Japanese health officials said Thursday that three young people have contracted dengue fever, the first such infections in the country in nearly 70 years.

The three are suspected of having contracted the disease when they were bitten by mosquitos in Yoyogi Park in central Tokyo, officials said.

India has asked U.S. soft drinks giant PepsiCo to reduce the sugar content of its sodas as the country battles growing levels of obesity and diabetes.

PepsiCo chairman Indra Nooyi met food processing industry minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal during a visit to India on Tuesday to discuss its plans for healthier options and investing in India.

A World Health Organization (WHO) employee who has contracted Ebola arrived in Germany Wednesday, the first patient with the virus to be treated in the country, officials said.

A plane carrying the patient -- a Senegalese epidemiologist who was infected in Sierra Leone -- touched down at the airport of the northern city of Hamburg and was to be taken to a hospital isolation ward.

Researchers in Japan have been unable to replicate experiments that were hailed earlier this year as a "game-changer" in the quest to grow transplant tissue, amid claims evidence was faked, a report said Wednesday.

In a scandal that rocked Japan's scientific establishment, Riken -- a research institute that sponsored the study -- launched an independent experiment in April to verify research published by scientist Haruko Obokata and her colleagues earlier this year.

Venezuela's socialist government is sounding the alarm about growing waistlines in a country where record food shortages are making it harder to put healthy meals on the table, prompting many people to fill up on empty calories.

Authorities launched a public relations campaign Tuesday to halt a steady rise in obesity that threatens to lead to a costly, public health crisis if left unchecked.

Nigeria said Tuesday that two more people had been released from isolation after recovering from Ebola, leaving only one living patient with the disease in the country.

According to the health ministry, Nigeria has recorded 13 confirmed cases of Ebola, including the Liberian-American Patrick Sawyer, who brought the virus to the economic capital Lagos on July 20 and died five days later.

Liberia's leader has sacked ministers and senior government officials who defied an order to return to the west African nation to lead the fight against the deadly Ebola outbreak, her office said on Tuesday.

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf had told overseas ministers to return within a week as part of a state-of-emergency announcement on August 6, warning that extraordinary measures were needed "for the very survival of our state".

Water-starved South Asian nations have devised their own answer to the Ice Bucket Challenge taking the social media world by storm, instead filling buckets with rice and other supplies for the needy.

Since June, thousands of people worldwide have doused themselves with a bucket of icy water, then posted a video recording of the stunt online and challenged others to do the same or pledge a donation.

Mice that were raised in a sterile environment or given antibiotics early in life lacked a common gut bacteria that appears to prevent food allergies, U.S. researchers said Monday.

The bacterium, called Clostridia, appears to minimize the likelihood that rodents will become allergic to peanuts, and researchers would like to find out if it does the same in people.

Children born to women who took antidepressants during pregnancy are statistically likelier to develop the mental disorder called ADHD, researchers said on Tuesday.

ADHD is a condition blamed for severe and frequent bouts of inattention, hyperactivity or impulsivity, often leading to problems in socializing and education. Children and young adolescents are most frequently diagnosed with it.