Tag: world

  • Sharapova still faces meldonium hearing, says ITF

    (Reuters) – Maria Sharapova still faces a hearing after testing positive for meldonium, despite the World Anti-Doping Agency issuing fresh rules for athletes who tested positive for the banned substance before March 1, the International Tennis Federation has said. Five-times grand slam tennis champion Sharapova tested positive for the drug at this year's Australian Open…

  • A rural retirement in Chernobyl’s radioactive shadow

    By Vasily Fedosenko TULGOVICH, Belarus (Reuters) – Ninety-year-old Ivan Shamyanok says the secret to a long life is not leaving your birthplace, even when it is a Belarusian village poisoned with radioactive fallout from a nuclear disaster. On April 26, 1986, a botched test at a nuclear plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine, then a Soviet republic,…

  • Special Report: The mafia and a very special flower arrangement

    By Steve Scherer ROME (Reuters) – To traders at the famous Royal FloraHolland flower market near Amsterdam, Vincenzo Crupi was just another businessman helping to make the Netherlands the largest exporter of cut flowers in the world. To the police, Crupi was a mafia suspect allegedly concealing drugs worth millions of dollars alongside fragrant bouquets…

  • Campbell Soup to switch to BPA-free cans by 2017

    (Reuters) – Campbell Soup Co , the world's largest soup maker, said it would completely switch to cans that do not use the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) for their linings in North America by the middle of 2017.

  • Disgraced celebrity surgeon’s spoiled dreams of fame

    Dreams of fame and fortune turned into a nightmare for a once-renowned Italian surgeon who compared himself to Doctor Frankenstein and now stands accused of using patients as guinea pigs. Sweden's Karolinska Institute (KI), which awards the Nobel Prize for Medicine, fired Paolo Macchiarini this week after years of controversy. A pioneer in regenerative medicine,…

  • Drug resistance adds to India’s tuberculosis menace

    After three years of battling tuberculosis, a disease that claimed the lives of his father and younger brother, Sonu Verma, a patient in northern India, hopes a cure for his illness may be within reach. “Only a few more months and my nightmare will end… it will be my rebirth, free from tuberculosis,” the 25-year-old…

  • Nearly 87 million children under seven live in conflict zones, brains not developing: UNICEF

    Nearly 87 million children around the world under seven years of age have been growing up in conflict zones, in conditions that can hinder the development of their brains, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on Thursday. Exposure to extreme trauma may hinder the development of brain cell connections, essential for health, emotional wellbeing…

  • China detains 37 people linked to vaccine scandal: Xinhua

    Chinese police have detained 37 people linked to a vaccine scandal and are investigating three pharmaceutical companies, state news agency Xinhua reported on Wednesday. The vaccine scandal underlines the challenge the world’s second-largest drug market faces to regulate its fragmented supply chain, even as Beijing looks to support home-grown firms. Xinhua said the arrests were…

  • Mosquitoes’ rapid spread poses threat beyond Zika

    By Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters) – As the world focuses on Zika's rapid advance in the Americas, experts warn the virus that originated in Africa is just one of a growing number of continent-jumping diseases carried by mosquitoes threatening swathes of humanity. Today, mosquito invaders are turning up with increasing regularity from Washington DC to…

  • Mosquitoes’ rapid spread poses threat beyond Zika

    By Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters) – As the world focuses on Zika's rapid advance in the Americas, experts warn the virus that originated in Africa is just one of a growing number of continent-jumping diseases carried by mosquitoes threatening swathes of humanity. Today, mosquito invaders are turning up with increasing regularity from Washington DC to…