Today's Globe: elder home care worries, Biederman agreement, trans fat ban, vitamins and cancer, elderly falls, cholera in Zimbabwe, free antibiotics, drug settlement, science policy, Amy Samuels

More than 300 disabled senior citizens will enter the new year on a waiting list for basic home care services, not knowing when or whether the assistance might arrive, because of state budget cuts.

Dr. Joseph Biederman, a prominent child psychiatrist whose relationship with drug makers is under scrutiny, will temporarily suspend his ties to the pharmaceutical industry under an agreement reached with his employer, Massachusetts General Hospital.

In the first three months since Boston banned trans fat, more than 99 percent of restaurants visited by city inspectors had eliminated the artery-clogging ingredient from French fries, chicken fingers, and other dishes.

Beta carotene, vitamin C, and vitamin E supplements taken for years failed to lower overall cancer risk in the latest study to cast doubt on the possibility that such dietary supplements can prevent cancer, researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School report.

Massachusetts health officials say they are making a new push to help prevent falls in the elderly.

The rate of cholera infections and deaths in Zimbabwe shows no signs of slowing, the World Health Organization said yesterday.

The supermarket chain Stop & Shop said it will offer some antibiotics free of charge to attract customers grappling with the US recession.

The Massachusetts attorney general's office says Pennsylvania drug maker Cephalon Inc. has agreed to a nearly $4.7 million payment to settle allegations of off-label marketing of three pharmaceutical products.

"America needs a new policy toward science," Jim Gomes, director of the Mosakowski Institute for Public Enterprise at Clark University, writes on the op-ed page. "We should support it, not denigrate it."

Traveling the world to research animal behavior, Dr. Amy Samuels hopscotched continents, and the breadth of her experience made her observations all the more incisive. Dr. Samuels, whose findings opened windows into the world of dolphin behavior, died Dec. 9 of cancer in her West Falmouth home. She was 57.