Britons should eat seven portions of fresh fruit and vegetables a day, according to new research into healthy eating, published on Tuesday.

The state-run National Health Service currently recommends each person eats five 80-gramme (three-ounce) helpings of fruit and vegetables daily.

Grimacing, Mustafa Ahmad slid the scarred stump just below his right knee into his new prosthetic leg. Extending his arms for balance, he slowly rose and hobbled across the packed dirt floor toward the door of his ramshackle tent.

Wild-haired children peered through a gap in the plastic sheet that serves as the wall of his tent, trying to catch a glimpse of the procedure that finally fitted Ahmad with a prosthesis, more than two years after losing his leg during a bombing raid on his hometown in northern Syria.

The White House said Tuesday it had reached its target of signing up seven million people to new insurance plans under President Barack Obama's health care law.

"I think it is fair to say we surpassed everybody's expectations," spokesman Jay Carney said, noting that 7,041,000 people had signed up before a midnight deadline.

Saudi Arabia on Tuesday announced the suspension of visas for Muslim pilgrims from Guinea and Liberia, two African countries hit by an outbreak of the deadly Ebola epidemic.

The "preventive" measure came at the request of the Saudi health ministry "due to the danger of the disease and its highly contagious" nature, state news agency SPA reported.

The consul of Guinea in Lebanon, Ali Saade, confirmed on Tuesday that no Lebanese expatriates in Guinea were infected with the Ebola virus suspected of killing dozens in the African country, the state-run National News Agency reported.

“There are no Lebanese expatriates living in the highly infected Guinean areas. Most of them live in the Capital Conakry where the total number of infections with the Ebola virus are limited to 4 cases that are meanwhile subject to treatment,” said the Consul.

A small technology company based in southern Belgium is set to take on the giant U.S. market with its crowning achievement: an anti-migraine headband.

The product of years of medical and technological research, the device is a diadem fitted with electrodes designed to take the edge off migraines before they develop into acute blinding pain.

When it comes to managing type 2 diabetes in overweight people, stomach-shrinking surgeries are still more effective than trying to shed pounds with pills and lifestyle changes, researchers said Monday.

Three years into a U.S. study that compares various approaches -- gastric bypass, sleeve gastrectomy and simply trying medical counseling, diet, exercise and weight loss medications -- the findings show that the two surgical procedures are still superior at reducing blood sugar and weight.

Spring in Japan brings explosions of pink and white cherry blossoms that provide a beautiful backdrop for picnics across this nature-loving country.

But it also heralds a mass outbreak of facemasks and specialty goggles intended to fend off clouds of pollen that make noses stream and eyes itch.

A Japanese research institute said Tuesday it will punish a young female scientist after a probe found a ground-breaking study on the production of stem cells was fabricated.

Riken institute head, Ryoji Noyori, who jointly won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2001, said in a statement he will "rigorously punish relevant people after procedures in a disciplinary committee."

Medical engineers said Sunday they had created a device the size of a plaster which can monitor patients by tracking their muscle activity before administering their medication.

Methods for monitoring so-called "movement disorders" such as epilepsy and Parkinson's disease have traditionally included video recordings or wearable devices, but these tend to be bulky and inflexible.