Workers who suffer job strain are 23-percent more likely to have a heart attack than stress-free counterparts, but the risk is far smaller than smoking or a sedentary lifestyle, a large study published in The Lancet says.

"Job strain is associated with a small, but consistent, increased risk of experiencing a first CHD (coronary heart disease) event such as a heart attack," said Mika Kivimaki, an epidemiologist at University Collegef London who led the probe.

Firecrackers and sporadic gunfire greeted the police-escorted social workers as they drove into northern Rio's Jacarezinho shantytown, home to a large population of crack cocaine addicts.

With one million users, Brazil is the world's largest market for crack, a highly addictive cocaine derivative which is wreaking havoc in impoverished slums, according to a study by the Federal University of Sao Paulo (UNIFESP).

California's Yosemite National Park has said that it has extended its hantavirus warning to 230,000 people after three people died from the rodent-borne disease.

"We are reaching out to additional overnight visitors to raise awareness about this rare disease and to ensure they know where to find information regarding hantavirus," the park said in a statement on its website Thursday.

Many cases of female genital mutilation likely go unreported in Australia, a state minister said Friday after four people were charged over the alleged circumcision of two girls aged 6 and 7.

Two men and two women were charged on Thursday over their involvement in the alleged mutilation of the girls in Sydney homes over the past 18 months.

First they began offering salad, then they added fruit. On Wednesday, McDonald's announced it would put something else on its menu to help customers watching their waistlines: calorie counts.

The fast food giant said that starting next week, it will begin listing calorie information at its more than 14,000 restaurants and drive-through windows across the United States.

U.S. lawmakers called Wednesday for pressure on China to stop the use of organs from executed inmates, as experts charged that transplants had become a business that may target prisoners of conscience.

At a congressional hearing, experts said the United States could act by restricting its citizens from seeking suspicious transplants overseas and by pressing Chinese doctors through international professional organizations.

Deaths linked to the West Nile virus jumped 35 percent in the United States over the past week, amid one of the worst U.S. outbreaks of the mosquito-borne disease, officials said Wednesday.

As of Tuesday, a total of 118 fatalities have been blamed on West Nile virus infections since the beginning of the year, up from 87 on September 2, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The number of cases rose to 2,636 from 1,993 during the same time frame, a 32 percent increase.

The U.S. government has fined a private school for refusing to accept a 13-year-old with HIV, saying it violated a federal anti-discrimination law, the Justice Department said.

The charity-funded school in Pennsylvania said it had "discontinued processing" Abraham Smith's application when it learned he had the virus that causes AIDS, according to a copy of the legal settlement released Wednesday.

Australia slammed as a "sick joke" Wednesday new cigarette packs on sale as part of the national phase-in to plain packaging which play on drab branding and claim it's "what's on the inside that counts."

Tobacco products in Australia will have to be sold in drab, uniform khaki packaging with graphic health warnings from December 1 under a new anti-smoking policy upheld last month by the nation's highest court.

U.S. regulators accused French cosmetics giant L'Oreal of misleading claims in marketing its Lancome line of anti-aging products, according to a letter released Tuesday.

In the letter, addressed to the president of L'Oreal-owned Lancome USA, the Food and Drug Administration said some Lancome products advertised online carry claims that "are intended to affect the structure or any function of the human body, rendering them drugs" under U.S. law.