More than 6,800 people have now died from the Ebola virus, almost all of them in west Africa, the World Health Organization said Monday.

The U.N. health agency reported that as of December 13, there had been 18,464 cases of infection from the deadly virus in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, and 6,841 people had died.

A British government-commissioned review has found that resistance to antibiotics could account for 10 million deaths a year and hit global gross domestic product by 2.0 to 3.5 percent by 2050.

The Review on Antimicrobial Resistance said surgeries that have become widespread and low-risk thanks to antibiotics, such as caesarean sections, could become more dangerous without urgent action.

Japan on Tuesday ordered the slaughter of some 4,000 chickens after officials confirmed bird flu at a poultry farm in the southwest of the country.

DNA tests confirmed the H5 strain of the virus at a farm in Miyazaki after its owner reported more than 20 sudden deaths among his poultry on Sunday and Monday, the agriculture ministry said.

It's been something of a breakthrough year for marijuana, the once shunned intoxicant that is steadily gaining ground as a legal high in parts of the world.

In 2014, Uruguay may have been the only country to fully legalize pot, but growing number of U.S. states followed parts of Europe in moving in a similar direction.

Officials in Ebola-stricken Liberia have postponed senatorial elections elections until the end of the week, while some urged calling off the vote for fear the results would not be credible.

Ebola has killed nearly 3,200 people this year in Liberia, and many question whether elections can be held at all under such circumstances.

After decades making brief, murderous forays from central Africa's forests, Ebola erupted into a global emergency in 2014, yet its success could spell its downfall as scientists scramble to relegate it to a footnote of medical history.

From a single infection in impoverished west Africa, the epidemic swept into bustling cities, killed thousands and unleashed a wave of fear in far-off Europe and America.

Scientists often test drugs in mice. Now some cancer patients are doing the same — with the hope of curing their own disease.

They are paying a private lab to breed mice that carry bits of their own tumors so treatments can be tried first on the customized rodents. The idea is to see which drugs might work best on a specific person's specific cancer.

France's president wants to allow doctors to keep terminally ill patients sedated until death comes, amid a national debate about whether to legalize euthanasia.

Francois Hollande stopped short of recommending lethal injections and avoided the terms euthanasia and assisted suicide, highly sensitive issues in this majority-Catholic country.

World cereal output is expected to hit record highs this year but food insecurity is worsening across the globe thanks to Ebola and civil conflicts, the UN's food agency said Thursday.

The Food and Agriculture Organization said 2014 was heading to be a bumper year for cereals, with "an all-time record of more than 2.5 billion tonnes".

The suspension of trials in Switzerland of an experimental Ebola vaccine over unexpected side-effects is not a setback in the fight against the deadly virus, the World Health Organization insisted Thursday.

The Geneva University Hospital (HUG) announced Thursday it was suspending trials of one of two experimental vaccines being tested on humans in several countries, after several volunteers experienced unexpected joint pains.