It was banned in restaurants and al fresco eating became all the rage. It was banned in offices, and business started getting done in huddles on the sidewalk.

The French, legend had it, were more likely to give up having affairs than stub out their smoking habit.

It is a spartan life of dormitory beds, communal eating and prayer, but the Jangalak treatment center in Kabul offers a rare glimmer of hope for heroin addicts caught in Afghanistan's spiraling drug problem.

About 250 male addicts at a time undergo a 45-day course at the government center, with 70 percent of all patients successfully staying off heroin after they leave.

Four Swedish women with transplanted uteruses have received test-tube embryos in a cutting-edge bid to fall pregnant, Swedish researchers said Monday.

"I cannot verify if any of them are pregnant or not," Mats Braennstroem, head of the research team at Sweden's Gothenburg University, told AFP.

A septuagenarian man who was fitted with the French biomedical firm Carmat's first artificial heart two and half months ago has died, a hospital statement said Monday.

"Seventy-five days after the implant of the first Carmat artificial heart bioprosthesis in a 76-year-old man with a terminal heart disease, the patient died on March 2, 2014," the Georges-Pompidou European Hospital said.

Saudi Arabia has imposed a total ban on advertisements for energy drinks and prohibited their sale in educational and sports facilities and government buildings due to health concerns, local press reported Tuesday.

The decision was taken following an interior ministry study of the "adverse effects of energy drinks," English-language daily Arab News said, without naming any of the brands affected.

A medical group of epilepsy experts on Monday called on the U.S. government to reconsider classifying marijuana as a dangerous drug so its impact on seizures can be studied.

The American Epilepsy Society's statement comes as a British pharmaceutical company is scheduled to begin tests of an ant-epilepsy drug derived from cannabis, with the hallucinogenic ingredients removed, and parents are flocking to Colorado to try a strain of pot they say has helped some children with seizures.

Under a searing midday sun, a herd of cattle circles atop a pile of golden teff, thrashing the wheat-like grain, a method that has been practiced by Ethiopian farmers for centuries.

The crop, mostly grown in the Horn of Africa, is a key part of the country's heritage and a crucial food staple, but is also gaining increased interest abroad among health afficionados seeking a nutritious, gluten-free alternative to wheat.

Millions of children in the Middle East will be vaccinated against polio this month after the crippling disease resurfaced in conflict-hit Syria, the United Nations said Sunday.

Mass vaccinations have already been launched in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Syria, while a similar campaign in Lebanon will start on March 9, the U.N. Children's Fund Unicef said in a statement.

The Lebanese Ministry of Agriculture was unanimously elected on Friday to head the Food and Agriculture Organization's 33rd regional conference of the Near East and North Africa.

The conference will be held in Beirut in 2016.

Health officials say the Philippines has broken India's record of gathering the most number of organ donor pledges in an hour at a single site. The feat awaits the Guinness World Records' official confirmation.

Health Assistant Secretary Eric Tayag said Friday's campaign gathered 3,548 pledges, beating India's previous record of 2,755.