Two new cases of the potentially deadly MERS respiratory virus, including a heavily pregnant woman, have been reported in the United Arab Emirates, media Friday cited health authorities as saying.

A 38-year-old Jordanian resident was hospitalized with breathing problems and diagnosed to be a carrier of MERS, the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus.

North Korea has increased food production for a third straight year, but malnutrition remains widespread, U.N. agencies say, voicing particular concern over stunting in children.

Failures in the state distribution system mean families increasingly rely on unofficial markets and bartering to feed themselves, according to a nationwide assessment published Thursday by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Program.

When Lina Afvander got her HIV diagnosis, it came with a set of prescriptions and a disclosure obligation, which legally requires HIV-positive people in Sweden to reveal their status before having sex.

"My strategy is that I don't expose myself to this situation that often, I just don't have that much casual sex," the 35-year-old Swede said.

A Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer with a medical marijuana prescription for job-related stress provoked a national debate Thursday over whether he should be allowed to smoke in uniform.

Corporal Ronald Francis serves in Canada's New Brunswick province, and reportedly received a prescription for medical-grade marijuana on November 4.

A new and more aggressive strain of HIV discovered in West Africa causes significantly faster progression to AIDS, researchers at Sweden's Lund University said Thursday.

The new strain of the virus that causes AIDS, called A3/02, is a fusion of the two most common HIV strains in Guinea-Bissau. It has so far only been found in West Africa.

Qatar said on Thursday that three camels have been found infected with the MERS coronavirus, in the first case of animals contracting the SARS-like virus in the Gulf state.

The camels were found in the same barn, and had been in contact with two humans who fully recovered from the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, said the country's Supreme Council of Health.

An experimental device is letting paralyzed people drive wheelchairs simply by flicking their tongue in the right direction.

Key to this wireless system: Users get their tongue pierced with a magnetic stud that resembles jewelry and acts like a joystick, in hopes of offering them more mobility and independence.

HIV infections in Europe and Central Asia increased by eight percent in 2012 compared to a year earlier, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control announced Wednesday.

The rise of 131,000 new cases was driven by a nine-percent increase in the Eastern Europe and Central Asia region which accounted for 102,000 new infections -- around three-quarters of them in the Russian Federation alone.

Scientists on Wednesday said they had identified a new target in the parasite that causes malaria, a disease that causes more than a half a million deaths annually.

Potential drugs can aim at a newly-discovered enzyme that the parasite uses to metabolize energy at every stage of its infection in humans, they said.

More than two dozen cancer groups say that about half the world's population doesn't have adequate access to painkillers because of restrictive laws meant to combat drug abuse.

In a global survey released on Thursday, The European Society for Medical Oncology and partners estimated millions of cancer patients aren't able to get seven cheap medicines considered essential for pain relief, including codeine and morphine.