At the end of an unpaved road, in a quiet suburb of a sleepy town in northern Israel, horticultural revolutionaries are growing a strain of cannabis they say relieves symptoms of some chronic illnesses but without the psychotic effects that can accompany regular weed.

Behind the fence at Tikkun Olam -- Hebrew for "fixing the world" -- the green-fingered staff say they have created an Israeli first, by breeding a cannabis plant almost free of THC, tetrahydrocannabinol, the substance that gives smokers their high but can also carry a serious downside.

A drug initially developed to treat some types of cancer now appears to help people suffering from multiple sclerosis (MS), a study said Thursday.

The drug, alemtuzumab, proved effective in patient trials at reducing relapses -- a key feature of MS which sees symptoms appear sporadically.

People with pale skin and red hair may be more prone to developing a deadly form of skin cancer regardless of whether they spend time in the sun or not, a study said Wednesday.

Not only is this group more vulnerable to the sun's ultraviolet (UV) rays, but a study in mice has now shown that the pigment that gives hair a red hue may in itself have cancer-causing effects, said a paper in the journal Nature.

Australian doctors Thursday hailed what they described as a world-first surgical treatment for a boy suffering from a rare disease that sends his blood pressure soaring and triggered a stroke.

Matthew Gaythorpe, 10, has suffered severe hypertension his entire life due to a combination of kidney and liver conditions called autosomal recessive polycystic kidney disease and congenital hepatic fibrosis.

Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk A/S says its net profit grew by 35 percent in the third quarter of 2012, chiefly spurred by strong sales of its diabetes drugs.

The world's biggest insulin maker says net profit during the period rose to 5.67 billion kroner ($983 million) from 4.2 billion kroner a year earlier.

Australia on Wednesday moved to extend punitive refugee policies to any asylum-seeker who lands on its mainland, allowing for them to be banished to remote Nauru or Papua New Guinea for detention.

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen introduced a proposal to expand the government's powers to send boatpeople for indefinite detention in the Pacific across the entire mainland, not just the remote islands where most land.

Drug-resistant malaria is spreading in Asia, experts warned as a high-level conference opened Wednesday with the aim of hammering out an action plan to strengthen the region's response.

Resistance to the drug used everywhere to cure the life-threatening disease has emerged in Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar, said Richard Feachem, director of global health at the University of California, San Francisco.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has the highest rate of malnutrition in central and west Africa, affecting 43 percent of children under five, UNICEF said Tuesday.

In central Africa, "some countries have a rate of chronic malnutrition which is still alarming," Marianne Flach, the representative of the U.N. children's agency in Congo, said at the opening of a regional workshop on reducing malnutrition.

Outdoor clothing from top manufacturers is frequently contaminated with chemicals that are harmful to health and the environment, Greenpeace warned Monday.

The environmental group said in a study that the materials that make many clothing items useful in wind, rain and snow are also toxic.

Two U.N. agencies have mapped the intersection of health and climate in an age of global warming, showing that there are spikes in meningitis when dust storms hit and outbreaks of dengue fever when hard rains come.

Officials said Monday that their "Atlas of Health and Climate" is meant to be a tool for leaders to use to get early warning of disease outbreaks.