The Howard Hughes Medical Institute announced Tuesday the selection of the top 56 U.S. biomedical scientists whose medical researches would be funded by the institute.

Over $600 million has been set aside by the institute for the new batch of HHMI investigators. The batch is made up of 42 men and 14 women from 31 institutions across the U.S. The 56 have medical careers spanning the globe, including works in China, Israel, Argentina, Belgium and the Netherlands

Two different studies on the quality of drinking water in Nepal revealed that 90 percent of the samples were found to be contaminated, exceeding guidelines set by the World Health Organization (WHO).

A team of bacteriologists from the Nepal Academy of Science and Technology (NAST) and Central Department of Microbiology (CDM) tested 114 water samples from stone spouts, taps and tube wells which revealed the coliform in 90.35 percent

China's Ministry of Health on Monday revealed that some 1,326 people across the region died of infectious diseases between the months of September and October this year, with 660 and 666 recorded deaths respectively.

The Ministry has identified three classes of infectious diseases such as Class A (plague and cholera), Class B (25 infectious diseases including viral hepatitis) and Class C (10 infectious diseases such as influenza)

Due to a nationwide outbreak of cholera and other food-borne diseases like diarrhea, health officials on Thursday said a northern Vietnamese province has banned wedding banquets in restaurants and hotels.

Nguyen Trong Quynh, chief of the provincial People's Committee, said Thanh Hoa province had imposed a temporary ban on serving food at wedding parties and funerals

Representatives of the United Nations from different levels started monitoring the affected sites where viral cholera was found among the patients of diarrhea in Saptari district of Nepal.

The U.N. took the measure after the diarrhea spread throughout the district claimed 34 lives. The monitoring teams in the affected sites include UN officer Leath Beaker, Dr. Sarvesh Jha from UNFPA, Uma Adhikari from UNICEF among others, the ekantipure.com, a local news portal, reported