BBC
China's President Xi Jinping has visited health staff in Beijing treating patients infected with the new coronavirus, in a rare public appearance amid the outbreak.
Wearing a face mask, Mr Xi also visited a community health centre, where he had his temperature checked.
More than 900 people have been killed by the virus, the gravest public health crisis in China since Sars in 2002-3.
During his visit, Mr Xi urged "more decisive measures" to combat the virus.
The Chinese leader has kept a low profile over weeks as the outbreak has worsened. He is yet to visit Wuhan, where the virus first emerged.
BBC
Growing up as an Afghan refugee in Pakistan, bloodshed was never far from Summia Tora's life.
From her home - a single bedroom in a house shared by four families - she could hear the sound of drones landing not far from Peshawar, in northwest Pakistan, where her family had fled in the 1990s to escape the Taliban's rise.
"I was just living in this violence, but it was a given, so I couldn't do anything about it," Summia says. Sometimes there were bombings once or twice a week. "At some point, people stopped talking about it. It would happen, and everyone would move on."
But life there was a privilege compared to Afghanistan, she tells the BBC. At least she got to go to school.
On a visit to Kabul in 2002, just after the US invasion, a girl not much older described only being able to attend school by pretending to be a boy. Summia was six, but she remembers it clearly. She vowed then that she would to take learning seriously.
NPR
The common cold is a top reason for missed work and school days. Most of us have two or three colds per year, each lasting at least a week.
There's no real cure, but studies from the last several years show that some supplement containing zinc can help shorten the duration of cold symptoms by up to 40% — depending on the amount of the mineral in each dose and what it's combined with.
Zinc has an interesting back story. It wasn't even acknowledged as an essential mineral for human health until the 1970s. But that changed thanks to the work of Dr. Ananda Prasad — a 91-year-old doctor who, decades ago, had a hunch that led to a better understanding of zinc's role in immunity.
Back in the 1960s Prasad was studying a group of young men in Egypt who had not grown to normal heights and remained underdeveloped in other ways, too. Prasad wondered if the problem might be a lack of zinc.
When Prasad gave them zinc supplements, the men grew significantly taller.
NPR
When a work of art is broken, is it destroyed — or transformed?
That's perhaps a generous question that one art critic is posing after a dramatic incident Saturday at the Zona Maco contemporary art fair in Mexico City.
One of the works on display was a large sculpture by Mexican artist Gabriel Rico. The piece involves a large sheet of glass with objects suspended through it, including a soccer ball, tennis ball, stick, feather and a rock.
Rico, who is based in Guadalajara, Mexico, "creates pieces that fragment the composition of the contemporary human and evidence the geometric imperfection in nature. ... Rico's sculptural works reflect on the nature of the materials used to produce them and their arrangement in the final composition," according to a preview of the exhibit from his gallery.
NPR
After wrapping up his book about the potential therapeutic benefits of psychedelic drugs, author Michael Pollan turned his attention to a drug that's hidden "in plain sight" in many people's lives: caffeine.
"Here's a drug we use every day. ... We never think about it as a drug or an addiction, but that's exactly what it is," Pollan says. "I thought, 'Why not explore that relationship?'"
Pollan's new audiobook, Caffeine, explores the science of caffeine addiction and withdrawal — and the broader impact that coffee and tea have had on the modern world. Caffeine, he says, is a powerful drug that alters the brain in surprising ways.
"There are studies that show that people's both mental performance and athletic performance are improved by coffee," he says. "If you have a cup of coffee after you've learned something or read a textbook chapter, you are more likely to test better on it the next day."
AFP
Sinn Fein on Monday stood on the threshold of a potential role in Ireland's government after winning the popular vote in a weekend election, a result shattering the political landscape.
The result from Saturday's ballot broke the stranglehold of two-party politics in Ireland, opening up a possible role for a nationalist party once shunned because of its links to IRA paramilitaries.
Former leader Gerry Adams and other party representatives were even banned from the airwaves in the UK as violence raged over British rule in Northern Ireland over three decades to 1998.
But with two decades of peace and a new leader under Mary Lou McDonald, Sinn Fein's left-wing policies on tackling crises in housing and health found favour with voters.
McDonald said the two main parties -- Fine Gael and Fianna Fail -- were "in a state of denial" and had not listened to the voice of the people.
DW News
A major winter storm — named both Ciara and Sabine — has passed through large swaths of Europe, resulting in a number of deaths across the continent. Weather services say the worst is yet to come for parts of Germany.
The UK on Monday morning was assessing the damage caused by winter storm Ciara — also called Sabine — which blew through late Sunday and overnight, as Germany and other parts of Europe await a similar fate.
There were reports of deaths directly connected to the storm across Europe. Three drivers — one in the southwest of the Czech Republic, one in northern Slovenia, and another in southern England — were killed after their cars were hit by falling trees.
In southern Poland, a woman and her daughter were killed after the storm ripped the roof off a ski rental equipment building in the mountain resort of Bukowina Tatrzanska, striking people standing near a ski lift, according to local police. Two others were left injured.
In southern Sweden, one man drowned after his sail boat capsized in the lake of Fegen. He was washed ashore and later died. Another person who was in the boat is still missing, according to the Swedish daily Aftonbladet.
DW News
The US Defense Department admitted to US news outlets on Monday that 109 service members suffered mild traumatic brain injuries in an Iranian attack on a US airbase in Iraq in January.
President Donald Trump had initially denied there were any casualties in the ballistic missile attack, which came in response to the US assasination of Revolutionary Guard general Qassem Soleimani.
In the weeks after the attack, Washington admitted that some troops had suffered mild traumatic brain injuries, but the latest figures are significantly higher than previously reported.
The Pentagon told US news outlets that 76 of those service members had already returned to duty.
Trump's initial downplay of their injuries prompted rebuke from US veterans groups.
Al Jazeera
February 11, 1990, was the day for which millions of black South Africans had been waiting - for decades.
On that cloudless Sunday afternoon, Nelson Mandela walked out of Victor Verster Prison flanked by his wife Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, his right hand raised and fist clenched. A sea of excited supporters held back by police had lined up, all trying to get a glimpse of their just-freed leader who had spent 27 years in prison for fighting against the country's discriminatory apartheid system of racial segregation.
The Guardian
Another 66 passengers onboard a luxury cruise liner quarantined in Japan have tested positive for coronavirus, bringing the number of infected people on the ship to 136.
Japanese health officials said the new diagnoses among 3,700 passengers and crew onboard the Diamond Princess included 45 people from Japan, 11 from the US, four from Australia, three from the Philippines and one each from Canada and Ukraine.
The vessel was quarantined when it arrived in Yokohama, south of Tokyo, early last week after it emerged that a passenger who had disembarked in Hong Kong late last month had tested positive for the respiratory illness, which has infected more than 40,000 people and killed at least 910.
On Monday, a week into their 14-day quarantine, some of the passengers were trying to fight off boredom by reading, watching live coverage of the Oscars, playing games or snoozing. Others were beginning to grow despondent, with at least another nine days to go before they will be allowed to disembark.
The Guardian
It’s a good day for dinosaur news!
Scientists in Canada have announced the discovery of a new species of dinosaur closely related to Tyrannosaurus rex that strode the plain of North America about 80m years ago.
Thanatotheristes degrootorum – Greek for “reaper of death” – is thought to be the oldest member of the T rex family yet discovered in northern North America, and would have grown to around 8m (26ft) in length.
“We chose a name that embodies what this tyrannosaur was as the only known large apex predator of its time in Canada, the reaper of death,” said Darla Zelenitsky, assistant professor of dinosaur palaeobiology at Canada’s University of Calgary.
“The nickname has come to be Thanatos,” she told AFP.
The Guardian
Indigenous activists in Canada have vowed to continue their fight against a multibillion-dollar pipeline project across their traditional territory after three female leaders were arrested by police early on Monday.
Freda Huson, Brenda Michell and Karla Tait were among seven people detained when Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers – backed by helicopters, heavy machinery and dogs – moved in on the remote camp in north-western British Columbia.
Police also dismantled a gate erected by activists to prevent access to Wet’suwet’en territories and stop construction of the proposed 670km (416-mile) Coastal GasLink pipeline (CGL).
The raid on the Unist’ot’en camp came after activists in Vancouver and Ontario launched solidarity protests, blocking commuter rail lines and access to shipping ports in support of the Wet’suwet’en land defenders.
The Guardian
Girls are beginning puberty almost a year earlier than women 40 years ago, according to research.
Scientists have found the onset of development of glandular breast tissue has crept forwards by about three months per decade since the late 1970s.
Puberty generally begins between eight and 13 years in girls and nine and 14 years for boys. However, a number of global studies suggest the average age of puberty is falling.
For girls, experts say the best marker of the start of puberty is the development of glandular breast tissue, known as thelarche.
Researchers say they have reviewed studies on the milestone to reveal that puberty in girls has shifted, on average, three months earlier per decade from 1977 to 2013.
Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Justice Department anti-human trafficking grant program is facing internal complaints, after two nonprofits were denied funding in favor of two less established groups whose applications were not recommended by career DOJ officials.
The awarding of more than $1 million total to the two groups, Hookers for Jesus in Nevada and the Lincoln Tubman Foundation in South Carolina, has triggered a whistleblower complaint filed by the Justice Department’s employee union to the department’s Inspector General.
An internal department memo seen by Reuters shows that as of September 12, two long-established nonprofits – the Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Palm Beach and Chicanos Por La Causa of Phoenix – were originally on the list of recommended grant winners after receiving high marks from outside contractors hired to review applications. The annual grants help nonprofits and local governments aid human trafficking victims.