Washington, D.C.

Poll: Many believe U.S. seeking world domination

A majority of people living in Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan and Turkey say they believe the U.S. is conducting its campaign against terror to control Mideast oil and to dominate the world, according to an international poll released Tuesday.

The governments in all four Muslim-majority countries have strong ties with the U.S. government.

A sizable number of people in France, Germany and Russia also have these suspicions about the campaign against terror, according to the Pew Global Attitudes Project.

At least two-thirds of people living in France, Germany, Russia and Turkey thought it would be a good thing if the European Union becomes as powerful as the United States. Turkey and Russia are not currently members of the European Union.

The polls were taken in February, before the train bombings in Spain that claimed the lives of at least 200 people.

Vatican City

Church condemns in-vitro fertilization

The Vatican issued a broad condemnation Tuesday of fertility treatments such as in-vitro fertilization, calling the destruction of embryos in the process a “massacre of the innocents.”

The Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano published the final communique from the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life after a conference it sponsored last month on “The dignity of human procreation and reproductive technologies: anthropological and ethical aspects.”

In the communique, the academy restated the Vatican position that any treatment that substitutes for sexual intercourse between a husband and wife, such as the creation of an embryo in a laboratory that is later implanted, was considered illicit because the embryo wasn’t the fruit of the “conjugal union.”

But the academy gave its blessing to therapies that can “facilitate” the natural sex act, such as drugs that help a woman ovulate since it would still allow for “natural” fertilization.

Chicago

Study: Radiation beneficial when prostate cancer recurs

A recurrence of cancer after a diseased prostate is removed is not necessarily as dire as doctors once believed, and radiation could save the lives of many men with such a condition, a study found.

Until now, doctors believed that certain ominous signs, including rising levels of a protein called PSA, usually meant that the cancer had not only returned but had spread to other parts of the body and was incurable. These men generally were not offered radiation but were treated only with hormones, which can slow the disease but cannot stop it.

But the new study suggests that many of these men can be cured with radiation, because the cancer has not spread after all.

The study, published in today’s Journal of the American Medical Assn., involved 501 men whose disease returned an average of about 10 months after their prostates were removed. All received radiation to treat the recurrence; half remained cancer-free an average of four years later.