A smoking ban overturned by a federal tribunal may be reinstated only in 2011, according to the health minister for Switzerland's Geneva canton. Switzerland's highest court overturned a three-month-old ban on smoking in public places in Geneva on Tuesday, saying the move failed to follow proper procedures. As a result, smokers have been lighting up in restaura...

Scientists have revealed that the AIDS virus, which was previously thought to have been transmitted from chimps to humans in the 1930s, may actually have leapt the species barrier more than a century ago in west-central Africa. Analysis of tissues preserved by doctors in the colonial-era Belgian Congo shows that the most pervasive strain of the human immunodeficiency virus (...

The Chinese milk powder scandal is nothing new in Bangladesh, where experts believe almost 40% of food produced is contaminated with industry chemicals. Mohammad Aminul Haq inspects a papaya in a central Dhaka food market but soon after picking it up, he returns it to its place on the fruit cart. "You can tell this has medicine to make it become ripe quicker," the...

Four years after a largely ignored smoking ban saw people continue to puff away in restaurants, clubs and bars, India has once again imposed a ban on smoking in public places. One in three Indians smokes some form of tobacco, officials say, and a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in February this year said one in eve...

A report by a research charity has said that cannabis is less harmful than alcohol or tobacco. It also called for a "serious rethink" of drug policy. The Beckley Foundation, a charity which numbers senior experts and other academics among its advisors, said banning cannabis has no impact on supply and turns users into criminals. "Although cannabis can have a negative im...