A Catholic couple has asked the Philippines' top court to stop a historic birth control law, their lawyer said Thursday, in the first of many legal challenges church leaders have vowed against the measure.

The petition was filed Wednesday at the Supreme Court by lawyer James Imbong and his wife, who claim the law signed by President Benigno Aquino two weeks ago was unconstitutional.

India's Supreme Court said Thursday that unregulated clinical trials of new drugs were causing "havoc" in the country as it ordered the health ministry to monitor any new applications for tests.

The comments were made during a hearing on a petition detailing deaths and health problems caused by clinical trials carried out on Indians, often without their knowledge or consent.

Turns out a few extra pounds may not be such a bad thing, according to a new analysis of nearly three million adults that showed people who are overweight or slightly obese may live longer.

But experts were quick to caution that the possible benefits dropped off when the "few" extra pounds turned into many.

Cholera has broken out in northern Zambia this week, with at least 30 cases recorded in the past three days, a health official said Wednesday.

"We have so far 30 suspected cases of cholera admitted at Mambilima Mission hospital," regional medical officer Lackson Ndhlovu told public radio station Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC).

A sperm donor in Kansas is fighting a state effort to force him to pay child support for a child conceived through artificial insemination by a lesbian couple.

Forty-six-year-old William Marotta told The Topeka Capital-Journal he's "a little scared about where this is going to go, primarily for financial reasons."

This is your brain on sugar — for real. Scientists have used imaging tests to show for the first time that fructose, a sugar that saturates the American diet, can trigger brain changes that may lead to overeating.

After drinking a fructose beverage, the brain doesn't register the feeling of being full as it does when simple glucose is consumed, researchers found.

The use of antidepressants during pregnancy is not linked to a higher overall risk of stillbirth and death in newborns, a study said Tuesday, confounding a long-held opposing view of such drugs.

The Swedish study of more than 1.6 million births in five Nordic countries included nearly 30,000 women who had filled in a prescription for an SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) during pregnancy.

Long journeys into deep space, including a mission to Mars, could expose astronauts to levels of cosmic radiation harmful to the brain and accelerate Alzheimer's disease, said U.S. research Monday.

The NASA-funded study involved bombarding mice with varied radiation doses, including levels comparable to what voyagers would experience during a mission to Mars, and seeing how the animals managed to recall objects or locations.

Japan's population logged a record drop in 2012, health ministry estimates showed Tuesday, highlighting concerns that an ever-dwindling pool of workers is having to pay for a growing number of pensioners.

A record low 1,033,000 babies were born last year, against 1,245,000 deaths, resulting in a net drop of 212,000 in the nation's population of about 126 million, according to figures from the ministry.

U.S. health regulators said Monday they had licensed a new treatment for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis -- the first such federal approval aimed at tackling the deadly disease in 40 years.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said it was approving the drug, named Sirturo, as an alternative treatment for adults suffering from TB when two more powerful medications that are available, isoniazid and rifampicin, do not work.