The biggest study of its kind suggests autism might be linked with inducing and speeding up labor, preliminary findings that need investigating since labor is induced in increasing numbers of U.S. women, the authors and other autism experts say.

It's possible that labor-inducing drugs might increase the risk — or that the problems that lead doctors to start labor explain the results. These include mothers' diabetes and fetal complications, which have previously been linked with autism.

Stephen Merrill was finishing his freshman year of college two years ago when he and a group of friends went to an indoor trampoline park in Utah for a day of flipping, jumping and bouncing.

At one point, Merrill leaped from a platform into a pit full of foam blocks, and he shot right through them and landed on his head. He broke a vertebra in his neck, and was left paralyzed from the neck down.

A Chinese woman infected with the deadly H7N9 bird flu virus died of multiple organ failure, a Beijing hospital said, bringing the total fatalities from the disease to 45.

The 61-year-old tested positive for the virus on July 20 after she fell ill in Hebei province in northern China.

New Zealand on Monday rejected allegations from Sri Lanka that its dairy products were contaminated with a farm chemical, accusing industry rivals of exploiting fears stirred by a recent botulism scare.

Sri Lanka's health ministry has recalled two batches of milk powder made by Auckland-based dairy giant Fonterra, saying it was concerned the product contained the chemical dicyandiamide.

One Yemeni prisoner at Guantanamo Bay says it is an agonizing, cruel punishment that he would not wish on anyone.

U.S. federal Judge Gladys Kessler describes it as a "painful, humiliating and degrading process."

Behind the brick walls of the Mycetoma Research Centre trying to unravel the mysteries of the infection is a rare story of medical success in impoverished Sudan.

With bandages on their swollen, deformed feet, patients from across the vast country arrive at the spotless facility set in a garden in the southern Khartoum district of Soba.

Beijing city health and corruption officials have launched an investigation into allegations staff at French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi bribed more than 500 Chinese doctors a total of about $280,000, state media reported Saturday.

The joint investigation will probe claims in China's 21st Century Business Herald newspaper purporting to show that company staff paid 503 doctors in 79 hospitals bribes totaling 1.69 million yuan in a bid to increase sales.

New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra, already under pressure over a global botulism scare, is facing fresh trouble over milk powder in Sri Lanka allegedly mixed with a farm chemical.

The company said Saturday it had completed a recall of two batches of milk powder under Sri Lankan government orders because of allegations it contained traces of chemical DCD.

Israel is to vaccinate all children against polio, after "thousands" of people in the south of the country were found to be carriers, Health Minister Yael German said on Saturday.

German said 98 percent of Israelis were already vaccinated but could pass the virus onto the remainder.

With her 1-day-old son propped against her in a hospital bed nursing, Qi Wenjuan says she has no desire to feed her child with infant formula.

"I don't trust baby formula," the first-time mother said, lying in the maternity ward of Beijing's Tiantan Hospital. "There are too many quality problems."