A tiny Samoan airline that is the first to introduce a fare system based on passengers' weight hailed the success of its policy Wednesday and predicted it would become a global norm.

Four months after introducing the "fare-weight" system -- the lighter the passenger the lighter the fare -- Air Samoa chief executive Chris Langton said the feedback from fliers of all sizes has been positive.

Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad was in hospital for an inflamed pancreas on Tuesday, a medic in Ramallah said, having been admitted the night before with stomach pains.

"Medical tests and scans show that Fayyad is suffering from pancreatic inflammation," a doctor at the hospital in the West Bank city told Agence France Presse.

Four more people in China have been infected with a new strain of bird flu, a local government said Tuesday, bringing the country's total to seven.

The announcement follows Sunday's disclosure of three infections -- two of them fatal -- elsewhere in China, the first time the H7N9 strain of avian influenza is known to have been transmitted to humans.

After crocheting a colorful blanket, Joan Ferguson snuggled up under it one night and proudly thought: "This is one groovy blanket. I'm brilliant."

Ferguson, 53, who struggles with low self-esteem, said it was the first time she had ever praised herself. She attributed the breakthrough in part to free self-help classes on mental health run by Britain's government-funded medical system.

An Australia-led study has identified a gene associated with a common form of epilepsy which could lead to earlier diagnosis, a researcher said Tuesday.

Melbourne University academic Ingrid Scheffer said a number of genes linked to epilepsy were known to scientists, but these related to rare families in which a large number of members had the condition.

People age 65 and older who eat fish may live an average of two years longer than people who do not consume the omega-3 fatty acids found mainly in seafood, a U.S. study suggested on Monday.

People with higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids also had an overall risk of dying that was 27 percent lower, and a risk of dying from heart disease that was 35 percent lower than counterparts who had lower blood levels, said the study.

Health officials say they still don't understand how a lesser-known bird flu virus was able to kill two men and seriously sicken a woman in China, but that it's unlikely that it can spread easily among humans.

Two men in Shanghai became the first known human fatalities from the H7N9 bird flu virus after contracting it in February. A woman in the eastern city of Chuzhou remains in serious condition, China's National Health and Family Planning Commission said.

Nearly one in five American teenage boys is diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, marking a dramatic rise in the past decade, the New York Times reported on Monday.

The condition, for which potent stimulant drugs like Adderal or Ritalin are often prescribed, has been previously estimated to affect three to seven percent of children.

Shanghai is stepping up monitoring at local hospitals after a new strain of bird flu killed two people last month in China's commercial hub, state media said Monday.

The Chinese government said over the weekend that two men, one aged 87 and the other 27, had died after being infected with H7N9 avian influenza -- a sub-type that had not previously been transmitted to humans.

Some 240,000 children have missed U.N.-backed vaccinations against polio because of security concerns in Pakistan's tribal regions bordering Afghanistan, a top official with the World Health Organization said Friday.

Dr. Nima Saeed Abid, the acting WHO chief in Pakistan, said health workers have not been able to immunize children in the North and South Waziristan regions — Taliban strongholds — since July 2012.