South Korea’s LG Electronics Monday unveiled what it described as the world’s first watch-shaped mobile video phone.

The “3G watch phone” model has a touch-screen dialling system with a camera and a speaker built in to enable users to make video calls over a high speed internet connection, LG Electronic said in a statement.

It also recognises voices, transforms text to speech, has a Bluetooth function and plays MP3 music.

The product has a 3.63-centimetre (1.4…

The elderly residents of a small Japanese island swarming with cats are hoping that their trademark animals will attract something they’ve been missing for years people.

The fishing village of Tashiro, known as Cat Island, has shunned dogs for centuries in the belief that cats invite a big catch.

The island’s 100 residents, most of whom are aged well over 70, are hoping that cats will become a drawcard in a campaign to attract tourists and, hopefully, people who want to s…

In developing countries like India, until very recently, infidelity was mainly seen as a prerogrative of the husband. There have been innumerable instances of adultery where a virtuous wife silently tolerated a straying husband, hoping and praying he would return to her. Great epics and legends like the ‘Silappadhikaram’ in Tamil, in South India, glorified the virtues of patience and chastity of women who waited for their straying husbands to return to the fold. According to the legend, Kannagi waited patiently while her husband Kovalan romanced the dancer Madhavi and later welcomed him with open arms when he returned to his senses and his wife.

With changing social mores, education and emancipation of women to a certain extent, some women in India are now beginning to question the rationale behind glorifying the silently suffering wife who endures her husband’s infidelity and accepts it as a matter of his right. Especially in the wake of more and more innocent and ignorant wives getting infected with AIDS by their HIV positive husbands who contract the infection from sex workers and pass on the infection to their offspring. Moreover, going by media reports, some women are now more aware of their sexuality and their right to express themselves and have their needs fulfilled, so the gender gap is beginning to narrow as far as infidelity is concerned.

A US-Japanese research team announced it had isolated three genes that explain why the 1918 Spanish flu, believed to be the deadliest infectious disease in history, was so lethal.

The pandemic killed between 20 and 50 million people – more than in all of World War I, which ended in November 1918 – and spread around the world.

The genes allowed the virus to reproduce in lung tissue, according to research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. br…

Austria will introduce a partial smoking ban in bars and restaurants on January 1, 2009, but with half measures and special allowances, critics are doubtful it will make much difference to existing habits.

Under the new law, which was rushed through parliament just before it was dissolved in July ahead of snap elections, establishments under 50 square metres (540 square feet) will be able to choose whether to accept smokers or not.

And two thirds of pubs, clubs and cafes …

British patients could soon rate their doctors by posting reviews on an official health service website, Health Minister Ben Bradshaw said in comments published Tuesday.

By being able to read feedback from other patients, people would be better able to decide which doctor they wanted to consult, the junior minister told The Guardian newspaper.

The scheme would take its cue from the way people leave comments and ratings about books and music on Internet retail sites, Brads…

Bird flu has struck two poultry flocks in northern Vietnam, a newspaper reported Sunday, after authorities warned that the killer virus could resurface strongly in the cold and wet winter months.

The virulent H5N1 viral strain killed five people in Vietnam early this year, but no new human deaths have been reported since March.

Last week the virus struck again in Thai Nguyen city, 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of the capital Hanoi, where it was found in several dead duck…

Two more people have died from an Ebola outbreak in central DR Congo, bringing the tally to 11 dead from the highly contagious but rare disease, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said Sunday.

“This Sunday morning, a women with symptoms… of Ebola died,” MSF spokesman Francois Dumont told AFP.

A man also died from Ebola on Thursday, he said.

Health Minister Augustin Mopipi said Thursday that the outbreak had killed nine and infected 21 since it was detected in Nov…

A senior opposition politician withdrew his statement that people with HIV should be banned from marriage, after he was criticised by AIDS activists, a report said Sunday.

Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin, of the conservative Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) and chief minister of the northern state of Perak, said people with HIV should be allowed to marry and have children.

“No one is out to sideline HIV carriers,” he was quoted as saying by the New Sunday Times newspaper. …

Scandals surrounding poisoned Chinese foods have taken a heavy toll on Taiwan’s bakeries and makers of dairy products in recent months, but could provide a long-term boost for local food makers.

Liu Li-chien, who produces dried persimmons according to a 150-year tradition, thought his days in business were numbered when the island lifted restrictions on Chinese imports.

In 2004, to conform with World Trade Organisation rules, Taiwan lifted its long-term ban on imports of …

Hundreds of thousands of people Sunday attended an open-air Catholic mass in Madrid designed to promote family values in a country where the Socialist government has undertaken sweeping social reforms.

Pope Benedict XVI addressed the faithful from Rome on giant screens set up in the Plaza Colon.

“Dear families, don’t allow love, the opening to life and the incomparable links that unite our family to become distorted,” the pope said in his Sunday Angelus prayer.
…

Hundreds of bargain-hunters braved the cold on Saturday morning as Harrods opened its post-Christmas sale amid protests from anti-fur campaigners.

Mezzo-soprano Katherine Jenkins opened the department store in Knightsbridge at 9:00 am (0900 GMT), after arriving by horse-drawn carriage as protesters chanted “Shame on Katherine”.

Harrods, owned by Egyptian tycoon Mohamed Al Fayed, typically invites an entertainment personality to open its late December sales — in the past,…

Boisterous weekend crowds flock to Tokyo’s Sugamo district where, unlike areas popular with hip young things, shoppers are grey-haired, short-sighted and often hard of hearing.

As Japan’s population ages, retailers in this northern suburb of the capital are focusing on the interests and needs of the elderly.

The shops lining the main street here are benefiting from the rapid greying of Japan, where one in five of the country’s 127 million people is 65 or older.
…

Five Cuban Roman Catholic bishops, including Cardinal Jaime Ortega, celebrated Christmas mass in a Cuban prison for the first time in 50 years, Catholic magazine Palabra Nueva said.

“It was wonderful. There were tears running down many faces because it seemed like an incredible experience,” said clergyman Felix Hernandez, who accompanied Ortega to Havana’s Combinado del Este penitentiary, Cuba’s largest.

The religious delegation “was met by the prison director and other p…

Temporary workers like Toshie Helena Oguihara were a driving force behind Japan’s economic recovery in recent years, but when the recession returned they found themselves first in the firing line.

Japanese companies have announced thousands of lay-offs among contract or temporary employees in recent weeks in response to the economic crisis.

The wave of job cuts has shattered the myth that a job is for life in Asia’s largest economy, which traditionally prided itself on a …

2008 has been all sour grapes for French wine, a once proud symbol of the nation’s identity now swirling in a cocktail of alcohol abuse legislation.

Long viewed as a quintessential part of the French lifestyle, along with fine foods and good living, wine is slumping so low in the national esteem that winemakers have even complained of being treated like drug dealers by the government, and their websites put on a par with porn.

One recent survey highlighting the change in …

A recent report by Deloitte Center for Health Solutions on medical tourism points out that health care costs in the US are increasing at 8 per cent per year thus eating into corporate profits and household disposable income. It also says with a growing number of healthcare facilities in other countries now accredited by Joint Commission International (JCI), perceptions about quality have undergone a radical shift. According to Deloitte’s report, two in five respondents surveyed said they would be interested in pursuing treatment abroad if quality was comparable and the savings were 50 per cent or more.

In Nov -2008 Wellpoint, the largest health benefits company in the US, announced a new international medical tourism product aimed at helping recession-struck American corporates cut their healthcare costs. The significant thing about this product is that members can opt for elective (non urgent and done by patient’s choice) procedures at healthcare facilities in India. Serigraph Inc., a Wisconsin-based specialty printer will become the first company to participate in Wellpoint’s pilot programme that kicks off in January 2009. Its employees have the choice of being treated at two Apollo group Hospitals, in Bangalore and New Delhi.

Another significant event last month(Nov-2008) was a tie-up between South Carolina-based Companion Global Healthcare, a medical travel facilitator, with Wockhardt Hospitals in Bangalore and Mumbai. The tie-up is noteworthy, as Vishal Bali, CEO of Wockhardt Hospitals, explains. Those insured with BlueCross BluesShield (one of the largest health insurer in the US), who are tied up with Companion Global Healthcare, can now exercise an option of getting treated at Wockhardt Hospitals.

Suddenly a whole new untapped market has opened up for Indian hospitals seeking to attract patients from the US — that of insured patients. Till now, corporate hospitals in India were pegging the opportunity size of patients from the US at 45 million uninsured individuals, or underinsured individuals. But now given the recessionary climate, and moves by US corporates to cut costs by outsourcing treatment overseas, India expects to be a key beneficiary. Pradeep Thukral, head of international marketing at Apollo Hospital, now estimates the opportunity size to have enlarged to at least 65 million Americans.

Worker healthcare costs are enormous for US companies and in fact, have been cited as one of the biggest reasons why American automakers, which are seeking $34 billion from the federal government, are in such trouble. Take General Motors, which has 479,000 retirees, who get an average pension of over $40,000 a year — together these retirees health insurance costs work out to about $5 billion a year. Now add to that the healthcare costs of serving employees, and it spells big expense for firms like GM. Obviously, then companies in other sectors are quickly exploring alternative options to cut healthcare costs before they join the troubled league of the automakers.

Rajesh Rao, CEO, of IndUShealth, a North Carolina-based company that facilitates medical travel of American patients to Indian hospitals, estimates that a company with 1,000 employees typically can hope to cut its healthcare costs by half a million dollars every year by outsourcing treatment options for its employees to India. Rao should know because even before the Serigraph announcement made headlines across the US, he has been helping American corporates send employees to India. Today, Rao, has at least 12 mid-sized employers availing his corporate programme (translating into 40,000-50,000 subscribers) and he says he has been tripling his volumes year on year since he started in 2005, when it was just a trickle.

As Rao points out the burgeoning healthcare costs have forced companies in the US to look at alternative options. “Out-of-pocket expenses have shot up phenomenally,” he says.

Even if you include airfare costs of a patient plus a companion, and accommodation costs in India, the cost of getting treated in India is significantly lower. For instance, US News & World Report, in its 12 May 2008 issue lists the cost of a coronary artery bypass surgery in a US hospital as anywhere between $70,000-133,000 whereas in India this same procedure would cost $7,000. Obviously even if you include airfare, accommodation, still there will be huge savings.

Egypt’s Coptic pope has banned the faithful from confessing their sins to priests over the telephone because intelligence agents might be listening in, a newspaper reported on Friday.

“Confessions over the telephone are forbidden, because there is a chance the telephones are monitored and the confessions will reach state security,” the independent Al-Masri Al-Yom quoted Pope Shenuda III as saying.

The leader of the Coptic minority also said confessions over the Internet w…

There are many theories on the links between food and sex, but Japanese researchers have came up with a new finding – young people who skip breakfast tend to lose their virginity earlier.

In a study of 3,000 people, those who did not regularly eat breakfast when in their early teens said they lost their virginity at an average age of 17.5, versus an overall average of age 19 for all Japanese.

For those who had a morning meal when they were younger, the average age of havi…

Greenland, struggling for years with a range of social problems, is stepping up the fight to save its children from the trauma of alcoholism, suicide and sexual and physical abuse.

The Arctic island has in the past 50 years developed at lightning speed, transforming itself from a traditional community of fishermen and hunters to a modern society.

But in doing so, some of its inhabitants have been left by the wayside.

Authorities in the Danish overseas territor…

A drug used to treat cancer has proven effective at stopping the body from rejecting a transplanted organ when other treatments failed, a study published Saturday found.

US researchers administered the drug, bortezomib, to six patients whose immune systems were attacking transplanted kidneys and who did not respond to traditional anti-rejection treatments.

In each case, the drug promptly reversed the rejection, improved organ function, provided prolonged reductions in ant…

A deadly Ebola outbreak in the central Democratic Republic of Congo has killed nine and infected 21, the UN-sponsored radio Okapi quoted the health minister as saying Thursday.

The rare disease, named after a small Congo river, was found in the town of Kampongo, near Mueka in the Western Kasai province, according to Augustin Mopipi.

He added that analysis from samples taken on site confirmed the existence of the virulent disease, which kills up to 90 percent of its victim…

A secret Santa who has donated more than 81 million won (62,000 dollars) since 2000 has come to a South Korean town again this year, a report said Thursday.

Staff at a residents’ centre in the southwestern city of Jeonju on Tuesday found a box containing 20 million won in a parking lot after a phone tip-off from the anonymous benefactor, the Korea Times said.

“Cheer up, breadwinners,” read a note.

It said the man has left donations 10 times since 2000, not alw…

With tents still serving as homes and schools seven months after Cyclone Nargis lashed Myanmar, survivors say they are struggling to rebuild their lives as international aid trickles in.

Fisherman Htein Lin Aung, a father of three, says a new roof is out of the question as he fixes the engine of his boat beneath the tarpaulin covering of his bamboo tent outside the town of Kungyangon.

“We have been in difficulties since Nargis. The weather is also unusual now,” said Htein…

Chantha said there was nothing else she could do in Cambodia but become a prostitute.

“If you don’t even have a dollar in your pocket to buy rice, how can you bear looking at your starving relatives?” she said.

“You do whatever to survive, until you start to realize the consequence of your deeds.”

Chanta, in her early twenties, was working in a small red-light district west of the capital Phnom Penh several months ago when she was arrested under Cambodia’s new…

As hotels, restaurants, bars and clubs in the Islamic-majority state of Indonesia are hit by severe alcohol shortage, drinkers in the country are grappling with the possibility of a very “dry” Christmas.

Many top brands have disappeared from shelves while prices for lesser known and even poor quality labels have skyrocketed after a government crackdown on a flourishing black market in booze.

The measures are the latest in Indonesia’s anti-corruption fight, with the financ…

With the Malaysian government’s latest proposals for compulsory screening and sex and marriage curbs for HIV+ sufferers, the national AIDS debate has only intensified on how a Muslim-majority state handles the sensitive issue.

The issue has revealed a sharp gulf in thinking in this multiracial nation of 27 million people, with AIDS activists critical of attitudes they say are stigmatizing people with the deadly disease and its precursor HIV.

Last week, deputy premier Naji…

A daily glass of beetroot juice can do wonders for hypertension and many cardiovascular diseases, say researchers at Barts and The London School of Medicine.

The study led by Professor Amrita Ahluwalia of the William Harvey Research Institute at Barts and The London School of Medicine, and Professor Ben Benjamin of Peninsula Medical School, may have major implications for the treatment of cardiovascular disease as it has been found that drinking just 500ml of beetroot juice a day can reduce blood pressure by a considerable level.

This study has disclosed that the ingestion of dietary nitrate in beetroot juice, just like in green, leafy vegetables, could eventually result in a decreased blood pressure.

Earlier, this effect of vegetable-rich diets was credited to their antioxidant vitamin content.

It was found that blood pressure was reduced within just 1 hour of ingesting beetroot juice in case of healthy volunteers, with a peak drop occurring 3-4 hours after ingestion. In fact a considerable degree of reduction continued until up to 24 hours after ingestion.

The researchers also displayed that the decrease in blood pressure was because of the chemical formation of nitrite from the dietary nitrate in the juice. This nitrate in the juice is converted in saliva, by bacteria on the tongue, into nitrite.

After this nitrite-containing saliva is swallowed, it is either converted into nitric oxide or re-enters the circulation as nitrite in the acidic environment of the stomach.

The peak time of reduction in blood pressure correlated with the appearance and peak levels of nitrite in the circulation, an effect that was absent in a second group of volunteers who refrained from swallowing their saliva during, and for 3 hours following, beetroot ingestion.

Hypertension is quite prevalent worldwide. It causes around 50 pct of coronary heart disease, and approximately 75 pct of strokes.

While showing nitrate’s importance in cardio-protective effect of a vegetable-rich diet, this research also underlines the potential of a natural, low cost approach for the treatment of cardiovascular disease.

“Our research suggests that drinking beetroot juice, or consuming other nitrate-rich vegetables, might be a simple way to maintain a healthy cardiovascular system, and might also be an additional approach that one could take in the modern day battle against rising blood pressure,” said Professor Ahluwalia.

The research is published in the American Heart Association journal Hypertension.

The extravagant beards and moustaches proudly sported by generations of Indian men are under threat, according to a new book that celebrates the country’s finest facial hair.

As India rapidly modernises, clean chins are becoming the rule among young people, said the book’s author, Richard McCallum, who spent months on the road documenting the bushiest bristles he could find before they disappear forever.

With photographer Chris Stowers, McCallum scoured markets, festivals…

Malaysia will urge non-Muslim couples to take voluntary pre-nuptial HIV screening tests before tying the knot due to high levels of infection among married women, the deputy premier said.

Such screening is already compulsory for Muslims as part of a pre-marital course but there is no such requirement for non-Muslims.

While new HIV infections dropped to 3,452 in 2008, compared to 6,756 in 2003, infections among women through normal sexual intercourse rose from 5.02 percent…