Norway ranks as the world's best place to be a mother, well ahead of the United States which dropped to the 33rd spot in the annual scorecard released by Save the Children on Monday.

Somalia is the worst place, just below the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic.

The second person in France to receive a much-hyped new-generation artificial heart has died eight months after receiving the transplant, biomedical firm Carmat said Tuesday.

The 69-year-old man, who wished to remain anonymous, was terminally ill when he received the experimental heart that was seen as a long-term solution for patients with end-stage heart failure.

Health officials now think Ebola survivors can spread the disease through unprotected sex nearly twice as long as previously believed.

Scientists thought the Ebola virus could remain in semen for about three months. But a recent case in West Africa suggests infection through sex can happen more than five months later.

Flying people to deep space -- like Mars or an asteroid -- is high on NASA's wish list, but research on mice suggested Saturday that extended radiation exposure permanently harms the brain.

Central nervous system damage and cognitive impairments were observed in lab animals that were exposed to highly energetic charged particles -- similar to the galactic cosmic rays that astronauts would encounter during long space flights -- said researchers at the University of California, Irvine.

The United States decommissioned its treatment unit Thursday for Liberian healthcare workers infected with Ebola, with the country set to be declared free of the virus within two weeks.

Officers from the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps staged a parade at the Monrovia Medical Unit (MMU) as President Ellen Sirleaf Johnson urged Liberians to learn lessons from the worst outbreak of the virus in history.

At a hospital in Mogadishu's Yaqshid district, children suffering from severe acute malnutrition, worsened by stomach and chest infections, are receiving treatment that is likely saving their young lives.

Three years have elapsed since famine killed more than a quarter of a million people in Somalia ?- more than half of them children ?- yet for many of the country's poorest and most vulnerable people the hunger has not gone away.

French authorities have charged eight people over their alleged role in a Europe-wide horsemeat trafficking ring dismantled last weekend, a judicial source said Thursday.

The suspects were charged in the southern port city of Marseille, said the source, who wished to remain anonymous and gave no details as to their nationality.

Improved vaccine campaigns have led to the elimination of rubella -- an infectious disease that can cause birth defects -- from North, Central and South America, global health authorities said Wednesday.

The virus, sometimes known as German measles, was formally declared eradicated after five consecutive years without an endemic case of the virus in the region, said experts from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), World Health Organization (WHO) and US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during a press conference in the US capital.

German measles is officially gone from North and South America, the first region to rid itself of the disease, health officials announced Wednesday.

Vaccines against German measles were first licensed in 1969, and were included in mass vaccination campaigns. It is now part of childhood shots.

A Los Angeles jury awarded $13 million to a 73-year-old woman who contracted a deadly disease from using asbestos-containing talcum powder manufactured by Colgate-Palmolive Co.

Jurors deliberated for two hours Tuesday before finding that New York-based Colgate was 95 percent responsible for Judith Winkel's mesothelioma, a fatal lung disease, according to her lawyers. The verdict included $1.4 million in damages for her husband.