India's biggest drugmaker by sales, Ranbaxy Laboratories, has assured shareholders it is taking "stringent steps" to resolve a U.S. ban on imports of medicines made at its newly renovated showcase plant.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned imports last week from Ranbaxy's "ultra modern" Mohali plant, whose renovation was supposed to mark a turning point for the generics giant after years of run-ins with U.S. regulators.

Saudi authorities are optimistic that October's hajj pilgrimage to the kingdom, one of the world's annual largest gatherings, will pass without outbreaks of the deadly MERS coronavirus, the health minister said Saturday.

The virus, which appeared first in the kingdom last year, has killed 58 people worldwide, 49 of them in Saudi Arabia, according to official Saudi figures and the World Health Organisation (WHO).

From political activists freed after years in Myanmar's jails to stricken and impoverished families, all are welcome at Yangon's Muslim Free Hospital -- a symbol of unity in a country riven by religious unrest.

There is barely a space left unoccupied in the bustling medical center. From the soot-smeared front steps, through dusty stairwells and into sweltering wards, people wait for treatments that would be beyond their reach elsewhere in Myanmar's desperately underfunded health system.

Bottled water sales have skyrocketed while officials try to pin down the source of a deadly amoeba found in the water supply of St. Bernard Parish, and some people worry about washing their faces in the shower.

That's despite experts who say the only danger is to people who manage to get the microscopic organism way up their noses. Its only entry to the brain is through minute openings in a bone about level with the top of the eyeball, said Dr. Raoult Ratard, Louisiana's state epidemiologist.

Scientists have a new lead on a possible treatment to slow Alzheimer's disease by targeting a protein involved in limiting flexibility in the aging brain, said a study out Thursday.

Alzheimer's -- the most common form of dementia in older adults -- affects an estimated five million Americans. There currently is no cure and minimal treatment options exist.

Britain said Friday it was looking at banning smoking in prisons, despite fears of a backlash from prisoners who claim a cigarette is one of the few joys of life behind bars.

Smoking was banned in communal areas in British jails in 2007 as part of a national ban on smoking in public places.

Researchers in Britain and Saudi Arabia said on Friday that gene profiling of the MERS virus had provided insights, but no answer, as to how the mysterious microbe spreads.

Reporting online in The Lancet, the scientists said they had assembled a family tree of the coronavirus causing Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), using samples taken from 21 patients in Saudi Arabia.

Michelle Obama used the power of her bully pulpit Wednesday to push food companies and television broadcasters to do more to promote healthier foods to children — and to do it faster.

Research shows food marketing is a leading cause of childhood obesity because the ads and promotions lead impressionable kids to then pester their parents to eat what they saw on TV, consumer advocates say.

The top doctor for elite U.S. Army commandos has told troops to immediately stop taking mefloquine, an anti-malaria drug found to cause permanent brain damage in rare cases.

The ban among special operations forces is the latest development in a long-running controversy over mefloquine. The drug was developed by the Army in the 1970s and has been taken by millions of travelers and people in the military over the years. As alternatives were developed, it fell out of favor as the front-line defense against malaria, a mosquito-borne disease that international health officials say kills roughly 600,000 people a year.

Authorities in Pakistan's northwestern Swat Valley have declared a health emergency after nearly 5,000 cases of dengue fever were reported in a month.

The mosquito-borne virus has killed 12 people in the valley since August 19 and the number of patients is increasing every day, doctors said.