Dizzy and sweating, 15-year-old Isatu Koroma sits with her eyes closed in the maternity ward in Sierra Leone where she has spent the last 10 days, as her tiny little daughter begins to cry.

Koroma badly needs blood after a complicated delivery -- relatives are expected to donate here but none has visited, also leaving the nurses to pay for her to eat.

Bars and restaurants in New York are not allowed to refuse alcohol to pregnant women since that would violate their basic rights, the mayor's office said.

Pregnancy discrimination under New York City Human Rights Law "is discrimination based on gender," according to new guidelines released last week.

Seita, the French subsidiary of Britain's Imperial Tobacco and the maker of the iconic Gauloises and Gitanes cigarettes, said Tuesday it would appeal to France's top court against regulations imposing plain packaging.

The appeal to the Council of State, France's top administrative court, won't suspend the regulation from entering force on January 1.

The phone rings off the hook these days at some pharmacies in Florida and the calls are long-distance: from Venezuelans desperate for everything from diapers to cancer medication.

Venezuela, though sitting atop the world's largest proven oil reserves, is enduring an acute economic crisis due in part to the global drop in crude prices and just about everything is in short supply, including medicine.

Decades of neglect and underinvestment have damaged the health of 10-to-24-year-olds worldwide and could hold back future generations, according to a major report published Tuesday.

Even as global efforts have significantly improved the well-being of children aged five and under, adolescents -- defined in the study as people aged between 10 and 24 -- have fared less well.

Social pressures are forcing people to cut back on their sleep, contributing to a "global sleep crisis," according to a new study based on research collected through a smartphone app.

It enabled scientists from the University of Michigan to track sleep patterns around the world -- gathering data about how age, gender and the amount of natural light to which people are exposed affect sleep patterns in 100 countries -- and better understand how cultural pressures can override biological rhythms.

Brazil's outbreak of Zika -- which has been linked to the devastating microcephaly birth defect in newborns in 1,271 cases since October -- has also killed 57 of those babies, authorities said Wednesday.

The Health Ministry said in that as of April 30, 3,580 suspected cases had been reported and that another 2,492 were ruled out as false alarms.

Colombia's widespread illegal mining is blamed for causing environmental damage and holding workers in slave-like conditions -- and now is also being blamed for a malaria outbreak.

Belgium is to provide iodine pills to its entire population of around 11 million people to protect against radioactivity in case of a nuclear accident, the health minister was quoted as saying Thursday.

The move comes as Belgium faces growing pressure from neighboring Germany to shutter two ageing nuclear power plants near their border due to concerns over their safety.

McDonald's is testing Chicken McNuggets with no artificial preservatives as it works to revive its U.S. business.

The world's biggest hamburger chain says it began testing the new recipe in about 140 stores in Oregon and Washington in March.