The U.S. Food and Drug Administration may consider new standards for the levels of arsenic in rice as consumer groups are calling for federal guidance on how much of the carcinogen can be present in food.

So far, FDA officials say they have found no evidence that suggests rice is unsafe to eat. The agency has studied the issue for decades but is in the middle of conducting a new study of 1,200 samples of grocery-store rice products — short and long-grain rice, adult and baby cereals, drinks and even rice cakes — to measure arsenic levels.

Switzerland is deeply divided ahead of a vote Sunday on whether to beef up a ban on smoking in indoor workplaces and public spaces, with supporters stressing the health benefits of less second-hand smoke and opponents decrying a "witch-hunt".

Sitting on the terrace of a Geneva cafe, enjoying a smoke in the early autumn sun, court clerk Isabelle Calapez told Agence France Presse she was "totally opposed" to the expanded ban.

Polish authorities said Wednesday that nationwide seizures netted 119,000 bottles of spirits made in the neighbouring Czech Republic, where methanol-tainted bootleg liquor has claimed 21 lives.

"This doesn't mean that the bottles contain methanol, but their sale will be banned for safety reasons until we have the results of tests," Jan Bodnar, spokesman for Poland's national health inspectorate, was quoted as saying by the country's news agency PAP.

Snakes are able to convert their venom back into harmless molecules according to new research published Wednesday that scientists said could have important implications for diseases like cancer.

The joint British-Australian study of venom and tissue gene sequences in snakes showed that venom not only evolved from regular cells but could be turned back into harmless proteins.

A group campaigning against obesity predicts that more than half the people in 39 U.S. states will be obese — not merely overweight, but obese — by 2030.

Mississippi is expected to keep its crown as the fattest state in America for at least two more decades. The report predicts 67 percent of that state's adults will be obese by 2030. That would be an astounding increase from the current 35 percent.

Two Swedish women are hoping to get pregnant after undergoing what doctors are calling the world's first mother-to-daughter uterus transplants.

Specialists at the University of Goteborg said they performed the surgery over the weekend without complications but added that they won't consider it successful unless the women give birth to healthy children.

Researchers said Monday a new computerized model of part of a rat's cortex predicts connections between neurons, which could help explain how the brains of mammals -- including humans -- works.

"This is a major breakthrough because it would otherwise take decades, if not centuries, to map the location of each synapse in the brain," said Henry Markram, head of the Blue Brain Project at Switzerland's Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne.

Lab-dish tests have raised hopes that a soil bacterium identified nearly 60 years ago could be a "very selective killer" of the germ that causes tuberculosis, a European journal reported on Monday.

Pyridomycin, a natural antibiotic exuded by the bacterium Streptomyces pyridomyceticus, shows promise as a candidate to fight a drug-resistant strain of TB, researchers in Switzerland said.

The U.S. states of Alabama and South Carolina discriminate against HIV-positive prisoners by separating them from others and excluding them from early release programs, singer Elton John said Monday.

Infected inmates also face hurdles accessing treatment they need to manage their disease and stop it from progressing, the British celebrity alleged in an opinion piece published in the Washington Post.

A fertility technique that uses DNA from three parents to create an embryo could become legal in Britain after a public consultation on its ethical implications was launched on Monday.

The results of the consultation will help inform a decision by the government on whether to legalise the technique as early as next year -- potentially making Britain the first country in the world to hold human trials into the treatment, the Daily Telegraph reported.