"Health & Medical News"

Barack Obama has acknowledged using marijuana and cocaine as a young man, but interviews with old friends and classmates find few who remember the presidential candidate as much of a drug user, the New York Times reported Feb. 9.

Former classmates from Obama’s high school and Occidental College, which he attended between 1979 and 1981, described Obama in mostly positive terms, with some saying he occasionally smoked marijuana but none recalling any cocaine use.

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Chinese-made toys made with a chemical that converts to gamma hydroxyl butyrate (GHB) when ingested have been pulled from store shelves in the U.S. and Australia after at least five children were hospitalized, the Associated Press reported Nov. 7.

The toys, called Spin Master Aqua Dots in the U.S. and Bindeez in Australia, are popular arts-and-crafts beads that can be arranged in designs and stuck together when sprayed with water. A chemical coating on the beads metabolizes to GHB if the beads are ingested, possibly causing unconsciousness, seizures, drowsiness, coma, or death.

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Jaspal tipped me off to this story that some of you may have heard of before. The state of recall related to China is getting is at a ridiculous level. No time to write a detailed post on this, but you will find below a few headlines for this recall and for the one on the fake diabetes test strips. The first article on fake diabetes test strips (link) provides the most detail and is worth reading. Also worth checking out or bookmarking is a blog devoted to these issues: Made (Deadly) in China.

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