Health & Science

• Tuesday, May 31st 2011 - 07:22 UTC

  WHO celebrates NO Tobacco Day and recalls 2003 milestone convention

  

  On World No Tobacco Day (31 May), the World Health Organization (WHO) celebrates the successes of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) in the fight against the epidemic of tobacco use. At the same time, WHO recognizes that challenges remain for the public health treaty to reach its full potential as the world's most powerful tobacco control tool.

• Monday, May 30th 2011 - 00:41 UTC

  “Fish pedicure” in the UK fuels health and animal welfare concerns

  

  One of the fastest-growing beauty treatments in Britain, fish pedicures – during which tiny toothless carp smooth down feet by eating dead skin – has come under new scrutiny from health experts and animal rights campaigners, reports the Sunday UK media.

• Friday, May 27th 2011 - 02:00 UTC

  OIE declares the world free of rinderpest, one of the deadliest cattle diseases

  

  The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) declared rinderpest, one of the deadliest diseases of cattle and of several other animal species, eradicated from the surface of the earth.

• Thursday, May 26th 2011 - 00:35 UTC

  Philip Morris takes Uruguay to international court because of tobacco-ban policy

  

  One of the world’s biggest tobacco companies is launching a claim against Uruguay for considering the country’s legislation commercially damaging to the company. Philip Morris corporation has filed a claim at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), a World Bank branch.

• Tuesday, May 24th 2011 - 22:15 UTC

  Sexual health and safe sex tags could be mandatory in Brazilian underwear

  

  Brazil's congress has passed a law that -- if approved by President Dilma Rousseff -- would require sexual health messages to be placed in underwear manufactured and sold in Brazil.

• Monday, May 23rd 2011 - 00:09 UTC

  Argentina and Chile organize winter land SAR operation in Antarctica

  

  Argentina and Chile Antarctic organizations are planning this year’s edition of the Search and Rescue training operation which is scheduled to take place sometime between August and September in the Antarctic Peninsula

• Monday, May 23rd 2011 - 00:06 UTC

  Air France’s Atlantic crash: speed probes seem to have iced reports Germany’s Spiegel

  

  Air France plane crashed into the Atlantic in 2009 because of a sudden stall, the German Spiegel magazine reported Sunday citing an expert involved in analysing data from the plane's flight recorders.

• Sunday, May 22nd 2011 - 22:59 UTC

  Amazon tribe first contacted in 1986 has no abstract concept of time

  

  Amazonian tribe has no abstract concept of time, say researchers. The Amondawa lacks the linguistic structures that relate time and space - as in our idea of, for example, “working through the night”.

• Sunday, May 22nd 2011 - 22:16 UTC

  Chile plans a museum in Antarctica to honour pioneers and attract tourism

  

  The Magallanes regional authorities in Chile’s extreme south are planning to open a museum in the country’s Arturo Prat Antarctic base. Objects and images of Chile’s national presence on the continent will be on display.

• Tuesday, May 17th 2011 - 01:05 UTC

  “Heaven is a fairy story, there is no afterlife” says eminent Stephen Hawking

  

  Heaven is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark, the eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking said in an interview. Hawking, 69, was expected to die within a few years of being diagnosed with degenerative motor neurone disease at the age of 21, but became one of the world's most famous scientists with the publication of his 1988 book “A Brief History of Time”.