President Barack Obama's administration on Friday proposed rule changes to exempt religious groups more broadly from having to pay for their employees' contraceptive care under his health care reform.

"The proposed rules provide women with coverage for preventive care that includes contraceptive services with no co-pays, while also respecting the concerns of some religious organizations," said Kathleen Sebelius, head of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Less than half of all countries in the world have functioning plans to prevent cancer and provide treatment and care to cancer patients, the World Health Organization lamented Friday.

"Cancer should not be a death sentence anywhere in the world, as there are proven ways to prevent and cure many cancers," Dr. Oleg Chestnov, in charge of WHO's non-communicable diseases and mental health unit, said in a statement.

Germany's upper house of parliament on Friday gave its green light to testing embryos after in vitro fertilization in certain cases after a passionate ethical debate in the country on the issue.

The Bundesrat voted to allow so-called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis of embryos when one of the partners had a history of serious hereditary disease or if there was a high risk of stillbirth.

Add those cute little hedgehogs to the list of pets that can make you sick.

In the last year, 20 people were infected by a rare but dangerous form of salmonella bacteria, and one person died in January. The illnesses were linked to contact with hedgehogs kept as pets, according to a report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Adding a low-cost antibiotic to dietary treatments could help save many children with acute malnutrition, according to new research out Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Researchers from the Washington University in Saint Louis medical school followed the treatment of more than 2,700 Malawian children, six months to five years old, all diagnosed with severe malnutrition.

Married people are less prone to heart attacks than singletons and more likely to recover if stricken, according to a Finnish study published Thursday.

Researchers collected data on 15,330 people in Finland between the ages of 35 and 99 who suffered "acute coronary events" between 1993 and 2002.

Her coarse hands gripping a blue plastic ventilator she pumped by hand for years to keep her injured son alive, Wang Lanqin sits by her child's bed.

Wang and her husband Fu Minzu took turns for years pumping the device to help their son Fu Xuepeng breathe, as they could not afford the fees for him to be cared for in hospital after he was paralyzed in a motorbike crash.

Doctors in Beijing said Thursday that hospital admissions for respiratory complaints rose in recent days during the latest bout of pollution, as air quality in the city began to improve.

The U.S. embassy's air quality index stood at 233 on Thursday morning, or "very unhealthy," after it peaked at more than 500 on Tuesday. The Beijing municipality's figure was 184 at 10:00 am on Thursday, or "lightly polluted.”

A dearth of calories may not be the only reason some children face acute malnutrition, according to a new study out this week that says the microbes living in our guts may also be to blame.

Within hunger-stricken communities, not all children fare the same. Some develop acute malnutrition, while others, even their brothers and sisters, may stay healthy.

A U.S. soldier who lost all of his limbs in a bomb attack in Iraq in 2009 said on Tuesday he feels like himself again after he received a rare double arm transplant.

Brendan Marrocco, a former infantryman who was the first serviceman to survive quadruple limb loss in the Iraq war, underwent the complex 13-hour surgery six weeks ago.