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ByMikeStobbe TheAssociatedPress NEW YORK Measles cases are accelerating, and in the last five months have caused more U.S. illnesses than in any entire year since 1996. Health officials say 307 cases have been reported since New Year's Day. About half have been in the past month — most from a huge outbreak in unvaccinated Amish communities in Ohio. That's a blistering start, even before the customary spurt of cases seen in the late spring and summer, health officials noted. "Measles has reached a 20-year high. This is not the kind of record we want to break," said Dr. Anne Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control and Preven- tion. The CDC released the lat- est numbers Thursday dur- ing a news conference. Nearly all the cases have been linked to travelers who caught the virus abroad and spread it in the United States among unvaccinated people. Many of the travelers had been to the Philippines, where a recent measles epi- demic has caused more than 30,000 illnesses. Most of the unvaccinated skipped shots for personal or philosophical reasons, Schuchat said. About half of those who got sick have been adults 20 or older. At least 43people were hospitalized with mea- sles complications — mainly pneumonia. There have been no deaths. No measles deaths have been reported in the U.S. since 2003. The measles virus is highly contagious, spreading easily through the air and in closed rooms. Infected drop- lets can linger for up to two hours after the sick person leaves. It causes a fever, runny nose, cough and a rash all over the body. In rare cases, measles can be deadly, and is particularly dangerous for children. Infection can also cause pregnant women to have a miscarriage or pre- mature birth. Before a vaccine became available about 50 years ago, nearly all children got mea- sles by their 15th birthday — that's hundreds of thousands of cases annually. In those days, nearly 500 Americans died from measles each year. According to CDC re- cords, the last time the na- tion saw this many cases in an entire year was 1996, when 508 were reported. DISEASE Officials:Measlestally doubled in past month By Mary Clare Jalonick The Associated Press WASHINGTON The Food and Drug Administration is updating its advice for preg- nant women on the appropri- ate levels of mercury in sea- food but Commissioner Mar- garet Hamburg said Friday that it won't require mercury labels on seafood packages. In a wide-ranging inter- view Friday with The As- sociated Press, Hamburg said the agency will up- date guidance on mercury in different varieties of sea- food and what that means, a long-awaited move aimed at helping women better un- derstand what to eat when they're pregnant. "It's an advisory, not an effort to mandate labeling," Hamburg said. "Different seafood products do con- tain different levels of mer- cury, and so different sea- food products can be rated in terms of levels of mercury." Eating fish is part of a heart-healthy diet, and many types are good sources of omega-3 fatty acids that are important for brain develop- ment. But fish also can absorb small amounts of mercury, a neurotoxin, from streams and oceans — and a small number of varieties harbor higher levels. For most people, accumu- lating mercury from eating seafood isn't a health risk. But for a decade, the FDA has warned that pregnant women, those who may be- come pregnant, and young childrenavoidcertaintypesof high-mercury fish because of concern that too much could harm a developing brain. Consumer groups have sued the agency, saying the warnings weren't clear enough about what to avoid, and seeking labeling to help so that shoppers wouldn't have to remember which products are OK during pregnancy or for youngsters. "We can't ask consumers to memorize two different lists of fish," said Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public In- terest, one of the groups that sued. DeWaal said the new ad- visory will be an improve- ment if it gives consum- ers better information, es- pecially if that information could be kept at fish coun- ters in grocery stores and retail outlets. The seafood industry says the government shouldn't look at mercury by itself, but at the benefits of seafood. Jennifer McGuire of the Na- tionalFisheriesInstitutesays the original FDA guidelines warning against some types of fish for pregnant women just served to decrease over- all seafood intake. "That would be very con- cerning if there was a 'good fish, bad fish' list," she said. The government's 2010 Dietary Guidelines incorpo- rated FDA's warnings to say that pregnant or breastfeed- ing women should consume 8 to 12 ounces of a variety of seafood per week. But it said they should not eat tilefish, shark, swordfish and king mackerel because of the mer- cury content and it advised limiting white albacore tuna to six ounces a week. On other food-related is- sues, Hamburg said deciding which businesses will have to post calorie labels has been "one of the more com- plex undertakings of my ten- ure as FDA commissioner." The food industry is closely watching FDA to see which establishments are included in final menu la- beling rules, which are ex- pected this year. Congress required the labels in 2010 health overhaul, and super- markets and convenience stores have lobbied aggres- sively since then to be ex- cluded. But the restaurant industry says that all estab- lishments serving prepared foods should have to post the labels. FOOD FDA to update seafood guide for pregnant women The Associated Press LONDON Almost a third of the world is now fat, and no country has been able to curb obesity rates in the last three decades, according to a new global analysis. Researchers found more than 2 billion people world- wide are now overweight or obese. The highest rates were in the Middle East and North Africa, where nearly 60 percent of men and 65 percent of women are heavy. The U.S. has about 13 per- cent of the world's fat pop- ulation, a greater percent- age than any other country. China and India combined have about 15 percent. "It's pretty grim," said Christopher Murray of the Institute for Health Met- rics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, who led the study. He and colleagues reviewed more than 1,700 studies covering 188 countries from 1980 to 2013. "When we realized that not a single country has had a significant de- cline in obesity, that tells you how hard a challenge this is." Murray said there was a strong link between in- come and obesity; as people get richer, their waistlines also tend to start bulging. He said scientists have no- ticed accompanying spikes in diabetes and that rates of cancers linked to weight, like pancreatic cancer, are also rising. The new report was paid for by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and pub- lished online Thursday in the journal, Lancet. Last week, the World Health Organization es- tablished a high-level com- mission tasked with ending childhood obesity. "Our children are getting fatter," Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO's director-general, said bluntly during a speech at the agency's annual meet- ing in Geneva. "Parts of the world are quite literally eat- ing themselves to death." Earlier this year, WHO said that no more than 5 percent of your daily calories should come from sugar. "Modernization has not been good for health," said Syed Shah, an obesity ex- pert at United Arab Emir- ates University, who found obesity rates have jumped five timesin the last20 years even in a handful of remote Himalayan villages in Paki- stan. His research was pre- sented this week at a con- ference in Bulgaria. "Years ago, people had to walk for hours if they wanted to make a phone call," he said. "Now everyone has a cell- phone." Shah also said the villag- ers no longer have to rely on their own farms for food. "There are roads for (companies) to bring in their processed foods and the people don't have to slaugh- ter their own animals for meat and oil," he said. "No one knew about Coke and Pepsi 20 years ago. Now it's everywhere." In Britain, the indepen- dent health watchdog issued new advice Wednesday rec- ommending that heavy peo- ple be sent to free weight- loss classes to drop about 3 percent of their weight. It reasoned that losing just a few pounds improves health and is more realistic. About two in three adults in the U.K. are overweight, mak- ing it the fattest country in Western Europe. "This is not something where you can just wake up one morning and say, 'I am going to lose 10 pounds,'" said Mike Kelly, the agen- cy's public health director, in a statement. "It takes re- solve and it takes encour- agement." HEALTH 30 percent of world now fat; no country immune Weightyissue MARKLENNIHAN—THEASSOCIATEDPRESS Scientists have noticed accompanying spikes in diabetes among overweight people, as well as links to cancer. The Associated Press LONDON He may have had a twisted spine, but Eng- land's King Richard III was no hunchback, according to a new analysis of the medi- eval king's skeleton. After the bones of the 15th-century king were discovered under a park- ing lot in central England in 2012, scientists scanned the remains of Richard III's back and created replicas of each bone to reconstruct his spine. The researchers said while Richard III had a severe case of scoliosis, he was far from the limping "hunchbacked toad" with a withered arm depicted in William Shakespeare's play. "Richard had a very squishy spine but it wouldn't have stuck out that obvi- ously," said Piers Mitchell of theUniversityofCambridge, oneofthestudy'sauthors.He said it was technically inac- curate to describe Richard III as a hunchback because his spine was bent sideways rather than forward. "Unless you were pretty close to him, it's unlikely you would have noticed anything very wrong with him," Mitchell said. He said the king's head and neck were straight, but his right shoulder was higher than his left and his upper body was rela- tively short compared to his limbs. "With some padded shoulders or if the height of his trousers was ad- justed, a sympathetic tailor could have hidden Richard's twisted back," Mitchell said. By analyzing the king's remains, Mitchell and his colleagues also found that his scoliosis developed dur- ing adolescence and as a result he was a few inches shorter than he otherwise would have been. Richard III died in 1485, the last English king killed on a battlefield. The new study was published online Thurs- day in the journal Lancet. Some historians say the finding confirms contempo- rary accounts suggesting that Richard III had only a slight deformity. 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