Aid workers in war-torn Somalia are struggling to contain a dangerous outbreak of the crippling polio virus, with rampant insecurity hampering efforts, the United Nations said Friday.

Six years after the Horn of Africa nation was declared free of the virus, at least 105 cases have been confirmed in Somalia, the "worst outbreak in the world in a non-endemic country," the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a statement.

Adult obesity in the U.S. still isn't budging, the latest government survey shows.

The national telephone survey found 13 states with very high rates of obesity last year. Overall, the proportion of U.S. adults deemed obese has been about the same for years now.

When people have a brain injury so severe that they can't squeeze a loved one's hand or otherwise respond, there are few good ways to tell if they have any lingering awareness or are in a vegetative state. Now researchers have created a tool to peek inside the brain and measure varying levels of consciousness.

The work reported Wednesday is highly experimental, not ready for bedside use yet — and if it pans out, a big question is how to use it without raising false hope. No one knows what level of consciousness at a certain point after injury really predicts recovery.

Long-term results from a major U.S. study ease worries about the safety of a hormone-blocking drug that can lower a man's chances of developing prostate cancer.

The drug cut prostate cancer risk by 30 percent without raising the risk of dying of an aggressive form of the disease as earlier results hinted it might.

Faced with falling sales of its diet soda, Coca-Cola is running ads in the United States that say its sugar-free beverages, sweetened with the chemical aspartame, are safe.

The print ads, which began appearing Wednesday in major U.S. newspapers, show a pair of laughing women, one holding a bottle of diet Coke in hand, alongside text that reads: "Quality products you can always feel good about."

People who use Facebook may feel more connected, but less happy.

A study of young adults released Wednesday concluded that the more people used Facebook, the worse they subsequently felt.

Sugar is toxic for mice in dosages that in humans would equal a "safe" diet that includes three cans of soda per day, scientists said Tuesday.

Mice fed a diet in which sugar contributed a quarter of their daily calories did not become obese or ill, yet died younger and had fewer babies than animals on a healthy diet, said the team -- raising red flags about "added sugar" levels some consider safe for humans.

Children born from obese women were 35 percent more likely to die prematurely in adulthood, according to a study Wednesday that warned of a growing epidemic.

Researchers in Scotland traced 37,709 children of 28,540 women who gave birth between 1950 and 1976.

A top executive at dairy giant Fonterra resigned Wednesday following a botulism milk scare that sparked global recalls and tainted the New Zealand food industry's "clean, green" image.

Fonterra's managing director of NZ Milk Products Gary Romano has quit, effective immediately, the company said in a brief statement.

Patients in China are swarming to acupuncture clinics to be given bee stings to treat or ward off life-threatening illness, practitioners say.

More than 27,000 people have undergone the painful technique -- each session can involve dozens of punctures -- at Wang Menglin's clinic in Beijing, says the bee acupuncturist who makes his living from believers in the concept.