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As of January 1, women in Oregon don’t need to visit their doctor to get a prescription for birth control. According to Dr. Alison Edelman of OHSU just having birth control availability via a pharmacist doesn’t suggest that preventative health care isn’t essential. Dr. Alison said that the law is not saying such a thing.

She is a supporter of new law, which ‘is actually going to allow increased access to women for something that’s extremely safe and a highly needed by women’.

Gov. Kate Brown signed into law a bill in July, which will permit women to buy birth control without a prescription from doctor, and the expanded access become effective on January 1.

Junior doctors said they have planned a 24-hour strike on Tuesday after the government decided not to think seriously about new contracts. The issue is over the number of working hours.

Negotiators said the government hasn’t fulfilled the demand to cut working hours. The doctors have announced to go on two-day strike on January 26, and if the agreement does not reach an agreement by them, they could also plan a third day for February.

“Throughout this process the BMA has been clear that it wants to reach agreement on a contract that is good for patients, junior doctors and the NHS. This is why, despite overwhelming support for industrial action, the BMA instead sought conciliation talks with the government”, said Dr Mark Porter, British Medical Association council chairman.

Reports have shown that approvals for first-of-a-kind drugs were all-time-high in the previous year. The annual tally of new United States drugs reached to its highest level in past 19 years.

The rise in number of approvals clearly reflect an industry wide focus on drugs meant for diseases that are either rare or are hard to treat.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2015 alone approved approximately 45 drugs with never-before-sold ingredients. The numbers of approvals were higher than that of 2014’s 41 approvals and were the highest since 1996.

As per analysts, drug makers have become more efficient in selecting the most promising drugs in their research and development pipelines.

According to New Jersey officials, a total of 510 bears were killed in this year’s annual bear hunt at the state. This high number of killing makes it the second-highest harvest since 2010, when the bear hunt resumed after a five-year of pause.

After the hunt failed to meet the target set by the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), official’s decided to extend the hunt for four more days. The target set by DEP was to kill around 20% to 30% of tagged bears, but only 18% of the tagged bears were killed during the harvest.

Officials said that although the number of bears killed was quite less than that of 2010, still the yield was significantly higher in number than the hunts in 2012, 2013 and 2014. In all these years the numbers of bears killed were less than 300 per year.

Asian carp could dominate biomass of Lake Erie if the fish establishes there, a new study based on computer modeling has suggested. It also showed that if it happens and the bighead carp moves from the Mississippi River basin, it may account for more than 30% of the entire fish weight of the lake.

It has been found that an invasion of Asian carp, which are growing fast, could be significant for Lake Erie as it could become more than one-third biomass of the lake. The fish could be a threat to many fish species, except smallmouth bass which could benefit by the invasion of Asian carp, as per the study.

British astronaut Tim Peake has delivered a ‘God save the Queen’ message to the monarch directly from space. Peake has personally addressed the Queen in footage live from the International Space Station (ISS) after the Queen sent her own well-wishes to him.

Major Peake was launched into space previous month, and he has thanked the Queen in the minute-long video, saying he hoped his journey would serve as a symbol of ‘international collaboration’ and would be helpful in making the world a better place.

Concluding his message, the ‘humbled’ astronaut said something that was according to him the first ever ‘God save the Queen’ uttered from space.