Saudi health authorities announced Thursday a new MERS death, bringing to 57 the number of people killed by the coronavirus in the country with the most fatalities.

The health ministry said in a statement on its website that a 73-year-old Saudi man, who suffered from chronic illnesses, died in the capital Riyadh after he contracted MERS.

A Hong Kong man infected with the H7N9 strain of bird flu died on Thursday, the first such death in the city since the virus emerged there this month.

The 80-year-old man was the second reported case of H7N9 infection in Hong Kong after one reported on December 2.

Scientists on Wednesday said they had found a variant of a gene to explain why Latin Americans are at higher risk of Type 2 diabetes, and pointed to a possible DNA legacy from the Neanderthals.

The variant lies on a gene called SLC16A11, which plays a part in breaking down fatty molecules called lipids, they said in the journal Nature.

Tattoo artists in France, who were up in arms about a government ban on certain dyes, say the health ministry has reassured them they will be able to keep using colored ink, attributing the uproar to a misunderstanding of thousands of pages of regulations.

France's professional tattoo artists had been protesting for months after the health ministry banned 59 dyes used in cosmetics, including tattoo inks, for safety reasons.

It almost sounds sadistic — making rape victims as young as 13 relive their harrowing assault over and over again. But a new study shows it works surprisingly well at eliminating their psychological distress.

The results are the first evidence that the same kind of "exposure" therapy that helps combat veterans haunted by flashbacks and nightmares also works for traumatized sexually abused teens with similar symptoms, the study authors and other experts said.

Gay-rights activists and health workers in India are warning that a new Supreme Court ruling criminalizing homosexuality will undo years of progress in fighting AIDS by driving gay and transgender people underground.

They say HIV services expanded and gay and transgender people became more likely to seek them out after a landmark 2009 ruling decriminalized same-sex acts by throwing out a colonial-era law. India's top court revived the law Dec. 11, saying it is up to the country's lawmakers — not the court — to change it.

Tablet computers are so easy to use that even a 3-year-old can master them.

And that has some pediatricians and other health experts worried.

Chinese state-run media and Internet users demanded action Wednesday after the deaths of at least seven babies since November following their vaccinations against hepatitis B.

China's Food and Drug Administration has suspended use of the vaccine involved, manufactured by domestic producer BioKangtai, and is investigating, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

The owners and insurers of a bankrupt pharmacy at the center of a deadly U.S. meningitis outbreak have reached a tentative agreement to pay more than $100 million to compensate victims, U.S. media reported Tuesday.

The fund will also serve to pay creditors of the New England Compounding Center, whose tainted drugs are blamed for dozens of deaths last year.

U.S. President Barack Obama has symbolically signed up for health insurance to promote his own controversial health care reform legislation, a White House official said Monday.

The official said Obama -- on vacation with his family in Hawaii for the holidays -- signed up over the weekend for "a health care plan made available by the Affordable Care Act on the DC marketplace."