AIDS-ravaged Malawi, where over a tenth of the population is HIV positive, records on average 1,000 new cases weekly, a top government official said Saturday.

"It’s a great concern to us that despite efforts by government to prevent HIV and AIDS, the country continues to register about 1,000 new cases of HIV every week," Edith Mkawa, a senior health ministry secretary in charge of nutrition, HIV and AIDS, told reporters.

It's been called one of medicine's "open secrets" — allowing patients to refuse treatment by a doctor or nurse of another race.

In the latest example, a white man with a swastika tattoo insisted that black nurses not be allowed to touch his newborn. Now two black nurses are suing the hospital, claiming it bowed to his illegal demands.

The Food and Drug Administration has approved a first-of-a-kind breast cancer medication that targets tumor cells while sparing healthy ones.

The drug Kadcyla from Roche combines the established drug Herceptin with a powerful chemotherapy drug and a third chemical linking the medicines together. The chemical keeps the cocktail intact until it binds to a cancer cell, delivering a potent dose of anti-tumor poison.

Several horse carcasses containing the drug Phenylbutazone have probably ended up in the human food chain, France's agriculture ministry said Saturday.

Phenylbutazone is an anti-inflammatory treatment for horses which is potentially harmful to humans and by law is supposed to be kept out of the food chain.

A man in southwestern China has died of bird flu, health authorities said Saturday, becoming the second fatality from the H5N1 virus this year.

The 31-year-old died in hospital in the city of Guiyang on Friday, the Guizhou province health department said in a statement, adding that no other human cases of avian flu had been reported in the province.

The United Nations rejected a claim for damages on behalf of more than 5,000 Haitian cholera victims and their families on Thursday, citing diplomatic immunity.

The claim was filed in November 2011 by the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, a Boston-based human rights group that contended the U.N. and its peacekeeping force are liable for hundreds of millions of dollars for failing to adequately screen peacekeeping soldiers.

It turns out this year's flu shot is doing a startlingly dismal job of protecting older people, the most vulnerable age group.

The vaccine is proving only 9 percent effective in those 65 and older against the harsh strain of the flu that is predominant this season, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.

Just like the centuries-old coffee tradition, the nargileh, or water pipe, is a mainstay of Turkish culture but authorities are clamping down on this ancient social ritual that health experts say is as harmful to health as smoking regular cigarettes.

Fans of the water pipe, also known as a hookah or shisha, can no longer get their fix in cafes, bars, and restaurants after a law banning smoking from closed public spaces came into force in January.

China's environment ministry has acknowledged the existence of "cancer villages", several years after widespread speculation first began that polluted areas were seeing a higher incidence of the disease.

The use of the term in an official report, thought to be unprecedented, comes as authorities face growing discontent over industrial waste, hazardous smog and other environmental and health consequences after years of rapid development.

On an average day, U.S. adults get roughly 11 percent of their calories from fast food, a government study shows.

That's down slightly from the 13 percent reported the last time the government tried to pin down how much of the American diet is coming from fast food. Eating fast food too frequently has been seen as a driver of America's obesity problem.