It won't be nearly as much fun as eating candy bars, but a big study is being launched to see if pills containing the nutrients in dark chocolate can help prevent heart attacks and strokes.

The pills are so packed with nutrients that you'd have to eat countless candy bars to get the amount being tested in this study, which will enroll 18,000 men and women across the U.S.

An experimental drug made from snail venom has shown early signs of promise in numbing pain, raising hopes in the hunt for new, non-addictive medications, researchers said Sunday.

The drug, which has not been tested yet on humans, was judged to be about 100 times more potent than morphine or gabapentin, which are currently considered the gold standard for chronic nerve pain.

More than 260 unwanted children, most of them babies, have been abandoned in a Chinese "safe haven" in just over six weeks -- more than five a day -- since it opened in late January, authorities said.

The "baby hatch" in Guangzhou, in the southern province of Guangdong, was suspended on Sunday after the city's welfare home exceeded its capacity to handle new arrivals.

Saudi health authorities said Saturday a young man had died from the MERS coronavirus, bringing the death toll from the respiratory disease in the worst-hit country to 63.

The 19-year-old national, who died in Riyadh, had been suffering from chronic illnesses, the health ministry said.

A rare case of suspected HIV transmission from one woman to another was reported Thursday by US health authorities

A rare case of suspected HIV transmission from one woman to another was reported Thursday by US health authorities.

A patient in Spain caught pneumonia from smoking an electronic cigarette too much, the second ever recorded case of lung illness from the devices, the hospital treating him said Thursday.

The patient, identified by media as a man aged 50, was admitted in the northwestern city of A Coruna for a separate illness and came down with the lung complaint while there, a source at the hospital told Agence France Presse.

Accused of witchcraft or sorcery, children with cleft lips or palates are often driven into hiding in several African countries, forced to live as outcasts unless they receive an early operation.

In the Suka clinic in the Burkina Faso capital Ouagadougou, a volunteer recounts the story of one young mother made to flee her village after giving birth to a "cursed child".

Saudi Arabia says a man has died from a new respiratory virus related to SARS, bringing to 63 the deaths in the kingdom at the center of the outbreak.

The Health Ministry said Friday the latest victim, a 19-year-old, died in the city of al-Kharj, southeast of Riyadh. Two of his sisters are in hospital on suspicion they have been infected with the virus. If they prove to be positive, it would further raise the number of people infected.

Noor Jahan rocked slowly on the floor, trying to steady her weak body. Her chest heaved and her eyes closed with each raspy breath. She could no longer eat or speak, throwing up even spoonfuls of tea.

Two years ago, she would have left her upscale home — one of the nicest in the community — and gone to a hospital to get tests and medicine for her failing liver and kidneys. But that was before Buddhist mobs torched and pillaged her neighborhood, forcing thousands of ethnic Rohingya like herself to flee to a hot, desert-like patch of land on the outskirts of town.

A man who suffered horrific facial injuries in a motorbike accident has had pioneering surgery to rebuild his face using 3D printed parts.

Stephen Power from Cardiff in Wales is thought to be one of the first trauma patients in the world to have a procedure in which 3D printing was used at every stage.