HEALTH: Rehydrate with a smoothie
They are full of nutritional goodness and are easy to make at home. SUZANNA PILLAY finds out more about smoothies FEELING parched and in need of a tall, cool drink to re-hydrate? Instead of a frosty frappucino or tempting milkshake, why not opt for a smoothie?

Read more on The New Straits Times

A new generation of rapid-acting antidepressants?
( Elsevier ) In a new issue of Biological Psychiatry, published by Elsevier, researchers from the National Institutes of Health report that another medication, scopolamine, also appears to produce replicable rapid improvement in mood.

Read more on EurekAlert!

Blood and guts
Passing tarry black stool means bleeding from the stomach or duodenum, and this is a medical emergency.

Read more on The Star

Women and men travelers tend to get different illnesses
World travel can make anyone sick but men and women tend to suffer different illnesses with women more prone to stomach problems and men at higher risk of fevers and sexually transmitted diseases, Swiss researchers found.

Read more on Reuters via Yahoo! News

Drink your fibre
CHINESE New Year bingeing is not good for your fibre intake. No matter what you wish, bak kwa is not fibre.

Read more on The Electric New Paper

Press Release
Genentech Inc. Posted on:23 Feb 10 Genentech, Inc., a wholly owned member of the Roche Group (SIX: RO, ROG; OTCQX: RHHBY), today announced that a Phase III study (AVAGAST) did not meet its primary endpoint of showing Avastin® (bevacizumab) plus Xeloda® (capecitabine) or 5-FU and cisplatin chemotherapy extended the lives of people with inoperable or advanced stomach (gastric) cancer, compared …

Read more on PharmiWeb

Baby’s bladder removed by mistake
A 18-month-old girl will need to use a catheter for the rest of her life after a botched operation in which 90 per cent of her bladder was mistakenly taken out by a surgeon, a disciplinary hearing was told today.

Read more on Independent

Top children’s surgeon ‘removed toddler’s bladder after mistaking it for hernia’
Consultant paediatric surgeon Dr Pierina Kapur, 43, failed to recognise the hernia when she carried out the operation on the seven-week-old baby girl, it was alleged.

Read more on Daily Mail

Cash ‘wasted’ on homeopathy
Spending public funds on homeopathy is a waste of NHS money and should be stopped, MPs say.

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Canada needs to take its seat at international table again
Canadian Liberals think most productively when they’re out of power. There have been three historic “thinkers’ conferences” when the party seemed bereft of ideas as the world changed utterly. Within three years of the conferences, there was a Liberal government.

Read more on Toronto Star