HEALTH AND SCIENCE HIGHLIGHTS

September 26, 2018 (San Diego's East County) -- Our Health and Science Highlights provide cutting edge news that could impact your health and our future.

HEALTH

• Beware the baby walker: popular toy can lead to serious injury (Healthlife)
• WHO extremely concerned about Ebola 'perfect storm' in Congo (Reuters)
• Soda can no longer be the default drink on kids’ menus in California (Mic.com)
• News from The UN's High-Level Meeting on Tuberculosis (WHO)

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

• Twitter releases new policy on ‘dehumanizing speech’ (Wired)
• Hawaii’s ‘Rapid Ohia Death’ Disease Is Killing the Forest Canopy, and There's No End in Sight (Newsweek)
• Instagram co-founders resign in latest Facebook shake-up (Washington Post)

For excerpts and links to full stories, click “read more” and scroll down.

HEALTH

Beware the baby walker: popular toy can lead to serious injury (Healthlife)

This toy for infants is linked to thousands of ER visits annually.

WHO extremely concerned about Ebola 'perfect storm' in Congo (Reuters)

The World Health Organization said on Tuesday that an Ebola outbreak in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo could worsen rapidly because of attacks by armed groups, community resistance and the geographic spread of the disease.

Soda can no longer be the default drink on kids’ menus in California (Mic.com)

Mic - A healthy kids’ meal bill that goes into effect at the start of 2019 will prevent soda or other sugary drinks from being the default on all restaurants’ kids’ meal menus.

News from The UN's High-Level Meeting on Tuberculosis (WHO)

Tuberculosis is the world’s biggest killer from infection now, striking down more than 4500 people each day. It infects a quarter of the world’s population and killed 1.6 million people last year alone. . This week’s high-level meeting at the United Nations on TB marks only the fifth time the UN has convened to focus on critical health care issues. The others included HIV/AIDS, Ebola, and antibiotic resistance threats.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Twitter releases new policy on ‘dehumanizing speech’ (Wired)

…The policy will prohibit “content that dehumanizes others based on their membership in an identifiable group, even when the material does not include a direct target.” It expands upon Twitter’s existing hateful conduct policy prohibiting users from threatening violence or directly attacking a specific individual on the basis of characteristics such as race, sexual orientation, or gender.

Hawaii’s ‘Rapid Ohia Death’ Disease Is Killing the Forest Canopy, and There's No End in Sight (Newsweek)

Mythology holds that the goddess Pele, in a fit of jealous rage, transformed the man she loved into a gnarly evergreen called the ohia. That’s the tragic tale behind the beautiful tree that, in its many forms, makes up most of Hawaii’s forest canopy…It would be hard to imagine the archipelago without the ohia, but some worry that day could come.

Instagram co-founders resign in latest Facebook shake-up (Washington Post)

The co-founders of the photo-sharing app Instagram, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, have submitted their resignations to Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.