A host of potential toxins, allergens and traces of endangered animals showed up in DNA sequencing tests on 15 Chinese traditional medicines, researchers said on Thursday.

Such therapies have been used in China for more than 3,000 years, but have risen in popularity outside Asia in recent decades and now amount to a global industry worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year, according to the study in PLoS Genetics.

Brazil's Supreme Court on Thursday declared abortion legal in cases of fetuses without brains, a decision that ends a debate started eight years ago amid protests from religious groups.

By a vote of 8-to-2, the Supreme Court said forcing women to maintain their pregnancies when their fetuses have been diagnosed with anencephaly creates a risk to their physical and psychological health.

The European Union and the UN's food agency announced an agreement on Thursday to manage vast stocks of obsolete pesticides in the former Soviet Union, warning they had become a "serious threat".

The EU and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) will spend seven million euros ($9.1 million) over the next four years to help contain the risks in 12 countries in the region, spanning Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

The number of people with dementia is expected to almost double to 65.7 million by 2030 as the world population ages, according to a World Health Organization report published Wednesday.

And by 2050 the number of sufferers could be more than three times the current figure of 35.6 million, the U.N. body said.

A Japanese study Wednesday said regular seaweed consumption among post-menopausal women heightened their risk of developing thyroid cancer, linking it to iodine in the macrobiotic food.

A 14-year national survey of nearly 53,000 Japanese women, aged between 40 and 69, found that the group reported 134 thyroid cancer cases, including 113 cases of papillary carcinoma, a common type of the illness.

U.S. health authorities on Tuesday ordered revised labels on some types of birth control including German pharmaceutical giant Bayer's Yaz pills to advise of a possibly higher risk of blood clots.

"Women who use birth control pills with drospirenone (like Yaz) may have a higher risk of getting a blood clot," said a new Yaz label on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration website.

In Brazil, a country known for girls in mini-bikinis and where body-consciousness borders on obsession, nearly half the population is overweight, a study by the Ministry of Health released Tuesday found.

"There is a tendency toward increased weight and obesity in the country. It's time to reverse the trend to avoid becoming a country like the United States," said Health Minister Alexandre Padilha.

A test to measure the heart's electrical activity could help predict future heart attacks in otherwise healthy adults over 70, said a U.S. study on Tuesday.

Researchers followed 2,192 healthy adults aged 70-79 for a period of eight years, according to the study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

An Indian health warning on cigarette packets that uses an apparent picture of England footballer John Terry with a set of blackened lungs is to be withdrawn, officials said Wednesday.

Terry's London-based lawyers had threatened to sue over the blurry photograph featuring the head and shoulders of a man closely resembling the former England captain and current skipper of Premier League side Chelsea.

A toxic ingredient in a popular herbal remedy is linked to more than half of all cases of urinary tract cancer in Taiwan where use of traditional medicine is widespread, said a U.S. study Monday.

Aristolochic acid (AA) is a potent human carcinogen that is found naturally in Aristolochia plants, an ingredient common in botanical Asian remedies for aiding weight loss, easing joint pain and improving stomach ailments.