Canadian police and doctors on Thursday reported a rash of pharmacy robberies and a rise in overdoses after the prescription drug OxyContin was pulled from circulation last month.

Addicts and drug dealers stepped up raids on drug stores at gunpoint in search of the last doses of the painkiller or turned to alternative mind benders with sometimes deadly results.

An Australian girl who suffered severe brain damage and was left paralyzed by food poisoning won a court case against fast food giant Kentucky Fried Chicken, in a judgment published Saturday.

Monika Samaan was seven years old when she suffered salmonella encephalopathy -- a brain injury linked to food poisoning that also left her with a blood infection and septic shock -- in October 2005.

Thousands of women arrive at health clinics across the United States every year, facing the heavy burden of ending pregnancies that were unplanned and unwanted.

But in a growing number of states, before being allowed to have an abortion, women are compelled to undergo a procedure that lets a medical professional hear the fetus's beating heart and describe details about its development.

Vietnam has asked international health experts to help investigate a mystery illness that has killed 19 people and sickened 171 others in an impoverished district in central Vietnam, an official said Friday.

The infection has mostly affected children and young people. It begins with a high fever, loss of appetite and a rash that covers the hands and feet. Patients who are not treated early can develop liver problems and eventually multi-organ failure, said Le Han Phong, chairman of the People's Committee in Ba To District in Quang Ngai province.

A computer game designed to lift teenagers out of depression is as effective as one-on-one counseling, New Zealand doctors reported on Thursday in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).

Researchers at the University of Auckland tested an interactive 3-D fantasy game called SPARX on a 94 youngsters diagnosed with depression whose average age was 15 and a half.

A new digital media service will foster the global collaboration of physicians and help them to share the latest advances in AIDS and other virus research, according to its Canadian promoters.

The new bilingual French and English service, "viroXchange," is funded by large pharmaceutical companies but will provide "independent" reporting on the latest medical breakthroughs for healthcare professionals, they said.

Doctors in Pakistan say they have successfully operated to save the life of a baby born with six legs due to a rare genetic condition, hospital officials said Thursday.

"A team of five experienced doctors have successfully separated the extra legs and limbs from the baby today. He is very much safe and secure," said Jamal Raza, the director of National Institute of the Child Health in Karachi.

Katya Nikitina could not sleep, think, or move during her first seven days at the rehab clinic.

A heroin addict in the Urals in western Russia, she moved from Chelyabinsk to the facility in Yekaterinburg, the area's main urban center, to get clean.

A new treatment helped rabbits born with cerebral palsy regain near-normal mobility, offering hope of a potential breakthrough in treating humans with the incurable disorder, researchers said Wednesday.

The method, part of the growing field of Nano medicine, worked by delivering an anti-inflammatory drug directly into the damaged parts of the brain via tiny tree-like molecules known as dendrimers.

New Zealand announced plans Thursday to force cigarette firms to sell their products in plain packaging, following world-first laws passed in Australia.

The government had agreed "in principal" to adopt plain packing laws on tobacco products, subject to public consultation to take place later this year, Associate Health Minister Tariana Turia said.