A study that was led by scientists from the John Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center has revealed that men that have chronic inflammation of the prostate tissue might have close to fifty percent more risk of developing prostate cancer in comparison to men who do not suffer from the inflammation.

Scientists were able to found a link that was even stronger between men that have persistent inflammation and prostate cancers that are quick growing and more aggressive.

The difference this study has with previous ones is the team of scientists examined the prostate tissues of men who had not previously undergone a biopsy due to elevated antigen levels in the prostate.

One of the authors of the study said that most men who have a biopsy do so because of having elevated levels of PSA. The problem with using these men for a study of this type is that the inflammation can cause injury to the prostate and elevate the levels of PSA independently from whether or not person has cancer.

Members of the study analyzed the Prostate Cancer Trial that was seven years in length and large scale and wanted to determine if finasteride, the hair growth medication could help reduce prostate cancer occurrence.

The group from John Hopkins examined tissue that was benign from 191 biopsies of men that had prostate cancer as well as from 209 men that did not have cancer.

The group discovered that over 86% of the men who had prostate cancer had a minimum of one sample of tissue that showed signs of inflammation. That was compared to only 78% of men who were cancer free.

By then reviewing the final outcomes health wise of the selected participants from the trial, the researchers were able to determine that men who had at least one sample of tissue showing chronic inflammation signs had a 1.78 times higher risk of developing a form of prostate cancer than men who did not experience inflammation, and risk 2.24 higher of developing the aggressive form of prostate cancer.

The link of inflammation remained even in men with low levels of PSA when the biopsies were taken.

Police Arrest Suspect in IRA Leader’s KillingA man has been held for questioning by police in Northern Ireland over the shooting death of Tommy Crossan the leading dissident republican in Belfast.

Police said a man, who is 26, was arrested. Crossan was the former lead figure in CIRA, the Continuity IRA. He was gunned down at an industrial complex near a fuel depot on Friday in view of many surrounding homes.

The police said the man arrested was in west Belfast at the Antrim office being questioned.

Three gunmen are suspected of carrying out the killing and detectives are examining a possibility that rival dissidents had been involved in Crossan’s murder.

Crossan was at one time the leader of CIRA’s Belfast unit, but is believed to have had a death threat and was expelled from the same group after there was a falling out a number of years ago.

It was alleged that at one time he was extorting hundreds of thousands of dollars in the name of the organization and then keeping the proceeds.

Suggestions have circulated that Crossan had been an agent with security services from Britain and was killed out of revenge for informing on former comrades in paramilitary, though those claims are used frequently to provide for the justification for carrying out a hit.

Crossan’s killing comes at a time when tensions continue to increase amongst dissident groups of republicans, with fighting continuing to bring problems to the ranks.

Last week a former gunman with CIRA was buried after being shot down outside a daycare center in Dublin in March.

The gunman was blamed for murdering two republican dissidents, Joseph Jones and Eddie Burns, in a dispute involving control of one of the factions.

Crossan spent six years in prison for conspiracy to murder law enforcement officers, after a gun attack in West Belfast at a police station in 1998.

The CIRA split in 1986 from the Provisional IRA and has long been opposed to the peace process. The process largely ended over three decades of brutal violence and helped transform Northern Ireland.

Crossan was gunned down on the day the Good Friday Agreement was signed 16 years ago, which established the sharing of political power between unionists and nationalists at Stormont.

Law enforcement authorities are trying to sort out details of a crash in California’s Central Valley that killed two California Highway Patrol officers. The two killed were Brian Law and Juan Gonzalez.

On Monday, investigators spoke of a sequence of different events, but stressed that the investigation was far from over.

At about 6 a.m. Monday morning Law and Gonzalez received calls on their radio about a collision on northbound 99. When the two approached that accident scene headed south, they discovered the accident was actually in the southbound lane on their side and blocking lanes. They also noticed a pedestrian outside one vehicle.

The officers took an evasive action in order to avoiding striking the parties from the accident, lost control of their vehicle, struck a guardrail and crashed severely. The CHP vehicle did not strike any other vehicles before or after hitting the guardrail.

Officials from CHP said both of the officers died instantly.

The commissioner of the CHP Joe Farrow said his officials were trying to determine the reason the officers had crashed.

Farrow said they are still uncertain if the two officers thought the crash had been down the road further, as they came upon the scene they lost control and hit the guardrail and road sign.

Law and Gonzalez were in the highway patrol academy together and ended up as close friends after spending the 27 weeks together in class. After their graduation in 2008, they went to different offices on assignment, but in 2013, they became reunited and worked the graveyard shift in Fresno.

Gonzalez was single but discussing marriage, while Law was married with three children.

Although, the officials are still investigating the accident, detail started to emerge late in the afternoon on Monday.

A reconstruction team at the crash scene was present for most of Monday, with all of the southbound lanes closed for a number of hours.

Officers from CHP will meet with members of the families of the victims. The CHP also announced it would be releasing any new information about the crash and what transpired, as soon as they had it.

Young females, who smoke, might have a higher risk of a common form of breast cancer, indicated the results of new research just completed.

Researchers have found that females between the ages of 20 and 44, who smoke at least one pack of cigarettes each day for a minimum of 10 years, were 60% more apt than those who smoked fewer cigarettes to develop the so-called breast cancer, estrogen receptor-positive.

Smokers however, were no more apt to develop a type of breast cancer that is less common referred to as triple-negative, which is usually more aggressive.

One of the researchers said that there is more evidence that another health hazard that is associated with smoking is breast cancer.

Research previously found ties between breast cancer and smoking, said researchers. The studies however, amongst breast cancer and younger women have produced results that are conflicting.

The researchers also have said there are questions that remain about whether smoking is tied to a higher risk of certain forms of the cancer and not others.

The team of researchers analyzed data of a group of Greater Seattle, Washington young women who had been diagnosed from 2004 to 2010 with breast cancer.

There were 778 women diagnosed during that period with estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer, which is the more common form. There were 182 diagnosed with the triple-negative form, which is more aggressive and less common.

Another 939 women, who are cancer free, had their information included for comparison reasons.

The National Cancer Institute says that one in eight women in the U.S. will eventually develop some form of breast cancer, but at a younger age, the risk is less.

Only one in 227 women at 30 years of age or less than 0.5% will have breast cancer develop before they are 40 years old.

For this study, the young females who smoked were 30% more apt to develop any type of breast cancer, when compared to females who never had smoked.

Women who had smoked recently or were currently smoking and had been smoking for 15 years or more were 50% more apt to develop the estrogen receptor-positive form of breast cancer. Those who said they had been smoking one pack or more of cigarettes for at least 10 years were 60% more apt to develop that form of cancer.

An index that contains 55 different foods items fell from December’s 206.2 to 203.4 last month. The drop put world food prices at a 19-month low, as costs for all foodstuffs from grains to sugar dropped amidst large global supplies, said the Food & Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

The FAO, based in Rome, released the information on Thursday online. The drop in the index was 4.5% from one year ago and is it’s lowest since June of 2012.

Corn was the S&P GSCI’s worst performer of the 24 commodities in 2013 dropping by 40% thanks to a record crop globally. Sugar fell by 16% in 2013 in New York and this year has extended that slid by another 1.6% as world supplies outpace the demand across the globe.

In another report, the FAO has said that production of world grain will be more than previously thought with a record 2.5 million metric tons.

Bumper crops during 2013 helped increase inventories, which along with large supplies for export, have forced down the prices internationally of cereals to far below the 2012 high levels, said the FAO.

Early 2014 prospects are also favorable for crops, forcing most cereals to fall even further over the last few weeks.

The grain index for FAO dropped from 191.5 to 188.4 in January, according to the latest report. The gauge for sugar prices by FAO dropped by 5.6%, while costs of vegetable oil fell by 3.8% and prices of meats dropped by over 0.9%. FAO announced that the only prices to rise were dairy costs which climbed by over 1.4%, said FAO.

The dairy cost increase was 29% higher than the same period one year ago. Widespread drought has reduced output in New Zealand, the largest diary exporter in the world.

The Department of Agriculture in the United States projects that the global inventories for dairy products from milk powder to cheese would fall in 2014 as the demand begins to outpace supply.

Imports into China of powdered whole milk, which often times is used in baby’s formula have spiked by 14-fold over the past 6 years, show new data from the USDA.