Pakistani police said Saturday gunmen attacked an anti-polio vaccination center in the country's northwest and killed a medic on duty, then fled the scene.

Police official Raheem Khan sayid another technician was also wounded in the attack on the outskirts of Peshawar, the capital of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

China on Saturday formally allowed couples to have a second child if one parent is an only child, the first major easing of the 3-decade-old restrictive birth policy.

First announced by the ruling Communist Party's leadership in November, the decision was officially sanctioned by the standing committee of China's top legislature, the National People's Congress, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

The U.S. government is preparing to regulate the new field of hand and face transplants like it does standard organ transplants, giving more Americans who are disabled or disfigured by injury, illness or combat a chance at this radical kind of reconstruction.

Among the first challenges is deciding how people should consent to donate these very visible body parts that could improve someone's quality of life — without deterring them from traditional donation of hearts, lungs and other internal organs needed to save lives.

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.