Chinese stem cell therapy reverses heart failure in 90% of patients in landmark trial

A hospital in east China has used reprogrammed stem cells to treat severe heart failure, with 90 per cent of patients showing significant recovery in heart function after the novel therapy.
On Wednesday, Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, affiliated with Nanjing University, released the long-term follow-up results of a phase 2 clinical study, which was published in the journal Nature Medicine.
While dead heart muscle cannot regrow, this stem cell technology can help ageing or damaged hearts grow new…

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China urges US to drop sweeping drone tariffs, warns of global supply chain fallout

Beijing has urged Washington to scrap planned tariffs of up to 100 per cent on imported drones, warning the measures unfairly target Chinese products and threaten global supply chains.
The tariffs are not set to take effect until September 3, but Chinese drone shipments to the United States are already under pressure, with exports of some models plunging in July, the latest customs data showed.
On Thursday, He Yadong, a spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce, said Beijing firmly opposed…

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‘Terrible’: UK PM Burnham after Palestinian refugee dies alongside wife, daughter in swimming tragedy

UK PM Andy Burnham. Three members of a family died after getting into difficulty while swimming off the coast of Shoreham-by-Sea in West Sussex, while a young girl remains in critical condition in hospital, police said.Emergency services were called at around 2.40pm on Tuesday after reports of four people in difficulty in the water near Shoreham Fort, Sussex Police said.All four were brought ashore, but a man, a woman and a teenage girl were pronounced dead despite efforts by paramedics.Sussex Police said all four were from the same family and that their next of kin had been informed. The Coastguard also confirmed that it was not searching for anyone else.Father identified as Palestinian refugeeThe man who died was later identified as Hossam El-Khawwas, a Palestinian refugee who had come to the UK from the Rashidieh refugee camp in Lebanon, the Palestinian Embassy in London confirmed to the BBC.His wife, Zeina Alyan, and their teenage daughter, Sarah, also died in the incident. Their y..

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18-year-old builds AI system to track particle collisions, wins $40,000

Seth NabatPhoto: Society for Science Every year, nearly 1,900 of the nation’s most promising high school seniors submit original research to the Regeneron Science Talent Search (Regeneron STS), the oldest and most prestigious science and mathematics competition in the United States. According to the Society for Science, which runs the competition, the Regeneron STS recognises and empowers young scientists who are developing ideas that could solve society’s most urgent challenges. Started in 1942 as the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, the competition has a long history of identifying future leaders in STEM. Among the 2026 top ten winners was Seth Nabat, an 18-year-old from Winnetka, California, who earned tenth place and a $40,000 award for his innovative machine-learning project on particle collisions. Read on to know more about his invention here:A breakthrough in physicsSeth Jacob Nabat, a senior at William Howard Taft Charter High School in Woodland Hills, California, developed ..

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Merck, Moderna claim encouraging melanoma vaccine trial results

AdvertisementUnited StatesWorldUnited States & CanadaMerck, Moderna claim encouraging melanoma vaccine trial resultsThe vaccine, intismeran autogene, showed ‘meaningful improvements’ for skin cancer patients when used with Merck’s Keytruda treatment, the firms say
1-MIN READ1-MIN ListenAgence France-PressePublished: 10:56pm, 19 Aug 2026US pharmaceutical firms Merck and Moderna announced on Wednesday encouraging results from a trial of their experimental vaccine against melanoma, potentially clearing the way for approval.
The vaccine, called intismeran autogene, showed “statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvements” for skin cancer patients when used with Merck’s Keytruda treatment, the companies said in a statement.
Unlike conventional vaccines, so-called therapeutic vaccines like intismeran treat rather than prevent a disease, by training the body’s own immune system against a tumour or other invaders.
The news sent shares in biotech specialist Moderna soaring in ea..

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Doctor to the stars cleared over failure to record reason for using labour drug

AdvertisementHong Kong healthcare and hospitalsHong KongHealth & EnvironmentDoctor to the stars cleared over failure to record reason for using labour drugDr Liang Shuk-tak was accused of failing to properly record fetal head position, pelvis shape, and the reason for administering a labour drug in 2017
2-MIN READ2-MIN ListenFiona SunPublished: 10:38pm, 19 Aug 2026Updated: 10:50pm, 19 Aug 2026An obstetrician to the stars has been cleared of professional misconduct by Hong Kong’s medical watchdog over allegations she failed to properly record why she administered a labour-inducing drug to a patient who said the procedure left her traumatised.
Dr Liang Shuk-tak, who reportedly had delivered babies for actresses Brigitte Lin Ching-hsia and Cecilia Cheung Pak-chi, and Olympic diving champion Guo Jingjing, was accused of failing to “properly document” the fetal head position, maternal pelvis shape or size, and the reason for administering Syntocinon to the patient in the medical record in 2..

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Who ‘killed’ Jason Arday? The absurd tragedy of Cambridge’s ‘youngest black professor’

There is a saying among bibliophiles: Never judge a book by its movie. For true readers, nothing any director dreams up can ever match the cinema playing inside one’s head, to borrow a line from Anurag Kashyap’s greatest villain. Two rare adaptations that arguably hold their own against their source novels are Mario Puzo’s The Godfather and William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist.And yet one film that outshone the book that inspired it is 3 Idiots, loosely based on Chetan Bhagat’s Five Point Someone, which captures the meat-grinder aesthetics of engineering education. There is a scene that hits a little too close to home when a student decides he has rolled the boulder long enough and commits suicide, unable to deal with the vagaries of engineering life. During his funeral, the film’s prodigal protagonist confronts the authoritarian dean and claims that it wasn’t suicide but “murder” caused by an institution and a society that created unbearable pressure that no post-mortem investigation c..

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In 1960s, US began displacing around 600 families for a 40-mile reservoir; in 1975 the dam was…

Origin Story: The Tocks Island Dam Controversy The US government once planned to flood a 40-mile stretch of the Delaware River valley to build a massive reservoir, only to cancel the project and turn the acquired land into a sprawling federal parkland. The Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, a 70,000-acre national park spanning Pennsylvania and New Jersey, exists today as the unexpected result of the abandoned Tocks Island Dam project. What began as an ambitious mid-century plan to control floods and generate hydroelectric power ended in 1975, when regional authorities voted to cancel the project, leaving 40 miles of free-flowing river under the National Park Service.High water and a federal mandateThe push to dam the Delaware River gained national attention in August 1955, when Hurricanes Connie and Diane hit the eastern seaboard one after another. The floods devastated the Pocono region, killing nearly 100 people along Brodhead Creek alone. In response, Congress ordered the ..

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In Spain’s Ceuta, migrant women tell of sexual harassment: ‘it’s really bad’

Some women who entered Spain’s ⁠North African enclave of Ceuta on July 30 as part of a mass migrant crossing say the ⁠hardships of sleeping rough as they wait to be registered are compounded by the threat and fear of sexual harassment.
More than a dozen women have set up camp on a wooded roadside running up to the barbed wire fencing that surrounds the government-run migrant reception centre, near the urban beach of El Trampolin. The facility is sheltering about 700 people, 200 more than…

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Israeli military ‘paralysis’ on settler violence exposed in West Bank siege

The Israeli military is touted as the most powerful in the Middle East, striking targets deep into enemy territory. But for more than a week, Israeli troops have somehow failed to evict a small group of settlers sitting on rocks in the occupied West Bank.
Experts says the military has long shown inertia when its task is stopping surging violence against Palestinians, due to government backing for the settlement movement and the increasing influence of settler ideology within the army’s…

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