If you come to a fork on the Internet, take it. It may end up being beneficial to your health.

The French-based startup Slowcontrol is unveiling at the Consumer Electronics Show this week what it calls the first Internet-connected fork, capable of monitoring the pace of eating to keep people from overdoing it.

As an automatic piano chimed a wedding march, new mother Wang Dan walked down a red carpet towards a hospital room called the "White House", minutes after giving birth in a candlelit water pool.

"I wanted to stay in the White House because it's large and well decorated," said the 28-year-old Wang, who settled with her newborn son into the suite adorned with an enormous rococo style sofa and a Mona Lisa portrait.

Thousands of Spanish medical workers marched through downtown Madrid on Monday to protest against budget cuts and plans to partly privatize their cherished national health service.

The march is part of a series of such demonstrations, described as a "white tide" because of the color of the medical scrubs many protesters wear. Participants on Monday walked behind a large banner saying, "Health care is not to be sold, it's to be defended."

Heart disease and diabetes get all the attention, but what about the many other ways obesity can damage your health?

Carrying too many pounds may lead to or worsen some types of cancer, arthritis, sleep apnea, even infertility. But a new poll suggests few Americans realize the links.

Roll up a sleeve for the blood pressure cuff. Stick out a wrist for the pulse-taking. Lift your tongue for the thermometer. Report how many minutes you are active or getting exercise.

Wait, what?

Authorities in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas say a bacterial disease has killed five babies and sickened 41 others in a remote indigenous community that is experiencing a wave of intense cold and rains.

Chiapas' health department said Sunday in a statement that residents of Emiliano Zapata in the municipality of Yajalon have been urged to stay in their homes and avoid contact with others to prevent the spread of the bacteria that is causing the infection, which is characterized by coughing and fever. Authorities are looking into whether it is whooping cough.

The H1N1 influenza strain known as swine flu killed a 26-year-old Jordanian man on Sunday, Health Minister Abdullatif Wreikat said on Sunday.

"The 26-year-old died in hospital today in Irbid," in northern Jordan, Wreikat told state-run Petra news agency.

Air pollution in Tehran has left 4,460 people dead in a year, an Iranian health official said in reports Sunday, with another sounding the alarm over high dose of carcinogens in domestically-made petrol.

Hassan Aqajani, an adviser to the health minister, made the announcement on state television, and said the Tehran residents died in a year-long period since March 2011.

The nation just suffered its worst year for whooping cough in nearly six decades, according to preliminary government figures.

Whooping cough ebbs and flows in multi-year cycles, and experts say 2012 appears to have reached a peak with 41,880 cases. Another factor: A vaccine used since the 90s doesn't last as long as the old one.

The Food and Drug Administration says its new guidelines would make the food Americans eat safer and help prevent the kinds of foodborne disease outbreaks that sicken or kill thousands of consumers each year.

The rules, the most sweeping food safety guidelines in decades, would require farmers to take new precautions against contamination, to include making sure workers' hands are washed, irrigation water is clean, and that animals stay out of fields. Food manufacturers will have to submit food safety plans to the government to show they are keeping their operations clean.