To reduce the risk of sudden death, babies should sleep in the same room as their parents but in their own crib or bassinet for the first year of life, US doctors said Monday.

The new policy statement by the American Academy of Pediatrics still says babies should sleep on their backs, on a clean surface free of toys and blankets, a guideline that has been in place since the 1990s and has reduced sudden infant deaths by about 50 percent.

Amnesty International Friday protested a "reprehensible" ruling by Pakistan's Supreme Court that said schizophrenia is "not a permanent mental disorder", in a decision that paves the way for execution of a mentally ill man.

Facebook has apologized for taking down a breast cancer awareness video because the images were flagged as offensive, saying the move was "an error."

Scientists said Wednesday they had linked mutations in a specific gene with an increased risk of recurrent miscarriages, offering hopes of better diagnosis and treatment for affected women.

The gene, dubbed FOXD1, was first pinpointed in lab mice, a team of international researchers wrote in the Royal Society Journal Open Biology.

Nine-month-old Amena al-Helou's skin sizzles as the surgeon cauterises an incision in her chest, beginning a heart operation at a south Lebanon hospital to save the Syrian refugee's life.

She is just one of dozens of refugees treated each year by Lebanon's leading paediatric heart surgeon Issam al-Rassi, who each week sets aside a day to operate on Syrian and Palestinian refugees.

ZMapp, once touted as a miraculous "secret serum" against the deadly Ebola virus, has shown some success but fell short of the bar for effectiveness in a clinical trial, researchers said Wednesday.

The World Health Organization said Tuesday it would send a million cholera vaccine doses to Haiti, which has seen cases of the disease surge since it was ravaged by Hurricane Matthew last week.

The World Heath Organization said Tuesday it had confirmed 11 cases of cholera in Yemen's capital Sanaa, after the UN announced an outbreak of the disease last week.  

The Zika virus is set to spread through Asia, the World Health Organization warned Monday, with hundreds of cases reported in Singapore and two Thai babies diagnosed with Zika-linked microcephaly.

War-torn Yemen is suffering from a cholera outbreak, the U.N.'s children agency said Friday, posing a further threat to infants in the impoverished nation.