SOUTH AFRICA
Mining multinational Anglo American is to supply free anti-retroviral drugs to its workers. The company estimates that a fifth of its 90,000-strong workforce in the region is HIV-positive.
NORTH AMERICA
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In the US, seven people have died and 135 have been infected by West Nile virus, a mosquito-transmitted disease from Africa that is now spreading to Canada as well.
EUROPE
Chemicals that act like hormones are harming wildlife, but the evidence that they damage people鈥檚 health is inconclusive, says a World Health Organization report. The authors call for more studies.
CANADA
A man has died of vCJD, the human form of mad cow disease. It鈥檚 the first confirmed case in North America, but the man is thought to have been infected in Britain.
UNITED STATES
Several tobacco companies have used their financial ties to the makers of smoking-cessation aids such as nicotine chewing gum to water down promotion campaigns for the products, says a report in The Journal of the American Medical Association.
MADAGASCAR
Nearly 300 people in a remote region of the island have died of a mystery illness in the past two months. Initial tests suggest a flu virus is to blame.
UNITED STATES
The advice to drink lots of water every day is wrong, concludes kidney specialist Heinz Valtin in a review for the American Journal of Physiology. Drinking too much water could be unhealthy, he says.
AUSTRALIA
Targeting a toxin produced by the malaria parasite, instead of the parasite itself, might be the best way to protect people from the disease. An experimental vaccine against the toxin saved mice from the worst effects, a Melbourne team reports in Nature.