U.N. aims to make first air drops of food to besieged in Syria: Egeland

The United Nations plans to make its first air drops of food aid in Syria, to Deir al-Zor, a town of 200,000 besieged by Islamic State forces, the chair of a U.N. humanitarian task force said on Thursday. Jan Egeland, speaking to reporters after the task force met in Geneva, said that the U.N.'s World Food Programme (WFP) had a "concrete plan" for carrying out the operation in coming days, but gave no details.

Colombia's forecast on Zika-linked birth defect may be too high: minister

By Julia Symmes Cobb and Luis Jaime Acosta BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia, seen as a key test case for the impacts of a Zika outbreak, is reconsidering its own forecast of babies likely to be born with a rare birth defect linked to the mosquito-borne virus, indicating that it may be too high. In an interview, Health Minister Alejandro Gaviria suggested the Andean nation may revise downward its projection of 500 to 600 cases of Zika-linked microcephaly, as the condition, marked by an abnormally small head, has not yet shown up in fetal ultrasounds. "The extrapolation of Brazil's figures to Colombia, which is how we got the projection, now doesn't seem reasonable." Much remains unknown about Zika, including whether the virus actually causes microcephaly.

Colombia: 3,177 pregnant women with Zika; no microcephaly

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos said Saturday that there's no evidence Zika has caused any cases of the birth defect known as microcephaly in his country, though it has diagnosed 3,177 pregnant women with the virus.