HEALTH NEWS

President Barack Obama is lauding the passage of historic anti-smoking legislation that gives the government sweeping authority to regulate tobacco products, pledging to quickly sign the measure into law.

“For over a decade, leaders of both parties have fought to prevent tobacco companies from marketing their products to children and provide the public with the information they need to understand what a dangerous habit this is,” said Obama, who has struggled for years to kick his own nicotine habit.

The House on Friday gave final approval to the bill after a bitter fight lasting nearly a half-century.

With swine flu now an official pandemic, the race is on among drugmakers to produce a vaccine.

GlaxoSmithKline said Thursday after the World Health Organization declared a global flu epidemic that it would be ready within weeks to begin large-scale vaccine production.

Eating a diet rich in carbohydrates that boost blood sugar levels — foods such as cornflakes or white bread — may hamper the functioning of your blood vessels and raise your risk of developing cardiovascular disease, a new study suggests.

And another study, released Thursday at the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C., found that people might actually feel fuller — and might therefore eat less — if they cut back a bit on carbohydrates in their diet.

In the first study, researchers from Israel’s Chaim Sheba Medical Center and elsewhere evaluated 56 healthy but overweight or obese men and women, aged 35 to 60.