Lego products are becoming increasingly violent as toymakers engage in an "arms race" to retain children's attention in the digital age, New Zealand researchers said Monday.

The World Bank announced Saturday a new program to mobilize funds quickly against virulent disease outbreaks after the world was caught unprepared in the 2014 Ebola disaster in West Africa.

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said the new Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility (PEF) will accelerate global and national responses to disease outbreaks that threaten large populations and fragile economies.

The governor of the U.S. state of Oklahoma on Friday vetoed a bill outlawing abortion, saying it was too vague and would not stand up to legal challenges.

"The bill is so ambiguous and so vague that doctors cannot be certain what medical circumstances would be considered 'necessary to preserve the life of the mother,'" Governor Mary Fallin said in a statement that labeled the measure "unconstitutional."

The days of branded cigarette packets in Britain and France are over as new plain packaging laws came into effect on Friday, hailed by campaigners despite resistance from tobacco firms.

A deadly yellow fever outbreak in Angola, which has already spread the disease as far as China, risks sparking a global crisis, the Red Cross warned Thursday.

Tobacco giants have lost a legal challenge in London against imposing new rules for standardized packaging due to come into force on Friday, meaning Britain will join a growing list of countries to do so.

Philip Morris International, British American Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco and Japan Tobacco International had challenged the legality of the new regulations, which mean all new cigarette packs sold in Britain will have to be olive green.

The World Health Organization will hold an emergency meeting Thursday on the yellow fever outbreak that has hit hardest in Angola but risks spreading further if vaccinations are not ramped up.

A leading Congolese surgeon who treats women sexually abused during conflict warned Tuesday of "unbearable atrocities" being committed in the country's east including the mutilation of babies and the disemboweling of pregnant women.

As a young woman in the roaring 1920s, the world's oldest living person loved to go singing and dancing.

Now 116-year-old Italian Emma Morano's next challenge is to see in the 2020s and become the oldest human being on record.

Fed up with drug-related violence, a growing number of Mexican politicians see one potential cure: legalizing the cultivation of opium poppies for the production of medicine.

The debate has emerged in recent weeks after President Enrique Pena Nieto proposed legislation in April to loosen marijuana laws by legalizing medical cannabis and easing restrictions on its recreational use.