $125 check in appreciation of his detective work.

Transocean says Icahn acquired 1.56 percent stake, seeks more

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Transocean Ltd has disclosed that billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn has acquired a 1.56 percent stake in the offshore rig contractor and is looking to increase that holding.
Icahn is seeking regulatory approval to acquire shares worth more than $682.1 million, according to a statement on Transocean's Web site.
If he gets approval, Icahn would become one of Transocean's largest shareholders with just over 5 percent of the company, based on its closing stock price of $54.09 on January 11.
Transocean's biggest shareholder is Capital World Investors, a division The Capital Group Companies Inc, which owned 5.12 percent as of October 15, according to Thomson Reuters data.
Icahn's move comes less than two weeks after Transocean agreed to pay $1.4 billion to settle U.S. government charges over BP Plc's massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2012 . Transocean employed nine of the 11 workers killed in the accident.

More kids taking alternative therapies, but doctors rarely told: study

TORONTO - A growing number of Canadian children with chronic illnesses are being treated with complementary medicine, researchers say, but parents don't always tell doctors they are using the alternative therapies.
Yet informing health-care providers about vitamins, herbal and homeopathic remedies is important because in some cases they can adversely interact with traditional medications, the researchers say.
In a survey of parents having their children treated at two Canadian pediatric hospitals, researchers found that alternative medicines and such therapies as massage and chiropractic were commonly used.
At Stollery Children's Hospital in Edmonton, 71 per cent of parents surveyed said they treated their kids with complementary medicine, while 42 per cent of parents attending the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) in Ottawa reported their use.
"Our study found that many, many children use complementary therapies, and unfortunately oftentimes parents do not necessarily disclose this use when they're talking to their child's health-care team," said pediatrician Dr. Sunita Vohra, co-principal author of the study.
The research, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, found almost 20 per cent of families surveyed said they had not told their physician or pharmacist about using both prescription and alternative medicines together.
"The reasons for this are probably many and varied," Vohra said from Edmonton. "Sometimes, parents don't feel comfortable bringing it up. Sometimes, they're not sure how that information is going to be received by the health-care team."
And in other cases, parents may not think the information is relevant because they may not consider a herbal remedy, for instance, as being a medicine, she said.
The study involved a total of 926 families at 10 different clinics in Edmonton and Ottawa, with parents asked to fill out an anonymous questionnaire in the waiting room prior to their child's appointment.
The young patients were being seen at clinics in the two hospitals that deal with pediatric cardiology, gastroenterology, neurology, oncology and respiratory health conditions.
The most common complementary medicines used were multivitamins or minerals, herbal products and homeopathic remedies, while the most often-used alternative therapies were massage, chiropractic, relaxation and aromatherapy.
Almost half reported using forms of complementary remedies at the same time as being treated by conventional medicine, while about five per cent said they used such alternative therapies instead of standard medicine.
Parents were two to three times more likely to use complementary medicine if their child's health was fair or poor and if the parent used that form of treatment themselves.
The study also found that about 56 per cent of respondents were treating their youngsters with alternative forms of medication at the same time as they were taking prescription drugs.
But such concurrent treatment can be risky: the study found 80 cases of interactions between complementary remedies and traditional drugs, including 19 considered moderately adverse and six that were deemed severe.
Fish oil, for instance, can cause the blood to thin. Combining it with a pharmaceutical blood thinner can result in bleeding, Vohra said.
Echinacea, a herb taken by many people to boost the immune system, can counter the effectiveness of chemotherapy used to treat cancer, she said.
"There's all kinds of medications that can interact and you have to (assess) it on a case-by-case basis," noted CHEO pediatrician Dr. James King, who led the study with Vohra.
"The big thing is if you don't ask about it, you don't know to check, right?" King said from Ottawa.
"And if it's possible that 20 per cent of your patients are coming in and they are on medications and they're not disclosing this (alternative) treatment ... on our side as a profession we need to make sure that we're asking."
Vohra also cautioned that "more is not necessarily better."
"We have seen patients that have gotten into trouble if they expose themselves ... to polypharmacy —the idea of taking many things at the same time," she said. "Even though the things they're taking are natural health products, if you're on a long list of them, I would be careful.
"People make an assumption that natural means safe."
The study also found that more than 60 per cent of parents reported getting information about complementary medicine from "family." Others cited the Internet, health food stores, pharmacies, and books and magazines.
"They get their information from a variety of sources, and when you have a commercial interest, when someone is trying to sell you something, you may not actually be getting an unbiased source of advice," Vohra said.
"So we think it's useful to try to create an opportunity for dialogue where there isn't a sales pitch attached to it," she said, encouraging parents to raise the issue of complementary medicine use with their child's care providers.
King said the study suggests that families want doctors and other health providers to ask about the use of complementary medicine, and they want a reliable source of information about their potential benefits and harms.
"A lot of people are using it," he said. "I think we need to recognize that and we just need to build it into our care plan.

Suspects to appear at Indian gang rape hearing to shift to 'fast track' court

NEW DELHI - Defence lawyers say the cases of five men charged in the fatal gang rape of a young woman on a moving New Delhi bus are expected to be shifted to a fast track court.
A hearing on whether to move the cases was to be held Monday. It had been set for last week but was rescheduled when it turned out that the official list of charges was not completely legible.
Five men have been charged with the Dec. 16 attack on the young woman, who died later in a Singapore hospital. They could face the death penalty if convicted. A sixth suspect, who says he is 17 years old, is likely to be tried in a juvenile court if medical tests confirm he is a minor.

Millions of devout Hindus plunge into Ganges River in festival ritual to wash away their sins

ALLAHABAD, India - Millions of devout Hindus have plunged into the holy Ganges River in India in a ritual they believe can wash away their sins.
Monday is considered the most auspicious day of the Kumbh Mela, or Pitcher Festival, that lasts 55 days and is one of the world's largest religious gatherings. The day's significance is based on astrological signs.
Top festival official Mani Prasad Mishra says nearly 3 million people bathed by late morning and 11 million were expected to enter the frigid water by day's end.
Devout Hindus believe bathing in the Ganges during the festival can cleanse their sins and free them from the cycle of death and rebirth.

Baseball-MLB, players agree to expand drug testing

Jan 10 (Reuters) - Major League Baseball and the players' union have agreed to expand their drug program to include random in-season blood testing for human growth hormone and a new test for testosterone, they said on Thursday.
The testing will start this season.
MLB has been conducting random blood testing for the detection of HGH among minor league players since July 2010.
Starting this season, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)-accredited Montreal laboratory will establish a program in which a player's baseline testosterone/epitestosterone (T/E) ratio and other data will be maintained in order to enhance its ability to detect use of testosterone and other prohibited substances.

RPT-Baseball-MLB, players agree to expand drug testing

(Repeats to widen distribution)
Jan 10 (Reuters) - Major League Baseball and the players' union have agreed to expand their drug program to include random in-season blood testing for human growth hormone and a new test for testosterone, they said on Thursday.
The testing will start this season.
MLB has been conducting random blood testing for the detection of HGH among minor league players since July 2010.
Starting this season, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)-accredited Montreal laboratory will establish a program in which a player's baseline testosterone/epitestosterone (T/E) ratio and other data will be maintained in order to enhance its ability to detect use of testosterone and other prohibited substances.