The death toll from the Ebola outbreak sweeping through west African countries has risen to 1,427 out of more than 2,600 cases, the World Health Organization said Friday.

The latest tally, which counts the number of victims from March when the deadly disease first reared its head to August 20, found that 77 people had succumbed to the virus on Tuesday and Wednesday. The previous death toll was 1,350.

Every region of Liberia has now been hit by Ebola, officials said Friday, as the World Health Organization warned the fight against the worst-ever outbreak of the killer disease would take months.

After seeing people fall to the deadly virus in area after area, Liberia said two people had succumbed to the virus in Sinoe province, the last Ebola-free bastion in a country that has seen the biggest toll with 624 deaths.

People with autism have too many synapses -- the connectors by which brain cells send and receive signals -- according to a new study that may point to a treatment for the complex disorder.

The extra synapses in autistic brains are the result not of overproduction, but of a failure in the normal process of discarding old and degraded cells.

Sao Paulo is thirsty.

A severe drought is hitting Brazil's largest city and thriving economic capital with no end in sight, threatening the municipal water supply to millions of people.

Women who eat instant noodles, like Ramen, at least two times a week face a greater risk of high blood pressure, elevated blood sugar and high cholesterol, U.S. researchers said Thursday.

The study looked at data from 10,711 adults -- just over half of whom were women -- in the Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

A New York city councilman wants to ban toys in fast-food restaurant kid meals that do not meet strict dietary guidelines.

Democrat Ben Kallos introduced a bill Thursday that would ban the toys from a child's meal if the food serving contains more than 500 calories and more than 600 milligrams of sodium.

The United Nations' new pointman on Ebola said Friday he was preparing for a possible flareup of the epidemic in West Africa.

"We're either close to a plateau, but then we'll drop, or we're in a phase, an inflection point, where it is going to increase, and I absolutely cannot tell," David Nabarro told Agence France Presse during a stopover at Conakry airport en route to Monrovia. He was determined to "ensure that every piece of our apparatus is at its optimum so it could deal possibly with a flareup if that's necessary."

A hemorrhagic fever of unknown origin has killed 13 people in the northwestern Democratic Republic of Congo since August 11, a health ministry official said.

"All 13 people who have died suffered from a fever, diarrhea, vomiting and, in a terminal stage, of vomiting a black matter," said Dr Felix Kabange Numbi. So far, about 80 people who came into contact with the deceased have been admitted to hospital.

New research suggests a one-two punch could help battle polio in some of the world's most remote and conflict-torn regions: Giving a single vaccine shot to children who've already swallowed drops of an oral polio vaccine greatly boosted their immunity.

The World Health Organization officials said the combination strategy already is starting to be used in mass vaccination campaigns in some hard-hit areas and is being introduced for routine immunizations in developing countries.

Botox has frozen the faces of countless Hollywood stars, and international researchers said Wednesday the toxic injections might also be able to stop cancer in its tracks, at least temporarily.

The findings in the journal Science Translational Medicine are based on studies of mice with stomach cancer.