Lifestyle

More bombs went off just after midnight (0500 GMT) on New Year's Day in Bangkok, injuring eight people near a shopping mall where hours before a New Year's Eve countdown was cancelled due to a string of six bombings earlier in the evening. The first bomb exploded at a seafood restaurant on the Saen Saeb Canal near Pratunam Pier just seconds after midnight. Three foreigners and two Thais were injured. One of the foreigners had her legs amputated by the blast, according to television and local newspaper reports. The foreign tourists were having

McDonald's is asking everyone who ate at a McDonald's restaurant located in Greenlane, Auckland, New Zealand, in December 15, 2006, to go to their doctor after a worker tested positive for Hepatitis A. Doctor Greg Simmons, medical officer of health in Auckland, said that it is possible for the food handler worker to have passed on the disease during 7:00 p.m. (NZDT) and 2:00 a.m. as he would have been in the most infectious stage of Hepatitis A and was not wearing gloves. According to a spokeswoman from McDonald's, Joanna Redfern-Hardisty, foo

United States Food and Drug Administration announced that cloned meat and milk from specific animals was "...as safe as the food we eat every day." An FDA spokesperson also added that there where "No unique risks for human food consumption...". Coming after a lengthy study, the move is likely to meet with opposition from U.S. consumers, despite the final decision having still to be made. Consumer groups have met the announcement with caution. Carol Foreman, a spokesperson for the Consumer Federation, was quoted as calling the move "a very bad

Travellers in many parts of the United Kingdom face chaos after thick fog enveloped major parts of the southern UK. London's Gatwick and Heathrow international airports have been severely affected and all British Airways domestic flights from Heathrow have been cancelled. On Thursday 350 flights from Heathrow were cancelled. Road travel has also been affected as visibility in some areas dropped down to less than 50 feet. Fog has caused several road accidents across the UK, there was one death when an accident caused a four lorry pile-up on the

A blizzard hit Colorado and the plains dumping more than two feet of snow in Denver, rising to five feet in some areas north of Denver. Over 2500 flights stand canceled as |Denver International Airport, the fifth-busiest airport in the US, shut down on Wednesday. The airport is not expected to open until noon of Friday. Thousands of travelers have been stranded during the busy Christmas season. Snow started to fall in Denver at dawn on Wednesday, and did not let up until Thursday afternoon. Sustained winds blowing at 20 miles per hour and gust

Taco Bell restaurants decided Wednesday to remove green onions from all 5,800 of its continental U.S. stores after a November 29 outbreak of E.coli food poisonings caused the voluntary closing of 9 mid-Atlantic states stores and led health officials to investigate the chain's regional supplier. As many as 66 people reportedly became ill in New York City, Long Island, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. The E.coli outbreak also caused Taco Bell Canada to recall green onions from all 182 locations across Canada. Officials with the Canadian b

On Monday, November 27, 2006 the Medical Health Officers of the Vancouver Coastal Health and Fraser Health recommended that the boil water advisory that had been in effect for the City of Vancouver, North Vancouver, and Burnaby could now be lifted. Hospitals, care facilities, schools, food premises and the public are no longer being advised to boil drinking water or to use an alternate drinking water source. The boil water advisory for the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD) had been lifted days before but had remained in effect for the

Media attention about a little noticed and month-old U.S. Department of Homeland Security report that international airline travelers in-and-out of the U.S. were being tracked via an Automated Targeting System (ATS) has drawn renewed interest. The database system, started four years ago, accumulates information on overseas travelers and assigns a "terrorist risk rank" to each individual. Such information may include nationality, flight patterns, motor vehicle driving records, and so on. Because ATS is exempt from many provisions of the U.S. P

The report from the Cole Inquiry has been handed down to Governor-General Michael Jeffrey. The inquiry was setup by the Howard government just over twelve months ago to investigate claims of corruption in relation to the United Nations Oil-for-Food Program. The report will be made public next week. Mainstream media has speculated that the report will recommend a string of charges against former AWB executives. It is believed that around AUD$222 million of illegal payments were made to a Jordanian trucking company partly owned by Hussein's Ira

As of 9 am this morning, flaring is still being carried out by ExxonMobil at Jurong Island, Singapore. This is the 3rd day flaring works are being carried out by the company to burn off excess fuel from the refinery plant. The flame, according to Ms Eva Ho, Communications Manager of ExxonMobil, is dying. ExxonMobil wishes to assure members of the public that no health risk is posed as water and carbon dioxide are produced as a result of the flaring. Meng Yew Choong, Assistant Director of Corporate Communication at the National Environment Ag

Anorexia nervosa claimed the life of another model. Ana Carolina Reston was 21 years old when she died on November 14 in São Paulo from a generalized infection caused by anorexia, an eating disorder in which sufferers obsessively deprive themselves of food in pursuit of an ultra-slim look. She was 5'8'' tall and weighed only 88 pounds. Doctors consider this weight normal for a 12-year-old girl who is no more than 5 feet tall. Her mother has revealed to the press that her diet, since the last two months, consisted only of apples and tomatoes.

Severe rainfall on the 16th of November has led to a water quality warning affecting more than two million people living in the Greater Vancouver metropolitan region. Wednesday's storm triggered severe landslides in the region's three water reservoirs, creating sediment levels up to ninety times higher than permitted under federal health standards. The Vancouver Coastal Health Authority issued a warning to residents advising them to boil all water intended for personal consumption. The advisory is mandatory for hospitals, daycares, and other pu