Australia said Thursday it has no plans to ban smoking after a key court ruling allowing cigarettes to be sold in plain packets, describing the health battle against tobacco as "one step at a time."

Tobacco products will have to be sold in drab, uniform packaging with graphic health warnings in Australia from December 1 after global cigarette firms lost a constitutional challenge against the world-first plan.

Suicide rates can rise by between eight and 15 percent in times of economic hardship, according to studies that separately probed the effects of Europe's economic crisis and of droughts in Australia.

Writing in the BMJ medical journal, researchers estimated the recession may have been to blame for some 1,000 people taking their own lives in Britain between 2008 and 2010.

Some 23,000 cheap Chinese-made cars were Wednesday recalled in Australia after asbestos was found in their engines, with unions demanding to know how they came to be in the country.

Importer Ateco Automotive instructed all Chery and Great Wall dealers to stop selling affected vehicles, with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) closely watching developments.

Global tobacco firms lost a "watershed" court challenge to Australia's plain packaging laws for cigarettes on Wednesday in a closely-watched case health advocates said will have a worldwide impact.

The High Court of Australia ruled the measures, forcing cigarettes and tobacco products to be sold in drab, uniform packaging with graphic health warnings from December 1 this year, did not breach the country's constitution.

Addiction to morphine and heroin can be blocked, according to research released Wednesday which could prove a major breakthrough in treating addicts and in pain relief treatments.

Researchers at the University of Adelaide in Australia worked with colleagues at the University of Colorado in the United States to pinpoint a key mechanism in the body's immune system that amplifies addiction to opioid drugs.

Guatemalans who had been subjected to sexually transmitted diseases by U.S. researchers in the 1940s have appealed a judge's dismissal of their lawsuit.

U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton dismissed the suit two months ago. He ruled that federal law bars claims against the U.S. based on injuries suffered abroad. The victims filed an appeal Monday with the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington.

Drugmakers AstraZeneca PLC and Pfizer Inc. have reached a deal giving Pfizer future rights to sell a nonprescription version of AstraZeneca's blockbuster heartburn drug, Nexium, as early as 2014.

The deal, announced late Monday, could help Pfizer expand its consumer-health business as it continues a restructuring meant to strengthen its core drug business and divest its infant-formula and animal-health businesses. The companies said they're exploring the idea of a partnership to convert other AstraZeneca prescription drugs to over-the-counter medicines.

Swiss pharma giant Roche said Monday it will sell in the United States a drug that treats a diabetes-related illness linked to blindness after getting the regulatory green light.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) decision means that Roche can take Lucentis to the U.S. to treat diabetic macular oedema (DME), a condition that causes swelling, blurred vision and blindness in people with diabetes.

A recent outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus is "under control" but has not yet been fully eradicated, a Ugandan health official said Monday.

Two suspicious cases were admitted to a hospital close to the scene of the outbreak over the weekend, bringing to nine the total number of people currently in isolation, the official said.

Nepal on Monday urged foreign travellers to take precautions against cholera after 13 people died in an outbreak in the remote west of the country.

Visitors were urged by GD Thakur, director of the Himalayan nation's epidemiology and disease control department, to drink boiled or mineral water and "pay attention to their personal care and hygiene".