Health & Science

• 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”.

• Thursday, May 12th 2011 - 19:07 UTC

  Baltic Sea patched with ‘dead zones’ reveals research expedition

  

  A research expedition in the Baltic Sea has yielded spectacular photos of surprisingly colourful life below the calm surface. But the images also reveal a more sinister reality -- the alarming spread of “dead zones” threatening aquatic life.

• Thursday, May 12th 2011 - 16:46 UTC

  EU votes for mandatory labeling or real fur or leather content in textiles

  

  Consumers will no longer risk inadvertently buying textiles that contain real fur or leather, thanks to new textile labeling rules approved by the European Parliament.

• Tuesday, May 10th 2011 - 18:17 UTC

  Measles vaccination campaign in Chile following several confirmed cases

  

  Undersecretary of Health Jorge Díaz confirmed Saturday that there are seven contagious cases of measles in Chile, but emphasized that “it’s not an epidemic or anything of the sort.”

• Tuesday, May 10th 2011 - 09:37 UTC

  Conservationists claim seafood labelling ‘fails’ to support sustainable fishing

  

  The Marine Conservation Society (MCS) has accused UK supermarkets of failing to label seafood in a way that makes it easy for consumers to select sustainable sourced fish. The allegation came as the MCS published the Good Fish guide, which is being hailed as the most comprehensive sustainable seafood advice released to date.

• Tuesday, May 10th 2011 - 09:34 UTC

  Mass culling of farm animals when outbreak of FMD ‘unnecessary’ say scientists

  

  The mass cull of farm animals to control the spread of foot-and-mouth disease, FMD, may be unnecessary if there is a new outbreak, scientists suggest. A new analysis of disease transmission suggests that future outbreaks might be controlled by early detection and killing only affected animals.

• Friday, May 6th 2011 - 17:21 UTC

  US payrolls expanded in April, but jobless rate climbed to 9%

  United States employers in April added more jobs than forecast. Payrolls expanded by 244,000 last month, the biggest gain since May 2010, after a revised 221,000 increase the prior month, the Labour Department said Friday in Washington.

• Friday, May 6th 2011 - 02:42 UTC

  First body recovered from Air France wreckage in seabed four kilometres deep

  

  An undersea recovery team has retrieved a first body from the wreck of an Air France jet that crashed into the Atlantic in 2009 with the loss of all 228 on board, French police said on Thursday.

• Friday, May 6th 2011 - 01:40 UTC

  Indian lab opens facility in Argentina to act as global hub for cancer drugs

  

  India’s Glenmark Pharmaceuticals on Thursday said it has opened its new facility in Argentina which would serve as a global hub for cancer treatment drugs.

• Thursday, May 5th 2011 - 10:53 UTC

  Scientists plan to recreate Darwin’s five year voyage on HMS Beagle replica

  

  An international group of scientists plan to recreate Charles Darwin’s five-year sea voyage around the world aboard a replica of the HMS Beagle. They plan to set sail from London in 2014.