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The French government is expected to throw its weight behind amendments to a new health bill that would ban the fashion world from hiring underweight models, slapping violators with fines or even prison sentences, the health minister said Monday The bill, which will be debated in parliament on Tuesday, also proposes banning websites and other forums that are viewed as promoting anorexia and other eating disorders. “This is an important message to young women, young women who see these models as an æsthetic ideal,” Health Minister Marisol Touraine said, adding that the Socialist government is likely to back the bill....

Passengers on the South West Train service from Basingstoke to London Waterloo were left in shock after an announcer took to the tannoy to say that fat people should remain standing because of lack of space, the Daily Mail reports. On the packed commuter service, a member of staff reportedly said: “We are going to be like sardines on this train, so can I ask that only slim people sit on the three-seaters. If you are fat then it is simply not going to work.” One passenger was left furious by the announcement, saying: “I am not necessarily a big...

Yes, greek yogurt is delicious, nutritious, and surprisingly cost-effective. But, we admit we’d never really thought about this consequence of making it our go-to breakfast snack. It turns out that one of the byproducts of greek yogurt production is a little thing called acid whey. It’s a runny substance that is remarkably bad for the environment: If acid whey is dumped, its decomposition can deplete ecosystems of oxygen, killing fishy inhabitants. But, with the continuously growing popularity of that delicious yogurt — it now accounts for $2 billion of the $6 billion yogurt market — finding an ecologically responsible way...

Several million people hit with new federal fines for going without health insurance will get a second chance to sign up starting Sunday, and that could ease the sting of rising penalties for being uninsured. But as the enrollment window reopens, it’s unclear how many know about the time-limited opportunity, let alone will take advantage of it. Fines payable to the IRS are the stick behind the offer of taxpayer-subsidized private insurance under President Barack Obama’s health care law. Virtually everyone in the country is now required to have coverage through an employer or a government program, or by buying...

Planned Parenthood Federation of America tells teens on its website that it “can take a long time” to determine one’s “sexual orientation or gender identity.” “Sexual orientation describes which gender(s) you’re attracted to, sexually and/or romantically,” says Planned Parenthood’s “All About LGBTQ at a Glance” webpage. “Sometimes a person’s sexual orientation changes over time, but people can’t choose or decide to change who they’re attracted to.” …

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CHARLOTTE, NC (WBTV) - Seven-year-old Timothy Brookshire idolizes Dallas Cowboys Quarterback Tony Romo. His mother has no idea why. Seven-year-old Timothy Brookshire gets to meet his idol, Dallas Cowboys Quarterback Tony Romo.MORE “He plays a bigger role in the medical game Timothy has to go through than the role even me and my husband play,” said Crystal Brookshire. “Tony Romo is this child's life. Every time it looks like he's starting to get weak, we find a way to put Tony Romo in it. ‘Well, Tony's doing this,' or ‘Tony's doing that'. It always works.” Timothy has had complications since...

South African University Performs Successful Penis Transplant STELLENBOSCH, South Africa — A South African university said Friday that it had performed a successful penis transplant. The transplant was done in a nine-hour operation last December by specialists from the faculty of medicine and health services at the University of Stellenbosch. The patient had his penis amputated three years ago following complications from a circumcision performed in his late teens, the university said. The 21-year-old patient, whose name was not released, "has made a full recovery and has regained all function in the newly transplanted organ," the university near Cape Town...

Record heat for this time of year is expected Friday and Saturday but may climb even higher on Sunday. Seto warned that the heat could strain the power grid and that outages are possible. ... Marathon organizers have moved up the race's start time by 30 minutes because of the expected heat. The start time for the race is now set for 6:55 a.m., when a temperature of 64 degrees with a humidity of 40% in downtown Los Angeles is expected. By the time the first runners make it to Santa Monica — likely between noon and 1 p.m. —...

Smith Jadesimi, from Nigeria, donated a kidney to Israeli Omaima Halabi through the NGO Matnat Chaim Israeli media is awash with the touching tale of how the son of a Nigerian billionaire braved all odds against him to donate his kidney to a dying lady he had never met... The Jerusalem Post in an article titled, ‘The Human Spirit: Love, Give, Live’, reported that the story of Smith Jadesimi, son of oil magnate Ladi Jadesimi, resonated in hearts across the country as an untainted demonstration of compassion beyond religion and race. Born in 1987 into the large and prosperous Jadesimi...

Her arm thrust out and pouting like a rapper, this is the moment that Michelle Obama showed off her dance moves during a toe-curling appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres Show. Challenged to show off her dance moves by Ms Degeneres, Mrs Obama gamely obliged and went on to pull shapes that wouldn't have shamed Rita Ora. Unfortunately for daughters Sasha and Malia, the appearance on Ellen, which airs on the 16th March, isn't the end of the 51-year-old's dancing ambitions.

Police in Akron, Ohio are working to identify a man believed to have repeatedly defecated on multiple cars and children's front yard toys in one neighborhood over the last three years.

The authors of the Lancet's centerpiece editorial said a so-called tobacco-free world -- in which fewer than 5% of adults smoke -- is "socially desirable, technically feasible and could become politically practical." .. Making tobacco use "out of sight, out of mind and out of fashion -- yet not prohibited" could be achieved only with a "turbo-charged approach," wrote a team of public health experts from Australia, Hong Kong and India. To achieve it, the United Nations, national leaders, and public- and private-sector institutions all would need to collaborate, they wrote. In addition to governments setting policies such as those...

Draft legislation aimed at boosting a flagging birth rate threatens to reduce Iranian women to “baby-making machines” and set their rights back by decades, Amnesty International warned on Wednesday. The London-based human rights group said that a first bill, which has already been approved once by parliament, would restrict access to contraception, forcing women into unsafe backstreet abortions.It said the second draft law, which is to go before parliament next month, would close many jobs to women who choose not to or are unable to have children. …

Schematic of a real-time in vitro fecal fermentation gas-sensing system. Credit: Nam Ha Microbes in the human body are estimated to outnumber human cells by 10 to 1, yet research on how they affect health is still in its infancy. A perspective article published by Cell Press on March 12th in Trends in Biotechnology presents evidence that gut microbes produce gases that may contribute to gastrointestinal diseases and could be used as biomarkers for one's state of health. As means to measure these potential biomarkers, the authors suggest two novel gas-sensing systems, one of which is an electronic gas sensor...

TEL AVIV/FRANKFURT, March 12 (Reuters) - Two years after scientists cooked up the first test tube beef hamburger, researchers in Israel are working on an even trickier recipe: the world's first lab-grown chicken. Professor Amit Gefen, a bioengineer at Tel Aviv University, has begun a year-long feasibility study into manufacturing chicken in a lab, funded by a non-profit group called the Modern Agriculture Foundation which hopes "cultured meat" will one day replace the raising of animals for slaughter. The foundation's co-founder Shir Friedman hopes to have produced "a recipe for how to culture chicken cells" by the end of the...

When I think of any kind of liquid metal form changing shape and moving around on its own accord, I can’t help but conjure up images of the T-1000 robot assassin from the movie, Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Now scientists have made a little drop of metal that’s able to propel itself through liquid and change shape to fit through a narrow passage. Although this little drop of liquid metal is no shapeshifting Nanomorph, it does have some fascinating properties that could one day be used to develop new methods for delivering drugs through blood vessels. To make the liquid...

If you are old enough to have been listening to the radio during the late 1960's, you would have heard Bobby Goldsboro's biggest hit, 'Honey'. In fact, you would have heard it over and over again without even trying to. Honey was quite popular for a few months and still seems poignant today because of the many ways to hear it. 'Honey' aka "Honey, I miss you", is a song written by Bobby Russell. He first produced it with former Kingston Trio member Bob Shane. Russell later offered it to Bobby Goldsboro who recorded it for his 1968 album. The...

Nearly 8 million people could lose up to $24 billion a year in health insurance subsidies in a Supreme Court case threatening President Barack Obama’s law, according to a government report released Tuesday. The estimates by The Associated Press show what’s at stake in the case. Health overhaul opponents argue that subsidies are illegal in some three dozen states where the federal government took charge of running the health insurance marketplaces, or exchanges. The justices heard arguments last week, and the court’s decision is expected in late June. Tuesday’s report from the Department of Health and Human Services shows that...

Kaci Hickox, the nurse who grabbed headlines for defying quarantines in New Jersey and Maine after treating Ebola patients in West Africa, is leaving the state. Hickox, a Texas native, told me in an email that she’s moving to Oregon to take a job with a large health care system. She arrived in Maine in October following a trip to Sierra Leone to care for Ebola patients, bringing the national debate over travel restrictions for health care workers returning from West Africa to Fort Kent’s doorstep. Hickox lived in the Aroostook County town during her showdown with the LePage administration,...