Twenty children have died after eating a free lunch at a primary school in eastern India, with initial tests showing the food may have contained poisonous chemicals, officials said Wednesday.

Thirty more children remain ill in hospital after consuming lunch cooked at the village school, said the education minister of Bihar state, P. K.Shahi.

Sweden's food safety watchdog said on Tuesday it had found "extremely high" levels of arsenic in a Chinese herbal remedy, posing a "very serious health hazard."

The toxic substance was found in a product called Niu-Huang Chieh-tu-pien, which is claimed by online vendors of traditional Chinese medicine to cure numerous conditions, including toothache, skin infections, anorexia and fever in infants.

Saudi Arabia will not issue visas to the elderly, pregnant women or children for the hajj and umrah pilgrimages to help combat the spread of MERS coronavirus, the French health ministry said on Tuesday.

In an urgent circular to doctors, it said the Saudi health ministry "has taken the decision to restrict the issuing of visas" for the annual hajj and for the umrah, a pilgrimage which can be undertaken at any time.

Four months after a Florida man was found unconscious in a Palm Springs, California, motel, doctors are looking into the mystery of his identity after he awoke with no memory of his past and speaking only Swedish.

Michael Boatwright, 61, woke up with amnesia, calling himself Johan Ek, The Desert Sun newspaper reported. Boatwright was found unconscious in a Motel 6 room in February. After police arrived, he was transported to the Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs where he woke up.

A DNA flaw may explain why people with Type 2 diabetes are more prone to blood cancers than the rest of the population, a study said Sunday.

Doctors have long known that Type 2 diabetes is associated with leukaemia and lymphoma, but the reasons for this have been unclear.

The Texas senate late Friday approved a bill setting some of the strictest limits on abortion in the United States, just weeks after a filibuster by opposition Democrats dramatically thwarted the measure.

The bill -- similar to the one that state Senator Wendy Davis helped block in a 13-hour filibuster on June 25 -- was approved 19-11, with one Democrat joining the Republican majority, local media reported.

Saudi Arabia Saturday urged elderly and chronically ill Muslims not to perform the hajj pilgrimage, to curb the spread of the MERS coronavirus which has killed 38 in the kingdom.

The health ministry issued a set of conditions for people wanting to perform the annual hajj, which this year falls in October, or the year-round omra or minor pilgrimage.

Suicides in Singapore hit an all-time high of 487 in 2012 as more young people bogged down by stress and relationship woes took their own lives, a charity group dealing with the problem said Friday.

The tally, a 29 percent increase from the 2011 total, was boosted by an 80 percent rise in the 20-29 age bracket, the Samaritans of Singapore (SOS) said in a statement.

Britain on Friday announced it had postponed plans to introduce plain packaging on cigarettes, saying it was waiting to see the results of a similar move in Australia.

Prime Minister David Cameron faced criticism over the move, with opposition lawmakers asking whether the decision had been influenced by links between his chief party strategist and tobacco companies.

Irish lawmakers on Friday overwhelmingly approved abortion for the first time in limited cases where the mother's life is at risk, in a vote that revealed deep divisions in the predominantly Catholic nation.

The change was prompted by the death last year of an Indian woman who had been refused an abortion in an Irish hospital, but more broadly ends years of uncertainty over the legal status of terminations in the country.