Ukrainian health officials say 37 people have died from the severe cold spell that hit the country this month.

Temperatures have dropped as low as minus-17 C (2 F).

Philippine Catholic church leaders vowed Tuesday to overturn a birth control bill after lawmakers passed landmark legislation to make sex education and birth control more widely available.

The Senate and the House of Representatives approved the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill late Monday, putting it on course to be signed into law by President Benigno Aquino within a week, after its final wording has been decided.

A four-year-old boy has died of bird flu in Indonesia, the health ministry said Tuesday, the 10th fatal case in the country this year.

The boy, from Bogor district in western Java, died on December 6 after a week of high fever.

The fight against malaria has slowed in the past two years, threatening to reverse progress in combating one of the world's biggest killers, the World Health Organization warned Monday.

Funding for efforts to prevent the deadly mosquito-borne disease increased sharply between 2004 and 2009, part of an ongoing drive that has saved more than a million lives in the past decade, but has since leveled off, the U.N.'s health body said.

Former South African president Nelson Mandela remained in hospital for a tenth straight day Monday after receiving treatment for a lung infection and gallstone surgery, the president's office said.

"If there's any changes we'll announce it. In the absence of that, work on the basis that he is continuing to improve," presidential spokesman Mac Maharaj told Agence France Presse.

A gene inserted into ordinary heart cells transformed them into rare "pacemaker" cells that regulate cardiac rhythm, according to experiments carried out on lab rodents.

The research is a step toward the goal of a biological fix for irregular heartbeat, which at present is tackled by drugs or electronic pacemakers, its investigators said.

Pentagon-backed scientists on Monday announced they had created a robot hand that was the most advanced brain-controlled prosthetic limb ever made.

The mind-powered prosthesis is a breakthrough, the team of neurologists and bio-engineers reported in The Lancet.

Philippine legislators were Monday poised to pass landmark birth control laws paving the way for increased sex education and free contraceptives, despite lobbying by the Catholic church, the bill's author said.

The Philippine Senate is due to vote on the Reproductive Health Bill during its crucial second reading, while the House of Representatives will vote for the third and final time late Monday, said Congressman Edcel Lagman.

Nelson Mandela remained in hospital Saturday, a week after he was admitted for treatment for a lung infection, a government official said.

"Mr Mandela is still in hospital, still comfortable and receiving treatment," said presidential spokesman Mac Maharaj.

The United Nations warned Friday that nearly 55 million tonnes of radioactive waste from old Soviet-era uranian mines remain in unsecured sites in northern Tajikistan.

The former Soviet republic, where Stalin's empire once mined uranium to create its first nuclear bomb, is still stuck with about 54.8 million tonnes of unsecured waste from the now mainly abandoned mines, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) said.