Sometimes anal cancer causes no symptoms at all. But bleeding is often the first sign of the disease. The bleeding is usually minor. At first, most people assume the bleeding is caused by hemorrhoids (painful, swollen veins in the anus and rectum that may bleed). They are a benign and fairly common cause of rectal bleeding.

Important symptoms of anal cancer include:

• Rectal bleeding
• Rectal itching
• A lump or mass at the anal opening
• Pain or a feeling of fullness in the anal area
• Narrowing of stool or other changes in bowel movements
• Abnormal discharge from the anus
• Swollen lymph nodes in the anal or groin areas

Most often these types of symptoms are more likely to be caused by benign (non-cancer) conditions, like hemorrhoids, anal fissures, or anal warts. Still, if you have any of these symptoms, it’s important to have them checked by a doctor so that the cause can be found and treated, if needed. 

Hurricane Ophelia has strengthened to a Category 2 storm with 100mph winds, as it makes its way across the Atlantic towards Britain. 

The US National Hurricane Center has been warning that the storm, which is currently 670miles south-west of the Azores, is becoming stronger and its remnants are set to hit the UK on Sunday and Monday. 

The volatile weather system could bring heavy downpours and gusts of up to 75mph by the time it hits Britain's shores at the start of next week, with the mwarning that the unsettled weather is expected to cause disruption. The Met Office today posted two satellite images of Ophelia, which were captured by the US National Hurricane Center.

The pictures, which were taken six hours apart at 4am and 10am, show how the storm which appears shaped like a 'cucumber' has increased in size as it looms menacingly over the Atlantic Ocean.

Alex Burkhill, a Met Office forecaster, said: 'Ophelia became a hurricane overnight and the forecast track takes it eastwards towards Iberia for the weekend.

'After that indications are that it will then have weakened. Then it will continue its way towards the British Isles, probably reaching us very early next week. The west of Britain will see the worst of the weather, with winds of 60mph to 75mph forecast.

Its arrival in the UK will coincide with the 30th anniversary of the Great Storm of 1987, which hit southern England overnight on October 15 and caused damage estimated at £1billion as well as claiming 18 lives.

The strong winds are expected to arrive after a possible 77F (25C) heatwave this weekend that will see hot air pulled up from southern Spain that will bring conditions more associated with summer from tomorrow.

The warmth is also being fuelled by the remnants of Hurricane Nate and will provide a respite for North West England which was under a weather warning yesterday, with up to 4in (100mm) of rain forecast to fall in Cumbria. .

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned the risk of an epidemic spreading is high after more than 231 cases were identified in Madagascar in just two months.

Madagascar is the most seriously affected country in the world and, although large outbreaks of the disease are rare, it is also endemic in the Congo and Peru.

And there are a surprisingly large number of other nations, including the US, which occasionally experience cases of the deadly disease due to animals carrying the bacteria. In the US, the plague is commonly spread by rats in rural areas and humans can become infected by cats and dogs.

Recently a public health warning was issued in northern Arizona, although there have not been more than a couple of isolated cases. From 2010 to 2015 there were 584 deaths from the plague reported around the world.

However, these were isolated cases, with only a few large-scale epidemics recognised by WHO this century.

The last major emergency was declared in Peru back in 2010 after 17 cases of the plague were reported in the Ascope province of Department La Libertad. And, a year before, a cluster outbreak of pulmonary plague cases were found in the remote town of Ziketan in China’s Qinghai province.

Twelve people were confirmed to have the disease while hundreds more had to be quarantined.

One man died after helping to bury the first victim, a 64-year-old man, as the disease swept through the town. The pneumonic, highly contagious, form of plague - known as the Black Death - is particularly dangerous, and can be passed on through coughing and always proves fatal unless it is caught early. Less contagious, but still dangerous is the bubonic strain of the disease.

It is passed on by a bacteria found in small mammals and their fleas.

Both types contributed to the deaths of more than 50 million people in Europe during the Middle Ages. 

WHO says the number of people dying from plague in Madagascar has risen in recent years even though the total number of infections has not increased.

This has been blamed on a deteriorating health system and rising poverty in the country.

Last week, the WHO delivered 1.2 million doses of antibiotics and released $1.5 million to fight the new epidemic. 

Breathing In (Inhalation)

When you breathe in, or inhale, your diaphragm contracts (tightens) and moves downward. This increases the space in your chest cavity, into which your lungs expand. The intercostal muscles between your ribs also help enlarge the chest cavity. They contract to pull your rib cage both upward and outward when you inhale.

As your lungs expand, air is sucked in through your nose or mouth. The air travels down your windpipe and into your lungs. After passing through your bronchial tubes, the air finally reaches and enters the alveoli (air sacs).

Through the very thin walls of the alveoli, oxygen from the air passes to the surrounding capillaries (blood vessels). A red blood cell protein called hemoglobin (HEE-muh-glow-bin) helps move oxygen from the air sacs to the blood.

At the same time, carbon dioxide moves from the capillaries into the air sacs. The gas has traveled in the bloodstream from the right side of the heart through the pulmonary artery.

Oxygen-rich blood from the lungs is carried through a network of capillaries to the pulmonary vein. This vein delivers the oxygen-rich blood to the left side of the heart. The left side of the heart pumps the blood to the rest of the body. There, the oxygen in the blood moves from blood vessels into surrounding tissues.

(For more information on blood flow, go to the Health Topics how the heart works article.)

Breathing Out (Exhalation)

When you breathe out, or exhale, your diaphragm relaxes and moves upward into the chest cavity. The intercostal muscles between the ribs also relax to reduce the space in the chest cavity.

As the space in the chest cavity gets smaller, air rich in carbon dioxide is forced out of your lungs and windpipe, and then out of your nose or mouth.

Breathing out requires no effort from your body unless you have a lung disease or are doing physical activity. When you're physically active, your abdominal muscles contract and push your diaphragm against your lungs even more than usual. This rapidly pushes air out of your lungs.

The animation below shows how the lungs work. Click the "start" button to play the animation. Written and spoken explanations are provided with each frame. Use the buttons in the lower right corner to pause, restart, or replay the animation, or use the scroll bar below the buttons to move through the frames.

Air pollution causes more than 500,000 premature deaths across Europe each year despite 'slowly' improving air quality on the continent, the EU's environment authority.

Although data from the Copenhagen-based European Environment Agency (EEA) reveals some encouraging signs, in large part the result of new technologies, air pollution remains the leading environmental cause of premature death in the region.

In its latest report, the EAA said 520,400 premature deaths in 41 European countries were caused by air pollutants generated by the burning of fossil fuels in 2014, compared with 550,000 in 2013. Of these, four out of five deaths (428,000) were directly linked to fine particulate matter. 

These measure less than 2.5 microns and can enter a person's lungs and even the bloodstream.

Data collected at monitoring stations showed that 82 per cent of the EU's urban population was exposed to these microscopic particulates, known as PM2.5, in 2015.

This is down from 85 per cent in 2013.

Other sources of air pollution linked to the premature deaths include nitrogen dioxide, emitted in the air, and ground-level ozone caused by motor vehicle emissions.

Within the 28 European Union members, fine particulates were responsible for more than three out of four premature deaths (399,000 out of 487,600) in 2014. 'The European Commission is committed to tackling this and help member states make sure that the quality of their citizens' air is of the highest standard,' said Karmenu Vella, the EU commissioner for the environment, maritime affairs and fisheries.

Research in August revealed the number of cases of lung cancer among non-smokers has doubled in the last decade, with experts also blaming air pollution. If the trend continues, the number of deaths from lung cancer among non-smokers will leapfrog those among nicotine users in a decade.

Previously, nine in ten cases of the disease were linked to cigarette use, but this proportion has decreased as more people shun the habit.

China has also seen a sharp rise in the incidence of lung cancer in the past 10-15 years, with many blaming heavy smog in cities. 

Experts at the China Academy of Medical Sciences said they had noticed more cases among non-smokers and women. 

Its study said there had been a rapid increase in a form of lung cancer that develops deep in the lung and is not associated with tobacco use.

China has been waging a battle against air pollution, with concentrations of PM2.5 often topping 300 micrograms per cubic metre.

Last year's national average stood at 47 micrograms, with only a quarter of cities meeting the country's official air quality guideline of 35 micrograms.

The World Health Organisation recommends levels of no more than 10 micrograms. 

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In the development of new drugs, taking something from nature and modifying it has been a successful tactic employed by medicinal chemists for years. Now, with the help of nanotechnology, researchers are turning once-discarded drug candidates into usable drugs.

An estimated 40% of clinical approved drugs fall into the category where either the natural compound itself or a modified version is the approved drug. These include statins (found in bacterial secretions) used to lower cholesterol, quinines (found in cinchona trees) as anti-malarials and paclitaxel (found in yew trees) as anti-cancer medication.

Many of these natural products are toxins produced by plants or animals as a form of defence. And scorpion venom has been gaining interest as a source of new drugs. It contains a mixture of biological chemicals called peptides, some of which are known to trigger cell death by forming pores in biological membranes. Cell death can be useful if we are able to target, say, tumour cells to auto-destruct.

These toxins can have very potent effects. For instance, one particular small peptide, known as TsAP-1, isolated from the Brazilian yellow scorpion (Tityus serrulatus), has both anti- microbial a And anti cancer properties 

However, harnessing this kind of power for clinical good has so far been challenging because these toxins kill both tumours and healthy cells. One method to control such toxicity is through using nanotechnology to build specific anti drug delivery vehicles  If successful, the toxic drug is released to kill only unwanted tissues in a body.