The Gulf state of Kuwait on Monday banned "all forms of smoking" in most public places, including cafes, restaurants, hotels and malls.

Commerce and industry minister Amani Buresli ordered cafes, hotels and restaurants to allocate well-isolated places for smokers.

The World Health Organization warned Monday that the battle against the age-old scourge of leprosy is not yet over, with more than 5,000 new cases reported yearly in the Western Pacific, where the disease was declared eliminated in 1991.

WHO regional director Shin Young-soo said the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Kiribati are three of 37 countries in the region that have failed to meet the target of lowering cases to less than one per 10,000 people — the health body's definition of leprosy elimination.

It happened to nurse Jane Byron years after an in-line skating fall, business owner Haralee Weintraub while doing "men's" push-ups, and avid cyclist Gene Wilberg while lifting a heavy box.

"It" is that pop, strain or suddenly swollen joint that reminds active older adults they aren't as young as they'd like to think.

Botox developer Alan Scott says he rues the day he handed over rights to the best-selling wrinkle-smoothing drug to a U.S. company for just $4.5 million, saying he might have become a billionaire.

Botox has become a front-line weapon in cosmetic medicine for erasing wrinkles -- while therapeutic applications of the drug are being used to help a wide variety of disorders from swallowing problems to muscle spasms.

White House hopeful Mitt Romney has promised to unite Republicans and defeat President Barack Obama in the "battle for the soul of America" as officials in Maine prepared to unveil the results of party caucuses on Saturday.

Romney and his main rivals for the nomination, former House speaker Newt Gingrich and religious conservative Rick Santorum, all made the pilgrimage to the Conservative Political Action Conference here to court the Republican base and lay out their plan to oust Obama in November.

Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has undergone follow-up surgery after a November operation on his intestine, his office said Saturday.

"The second and final part of the operation on his intestinal system started on November 26 has been carried out successfully," said the statement, adding that it had taken 30 minutes. It did not way when the operation took place.

Top Russian psychiatrists on Friday called for urgent measures to battle the soaring teenage suicide rate, one of the world's highest.

The number of 15 to 19-year-olds taking their own lives is almost three times higher than the world average at 19 to 20 per 100,000, the health ministry's chief psychiatrist Zurab Kekelidze told a round table in Moscow.

Four years after U.S. drug-maker Baxter International's blood thinner heparin was contaminated in China, causing dozens of deaths, U.S. regulators on Friday issued draft guidelines for safe production.

Heparin, a blood thinner used by millions of patients during kidney dialysis and heart surgery to prevent blood clots, is normally produced from pig intestines.

Women who are given chemotherapy during pregnancy do not run a risk of harming their baby, doctors reported in The Lancet Oncology on Friday.

European cancer specialists looked at 68 pregnancies, producing 70 children, during which 236 cycles of cancer drugs were administered.

Driving under the influence of cannabis almost doubles the risk of a serious accident, according to a paper published on Friday in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).

The risk of collision is substantially higher if the driver is aged under 35, it said.