A trick for less painful shots – If your doctor applies pressure with her thumb at the site of an injection for 10 seconds before giving the shot, it hurts a lot less, says a study in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management.

Life saving gifts – The CPR Prompt Home Learning System ($60) uses an in-depth video, training manual, two mannequins and six replaceable practice lungs to teach CPR to people who have never taken a course.

New air pollution scare – Researchers from the Natural Resources Defense Council estimate that up to 64,000 people die prematurely each year from heart and lung diseases related to fine-particle air pollution.Tea may keep cancer at bay – A recent long-term study of 35,369 postmenopausal women found that those who drank two or more nonherbal tea a day were 60 percent less likely to develop urinary tract cancer and 32 percent less likely to develop cancers of the digestive tract than women who drank less or none at all, according to the findings of the Iowa Women’s Health Study.                                                                                                                                                                                           A better diabetics diet – A Georgetown University study found that diabetics following a 10-percent-fat vegan diet (no diary, eggs, meat or fish) lost 46 percent more weight and had a 59 percent greater reduction in blood sugar levels than a group of diabetics who ate a 3o percent fat nonvegan diet.

RU-486 should be available by summer – Mifepristone, the abortion-inducing drug now available only in Europe, has been given conditional approval by the Food and drug Administration to be sold in the U.S. Patent rights, RU-486 has been used since mid-1997.