Adding fluoride to water should be considered by councils in England to improve dental health, the government's public health advisory body says.

Public Health England urged councils to act after reviewing the impact of water fluoridation on children in areas where it has been introduced.

About 6m people - 10% of the country - currently live in areas with fluoridated water supplies. PHE said it was a "safe and effective" public health measure. Its review found it had reduced tooth decay and hospital admissions for dental problems.

In fluoridated areas, there were 45% fewer children aged one to four admitted to hospital. Levels of general tooth decay were 15% lower for five-year-olds and 11% lower for 12-year-olds. In deprived areas the impact for general tooth decay was even greater. PHE also looked for signs of harms but found none. It has been suggested water fluoridation can increase the risk of some cancers, hip fractures and Downs syndrome.

Sue Gregory, PHE's director of dental public health, said: "These findings highlight the important contribution that water fluoridation makes." She said councils would need to consult their local populations on the issue and conceded there were some technical hurdles to overcome.

Water zones tend to span several local authority areas and so fluoridation could require agreement across regions. England is one of the few countries in Europe that adds fluoride to water. Neither Scotland or Northern Ireland does, while in mainland Europe Spain is the only country with similar levels of fluoridation. However, it is more popular in places such as Australia and the US.

Birmingham was the first place to fluoridate water in the 1960s and since then other areas across the Midlands and in the north west, north east and Yorkshire and the Humber, have taken the step.

But it has proved controversial. Attempts to add fluoride to the water supply in Hampshire in recent years have run into stiff opposition and even ended up in court with campaigners saying they were concerned about the health impacts.

Prof Damien Walmsley, of the British Dental Association, said: "The report is a timely reminder of the significant role that fluoridation plays in reducing tooth decay which remains a significant health problem in England."

But a spokesman for the National Pure Water Association said health chiefs should concentrate on alternatives, such as better dental hygiene, to improve teeth.

READ MORE: Consider mass fluoridation of water, says health body

New research suggests hours of exposure to violent media such as video games can make children react in more hostile and violent ways compared to kids who don't spend lots of time controller-in-hand, sparking new debate about gaming and children.

Ever since Columbine, in which two students went on a deadly rampage at their high school, television, movies, and video games have been a popular target for senseless acts of violence. After the shooting, the media pushed the narrative that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold's inclinations for violent video games, not to mention metal music and goth subculture, were partly to blame for the horrific incident.

Nearly 15 years later, that hasn't discouraged teens from playing video games, especially of the violent ilk. Approximately 90% of children in the U.S. play video games, and more than 90% of those games involve mature content that often includes violence. The connection between violent media and aggression has also spawned a body of research that has gone back and forth on the issue.

Worries about how violence in virtual reality might play out in real life have led legislators to propose everything from taxing violent video games to proposing age restrictions on who can buy them. The inconsistent state of the literature was enough to prompt President Obama in 2013 to call for more research into how violent video games may be influencing kids who use them. While there are studies that don't show a strong influence between violent media and acts of violence, an ever growing body of research does actually support that violent games can make kids act more aggressively in their real-world relationships.

In the latest work to address the question, published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, scientists led by Craig Anderson, director of the center for the study of violence at Iowa State University, found hints that violent video games may set kids up to react in more hostile and violent ways.

READ MORE: Little By Little, Violent Video Games Make Us More Aggressive

SANTIAGO, Chile — More than 300 earthquakes have shaken Chile's far-northern coast the past week, keeping people on edge as scientists say there is no way to tell if the unusual string of tremors is a harbinger of an impending disaster.

The unnerving activity began with a strong magnitude-6.7 quake on March 16 that caused more than 100,000 people to briefly evacuate low-lying areas, although no tsunami materialized and there was little physical damage from the shaking.

But the land has not settled down. More than a dozen perceptible quakes were felt in the city of Iquique just on Monday.

"The situation is out of the ordinary. There's a mix of a string of tremors and their aftershocks that make things more complex to evaluate," Mario Pardo, deputy head of the Universidad de Chile seismology center, told the local newspaper La Tercera. "We can't rule out a larger quake."

Chile is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries. A magnitude-8.8 quake and ensuing tsunami in central Chile in 2010 killed more than 500 people, destroyed 220,000 homes, and washed away docks, riverfronts and seaside resorts.

The strongest earthquake ever recorded on Earth also happened in Chile — a magnitude-9.5 tremor in 1960 that killed more than 5,000 people.

The last recorded big quake to hit the northern area around Iquique was a devastating magnitude-8.3 in 1877. It unleashed a 24-meter-high (nearly 80-foot-high) tsunami, causing major damage along the Chile-Peru coast and fatalities as far away as Hawaii and Japan.

"The latest string of quakes is noteworthy because the last one happened in this seismic zone more than 130 years ago," said Paulina Gonzalez, an expert on seismic analysis at the Universidad de Santiago. "It's a zone where quakes should happen more often, and they haven't in a very long time."

A major quake in the country's north would be a potential threat to the economy of Chile, which is the world's top copper producing nation. Most of the Chilean mining industry is in the northern regions.

Chile's worrisome seismic activity can be traced to just off the country's 4,000-kilometer (2,500-mile) Pacific coast, where the Nazca tectonic plate plunges beneath the South American plate, pushing the towering Andes cordillera to ever-higher altitudes. The 2010 quake released so much energy it shortened the Earth's day slightly by changing the planet's rotation.

READ MORE: Chileans worry over string of 300 quakes in north

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has informed the families of those missing on flight MH370 that the plane likely crashed in the Indian Ocean west of Perth.

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 vanished from civilian radar screens less than an hour after take-off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing with 239 people on board on March 8.

No confirmed sighting of the plane has been made since, but much debris has been found in remote waters off Australia which might be part of the missing plane.

Malaysian Airlines said on Monday it was now "beyond any reasonable doubt" that missing flight MH370 had been lost and there were no survivors.

"Malaysia Airlines have already spoken to the families of the passengers and crew to inform them of this development," said the prime minister.

"For them, the past few weeks have been heartbreaking; I know this news must be harder still.

"I urge the media to respect their privacy, and to allow them the space they need at this difficult time."

In a statement released to the media and shared with the family members of passengers and crew of the missing plane, Malaysian Airlines said "the ongoing multinational search operation will continue, as we seek answers to the questions which remain".

"Alongside the search for MH370, there is an intensive investigation, which we hope will also provide answers," it added.

Stunned relatives in Beijing and Kuala Lumpur reacted with grief and anguish as their worst fears were confirmed.

In dramatic scenes in Beijing, stretcher-bearing paramedics were drafted in to tend to family members devastated by the news, which was broken to them by the airline at a hotel where they had gathered throughout the 17-day ordeal.

At least two people were borne out on stretchers, including a woman whose body was shaking, her eyes glazed and heavy with tears, as a family member held her arm.

In the lobby of a hotel outside Kuala Lumpur where relatives, including many flown in from China by Malaysia Airlines, had gathered, an elderly woman sat down hard on the floor and wept.

"He died too young, I want my son back," she cried out in Mandarin before security escorted her into an elevator.

Subramaniam Gurusamy, 60, whose 34-year-old Malaysian son Puspanathan Gurusamy was on board, had continued to hold out hope of his return throughout the agonising 17-day wait.

"I had the belief that my son would return home safely. But what can be done? This is fate. We must accept it," he told AFP, choking back tears.

Some relatives in Beijing lashed out as they left their meeting with the Malaysian flag carrier, with one man throwing punches and kicks at assembled media. One woman left the room shouting "Murderers! Murderers".

The Malaysian Airlines plane went missing three weeks ago.

READ MORE: Families told plane lost in Indian Ocean

Air pollution kills about 7 million people worldwide every year, with more than half of the fatalities due to fumes from indoor stoves, according to a new report from the World Health Organization.

The agency said air pollution is the cause of about one in eight deaths and has now become the single biggest environmental health risk.

"We all have to breathe, which makes pollution very hard to avoid," Frank Kelly, director of the environmental research group at King's College London, who was not part of the WHO report, told the Associated Press news agency.

One of the main risks of pollution is that tiny particles can get deep into the lungs, causing irritation. Scientists also suspect air pollution may be to blame for inflammation in the heart, leading to chronic problems or a heart attack.

WHO estimated that there were about 4.3 million deaths in 2012 caused by indoor air pollution, mostly people cooking inside using wood and coal stoves in Asia. WHO said there were about 3.7 million deaths from outdoor air pollution in 2012, of which nearly 90 percent were in developing countries.

The new estimates are more than double previous figures and based mostly on modeling. The increase is partly due to better information about the health effects of pollution and improved detection methods. Last year, WHO's cancer agency classified air pollution as a carcinogen, linking dirty air to lung and bladder cancer.

WHO's report noted women had higher levels of exposure than men in developing countries.

"Poor women and children pay a heavy price from indoor air pollution since they spend more time at home breathing in smoke and soot from leaky coal and wood cook stoves," Flavia Bustreo, WHO Assistant Director-General for family, women and children's health, said in a statement.

READ MORE: WHO: Pollution kills 7 million people a year

The remains of more than 15,000 babies were incinerated as 'clinical waste' by hospitals in Britain with some used in 'waste to energy' plants.

The bodies of thousands of aborted and miscarried babies were incinerated as clinical waste, with some even used to heat hospitals, an investigation has found.

Ten NHS trusts have admitted burning foetal remains alongside other rubbish while two others used the bodies in 'waste-to-energy' plants which generate power for heat.
Last night the Department of Health issued an instant ban on the practice which health minister Dr Dan Poulter branded 'totally unacceptable.'
At least 15,500 foetal remains were incinerated by 27 NHS trusts over the last two years alone, Channel 4's Dispatches discovered.
The programme, which will air tonight, found that parents who lose children in early pregnancy were often treated without compassion and were not consulted about what they wanted to happen to the remains.
One of the country's leading hospitals, Addenbrooke's in Cambridge, incinerated 797 babies below 13 weeks gestation at their own 'waste to energy' plant. The mothers were told the remains had been 'cremated.'
Another 'waste to energy' facility at Ipswich Hospital, operated by a private contractor, incinerated 1,101 foetal remains between 2011 and 2013.
They were brought in from another hospital before being burned, generating energy for the hospital site. Ipswich Hospital itself disposes of remains by cremation.
"This practice is totally unacceptable," said Dr Poulter.
"While the vast majority of hospitals are acting in the appropriate way, that must be the case for all hospitals and the Human Tissue Authority has now been asked to ensure that it acts on this issue without delay."
Sir Bruce Keogh, NHS Medical Director, has written to all NHS trusts to tell them the practice must stop.
The Chief Medical Officer, Dame Sally Davies, has also written to the Human Tissue Authority to ask them make sure that guidance is clear.
And the Care Quality Commission said it would investigate the programme's findings.

READ MORE: Aborted babies incinerated to heat UK hospitals

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