Health officials in Indiana and Kentucky say they are investigating farms, distributors and retailers after an outbreak of salmonella that has killed two and sickened at least 141 people nationwide was linked to cantaloupe grown in southwestern Indiana.

Officials Friday advised all Indiana residents to discard cantaloupes purchased since July 7.

Groundbreaking work with lab mice has boosted hopes for a male contraceptive pill, researchers in the United States reported on Thursday.

A compound initially sketched as a candidate for blocking cancer has been found to stop sperm generation in mice, they said.

Aircraft have begun spraying pesticide over parts of Dallas, Texas to combat an outbreak of mosquito-borne West Nile Virus blamed for 17 deaths this year, authorities said Friday.

The Texas Department of State Health Services said the aircraft covered 52,000 acres of Dallas County on Thursday night, opening a new front to stop the spread of West Nile Virus.

A proposal to open treatment centers in the Colombian capital for drug addicts is causing a stir in this cocaine-producing Latin American country.

The project, the brainchild of Bogota mayor Gustavo Petro, is aimed at curbing drug-related crime. Petro's office says it is similar to programs in Canada, Portugal, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

Cuban health officials warned Thursday about an increased number of mosquitoes in the country's urban areas that can spread diseases such as dengue fever.

The communist island's 23 largest municipalities are affected by an uptick of the Aedes aegypti mosquito, including the capital Havana, state television reported.

An overwhelming majority of New Yorkers oppose Mayor Michael Bloomberg's unprecedented proposal for banning super-sized sweet drinks and his support for breastfeeding, a poll found Thursday.

The Quinnipiac University poll found that 54 percent of New Yorkers oppose Bloomberg's planned prohibition restricting soda drink servings to no more than 16 ounces (almost half a liter). Some 42 percent of respondents backed the measure that could go into effect next year.

Tobacco use is massively entrenched in developing countries, where one of the biggest worries is the rise of smoking among women, according to a study published on Friday in The Lancet.

A survey of 16 countries that are home to three billion people found that 48.6 percent of all men and 11.3 percent of women are tobacco users, especially in poorer economies, where more girls are starting to smoke early and often at the same age as boys.

The Czech Republic is contemplating a blanket ban on smoking in restaurants, a step that would put the country on par with many of its EU peers, Czech media said Thursday.

"We will submit a new version of the law, the toughest ever here -- a complete ban on smoking in restaurants," the Lidove noviny broadsheet quoted deputy health minister Martin Plisek as saying.

Scientists in Germany and Africa on Wednesday said they had found two variants of genes that help to explain why some lucky individuals do not develop severe malaria.

The two variants were netted in a comparison of 1,325 people in the West African state of Ghana who had fallen ill with severe falciparum malaria and of 828 counterparts who were otherwise healthy.

The southwestern U.S. state of Texas is battling an outbreak of the West Nile virus, with 17 deaths blamed on the mosquito-borne disease, authorities said Wednesday.

Throughout the state 465 people have been sickened since the start of the year, putting it on track to have the most cases since the disease first emerged a decade ago, the Texas Department of State Health Services said.