Companies vying for a stake in the fast-growing electronic cigarette business are reviving the decades-old marketing tactics the tobacco industry used to hook generations of Americans on regular smokes.

They're using cab-top and bus stop displays, sponsoring race cars and events, and encouraging smokers to "rise from the ashes" and take back their freedom in slick TV commercials featuring celebrities like TV personality Jenny McCarthy.

China stepped up warnings to consumers Monday over a botulism scare involving products from a New Zealand dairy company, and has demanded affected importers check their sales records.

The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) said it was "warning consumers" following an alert over a bacteria that could lead to the potentially fatal illness.

China has blocked all imports of milk powder from New Zealand, a New Zealand minister said Sunday, after bacteria that can lead to botulism was found in some dairy products.

Trade Minister Tim Groser said the ban was "entirely appropriate", after global dairy giant Fonterra said some exported whey products including infant formula may contain bacteria that could lead to the potentially fatal illness.

Eleven people have died in Cuba after consuming alcohol sold illegally on the street, according to an updated toll out Friday.

"Four people remain in critical condition, two of whom are receiving hemodialysis," Efren Acosta, deputy director of Havana's provincial health department, said.

India has revoked a local patent granted to Britain's GlaxoSmithKline for a breast cancer drug in the latest blow to global companies seeking a bigger presence in the country's $13 billion medicine market.

Tykerb, one of the most widely prescribed breast cancer treatments in India used to treat advanced forms of the disease, is a newer version of GlaxoSmithKline's (GSK) original anti-breast cancer drug lapatinib.

The Food and Drug Administration says an outbreak of stomach illnesses in Iowa and Nebraska is linked to salad mix served at local Olive Garden and Red Lobster restaurants and supplied by a Mexican farm.

The outbreak of cyclospora infections has sickened more than 400 people in 16 states in all. The agency says it is still working to determine whether the salad mix is the source of illnesses in the other 14 states.

New Zealand warned international health authorities Saturday of exported dairy products, including infant formula, containing a bacteria that could lead to botulism -- a potentially fatal illness.

The government said the contaminated whey protein concentrate, or products using this ingredient, had been exported to Australia, China, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Thailand and Vietnam.

Nepal on Thursday banned the sale of chicken after health workers found cases of bird flu at several poultry farms on the outskirts of the capital Kathmandu, officials said.

Officials at Kathmandu District Animal Health Office said the government had imposed a week-long ban on the supply and sale of poultry products to prevent the H5N1 virus from spreading to humans.

New Swedish research has shown that there is little or no relation between how much sleep people get at night and how fatigued they feel, the head researcher said Thursday.

"The length of sleep is not a good measurement to analyse whether we get enough sleep or not," Torbjoern Aakerstedt told Agence France Presse of the studies conducted at the Stress Research Institute of Stockholm University.

Three women have contracted the deadly MERS virus in Saudi Arabia, which has been hardest hit by the enigmatic disease, the World Health Organisation said Thursday.

One of the patients is a 67-year-old woman from Riyadh with underlying medical conditions, but who was not known to have come into contact with animals or another sufferer of the virus.