A deadly Islamist insurgency in northern Nigeria has harmed efforts to eradicate polio in the region, the WHO says, with a resurgence of the potentially paralyzing virus reversing gains.

Nigeria, one of only three countries still considered to have endemic polio, alongside Pakistan and Afghanistan, has accounted for 72 of the 123 polio cases recorded so far this year, a World Health Organization report said.

To ensure there is no cheating at the Paralympics, officials will be testing not just for the usual banned drugs, but for a practice called boosting, where wheelchair athletes do things like break a toe to cause a blood pressure spike to enhance performance.

In able-bodied athletes, intense physical exercise automatically raises the heart rate and blood pressure. Athletes with a severe spinal cord injury, however, don't get that natural boost.

The United States' most influential pediatricians group says the health benefits of circumcision in newborn boys outweigh any risks and insurance companies should pay for it.

In its latest policy statement on circumcision, a procedure that has been declining nationwide, the American Academy of Pediatrics moves closer to an endorsement but says the decision should be up to parents.

Raj Kumar Pun took in HIV-positive orphans no one wanted, and when no one wanted to teach them either, he created a school in the shelter. But now they are running out of money, support and time.

Ten children ages 3 to 10 live in the Saphalta HIV Shiksya Sadan School — the Successful HIV Home and School — in a pink two-story house just outside the capital of this Himalayan nation. But Pun has had to sell the building — his own house — and they must be out by the end of October.

About 300 AIDS patients and their relatives have torn down the main gate of a government office in central China during a protest over unmet demands for financial assistance.

Protester Li Xia says police in Zhengzhou city beat some of the patients with batons after the group gathered outside the Henan provincial government office Monday and blocked the main gate to demand a meeting with officials.

A U.S. appeals court on Friday refused to order the Obama administration to stop funding embryonic stem cell research, despite complaints the work relies on destroyed human embryos.

The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Washington area upheld a lower court decision throwing out a lawsuit that challenged federal funding for the research, which is used in pursuit of cures to deadly diseases. Opponents claimed the National Institutes of Health was violating the 1996 Dickey-Wicker law that prohibits taxpayer financing for work that harms an embryo.

An Alzheimer's treatment from Eli Lilly and Co. failed to slow memory decline in two separate patient studies, but the drug did show some potential to help in mild cases of the mind-robbing condition that is notoriously difficult to treat.

The Indianapolis drug maker’s announcement could be a step toward a long-awaited breakthrough in the fight against the disease. But researchers not tied to the studies — and Eli Lilly itself — cautioned against overreacting to the initial results.

A U.S. court on Friday shot down orders to slap graphic anti-tobacco messages on cigarette packs, saying the government overstepped its authority by trying to "browbeat" smokers into quitting.

In line with campaigns in several other nations, the United States planned from September 22 to require images on cigarette packs including a man smoking through a hole in his throat and a body with chest staples on an autopsy table.

Drug maker Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. has scrapped a potential hepatitis C treatment after a patient participating in a test of the drug died of heart failure.

The New York Company said Thursday that it decided to discontinue development of the drug, labeled BMS-986094, in the interest of patient safety.

Legionnaire's disease, which hit Quebec in mid-July, has infected 65 people and killed six, health authorities of the French-speaking Canadian province said.

"We are very concerned by the current situation," Quebec public health chief Francois Desbiens said.