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Liberia has suspended all football activities in an effort to control the spread of the deadly Ebola virus.

There was a risk of infection because football is a contact sport, the football association said.

The number of people killed by the virus in West Africa has now reached 672, according to new UN figures.

A major regional airliner, Asky, said it had halted flights to the Liberian and Sierra Leonean capitals because of growing concerns about the virus.

Image: Carving whale shark. Photo: WildLifeRisk

businessinsider.com.au - January 28, 2014 - Chris Pash

An activist group has uncovered what it says is a whale shark factory in China processing up to 600 of the endangered fish each year.

WildLifeRisk, a Hong Kong-based conservation group, says the whale sharks are being processed at the “China Wenzhou Yueqing Marine Organisms Health Protection Foods Co Ltd” in China’s PuQi township near Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province.

The factory is fed by a network of agents who pay fishermen up to $US30,000 for one whale shark which can grow to 12m and weigh 20 tonnes.

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By 2050, the number of people aged over 60 years is projected to be five times that in 1950 (credit: Luigi Fontana, Brian K. Kennedy, and and Valter D. Longo/Nature)

submitted by Luis Kun

kurzweilai.net - July 24, 2014

By 2050, the number of people over the age of 80 will triple globally, which could come at great cost to individuals and economies.

Unfortunately, medicine focuses almost entirely on fighting chronic diseases in a piecemeal fashion as symptoms develop, researchers writing in the journal Nature say. Instead, more efforts should be directed to promoting interventions that have the potential to prevent multiple chronic diseases and extend healthy lifespans.

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Nature - Medical research: Treat ageing

(CNN) -- A doctor who has played a key role in fighting the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone is infected with the disease, according to that country's Ministry of Health.

Dr. Sheik Humarr Khan is being treated by the French aid group Medicins Sans Frontieres -- also known as Doctors Without Borders -- in Kailahun, Sierra Leone, Tim Shenk, an agency spokesman, told CNN.

(Read complete article here)