A patient being treated at a Dallas hospital has tested positive for Ebola, federal health officials have confirmed.

New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra has said tests of some ingredients used in infant formula and sports drinks have discovered a type of bacteria that could cause botulism.

Two threatening letters sent to New York City’s mayor and his group that advocates for gun control contained traces of the deadly poison ricin, police have said.

Taiwan has heightened surveillance of travellers from China after authorities confirmed the island’s first case of a deadly new strain of bird flu.

Braced for a fight, President Barack Obama last night unveiled the most sweeping proposals for curbing gun violence in two decades, pressing a reluctant Congress to pass universal background checks and bans on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines like the ones used in the Newtown, Connecticut, school shooting.

President Barack Obama has by-passed Congress with a series of actions aimed at curbing gun violence.

Mexico ordered all schools across the country to close today as the death toll from the swine virus outbreak climbed to 149.

Churches stood empty today in heavily Roman Catholic Mexico City after services were cancelled, and health workers screened airports and bus stations for people sickened by a new strain of swine flu that experts fear could become a global epidemic.

Mexico’s president assumed new powers to isolate people infected with a deadly swine flu strain as authorities struggled to contain an outbreak that world health officials warned could become a global epidemic.

A team of international health experts are visiting China in the next few days to examine a SARS research lab in Beijing where two workers became sick.

China confirmed two cases of Sars today and said the mother of one patient has died, apparently the first Sars fatality in the country since last July.

International health experts are seeking a vaccine for the bird flu that has killed five people in Vietnam and millions of chickens across Asia.

Hundreds of people have been advised to go into quarantine, after health chiefs announced a new cluster of 20 or more possible SARS cases in Toronto.

SEVERE Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) has killed more than 250 people worldwide and infected almost 4,000.

A New York woman who mysteriously died of inhalation anthrax did handle the post at the hospital where she worked.