 BERLIN/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - An investigation commissioned by Volkswagen into its emissions test cheating scandal has found no evidence against the head of its Audi luxury car division, three people familiar with the matter said. Audi Chief Executive Rupert Stadler was questioned earlier this week by U.S. law firm Jones Day, which is conducting the investigation, about when he found out about the use of test-cheating software, the people said. The findings are due to be discussed by Volkswagen's (VW) supervisory board on Friday, they added.
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 Singapore is exploring plans to establish a national surveillance program to monitor the development of babies born to pregnant women infected with the Zika virus, the state-owned Channel NewsAsia (CNA) said on Friday. Sixteen pregnant women have been confirmed to have the virus in Singapore, CNA said, quoting the Ministry of Health - a doubling of the eight cases reported on Sept. 11. While most people experience mild symptoms, Zika infections in pregnant women have been shown to cause microcephaly, a severe birth defect in which the head and brain are undersized.
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YOLA, Nigeria (AP) — Health officials in eastern Nigeria say they have started to administer polio vaccines to children at military checkpoints in an attempt to stop the spread of the crippling disease.
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By Martinne Geller LONDON (Reuters) - Japan Tobacco aims to start selling its Ploom Tech tobacco-based electronic cigarette in cities across Japan next year, it said on Friday, as it fights to catch up with bigger rival Philip Morris in meeting the growing demand for "vaping" products. Japan Tobacco, the world's third-largest tobacco company whose top brands include Winston, Mevius and Benson & Hedges, has invested heavily in expanding its production capacity for Ploom Tech tobacco capsules after it hit supply constraints in March following a test launch in the southern city of Fukuoka.
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By Ronnie Cohen (Reuters Health) - Emergency room patients needing mental health care were transferred to other facilities six times more often than patients needing other services, and they waited longer to be treated or moved, a new study found. “This study provides data showing that ERs are the de facto dumping ground for psychiatric patients,” senior author Dr. Renee Hsia told Reuters Health. “Our goal in reporting this is to provide data to the public and policymakers so that they look at it squarely in the face and decide if it’s acceptable or if it’s something that needs to be changed,” said Hsia, who is a professor of emergency medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
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By Kathryn Doyle (Reuters Health) – Adopting a healthier diet may lower type 2 diabetes risk over time, while a worsening diet is often accompanied by increased risk, according to a new U.S. study. “Although recent public health recommendations have increasingly focused on advocating overall diet quality improvement, evidence has been limited on whether changing overall diet in adulthood has a long-term preventative impact on diabetes prevention in general population,” said lead author Sylvia H. Ley of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston. “We provide evidence that improving diet quality in adulthood is associated with type 2 diabetes prevention, while worsening diet quality is associated increased risk for diabetes,” she said by email.
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 The view inside is less inspiring: dated furniture and listless pot plants dot the seventh-floor office of Margaret Chan, the WHO's director general. "I am here to facilitate countries to discuss and find solutions." Chan's low-key, consensual approach has held sway at the organization for nearly a decade. A Chinese former teacher and doctor, she says it has brought lasting results – such as progress towards universal health coverage and improved pandemic preparedness.
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 By Ziyanda Yono MARBLE HALL, South Africa (Reuters) - Almost 40 years after the first human test-tube baby was born, South African scientists have produced something bulkier: the first Cape buffalo brought into the world by in vitro fertilization (IVF). Pumelelo the buffalo bull calf was born on June 28 and was unveiled to the world this week at a game farm north of Johannesburg in South Africa's Limpopo province. The technique holds hope for far bigger and more endangered species such as the northern white rhino - only three of them are left on the planet.
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 By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) - Six international health experts, including four from Europe, are to compete to become the next director general of the World Health Organization (WHO) after its current leader Margaret Chan ends her tenure next June. Nominations for the position, announced on Friday, include Britain's David Nabarro - who was the United Nations' special envoy for Ebola during the crisis in 2014/15 - and Ethiopia's foreign minister and former health minister, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
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Erin Cross, 6, received an experimental treatment to fight leukemia.
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BERLIN (AP) — German legislation designed to make life safer for sex workers, including making the use of a condom mandatory, and a stricter "no means no" law both passed their final hurdles Friday with approval from the upper house of Parliament.
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LOS ANGELES (AP) — A case of leprosy, extremely rare in the United States, has been diagnosed in a Southern California elementary school student, sending health officials scrambling to reassure parents and the public that the disease is hard to transmit and easy to treat.
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 By John Miller ZURICH (Reuters) - Novartis's Zykadia drug performed well against a rare form of lung cancer, the Swiss company said on Friday, citing a study it hopes will help it win expanded regulatory approval for the use of the drug. Novartis released results of a phase III clinical trial of Zykadia, or ceritinib, on previously untreated patients with advanced anaplastic lymphoma kinase-positive (ALK+) non-small cell lung cancer. Patients treated with Zykadia showed a significant improvement in their chances of surviving without the cancer spreading compared with standard chemotherapy, the firm said.
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Seventy trucks of humanitarian aid were delivered on Sunday to four besieged towns in Syria for the first time in almost six months, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said. The aid organisation said convoys were delivered to Madaya and Zabdani near Damascus and to the villages of al Foua and Kefraya in Idlib province in the north west. Kefraya and al-Foua, in Idlib province in northwest Syria, have around 20,000 people, according to U.N. estimates, and have been surrounded by insurgents since April 2015.
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 OAK FOREST, Ill. (AP) — The idea is simple: Load fresh fruits and vegetables into a refrigerator truck and drive it to a health clinic, then have a doctor write a "prescription" for food to improve the diets of low-income people with diabetes and high blood pressure.
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 An ultrasound showed one of Sarah Gray's unborn twins was missing part of his brain, a fatal birth defect. His brother was born healthy but Thomas lived just six days. Latching onto hope for something ...
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 KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — When she was younger, Tryphena Natukunda's mother discouraged her from swallowing her antiretroviral medicines among strangers or even distant relatives.
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 The British Medical Association (BMA) had planned a full withdrawal of labor by junior doctors on Oct. 5-7 and 10-11, Nov. 14-18 and Dec. 5-9, which would have been the longest stoppages in the nearly 70-year history of the National Health Service. Junior doctors - a term covering recent medical school graduates right through to doctors who have been working for well over a decade - have staged a series of walkouts over a new work contract the government plans to impose next month. The BMA said its decision to suspend the action follows feedback from doctors, patients and the public, and discussions with NHS England about the ability of the NHS to maintain a safe service if industrial action were to go ahead.
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 By Padraic Halpin DUBLIN (Reuters) - Thousands of protestors marched in Dublin, and Irish expatriates joined in demonstrations around the world on Saturday, to put pressure on the Irish government to hold a referendum to repeal restrictive abortion laws. Regulations in the once stridently Catholic Ireland are among the strictest in the world and next month Prime Minister Enda Kenny will call a citizens' assembly to advise the government on whether a vote should be held to boost access to abortion. Demonstrators marched in the rain on government buildings from Dublin's main thoroughfare of O'Connell Street, bringing traffic to a standstill by the River Liffey as they chanted, beat drums and held placards saying "My Body, My Choice".
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WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — The Obama administration has proposed barring states and other recipients of federal family planning grants from placing their own eligibility restrictions on where the money can go, which would undermine the efforts of 13 Republican-led states to prevent such money from going to Planned Parenthood.
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From Hawaii to New Hampshire, here's where to move for your health.
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 Next month's world heavyweight title rematch between champion Tyson Fury and Ukrainian Vladimir Klitschko was called off on Friday for a second time with the Briton ruled "medically unfit". The fight was due to be held on Oct. 29 in Manchester, having been originally postponed in July when Fury suffered an ankle injury. "Tyson has this week been declared medically unfit to fight," his promoters Hennessy Sports said in a statement without elaborating.
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 By Alex Whiting TURIN, Italy (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - As a young university student of agriculture, Edie Mukiibi believed the latest hybrid seeds which promised bumper crops were the answer to improving the lot of maize farmers in his part of Uganda. He persuaded many to buy the seeds, while working part-time promoting them in Kiboga district in central Uganda. But the consequences were "terrible", he said. When I went back to talk with the farmers I could feel their pain," Mukiibi said. Even worse, the new crops could not be grown with any other crops, so the farmers were left with nothing to fall back on except the bills they had run up for the pesticides, herbicides and fertilisers the maize required, he said. "This is when I started working with farmers ... to diversify (their) farming," said Mukiibi, now vice president of Slow Food International, a grassroots movement of farmers, chefs, activists and academics campaigning to improve the quality of food and the lives of producers.
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 Who becomes the next U.S. president will be a primary focus for Wall Street next week and beyond, starting on Monday with the first debate between candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. While the White House race has so far had little discernible effect on the market, that may soon change as polls show a tightening race. Clinton's once-comfortable lead in opinion polls has evaporated, and with just over six weeks until Election Day, some investors see a toss-up contest creating volatility in certain sectors, including health insurers, drugmakers and industrials.
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 By Piya Sinha-Roy LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Bringing the American Wild West to life was no easy task, just ask the cast of "The Magnificent Seven," who endured scorching heat and torrential rain in wool costumes in the Louisiana summer. "We had a lot of lightning, thunder issues where we had to shut (production) down, but the heat was just constant," Denzel Washington, who plays bounty hunter Sam Chisholm, told Reuters. "The Magnificent Seven," a remake of the 1960 classic, is directed by Antoine Fuqua and opens in theaters on Friday.
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 BERLIN (Reuters) - The world heavyweight title rematch between champion Tyson Fury and Ukrainian Vladimir Klitschko on Oct. 29 has been called off for a second time with the Briton ruled "medically unfit". "Tyson has this week been declared medically unfit to fight," Fury's promoters Hennessy Sports said in a brief statement on Friday. "Medical specialists have advised that the condition is too severe to allow him to participate in the rematch and that he will require treatment before going back into the ring." (Reporting by Karolos Grohmann; Editing by Tony Jimenez)
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* Heavyweight fight called off for second time * Champion Fury's condition is "too severe" (Adds quotes, details) BERLIN, Sept 23 (Reuters) - Next month's world heavyweight title rematch between champion Tyson Fury and Ukrainian Vladimir Klitschko was called off on Friday for a second time with the Briton ruled "medically unfit". The fight was due to be held on Oct. 29 in Manchester, having been originally postponed in July when Fury suffered an ankle injury. "Tyson has this week been declared medically unfit to fight," his promoters Hennessy Sports said in a statement without elaborating.
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved Amgen Inc's biosimilar version of AbbVie's top-selling arthritis drug, Humira. The drug, Amjevita, known also as adalimumab-atto, was approved to treat rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, Crohn's disease, psoriasis and other conditions. Amjevita is the fourth biosimilar to be approved by the FDA and is expected to be sold at a discount to the original drug.
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BERLIN, Sept 23 (Reuters) - The world heavyweight title rematch between champion Tyson Fury and Ukrainian Vladimir Klitschko on Oct. 29 has been called off for a second time with the Briton ruled "medically unfit". "Tyson has this week been declared medically unfit to fight," Fury's promoters Hennessy Sports said in a brief statement on Friday. "Medical specialists have advised that the condition is too severe to allow him to participate in the rematch and that he will require treatment before going back into the ring." (Reporting by Karolos Grohmann; Editing by Tony Jimenez)
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By Madeline Kennedy (Reuters Health) - Obstacle course runs like Tough Mudder and Warrior Dash are becoming more popular and are relatively safe for participants, a Canadian study suggests. Only about 1 percent of participants are injured during these races, and most of the injuries are minor and only require first aid, the researchers write in Emergency Medicine Journal. Obstacle course runs can be anywhere from 3 miles long to a full marathon.
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 PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Five major hospitals in Portland, Oregon, and a nonprofit health care plan said Friday they will donate a combined $21.5 million toward the construction of nearly 400 housing units for the city's burgeoning homeless and low-income population — a move hailed by national housing advocates as the largest private investment of its kind in the nation.
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By Lisa Rapaport (Reuters Health) - Stroke survivors may spend more time at home – as opposed to a nursing home or a hospital – if they were treated at a place that handles a lot of stroke patients or that’s located in a rural area, a U.S. study suggests. Patients treated at smaller hospitals also tended to spend more days at home after a stroke, the study also found. “Home-time after stroke varied depending on where patients were hospitalized and in what type of hospital,” said study leader Emily O’Brian of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.
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 Online tutorials that teach people how to make their own EpiPens have been watched by tens of thousands, but experts warn that using a homemade injector could be dangerous. However, Dr. Lolita McDavid, pediatrician and medical director of child advocacy and protection at University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital, said even as a trained physician she would never use a DIY epi-injector on a family member. McDavid pointed out that in one video online the instructor didn't even sterilize the vial before filling the syringe, meaning it could possibly cause infection if used.
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 California health officials reported on Thursday that a child in Jurupa Valley, California, has been diagnosed with leprosy and another child is suspected of having the disease. Leprosy, also called Hansen's disease, is rare in the U.S., according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. There were 175 new cases of the disease reported in 2014, the most recent data available. The Riverside County Health Department has not listed a source or suspected source of the disease, but leprosy can remain in the body for three to 10 years before symptoms develop, according to the HHS.
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Endo International Plc said Chief Executive Rajiv De Silva had stepped down and would be replaced by generics division head Paul Campanelli, as the drugmaker grapples with a large debt load and mounting pressure on some of its drug prices. Endo's shares rose as much as 18 percent to $23.98 on Friday as the company also maintained its full-year profit and revenue forecasts. Campanelli joined Endo in 2015 following the company's $8-billion acquisition of generic drugs maker Par Pharmaceutical, where he was CEO since 2012.
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 (Reuters) - The unprecedented aerial spraying of products that kill both adult mosquitoes as well as their larvae delivered a "1-2 punch" that has stopped direct transmission of the Zika virus in the Wynwood section of Miami, U.S. and Florida health officials said on Friday. The trendy Miami neighborhood in June became the first neighborhood in the continental United States with a local outbreak of Zika, a mosquito-borne virus that can cause severe birth defects in infected pregnant women. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday declared Wynwood free of Zika, saying there had been no cases of infection with the virus there in the past 45 days.
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 UPS's test flight was handled by drone maker CyPhy Works, in which it owns a stake. "The technology for drones is there and it's moving extremely fast," said CyPhy founder Helen Greiner. The UPS-CyPhy test comes amid a burst of U.S. drone activity, including companies focusing on package delivery.
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Raia Drogasil SA, Brazil's biggest drugstore chain, will sit out expected consolidation of the national market, the company's chief executive said in an interview, because its own rapidly expanding network is proving increasingly efficient. CVS Health Corp entered Brazil with an acquisition in 2013 and two sources told Reuters this month that rival Brasil Pharma SA is close to selling two units. "Our aim is to consolidate the market opening stores." Raia Drogasil has done that at an accelerating pace.
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How a small company using a rented mailbox in Chicago got millions of dollars from international agencies and the U.S. government
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By Madeline Kennedy (Reuters Health) – In adults of all ages, chronic sleep problems were linked with a greater risk of trouble with activities of daily living later in life, in a recent study. Although disability rates have been falling, up to one in five seniors have at least one limitation in their ability to perform tasks, the researchers write in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. “Most people don’t get sufficient sleep - as a culture we tend to devalue sleep - and we tend to underestimate the potential impact of not getting adequate sleep,” lead author Elliot Friedman told Reuters Health by email.
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Cell phone video released Friday recorded Rakeyia Scott, the wife of Keith Lamont Scott, who was fatally shot by Charlotte police, screaming, "He has a TBI," or traumatic brain injury. On Thursday, Scott's mother told CNN affiliate WCSC about a "near-death" motorcycle accident her son survived last year. 
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Terry Jones, best known for his part in the British comedy group Monty Python, has been diagnosed with a rare form of dementia, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts confirmed today. 
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When you hear of peer-pressured pot smokers, you picture first-year college students or coming-of-age teens, not toddlers. That's why a video that police say Lamel Yancey of Arkansas uploaded to Facebook is causing furor online. It shows Yancey urging a diapered, 3-year-old to smoke a joint. 
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In modern history, few things have caused such a sharp spike in US deaths as drug overdoses. 
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Sara Murray tends to two dozen babies in the neonatal therapeutic unit at Cabell Huntington Hospital. They shake. They vomit. Their inconsolable, high-pitched screams pierce the air. The symptoms can last for hours, days or months. 
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A woman in graphic photos showing her passed out in a car with her young grandson after she allegedly overdosed on heroin has been ordered to serve the next half-year in an Ohio jail. 
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Being approached by a US Coast Guard boat when you're on the water is normally not a good thing. But when you're with the crew of the M/V OCEARCH shark research vessel, it feels as if anything can happen. 
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Hearing the words "$3 billion," most of us felt vaguely stunned, so we missed hearing what came next during Wednesday's announcement from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Dr. Priscilla Chan. The Silicon Valley couple also introduced the world to the new president of Chan Zuckerberg Science -- now perhaps the most influential scientist on the planet. 
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Most people have a story or two about teachers who really gave of themselves. But Natasha Fuller's most likely trumps everyone's. 
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A lawsuit filed by 35 states and the District of Columbia alleges that drugmaker Indivior violated antitrust laws by trying to extend its monopoly over Suboxone, New York's attorney general announced Thursday. Suboxone is a prescription drug used to treat patients addicted to heroin, painkillers and other opioid drugs. 
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Katie Prager, the wife in the real "Fault in Our Stars" couple, died Thursday after complications from cystic fibrosis and a lung transplant. She was 26 years old. 
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In a striking new public service announcement trying to change the conversation about sexual assault, tween, teen and college students, girls and boys, women and men, look directly at the camera and don't say a word. Instead, they hold up posters with statements that speak volumes about the messages society has been sending for far too long. 
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It was a marriage made in Hollywood, and one many people throughout the world may have envied, but now comes the divorce with all-too-real consequences for the children. 
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Photos released by Venezuela's opposition this week show a dramatically different scene than you'd expect to see in a hospital nursery. 
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An unexpected visitor hitching a ride caused a rollover car wreck in Oregon. 
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Wearable technologies can monitor your physical activity or your allergies. Increasingly, they are part of our everyday lives. But a new analysis comparing two sets of dieters discovered that those wearing activity trackers lost less, not more, weight than the tech-free dieters. 
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The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends introducing babies to solid foods when they are between 4 and 6 months of age. 
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When men think of undergoing a vasectomy, they might have a few concerns: fears of pain, worries it won't work and concerns about their sex life afterward. 
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They appear overcome with emotion and share a kiss, ecstatic to be back in each other's arms. 
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Hundreds more cervical cancer patients' lives could be saved if all eligible women went for screening, says a study published in the British Journal of Cancer.
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Just keeping an eye on small prostate cancers results in the same 10-year survival rate as treating them, a major study suggests.
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The failure to successfully prosecute a single case of female genital mutilation in the UK is "lamentable" and a "national scandal", MPs say.
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GlaxoSmithKline appoints Emma Walmsley, its current head of consumer healthcare, as its new chief executive.
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Medical correspondent Fergus Walsh demonstrates what can happen if a button battery gets lodged in a child's throat, after a warning from surgeons over the dangers.
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Smokers say stress keeps them in the habit, as smoking rates in England hit a record low
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The black women using art to talk about mental health.
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Training exercise shows how emergency services cope with obese people who get stuck in their homes.
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When Carl Hillis was struck with cancer at the age of nine, he received bone marrow from a perfect stranger. Carl says donor Tony Blood is "like a brother".
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BBC Newsnight meets the UK doctor who is directing life-saving surgery in the Syrian city of Aleppo via Skype.
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Former nurse Lara Smith tells Victoria Derbyshire why she takes cannabis-based medicine.
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A Nigerian woman has given birth to a boy on board a rescue ship in the Mediterranean after being plucked from an overcrowded rubber dinghy.
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Venom collected from two species of Irish spiders has potential medicinal properties, say university researchers.
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Professor Canavero says he's a year away from transplanting a head onto a totally different body and has lots of volunteers from the UK who want it done.
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A major medical emergency has never occurred on the International Space Station - but what would happen if it did?
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Rats, dogs and cows are just some of the animals that are advancing the diagnosis and treatment of disease in humans.
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For centuries diseases have been named after people and places - but do these names honour or offend?
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Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife want to tackle all diseases by the end if the century. Just how feasible is this aim?
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Lots of people take glucosamine to help them with pains in their joints, but is there hard evidence that it improves things?
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Early diagnosis of disease is literally a matter of life and death, so the race is on to produce cheaper, faster, lighter kits to help doctors and nurses in the field.
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Bold health claims have been made for the power of turmeric. Is there anything in them, asks Michael Mosley.
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Campaign groups say a million people across the UK rely on cannabis for medical reasons, but how does it feel to break the law just to feel better?
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Scientists in Cardiff are working on ways to improve health, creativity and emotional well-being using "sleep engineering".
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Competitors prepare for a contest involving electronic arms and robotic exoskeletons.
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What we still don't know about the Zika virus and microcephaly.
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An alarming and disturbing infection linked to thousands of babies being born with underdeveloped brains is spreading.
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The threat of the Zika virus has now become international, but the alarm was raised in Brazil last year when a growing number of cases of microcephaly began to emerge.
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Why the mosquito that spreads the Zika virus is flourishing in the urban environment.
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Wearing an activity device that counts how many steps you have taken does not appear to improve the chances of losing weight, research suggests.
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The Miami district where the first locally transmitted Zika cases in the US occurred has been declared free of the virus.
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Facebook's founder and his wife aim to cure, prevent or manage all diseases by the end of the century.
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Teenage cigarette and alcohol use is declining across Europe but the numbers using cannabis are growing, an EU survey shows.
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A gene from an almost indestructible microscopic creature could provide "radiation shield" for human cells, scientists find.
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The number of obese people being rescued by fire services because they are too large to move on their own rises by more than a third over the past three years in the UK.
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Exposure to bright light can lead to greater sexual satisfaction in men with low sexual desire, a new study suggests.
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Any child or teenager sending explicit images or messages on texts and emails is cause for concern and should be monitored, new guidelines for schools and health professionals in England advise.
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Napping for more than an hour during the day could be a warning sign for type-2 diabetes, Japanese researchers suggest.
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