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Moderna has secured the European Commission’s go-ahead for its combination flu and COVID-19 vaccine, handing the mRNA specialist a much-needed regulatory win after a rough few months of dealing with the U.S. FDA. The shot, which will carry the brand name mCOMBRIAX, combines the next-generation COVID-19 vaccine mNEXSPIKE and the investigational flu vaccine mRNA-1010. The European approval covers its use across all 27 European Union member states—plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway—for the active immunization of people 50 years and up, according to a Tuesday company release. (Manalac, 4/22)

Four years ago, Dr. Brandon Williams, an internal-medicine doctor at a hospital in La Jolla, Calif., reached a breaking point. An increase in patients, not enough medical staff, the threat of malpractice lawsuits, and distress about patients’ inability to pay for healthcare got so bad that he developed post-traumatic stress disorder. One of his colleagues died by suicide. He didn’t want to stop practicing medicine—but he wanted to stop practicing medicine in the United States. He and his wife, Ellen Williams, 38, started looking in Europe for a better option. Then he got a letter from a medical recruiter in New Zealand. (Keates, 4/23)

Federal health officials reported on Monday that cases of a flesh-eating parasitic infection continue to be detected near the United States. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said a New World screwworm case was confirmed in the Mexican state of Nuevo León, approximately 62 miles from the Texas border. This marks the northernmost active case in Mexico. USDA said the current risk to livestock, other animals and people in the U.S. remains very low and there is currently no evidence of NWS among animals in the U.S. (Kekatos and Joseph, 4/22)

DNA and other confidential health data from 500,000 people who volunteered for a massive U.K. health study were offered for sale online in China following a data breach this week, the British government said Thursday. The information from the U.K. Biobank database was found listed for sale on the website Alibaba, but names, addresses, contact details or telephone numbers were not included, the technology minister, Ian Murray, told lawmakers. Murray said he could not give a complete guarantee that nobody could be identified as the data could include gender, age, month and year of birth, socioeconomic status, lifestyle habits, and measures from biological samples. (Pylas, 4/23)

Norway plans to restrict access to social media for children under 16, joining a growing number of countries responding to concerns about the potential harm kids face online. The bill comes after “overwhelming” demand from the public, the government said Friday. It plans to bring the legislation to parliament before the end of the year. The limit will apply up until January 1 the year a child turns 16 with technology companies responsible for age verification, the government said. (Lundgren and Taksdal Skjeseth, 4/24)

A Brazilian gang founded in the country’s violent prisons is fast becoming one of the world’s biggest criminal organizations, reshaping global cocaine flows from South America to Europe’s busiest ports and edging into the U.S. Long under Washington’s radar, the First Capital Command, known by its Portuguese initials PCC, started out as a disgruntled band of inmates fighting for soap and toilet paper in the 1990s. (Pearson, 4/20)

The House of Mercy hospice looks after the abandoned and the ill, along with people driven from their homes by the fighting. In the chaos of war, it is a center of care, and of prayer. (Didur and Vinograd, 4/23)