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(TOKYO) — Loaves of bread have been taken off store shelves in Japan after the remains of “a small animal” believed to be a rat were found.Production of the bread was halted at a Tokyo factory, with 104,000 packages being recalled, according to Pasco Shikishima Corp.The company apologized and promised compensation.“We will do our utmost to strengthen our quality controls so that this will never happen again. We ask for your understanding and your cooperation,” it said in a statement this week.Japanese media reports said at least two people who bought the bread in Gunma Prefecture, northwest of Tokyo, complained to the company about finding a rodent in the bread.The bread had been sold in various areas, including Ibaraki, Niigata, Kanagawa, Fukushima, Aomori and Tokyo, according to Pasco.Th...

(DES MOINES, Iowa) — As Cary Fowler and Geoffrey Hawtin began thinking about ways to prevent starvation and protect the world's food supply, they came up with what Fowler called “the craziest idea anybody ever had” — a global seed vault built into the side of an Arctic mountain.About 20 years ago, Fowler, now the U.S. special envoy for Global Food Security, and Hawtin, an agricultural scientist from the United Kingdom, envisioned the so-called “doomsday vault” as a backup spot for seeds that could be used to breed new crops if existing seed banks were threatened by wars, climate change or other upheaval. On Thursday, officials in Washington announced that Fowler and Hawtin would be named 2024 World Food Prize laureates for their work.“To a lot of people today, it sounds like a perfectly re...

Sunscreen is a $10 billion business, with a seemingly endless array of products available for sale. Walk into your local drugstore and you’ll find chemical and mineral formulas in virtually every SPF count and format imaginable, from creams to sprays to sticks. So which one should you throw in your beach bag this summer? Here’s how to choose the right sunscreen, according to dermatologists.What’s the difference between chemical and mineral sunscreens?There are two major types of sunscreen: chemical and mineral (also known as physical) formulas. They serve the same purpose—preventing sunburns and other skin damage from the sun’s UV radiation—but they do so in different ways. Sunscreens made from the minerals titanium dioxide and zinc oxide create a physical barrier atop the skin that reflec...

More than 321,000 children in the U.S. lost a parent to a drug overdose from 2011 to 2021, an alarming figure that shows the nation’s obligation to “comprehensively address the needs of individuals, families and communities” when tackling the growing overdose crisis, experts say.A new study published Wednesday in the medical journal JAMA Psychiatry found that the rate of children who lost a parent to an overdose more than doubled in that decade span, jumping from 27 to 63 children per 100,000. In total, the study estimates that 321,566 children in the U.S. lost a parent to a drug overdose in that time span. And while the rates of loss increased consistently each year across all demographics examined in the study, people of color were disproportionately affected by this trend.The highest nu...