The Union Health Ministry implemented a ban on 156 "irrational" FDC medicines, effective immediately. These medicines, including widely used antibiotics, painkillers, and multivitamins, were commonly used to treat fever, cough, and infections. The ban was imposed due to the associated health risks and lack of therapeutic justification for the ingredients in these FDCs.

What are FDC medicines?

FDCs or fixed-dosed combinations, also known as "cocktail drugs," are medications that combine multiple drugs in a single pill. They are designed to treat multiple symptoms or conditions simultaneously. While they offer convenience, they can pose significant risks. These risks include the possibility of overdose, adverse interactions between the drugs, and the development of antibiotic resistance. Additionally, many FDC medicines lack sufficient scientific evidence to support their safety and efficacy.

Expert opinions on FDC medicines

Experts have raised concerns about the use of FDC medicines. They believe that many of these combinations lack sufficient scientific evidence to support their safety and effectiveness. Additionally, the combination of multiple drugs in a single pill can increase the risk of adverse side effects and interactions with other medications.

Experts have also found that FDC medicines may not be as effective as individual drugs in treating certain conditions. It is important to note that safer and more effective alternatives are available for most of the medical conditions that FDC medicines were used to treat. One particular concern is the inclusion of antibiotics in some FDCs. Overuse of antibiotics can contribute to the development of antibiotic resistance, a major public health threat.

The risks of FDC medicines

The use of FDC medicines can lead to adverse effects, including serious ones. Additionally, safer alternatives, tested in clinical trials, are available to treat the same medical conditions. Experts recommend prescribing drugs individually based on a patient's clinical symptoms rather than combining them in FDCs.

The ban on irrational FDC medicines by the Union Health Ministry can be seen as a positive step towards promoting rational drug use and protecting public health. The goal is to eliminate unnecessary and potentially harmful drug combinations. This is a step forward in reducing the risks associated with medication and ensure safer and more effective treatment options for patients.

Researchers at Stanford University have developed a new AI model which can predict more than 100 health conditions including cancer, mental health, cardiovascular issues and death using sleep study data.

SleepFM uses polysomnography, a comprehensive sleep assessment that utilizes various sensors to record brain activity, heart activity, respiratory signals, leg movements, eye movements and more to provide an accurate prediction of future disease risk, according to the study published in Nature on January 6.

Emmanuel Mignot, Craig Reynolds Professor in Sleep Medicine and co-senior author of the study, said, "We record an amazing number of signals when we study sleep. It’s a kind of general physiology that we study for eight hours in a subject who’s completely captive. It’s very data rich."

It remains unclear when SleepFM will be commercially available to the public and whether it will be incorporated into wearable technology such as watches and phones.

How Does It Work?

The AI model has been trained on nearly 600,000 hours of sleep data collected from 65,000 participants which had been split into five-second increments to combine multiple body signals, such as brain activity, heart activity, muscle activity, pulse and breathing and understand how they relate to each other.

James Zou, PhD, associate professor of biomedical data science and co-senior author of the study commented, "One of the technical advances that we made in this work is to figure out how to harmonize all these different data modalities so they can come together to learn the same language."

After being trained to identify and link different body signals, SleepFM was taught how to understand standard sleep analysis tasks such as different stages of sleep and diagnosing the severity of sleep apnea, a serious sleep disorder where breathing repeatedly stops and starts often due to airway blockage or the brain failing to signal muscles.

Once the model was seen successfully identifying sleep-related issues, it was paired with the sleep recordings and health data of 35,000 patients collected over 25 years for it to learn how to identify chronic diseases through nighttime body signals.

Which Diseases Can It Accurately Predict?

Particularly, SleepFM excelled at predicting Parkinson’s disease, dementia, hypertensive heart disease, heart attack, prostate cancer, breast cancer and death.

“We were pleasantly surprised that for a pretty diverse set of conditions, the model is able to make informative predictions,” Zou said.

Even though heart signals were prominently used to predict heart disease and brain signals were predominant in mental health predictions, the researchers noted that it was the combination of all the data modalities that achieved the most accurate predictions.

“The most information we got for predicting disease was by contrasting the different channels. Body constituents that were out of sync. A brain that looks asleep but a heart that looks awake, for example, seemed to spell trouble,” Mignot said.

Zhou added, "From an AI perspective, sleep is relatively understudied. There’s a lot of other AI work that’s looking at pathology or cardiology, but relatively little looking at sleep, despite sleep being such an important part of life.

"SleepFM is essentially learning the language of sleep."

Dozens of Greater Noida residents, including children and teenagers aged 12 to 15, have been found suffering from vomiting, stomach pain, diarrhea, headaches and fever after allegedly consuming water mixed with sewage for the last three days.

Dr Narayan Kishore, CMS, CHC Kasna, told Times of India that over 30 residents of Sector Delta 1 received treatment for the condition at a medical camp. "Around 30 people visited the doctors, of them five to six were given medicines, while others were advised ORS. The situation is under control, and if required, we will organize another camp," he said.

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According to Manoj Choudhary, Greater Noida Industrial Development Authority (GNIDA) Assistant Manager (water department), a dilapidated section of a water pipeline in Block C was found leaking and was repaired immediately by January 7 afternoon. He said inspections were also carried out in other parts of the sector, where two additional leaking pipelines were identified and replaced.

"We checked the quality of water supply post repairs in the evening and found it to be normal," he told TOI.

Despite claims of repairs, affected residents have revealed that the damaged water pipeline has instead been diverted into a drain and sewage is being mixed into a leaking water supply pipeline that runs through the same channel.

Deepak Kumar Bhati, convenor of the sector's RWA said, "Instead of repairing the blocked sewer line, it was diverted into a drain. The uncovered manhole allowed dirty water to seep into an old leaking water pipeline, contaminating the drinking supply. How would anyone feel knowing the water they drink and bathe in is mixed with feces?

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"We pay our bills yet are forced to use contaminated water."

Pramod Bhati, RWA President of Sector Delta 1, added that this was not the first time residents in the area had fallen ill due to contaminated water. According to the official, the recent incident marks the third time such damage has been reported within a week in the sector that houses around 20,000 people across its six blocks, A to F.

What Officials Are Doing To Deal With The Issue?

He added that GNIDA teams are working continuously to maintain water supply lines and that proposals are being prepared to replace pipelines in older sectors facing persistent problems.

Moreover, Ravi Kumar, GNIDA CEO NG has ordered random water testing across Greater Noida to prevent similar incidents and ensure the safety of the water supply, according to News18.

The Indore Crisis?

However, locals claim that the outbreak has instead caused the death of 17 residents, including a six-month-child. The situation has also left Parvati Bai, 67, with kidney failure, a brain stroke and symptoms of Guillain-Barré Syndrome, or GBS.

GBS is a rare condition where your immune system attacks the nervous system and can cause paralysis as well as death, in certain cases.

The outbreak occurred due to lapses in civic infrastructure. Investigation revealed that a toilet constructed directly above a main drinking pipeline near a police outpost, without a mandatory safety tank resulted in the sewage mixing with drinking water.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has announced sweeping changes to the dietary guidelines for Americans, positioning the new food pyramid as a reset of long-standing nutrition policy. Unveiled at a press conference on Wednesday, the revised pyramid places red meat, cheese, fruits, and vegetables at the top, reflecting a renewed focus on whole foods, protein, and healthy fats.

Kennedy described the update as the most significant change to federal nutrition advice in decades, arguing that earlier guidelines unfairly promoted low-fat, highly refined foods while discouraging nutrient-dense options.

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New Food Pyramid 2026: RFK Jr Food Pyramid Moves Away From the Old Food Pyramid Model

The food pyramid 2026 marks a clear departure from the old food pyramid, which emphasized grains and low-fat diets. Under the new dietary guidelines 2026, Americans are encouraged to reduce their reliance on ultra-processed foods and refined carbohydrates while prioritizing protein-rich meals, as per USA Today.

Kennedy said previous dietary advice wrongly framed saturated fat as the primary cause of chronic disease, a claim the new guidelines seek to revisit.

New Dietary Guidelines 2026 Target Added Sugar and Ultra-Processed Foods

As part of the updated dietary guidelines for Americans 2026, the administration has set firmer limits on added sugar consumption and called for a dramatic reduction in highly processed foods. Kennedy and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins stressed that modern diets heavy in refined carbs, excess sodium, and chemical additives have contributed to rising obesity rates, as per USA Today.

According to the administration, more than 70 percent of American adults are now overweight or obese, a trend they attribute largely to dietary patterns shaped by convenience foods and sedentary lifestyles.

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Food Pyramid 2026 Elevates Meat and Dairy in Federal Nutrition Advice

One of the most debated changes in the new food pyramid 2025–2026 is the elevation of red meat, cheese, and other dairy products. The updated framework encourages diets that include meat and dairy as core components, framing them as important sources of protein and healthy fats.

This shift also opens the door for full-fat milk and dairy products to return to school meal programs, a move supporters say reflects newer nutrition science suggesting dairy can be beneficial when consumed in moderation.

RFK Jr Dietary Guidelines Retain Limits on Saturated Fat Intake

Despite the emphasis on protein and fats, the new dietary guidelines still maintain the long-standing recommendation to limit saturated fat to no more than 10 percent of daily calorie intake. Health organizations, including the American Heart Association and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, continue to cite evidence linking excessive saturated fat consumption to heart disease.

These groups argue that the presence of red meat and saturated fat sources at the top of the pyramid risks confusing the public about portion size and frequency.

Old Food Pyramid vs New: Experts Raise Concerns Over Scientific Evidence

The new food pyramid has drawn criticism from several nutrition experts. Stanford University nutrition researcher Christopher Gardner said prioritizing animal-based foods over plant-based protein sources runs counter to decades of research.

Gardner, who previously served on the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, emphasized that beans, legumes, and other plant proteins offer proven cardiovascular benefits that are underrepresented in the updated pyramid.

Brooke Rollins and the Broader Push Behind New Dietary Guidelines

Brooke Rollins framed the changes as part of a broader effort to rethink federal health policy. Alongside Kennedy, she called for Americans to move away from ultra-processed foods and toward diets built around whole, minimally processed ingredients, as per NPR News.

The new dietary guidelines, tied closely to the administration’s MAHA agenda, have also drawn political attention, with figures such as Dr Oz weighing in on the future direction of public health messaging