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."

Women who eat peanuts while pregnant are less likely to have children with peanut allergies than women who avoid them, said a U.S. study out Monday.

The findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Pediatrics were based on a study of more than 8,200 U.S. children.

The flu vaccine is generally less effective for men than for women, scientists said in a study Monday, tracing the effect to higher levels of testosterone that curb the immune response.

It has long been known that men are more vulnerable than women to bacterial, viral and parasitic infections, but scientists have never been able to clearly explain why.

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."

Taiwan police said Sunday they had seized about 200 kilograms (440 pounds) of ketamine worth millions of U.S. dollars and smuggled from China, in the second such drugs bust this year.

The haul was discovered in a shipment of shoes in three containers sent from the Chinese mainland, said officers at Taoyuan airport in the north.

Sweet tropical smells drift through Shinkichi Tawada's laboratory as he stirs an amber liquid that he believes could be the secret behind the historic longevity of people in southern Japan.

The elixir is an extract from a plant known locally as "getto", and he says experiments show it can prolong life by as much as a fifth.

New Yorkers who turned to electronic cigarettes to keep smoking in restaurants, offices or even libraries are down to their last few puffs in such places.

The City Council's voted 43-8 Thursday to include e-cigarettes in the ban on smoking in public indoor places. Outgoing Mayor Michael Bloomberg is expected to sign the measure. The ban would then take effect in four months.

Spain's government agreed Friday to ban women from opting freely for abortions, outraging pro-choice campaigners who say the move will take the country back to the 1980s.

Launched by Spain's conservative government after pressure from the Catholic Church, the draft bill rolls back a 2010 law which brought Spain into line with much of Europe by letting women opt freely for abortion up to 14 weeks of pregnancy.