Houston Mayor Bill White asked the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality on Monday to subject Lyondell Chemical Company's refinery to a public hearing on its discharge of cancer-causing benzene, before granting the city's largest refinery another permit from the state of Texas.

The TCEQ is the agency responsible for monitoring Texas' air quality

Alberta health officials and Roman Catholic Church leaders in the province have turned a vaccination issue into a public debate, when the Calgary Catholic School Division disallowed schoolgirls to receive vaccination against the sexually transmitted human papilloma virus or HPV.

The Calgary Herald reported that Bishop Fred Henry believes that vaccination against STDs is in effect allowing sexual promiscuity and premarital sex among Catholic schoolgirls

One of the pending bills waiting for California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's signature is a proposal to expand the coverage of medical policies to include maternity service, tests for the HPV virus, which could cause cervical cancer, treatment for mental health and substance abuse problems.

But with the wider medical coverage for 18 million California residents, premiums would go up by $383 million annually, equivalent to 0.5 percent of the $74 billion that employers and individuals pay, according to data from the University of California's Health Benefits Review Program

- A Kentucky man is suing a doctor for amputating his penis with out permission.

Phillip Seaton, 61, was scheduled for a circumcision to treat inflammation. He claims he told Dr. John Patterson not to remove anything but the foreskin before the medical staff administered general anesthesia

Young women diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer are no more likely than older women to have a recurrence of the disease than their older counterparts, says a new study.

It is widely believed that young women, 40-years old and younger, with a common form of early breast cancer known as ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) that arises in and is confined to the mammary ducts, have a worse prognosis than older women as they can have a recurrence of breast cancer at some point throughout their lives