The people of Monrovia's Peace Island ghetto, refugees of civil war who found themselves suddenly overwhelmed and outmanoeuvred by the deadly Ebola epidemic, are used to life under siege.

Yet with Liberia emerging from the worst outbreak in history a year to the day since Ebola was first identified in west Africa, the slum-dwellers are facing an even deadlier threat -- the measles virus. 

The U.N.'s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) said Friday that three pesticides, including the popular weedkiller Roundup, were "probably" carcinogenic and two others, which have already been outlawed or restricted, were "possibly" so.

IARC classified the herbicide glyphosate -- the active ingredient in Roundup -- and the insecticides malathion and diazinon as "probably carcinogenic" on the basis of "limited evidence" of cancer among humans.

Health experts at an anti-tobacco conference in Abu Dhabi defended e-cigarettes on Friday, dismissing widespread concerns that the devices could lure adolescents into nicotine addiction.

Most experts agreed, however, that use of the devices, about which research warns that not enough is yet known, should be regulated.

The chanting begins quietly but quickly swells, the sound echoing depths of suffering that the music might heal. "Help me, each day is difficult, help me overcome this suffering."

The teenage girls singing in a state-of-the-art music studio near the Panzi hospital outside the city of Bukavu are young enough to be in school, but some are already mothers after being raped in the atrocities sweeping eastern parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Liberia Friday confirmed its first new Ebola case in more than a month in a setback to hopes the country would soon be officially declared free of the deadly disease.

The country was the hardest hit at the peak of the epidemic in west Africa and has seen more than 4,000 deaths in all, but was at an advanced stage in its recovery and was expecting to be declared Ebola-free by mid-April before the latest case in the capital Monrovia.

Doctors at some public hospitals in South Africa have allegedly coerced dozens of HIV-positive women to undergo sterilization over the past three decades, rights groups said Thursday.

The Women's Legal Center, an independent local group, and the international Her Rights Initiative say they have received 48 complaints over coerced sterilization that occurred between 1986 and last year.

A much-hailed law that restricted the opening of new stand-alone fast-food restaurants in one of the poorest sections of Los Angeles did not curb obesity or improve diets, a new study found.

City lawmakers passed the zoning ordinance in 2008 that limited the opening or expansion of fast-food outlets in a 32-square-mile area south of Interstate 10 that struggles with high obesity rates and other health problems.

In a delay that some say may have cost lives, the World Health Organization resisted calling the Ebola outbreak in West Africa a public health emergency until last summer, two months after staff raised the possibility and long after a senior manager called for a drastic change in strategy, The Associated Press has learned.

Among the reasons the United Nations agency cited in internal deliberations: worries that declaring such an emergency — akin to an international SOS — could anger the African countries involved, hurt their economies or interfere with the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.

A large-scale trial of a new drug shows it boosts survival chances for Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer of the blood that mostly strikes younger people, a study said Thursday.

Known by the lab name of brentuximab vedotin (BV), the drug is the first new treatment for Hodgkin's in more than three decades.

World Health Organization chief Margaret Chan urged global action Wednesday to drive tobacco companies "out of business" and hailed progress in tackling smoking in many countries.

Speaking at the World Conference on Tobacco or Health in Abu Dhabi, she welcomed steps taken by several countries, led by Australia, to introduce plain packaging for cigarettes.