HEALTH/FITNESS

Photo Credit: Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File

The 19-year-old daughter of NFL Hall of Famer and “Good Morning America” co-anchor Michael Strahan is undergoing treatment for brain cancer.

Isabella Strahan appeared on a prerecorded videotape segment sitting next to her father while discussing her diagnosis of medulloblastoma, a cancerous brain tumor, with fellow GMA co-anchor Robin Roberts.

The segment was shot at the show’s studios in New York on Wednesday and aired Thursday during the broadcast of the morning news show.

Photo Credit: Martial Trezzini/Keystone

The head of the U.N. health agency said Wednesday holiday gatherings and the spread of the most prominent variant globally led to increased transmission of COVID-19 last month.

Photo Credit: Mikal Schlosser/University of Copenhagen

Ancient DNA helps explain why northern Europeans have a higher risk of multiple sclerosis than other ancestries: It’s a genetic legacy of horseback-riding cattle herders who swept into the region about 5,000 years ago.

The findings come from a huge project to compare modern DNA with that culled from ancient humans’ teeth and bones — allowing scientists to trace both prehistoric migration and disease-linked genes that tagged along.

Photo Credit: Andrew Medichini

Pope Francis called Monday for a universal ban on what he called the “despicable” practice of surrogate motherhood, as he included the “commercialization” of pregnancy in an annual speech listing threats to global peace and human dignity.

In a foreign policy address to ambassadors accredited to the Holy See, Francis lamented that 2024 had dawned at a time in which peace is “increasingly threatened, weakened and in some part lost.”

Citing Russia’s war in Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas war, the issue of migration, climate crises and the “immoral” production of nuclear and conventional weapons, Francis delivered a list of the ills afflicting humanity and the increasing violation of international humanitarian law that allows them.

But Francis also listed smaller-scale issues that he said were threats to peace and human dignity, including surrogacy. He said the life of the unborn child must be protected and not “suppressed or turned into an object of trafficking.”

“I consider despicable the practice of so-called surrogate motherhood, which represents a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child, based on the exploitation of situations of the mother’s material needs,” he said.

Photo Credit: Toby Talbot

Consulting firm McKinsey and Co. has agreed to pay $78 million to settle claims from insurers and health care funds that its work with drug companies helped fuel an opioid addiction crisis.

The agreement was revealed late Friday in documents filed in federal court in San Francisco. The settlement must still be approved by a judge.

Under the agreement, McKinsey would establish a fund to reimburse insurers, private benefit plans and others for some or all of their prescription opioid costs.