The Hague, Netherlands | AFP | Supermarkets in the Netherlands and Germany were Thursday removing millions of eggs from their shelves believed to have been contaminated by a toxic insecticide in a widening food scandal. Amid fears the Dutch poultry industry could be facing huge financial losses, German officials said late …
Read More »Candidate AIDS vaccine passes early test
Successful trials held in South Africa, Uganda, Rwanda |JULIA BELLUZ| Developing a vaccine to stop HIV is thought to be among the most daunting challenges in medicine for one big reason: The virus is extraordinarily genetically diverse, even more so than the flu. So it’s difficult to think about how …
Read More »London doctor charged with over 100 sexual offences
London, United Kingdom | AFP | A London doctor was on Wednesday charged with over 100 sexual offences, with a pre-teen child among the alleged victims, police announced. Manish Shah, 47, is accused of 118 crimes including one charge of sexual assault on a child under 13 years old. The doctor …
Read More »COMMENT: Fighting antimicrobial resistance
Over ten million people will die from drug-resistant microbes every year by 2050 COMMENT |Jörg Reinhardt| In the first week of July, G20 leaders committed to working together to address one of the world’s most pressing and perplexing security threats: antimicrobial resistance (AMR) – a fierce and evolving adversary against …
Read More »Method for editing embryo DNA at centre of legal war
Washington, United States | AFP | As scientists announced Wednesday they had corrected a disease-causing gene mutation in human embryos for the first time, a legal dispute over who discovered the CRISPR-Cas9 “editing” tool they used, continues to rage. With the potential to revolutionise medicine and agriculture, the fight over patent …
Read More »COFFEE: ‘Coffee naps’ put to rest
How a cup before a nap helps you power through the day |CHIN MOI CHOW| Caffeine and napping have something in common. Both make you feel alert and can enhance your performance, whether that’s driving, working or studying. But some people are convinced that drinking a coffee before a nap …
Read More »Sugar not so sweet for mental health
Paris, France | AFP | Sugar may be bad not only for your teeth and your waistline, but also your mental health, claimed a study Thursday that was met with scepticism by other experts. Researchers at University College London (UCL) compared the reported sugar intake of more than 8,000 people in …
Read More »Finish your antibiotics course? Maybe not, experts say
Paris, France | AFP | British disease experts on Thursday suggested doing away with the “incorrect” advice to always finish a course of antibiotics, saying the approach was fuelling the spread of drug resistance. Rather than stopping antibiotics too early, the cause of resistance was “unnecessary” drug use, a team wrote …
Read More »Murdered NY cop’s baby born 2.5 years after his death
New York, United States | AFP | New York police detective WenJian Liu was ambushed and killed two and a half years ago in a murder that shocked the city. This week, his widow gave birth to his baby daughter. Angelina was born Tuesday at Weill Cornell Hospital. Her mother, …
Read More »OBAMACARE: Double blow convulses Republican bid to reform US health care
Washington, United States | AFP | US Senate Republicans suffered a second stinging setback in as many days Wednesday in their efforts to uproot Obamacare, when a plan to repeal the health care law — with no replacement at the ready — failed to advance in the chamber. The washout …
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