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Obesity is the biggest threat to women's health

Her annual report, which focuses on women this year, said tackling obesity should be a national priority to avert a "growing health catastrophe". She said the food industry needed to do more or it should face a sugar tax. Dame Sally is also calling for better treatment of ovarian cancer and more open discussion on incontinence. England's top doctor said obesity was so serious it should be a priority for the whole population, but particularly for women because too often it shortened their lives. In England in 2013, 56.4% of women aged 34-44 and 62% of women aged 45-54 were classified as overweight or obese. Obesity increases the risk of many diseases including breast cancer, type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Dame Sally warned that if the food industry did not clean up its act then new taxes may be the only option.She told "I think it is inevitable that manufacturing has to reformulate and resize, that supermarkets and others need to stop ch...

Is Facebook Video a threat to YouTube?

It is a staggering increase - double the views it had in April - which appears to dwarf the billion views YouTube clocks up daily. Facebook's aggressive push into video will surely delight advertisers who can promote their products alongside popular clips. But not everybody is convinced Facebook will eclipse rival YouTube. How did Facebook video grow so quickly?Making clips play automatically, a new video tab in mobile, and suggesting more videos to keep people watching will all have contributed to Facebook's mammoth viewing figures. Facebook also prioritises video in the news feed, or as its founder Mark Zuckerberg puts it: "Helping people discover content that they hadn't really asked for." But the company has been criticised for registering a video as "viewed" if it plays for just three seconds. "It's counting you seeing the video, essentially no more than you scrolling past the video in your news feed, as a 'view',...

Snow leopards face climate change threat

Conservation charity WWF says more than a third of the animal's mountain living areas could become uninhabitable because of climate change. It says plants and trees there are not able to survive in warmer temperatures. The report describes snow leopards as one of the most beautiful and enigmatic big cats. "But it is also one of the most elusive and endangered," it says.WWF says that the animal is threatened not just because of climate change but also because of a combination of other factors including: Habitat fragmentation: the snow leopard's habitat especially in the eastern Himalayas - is being increasingly encroached upon by humans A decline in natural prey, resulting in snow leopards sometimes attacking livestock, which can result in local people killing them Illegal wildlife trade: Snow leopards are being increasingly poached for their body parts.Climate change will exacerbate most of these threats, the report says, further increasing the pre...

Cactus species are under threat, a global study has said

CACTUS Conservationists voiced concern, saying the level of threat to cacti was much greater than previously thought. The plants are a vital component of arid ecosystems, providing a source of food and water for many animals. The results of the assessment by the International Union for Conservation of Nature appear in Nature Plants journal. According to the study, 31% of the world's 1,480 cactus species were under pressure from human activity, such as illegal trading, agriculture and aquaculture as well as land-use change. "The results of this assessment come as a shock to us," said lead author Barbara Goettsch, co-chairwoman of the IUCN's Cactus and Succulent Plant Specialist Group. "We did not expect cacti to be so highly threatened and for illegal trade to be such an important driver of their decline." The assessment reported that the illegal trade of live plants and seeds for the horticultural industry and private collections, as well a...