Gay men vulnerable to staph infection

SAN FRANCISCO - A drug-resistant strain of potentially deadly bacteria has moved beyond the borders of US hospitals and is being transmitted among gay men during sex, researchers said yesterday. They said methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, is beginning to appear outside hospitals in San Francisco, Boston, New York, and Los Angeles. "Once this reaches the general population, it will be truly unstoppable," said Binh Diep, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who led the study. The superbug can cause life-threatening and disfiguring infections and can often be treated only with expensive, intravenous antibiotics. It killed about 19,000 Americans in 2005, most of them in hospitals, according to a report published in October in the Journal of the American Medical Association. (Reuters)

Yale University, following Harvard, will cut in half the cost of attendance for families needing financial aid, step up assistance for students from households earning as much as $200,000 a year, and trim tuition increases. Families with annual incomes under $120,000 will pay 50 percent less starting in the 2008-2009 academic year, the New Haven university said yesterday in a statement. Families earning less than $60,000 won't make any contribution to their students' education. (Bloomberg)

The Supreme Court questioned yesterday whether evidence in criminal cases should be suppressed following arrests that violate state laws. At issue is the cocaine conviction of David Lee "Chubs" Moore, stopped by Portsmouth, Va., detectives for driving on a suspended license. Instead of letting Moore go after writing a court summons as Virginia law requires, police arrested him and found crack cocaine in his jacket. The Virginia Supreme Court threw out the case, saying the search was unconstitutional. An arrest is constitutionally lawful if there is probable cause to believe the person committed a crime, Deputy Virginia Solicitor General Stephen McCullough told the justices. (AP)