US singer and actress Queen Latifah joined a mass anti-AIDS march in the South African city of Durban Saturday, where grandmothers bringing up children orphaned by the disease also took to the streets. Holding up signs that read “I care, do you?”, around a thousand grandmothers walked in a colourful procession to draw attention to their plight, as the coastal city readies to host a global AIDS conference from Monday.
SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Justice has begun a rare internal examination of what went wrong in the prosecution of a controversial drug conspiracy case against delivery service Federal Express , the department's top prosecutor in San Francisco told Reuters. The review plays into a broader debate about how the government prosecutes suspected corporate wrongdoing and could influence its approach to such cases in the future. Prosecutors obtained a grand jury indictment against FedEx in 2014 on charges the courier service had knowingly helped Internet pharmacies ship illegal pills.
By Marilynn Larkin (Reuters Health) – The smelly “burning hair” smoke released during laser hair removal could be a health hazard, especially for people with heavy exposure to it, researchers report. The smoke contains chemicals that irritate the airways and are known to cause cancer, Dr. Gary Chuang told Reuters Health by email. Chuang, of the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues also measured the concentrations of very fine particles in the plume that could be easily inhaled.
Shire has won U.S. approval for its most important new medicine, a treatment for dry eyes, in a fresh boost for the company which completed its $32 billion acquisition of U.S. rare diseases specialist Baxalta last month. The Dublin-based drugmaker has been a big stock market winner following Britain's decision to leave the European Union, benefiting from the strength of the dollar against sterling and investor demand for defensive sectors like pharmaceuticals. Shire shares — already up a fifth since the UK referendum on June 23 — gained another 4 percent on Tuesday on news the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had approved lifitegrast eye drops for treating signs and symptoms of dry eye disease.
WASHINGTON (AP) — One of Donald Trump's potential running mates said Sunday that women should be the ones to decide whether or not to have abortions.
Uruguay won an arbitration case against US tobacco giant Philip Morris, which sued the state claiming its strict anti-tobacco law harmed the cigarette maker's business, both sides said. “The Uruguayan state has emerged victorious and the tobacco company's claims have been roundly rejected,” Uruguayan President Tabara Vasquez said in a televised address. Philip Morris reacted by saying “we respect” the verdict, which is binding in any case.
Brendon de Jonge has become the latest golfer to opt out of the Rio Olympics but unlike other players who have cited fears over the Zika virus, the Zimbabwean has withdrawn to focus on keeping his PGA Tour card. De Jonge, who currently sits 160th in FedEx Cup points and has work to do to maintain his Tour card, has decided to play two events on the PGA Tour during the Olympics in August. “I am truly disappointed, but my current position on the FedEx Cup points list does not allow me the luxury to skip the John Deere Classic or the Travelers Championship,” the 35-year-old said in a statement.
GENEVA (AP) — The U.N. health agency says it and national authorities are investigating whether three cases of the Zika virus discovered in Guinea Bissau are of the same strain as the one behind outbreaks linked to head and brain abnormalities in Brazil and elsewhere.
Guinea-Bissau has recorded three cases of Zika, becoming the second country in West Africa where the dangerous viral disease has been detected, the government said on Saturday. “Three cases of contamination by Zika virus have been confirmed,” a statement quoted Health Minister Domingos Malu as saying. The cases occurred in the Bijagos archipelago, a group of 88 islands of which 23 are inhabited, Malu told a cabinet meeting on Friday.
LONDON (Reuters) – Leading Brexit campaigner Michael Gove pledged an extra 100 million pounds per week for Britain's National Health Service (NHS) by 2020 should he become the next prime minister. The justice secretary in Prime Minister David Cameron's government, Gove was a leading figure in the official Vote Leave campaign ahead of the June 23 referendum that saw Britain vote to quit the European Union, prompting Cameron to resign. He made the NHS pledge in a speech on Friday setting out his stall in the race to succeed Cameron. …