The Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives passed two anti-abortion measures Friday, highlighting intense efforts to inject the controversial issue into a spending debate two weeks before a potential government shutdown.

Lawmakers voted largely along party lines to halt federal funding for Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest women's health care services provider, for a year while Congress conducts investigations on the organization.

The experimental Ebola drug ZMapp has been granted fast-track status by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which could speed its arrival on the market, the drug-maker said Thursday.

Larry Zeitlin, president of LeafBio and Mapp Biopharmaceutical, described the decision by the FDA as an "important milestone."

Cuban and U.S. diplomats hailed a "historic opportunity" on Thursday to work together to improve Haiti's dilapidated health care system.

Havana and Washington restored diplomatic ties earlier this year, following a five-decade freeze, and now are looking to take fast-improving relations into the medical field.

Dying of a brain tumour, Frederik van den Broek had one last wish on his "bucket list": serving as his own guinea pig to build a smartphone app for fellow cancer patients.

Now Dutch neurologists say the input from Van den Broek, who died late last month aged 41, has been invaluable in creating what is believed will be the world's most advanced mobile-based app for cancer patients.

Cancer is the leading cause of death among Hispanics living in the United States, according to a report Wednesday by the American Cancer Society.

While heart disease is the top killer in the nation as a whole, cancer kills more often among Hispanics, the largest minority group in the United States, making up 17.4 percent of the population.

Children who live near traffic-choked roads run a 30 percent higher risk of developing a very rare type of blood cancer, researchers said.

Among the roughly 140 new cases of acute myeloblastic leukemia (AML) in France each year, three can be linked to car exhaust, according to results published on Tuesday in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

Malaria deaths worldwide have fallen by 60 percent since 2000, the UN said Thursday, with improved diagnostic tests and the massive distribution of mosquito nets aiding dramatic progress against the disease.

Fifteen years ago, an estimated 262 million malaria cases killed nearly 840,000 people.

A French startup working with a top government lab says it has developed in-vitro human sperm, claiming a breakthrough in infertility treatment sought for more than a decade.

Researchers with Kallistem had announced the discovery previously, but they and French government lab CNRS described how it works for the first time Thursday.

Australia Wednesday introduced a "no jab, no pay" law which would block parents who refuse to vaccinate their children from accessing some government benefits.

The new legislation introduced to parliament was announced by the government in April.

Antibacterial hand soaps containing a chemical flagged as potentially dangerous are not much better at killing germs than regular suds, researchers said Wednesday.

The chemical, triclosan, was long one of the commonest ingredients in antibacterial soaps, which are used by millions of people and generate $1 billion (880 million euros) in sales annually in the United States alone, experts say.