Two new infections from MERS coronavirus have been detected in Jordan, the health ministry said Thursday, one a Saudi man and the other a Jordanian medic who was treating him.

State news agency Petra which carried the report said this brought to seven the total number of people who were diagnosed in Jordan with the disease known as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome since 2012.

U.S. regulators have approved a first-of-its-kind implant that can help ward off moderate to severe sleep apnea, a chronic disorder which affects up to 18 million Americans.

Sleep apnea is a condition in which the breathing passage collapses or becomes blocked during sleep -- complications can include heart disease and increased risks of accidents and death. 

More than three decades after the eradication of smallpox, U.S. officials say it is still not time to destroy the last known stockpiles of the virus behind one of history's deadliest diseases.

The world's health ministers meet later this month to debate, again, the fate of vials held under tight security in two labs — one in the U.S. and one in Russia.

Muscle cells grown from human embryonic stem cells boosted damaged monkey hearts in lab experiments, said a study Wednesday that holds promise for therapies to replace tissue in heart failure patients.

Scientists in the United States and Australia used human embryonic stem cells to cultivate billions of heart muscle cells which they transplanted into injured macaque hearts, according to research findings published in the journal Nature.

In the next few months, highly secretive U.S. military researchers say they will unveil new advances toward developing a brain implant that could one day restore a wounded soldier's memory. 

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is forging ahead with a four-year plan to build a sophisticated memory stimulator, as part of President Barack Obama's $100 million initiative to better understand the human brain.

The rise of superbugs, stoked by misuse of antibiotics and poor hospital hygiene, is enabling long-treatable diseases to once again become killers, the World Health Organization warned on Wednesday.

In a hard-hitting study of antimicrobial resistance -- when bacteria adapt so that existing drugs no longer curb them -- the U.N. health agency said the problem was a global emergency.

Health officials in the Dominican Republic say a mosquito-borne virus has spread widely since making its first appearance in the country.

The Health Ministry says it has documented about 3,500 suspected cases of chikungunya virus since it was first detected in March. Most cases have been near the capital, but Health Minister Freddy Hidalgo said Tuesday there have been some isolated cases in northern provinces.

Saudi health authorities announced Tuesday three new deaths from the MERS coronavirus, as a group of experts met to discuss means of preventing the spread of the disease.

Three men -- aged 56, 61, and 79 -- died of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome in Riyadh, bringing to 105 the total deaths since the disease appeared in the kingdom in September 2012, the health ministry said.

Guinea said Tuesday 74 people had died so far this year in one of the worst ever outbreaks of the Ebola virus.

The health ministry said there had been 121 confirmed cases of Ebola -- an incurable disease that can kill up to 90 percent of its victims -- since January.

The European Union said Tuesday it would promote common guidelines across the bloc for the health screening of incoming migrants and refugees.

"My intention is to set up a working group... to create guidelines on what (diseases) to screen for, when and how," EU Health Commissioner Tonio Borg said during a two-day informal meeting of EU health ministers in Athens.