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'In The Heights' star Melissa Barrera has been dropped from 'Scream VII' over her social media comments regarding the Israel-Hamas conflict.

It's speculated AC/DC could be preparing to announce a stadium tour after the leak.

By Bhargav Acharya JOHANNESBURG South African inflation quickened more than expected in October, approaching the upper end of

Already feel like you’ve had your fill of sore throats, coughs and stuffy heads this winter? Colds may be common and minor – but they can still leave you feeling rotten, not to mention being a major inconvenience. They aren’t really something you want to be traipsing to the GP surgery with either – but wouldn’t it be helpful to know what your doctor really thinks about managing winter ailments? We asked them… Getting ill is not always terrible Nobody enjoys having a cold, of course. But GP and TV medic Dr Hilary Jones – known for regular appearances on Good Morning Britain – says we can’t always “prevent exposure to viruses, especially in winter when people flock together for warmth indoors”. And if symptoms are mild, we probably don’t need to worry too much. “Let your own immune system deal with it,” says Jones. “That’s what your immune system is for – and looking on the positive side, the more you tickle up your immune system, the healthier it is. In a way, you’re stimulating your immune system to be healthy.” Antibiotics can be harmful if you don’t actually need them If symptoms are proving tougher to tolerate, it can be tempting to try antibiotics. But while there are certainly times when antibiotics are vital, they only work for bacterial infections, so taking them when you have a viral infection (such as a cold) is not only futile, but could cause harm. “Often, both clinicians and patients will be tempted to try antibiotics, even when there is little-to-no chance of them helping – ‘just in case’ and often accompanied with the reasoning of ‘what harm can it do?’,” says Dr Tom Jenkins, GP and developer of Centoreze Pelargonium. “We are now beginning to appreciate that there is potential harm at an individual level,” Jenkins adds. “There are more bacterial cells in the human body than human cells, and most of those bacterial cells are helpful and essential for healthy functioning. Because antibiotics are not selective and do not single out just bad bacteria, taking them upsets our bacterial microbiome, and we are now starting to learn about the subtle and sometimes lasting consequences of this.” Another major concern is bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics – which the World Health Organisation (WHO) describes as one of the biggest threats to global health today. Tackling this is complex, but on an individual level, WHO guidelines suggest people only use antibiotics when suitable. Soothing home remedies are worth it Jones, who is working with Manuka Doctor, also points out: “If you do get sick, comforting symptomatic relief is really important, starting with the simple things. I’m an advocate of manuka honey – the genuine manuka honey from New Zealand, which carries a number for the antibacterial activity, the MGO methylglyoxal.” As well as its antibacterial properties, Jones says it’s “soothing for throats” and can provide an “energy boost” – plus his 97-year-old mother is a fan. “Not only does she put it in her porridge, she put it on her skin for a few lesions that she has – perfectly well-endorsed by the district nurse who comes to visit her as well. “You can also put honey in a grog, in hot water, with a bit of lemon, a bit of cinnamon – that’s something our grandmothers used to use, and to good effect.” The herbal remedy that’s doctor-approved There are so many natural remedies out there promising to fight off symptoms, and deciding between them can be overwhelming. But did you know there’s one herbal remedy that is recommended by the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) for managing certain upper respiratory tract symptoms? Pelargonium, licenced as a Traditional Herbal Remedy, is recommended by GPs to consider as one of four self-care treatment options for adults and children aged 12 and above. It’s mentioned on the NHS website’s page for coughs, too – along with getting plenty of rest, staying hydrated, Paracetamol and Ibuprofen where suitable for pain relief, and honey and lemon. Derived from plants found in South Africa and Lesotho, Pelargonium was widely used to help treat infections before antibiotics boomed. But “over the last quarter of a century”, Jenkins says , “clinical research has begun to revisit this forgotten treatment, especially in Germany, and now more recently here in the UK too.” This has “resulted in the publication of over 70 peer reviewed pre-clinical and clinical studies supporting its effect”, says Jenkins. He explains it contains “a large number of biological molecules” that work in a number of ways to “stimulate the body’s immune system to fight infections”. Diet and lifestyle do play a part “Diet is always important,” says Jones. “A healthy lifestyle does protect us and helps our immune system. Clearly there are obvious things not to do – smoking and excess alcohol – as well as poor nutrition. “We know vitamin D is important for good immune health, and there are many people who are deficient in vitamin D, who should be taking a supplement as recommended by the WHO and NHS, particularly through winter,” Jones adds (when there isn’t enough sunlight in this part of the world for our bodies to make sufficient amounts). “So vitamin D, adequate vitamin C, zinc, and sometimes things like garlic and echinacea can be helpful in making sure your immune system is healthy.” While a balanced diet comes first, Jones believes “it’s always worth considering a multivitamin, which gives you a little bit of everything, particularly if your diet is restricted or selective in any way or if you’ve got extra needs”, he adds. “But healthy eating, plenty of fruit and vegetables, adequate protein, exercising moderately and avoiding pollutants and cigarettes – those are the main things.” Check in with your doctor if you’re constantly rundown Still feel like nothing seems to help? Then it may be time to check in with your doctor. “If you’re concerned that you have any possible underlying medical problem, I would always advise discussing matters with your GP,” says Jenkins.“Sometimes recurrent infections can be a sign of an underlying infection, but sometimes they can be because you are rundown. Your GP is ideally placed here because they have your medical record, are able to look into things in more detail, and can follow you up.”

To the uninitiated, there isn’t much to water. Sure, the world’s oceans are filled with monsters, marvels and mysteries but, otherwise, they’re just vast, singular expanses of liquid. Right? Wrong. Far from being uniform everywhere, ocean water is a patchwork of interlinked layers and masses which mix and split apart thanks to currents, eddies, and changes in temperature or salinity. Indeed, beneath the surfaces of our great seas, there are waterfalls, rivers and even gigantic blobs, stretching thousands of miles, that somehow manage to evade detection. Now, scientists have discovered one of these massive blobs in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean; extending from the tip of Brazil to the Gulf of Guinea. Until the discovery of this water mass – which has been named the Atlantic Equatorial Water – experts had seen waters mixing along the equator in the Pacific and Indian oceans, but never in the Atlantic. "It seemed controversial that the equatorial water mass is present in the Pacific and Indian oceans but missing in the Atlantic Ocean because the equatorial circulation and mixing in all three oceans have common features," Viktor Zhurbas, a physicist and oceanologist at The Shirshov Institute of Oceanology in Moscow, told Live Science. "The identified new water mass has allowed us to complete (or at least more accurately describe) the phenomenological pattern of basic water masses of the World Ocean." As the name suggests, the Atlantic Equatorial Water is formed by the mixing of separate bodies of water by currents along the equator. To distinguish such masses from the water surrounding them, oceanographers analyse the relationship between temperature and salinity across the ocean — which determines the density of the seawater. Back in 1942, this charting of temperature-salinity led to the discovery of equatorial waters in the Pacific and Indian oceans, as Live Science notes. Because they are created by the mixing of waters to the north and south, the Indian and Pacific Equatorial waters share similar temperatures and salinities curving along lines of constant density, which make them easy to distinguish from the surrounding water. And yet, for years, no such relationship could be spotted in the Atlantic. However, thanks to data collected by the Argo programme – an international collection of robotic, self-submerging floats which have been installed across Earth’s oceans – the researchers spotted an unnoticed temperature-salinity curve located parallel to the North Atlantic and South Atlantic Central waters. This was that elusive Atlantic Equatorial Water. "It was easy to confuse the Atlantic Equatorial Water with the South Atlantic Central Water, and in order to distinguish them it was necessary to have a fairly dense network of vertical temperature and salinity profiles covering the entire Atlantic Ocean," Zhurbas explained in his email to Live Science. The discovery is significant because it offers experts a better understanding of how oceans mix, which is vital to how they transport heat, oxygen and nutrients around the world. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings

Manchester United and England defender Harry Maguire spoke on officiating controversies and wants Premier League referees to make it harder for teams to be awarded penalties.

Wednesday's football transfer rumours include Manchester United and Antoine Griezmann, Barcelona wanting Giovani Lo Celso, plus Joao Palhinha, Kylian Mbappe, Raphael Varane, Thomas Muller and more.

HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov 22, 2023--

Computer chip and software maker Broadcom says it has cleared all regulatory hurdles and plans to complete its $69 billion acquisition of cloud technology company VMware on Wednesday

(Reuters) -OpenAI said late on Tuesday Sam Altman would return to the company as CEO, capping days of high drama

OpenAI said on Tuesday it had reached an agreement for Sam Altman to return as CEO days after

BARCELONA, Spain & NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov 22, 2023--