International scientists on Friday agreed to a temporary two-month halt to controversial research on a bird flu virus that may be easily passed among humans, citing global health concerns.

Two separate teams of researchers, one in the Netherlands and the other in the United States, found ways late last year to engineer the H5N1 virus so that it was transmitted among mammals, something that has previously been rare.

A baby believed to be the third smallest birth-weight infant ever to survive left hospital in Los Angeles, doctors and the proud parents said.

Melinda Star Guido was born last August, 16 weeks early, weighing only 9.5 ounces (270 grams) -- less than a can of soda or the same as two iPhones -- and has spent nearly five months in aneonatal intensive care unit.

Obesity among children andadults has almost doubled over the past 15 years, something which could alsoincrease the prevalence of chronic diseases in the next generations, warnedresearchers at the American University of Beirut.

During a special half-dayseminar held at AUB on January 20, 2012, the latest results of a three-yearcollaborative study on undernutrition and obesity were disseminated.

Mexico enacted tough new rules Thursday to ban advertising of "miracle cures" for weight loss, sagging body parts and more serious illnesses like prostate ailments, chronic fatigue and even cancer.

Mexico has a long history of faith healers and home remedies, but the problem has come to a head in the last few years with a constant stream of ads on television for more "scientific" sounding creams that supposedly lift or enlarge breast and buttocks, magnets that help users lose weight, or pills and powders that cure gastric problems or diabetes.

Good news: Sex is safe for most heart patients. If you're healthy enough to walk up two flights of stairs without chest pain or gasping for breath, you can have a love life.

That advice from a leading doctors' group on Thursday addresses one of the most pressing, least discussed issues facing survivors of heart attacks and other heart patients.

A new government study suggests a lot of teenage girls are clueless about their chances of getting pregnant.

In a survey of thousands of teenage mothers who had unintended pregnancies, about a third who didn't use birth control said the reason was they didn't believe they could pregnant.

South Africa, home to the highest number of HIV cases in the world, should see a massive reduction by the end of the decade after a sea-change in government policy, a UNAIDS official said Thursday.

"It now has more people with HIV infections than any country in the world, with 5.6 million. That is because a lack of political commitment before," said Sheila Tlou, UNAIDS regional director for East and Southern Africa.

Vietnam on Thursday reported its first human death from bird flu in nearly two years, as the virus also claimed the life of a toddler in Cambodia.

Concerns about avian influenza have risen in the region after China in late December reported its first fatality from the H5N1 virus in 18 months, but Vietnamese authorities said there was no need to be alarmed.

A long-term fall in the global abortion rate has tapered off and the number of unsafe pregnancy terminations is rising worryingly, according to a report published by The Lancet on Thursday.

Between 1995 and 2003, the number of abortions around the world for every 1,000 women aged between 15 and 44 fell from 35 to 29.

The Indian government on Tuesday dispatched a team of medical experts to the financial capital, Mumbai, to assess reports of a handful of cases of apparently untreatable tuberculosis.

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said senior doctors from its Central TB Division and the World Health Organization had been sent to the city to meet public health officials to "ascertain the facts" of the cases.