A federal district judge on 6 January showed mercy to former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell (Republican), sentencing him to only two years in prison, followed by two years of supervised release, after he was found guilty for conspiring to use his office to promote a dietary supplement company's products in exchange for about $177,000 worth of gifts, loans and trips.

The US must take the lead in a multipronged effort to combat antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and needs a well-financed, coordinated and actionable national plan with measurable goals, timelines and mechanisms for accountability, the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) declared on the eve before the start of the 54th Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC) in Washington.

The opportunities expected to be created under the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) could especially be valuable for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), given trade barriers tend to disproportionately burden those firms, which have fewer resources than larger companies to overcome obstacles, trade officials from both sides of the Atlantic said in a new report.