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Hollande to meet ministers over Alstom’s plans for Belfort plant

French President Francois Hollande will meet Prime Minister Manuel Valls and ministers in charge of economic and transport policy on Monday morning to discuss trainmaker Alstom's sudden decision to scale down its Belfort plant, the president's office said. Alstom said on Wednesday it planned to stop making trains at Belfort and transfer production to its plant in Reichshoffen in eastern France by the end of 2018. Valls said on Sunday Alstom's decision was unacceptable.

Chelsea Manning announces hunger strike over treatment in prison

U.S. soldier Chelsea Manning, serving a 35-year prison term for passing classified files to WikiLeaks, said on Friday that she would refuse to eat until given help for her gender dysphoria and “treated with dignity, respect and humanity” by the government. The 28-year-old Army private, who was born male but revealed after being convicted of espionage that she identifies as a woman, tried to commit suicide in July over what her representatives said was the government's denial of appropriate treatment for those gender issues. The Army announced later that month that it would investigate Manning for misconduct in connection with the attempt to take her own life, a probe that could lead to indefinite solitary confinement, reclassification into maximum security or additional prison time.

Apple jack ax ushers in a voice-driven world

While some fans opposed the widely anticipated move – one online petition urging Apple to keep the headphone jack drew more than 300,000 signatures – equipment suppliers and experts heralded a change in how users will interact with their devices. Axing the jack, they say, paves the way for discreet, bean-sized earbuds that can simultaneously translate, filter out unwanted noise or let us control other devices by voice – and drive up the value of the so-called ‘hearables’ market to $16 billion within five years. It’s the vision of the futuristic 2013 movie “Her”, where a human has a love affair with a disembodied voice in his ear.

Deliver twins slightly short of full term, study says

Current recommendations for twin births vary from 34 to 39 weeks, short of the normal 40 weeks of gestation, to lower the risk of still birth. For the new analysis, an international research team looked at 32 studies published in the past 10 years of women with uncomplicated twin pregnancies whose children died at birth or shortly thereafter. Scientists had previously observed a thirteenfold increase in stillbirths in monochorionic twins compared to single child pregnancies, and five-fold in dichorionic ones.

Climate change threatens to double malaria risk from African dams, say researchers

By Magdalena Mis LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – The number of Africans at risk of malaria who live near dams will nearly double to 25 million by 2080 as areas where the disease is not currently present will become transmission zones due to climate change, researchers said on Monday. Without prevention measures, the number of malaria cases associated with dams could triple to nearly 3 million a year over the same period, they said in a study published in Malaria Journal. “While dams clearly bring many benefits … the role of climate change on malaria around dams will fundamentally alter the current impact,” said Solomon Kibret of the University of California and the paper's lead author.

Hailing cooperation, US and China join global climate deal

HANGZHOU, China (AP) — Setting aside their cyber and maritime disputes, President Barack Obama and China's President Xi Jinping on Saturday sealed their nations' participation in last year's Paris climate change agreement. They hailed their new era of climate cooperation as the best chance for saving the planet.

U.S. fights Zika mosquitoes with limited arsenal

Over Wynwood, the Miami neighborhood where Zika gained a foothold in the continental United States, low flying planes have been spraying naled, a tightly controlled pesticide often used as a last resort. It appears to be working, killing at least 90 percent of the target mosquitoes. Across the Biscayne Bay in Miami Beach, wind and high-rise buildings make aerial spraying challenging.

U.S. FDA adds new warning about opioid/sedative combination

The agency is requiring that black box warnings, the strongest available, be added to some 400 products, alerting doctors and patients that combining opioids and benzodiazepines can cause extreme sleepiness, slowed breathing, coma and death.

Mylan to launch generic EpiPen at half the price of original

The company reduced the out-of-pocket costs of EpiPen for some patients on Thursday, but kept the list price at about $600, a move that U.S. lawmakers and Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said was not enough. Mylan said on Monday it expected to launch the generic product “in several weeks”, an unusual move considering the branded bestseller is still patent protected and major rival treatments have failed to get regulatory clearances. “Our decision to launch a generic alternative to EpiPen is an extraordinary commercial response,” Chief Executive Heather Bresch said Monday.