Nurses at Liberia's largest hospital went on strike on Monday, demanding better pay and equipment to protect them against a deadly Ebola epidemic which has killed hundreds in the west African nation.

John Tugbeh, spokesman for the strikers at Monrovia's John F Kennedy hospital, said the nurses would not return to work until they are supplied with "personal protective equipment (PPEs)", the hazmat-style suits which guard against infectious diseases.

Could action-packed TV fare make you fat? That's the implication of a new study that found people snacked more watching fast-paced television than viewing a more leisurely-paced talk show.

Cornell University researchers randomly assigned almost 100 undergraduates to watch one of three 20-minute sessions featuring: "The Island," a 2005 sci-fi thriller starring Scarlett Johansson and Ewan McGregor; that same movie but without the sound; or the "Charlie Rose" show, a public television interview program. The students were all provided generous amounts of cookies, M&M candies, carrots and grapes.

Japanese researchers said Tuesday they had developed a new method to detect the presence of the Ebola virus in 30 minutes, with technology that could allow doctors to quickly diagnose infection.

Professor Jiro Yasuda and his team at Nagasaki University say their process is also cheaper than the system currently in use in west Africa where the virus has already killed more than 1,500 people.

Saudi Arabia has stopped granting visas to workers from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the countries worst-hit by the deadly Ebola virus, the labor ministry announced Monday.

The "preventive measure" is based on "directives from the foreign and health ministries to avoid" the spread of Ebola to the kingdom, the official news agency SPA reported.

The Japanese unit of Swiss pharma giant Novartis has admitted it did not report more than 2,500 cases of serious side effects in patients using its leukaemia and other cancer drugs, reportedly including some fatalities.

It's pretty hard to find a novel way to do the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge by now, but two-time Grammy-winning rapper Pras Michel, a founding member of the Fugees, has done it — getting his dousing in the center of North Korea's capital on Sunday.

Pras had two buckets of ice water dumped on his head along Pyongyang's Taedong River, much to the surprise and bewilderment — and laughter — of North Koreans out for a stroll or some fishing on their day off.

An outbreak of dengue fever in Japan -- the first since World War II -- has affected at least 22 people, the government said Monday, with all cases believed to be linked to a Tokyo park.

The health ministry said 19 new infections have been confirmed since last week.

Scientists on Sunday said they had identified six genetic variants linked to glaucoma, a discovery that should help earlier diagnosis and better treatment for this often-debilitating eye disease.

A new invention can cheaply and accurately diagnose malaria infection in just a few minutes using only a droplet of blood, researchers reported Sunday in the journal Nature Medicine.

Guinea-Bissau launched a nationwide hygiene drive on Saturday, declaring itself "on alert" after the announcement that the Ebola epidemic ravaging west Africa had spread to neighbouring Senegal.

The campaign will involve the cleaning and disinfection of public places "across the entire country" on the last Saturday of every month, Prime Minister Domingos Simoes Pereira's office said.