Serbian health authorities on Tuesday reported the first death of swine flu caused by the H1N1 virus in the Balkans country this year.

"A first lethal case linked to the flu virus H1N1 was reported. It concerned a person born in 1968 and living in Banat (northern Serbia) who suffered from chronic cardiac illness," the Serbian national health institute said in a statement.

Three shipments of U.S. beef have been pulled from Taiwan's shelves after they were found to contain controversial drugs to promote leanness in animals raised for meat, an official said Sunday.

"Now all the U.S. beef that may contain the residue of the leanness drug Paylean has been removed from the shelves," Chiang Yu-mei, a health official at the Taipei city government, told Agence France Presse.

European scientists have found a way to genetically modify chickens so that they don't transmit bird flu, according to research published Thursday in the journal Science.

Bird flu, also known as H5N1 avian influenza, usually afflicts poultry but can cross over to humans and cause lethal respiratory problems and other complications.

Scientists have found a way to ease chronic ringing in the ears, known as tinnitus, by stimulating a neck nerve and playing sounds to reboot the brain, according to research published Wednesday.

There is currently no cure for tinnitus, which can range from annoying to debilitating and affects as many as 23 million adults in the United States, including one in 10 seniors and 40 percent of military veterans.

DNA in a pregnant woman's blood can reliably show whether her fetus has Down's syndrome, thus hugely reducing the need for invasive test procedures such as amniocentesis, research published on Tuesday said.

Down's syndrome, a major developmental disorder also called trisomy 21, occurs in around one in every 800 live births.

A Saudi court has dismissed an $8-million lawsuit filed against tobacco companies by a cancer-sufferer who blamed smoking for his damaged health, a newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Al-Hayat said the General Court in Jeddah on Monday dismissed the legal action against tobacco distributing companies in Saudi Arabia and denied the plaintiff his claim of 30 million riyals (around $8 million) compensation.

Bulgaria's veterinary service on Monday ordered the slaughter of all cattle in a village close to the country's southeast border with Turkey after cases of foot-and-mouth disease were confirmed there.

More than 500 animals in the mountain village of Kosti are to be destroyed after 37 tested positive for foot-and-mouth disease, the national veterinary service said in a statement.

Five thousand dead blackbirds rained from the sky on the first day of the New Year in Arkansas. Then more dead birds fell in other states. Then huge fish kills were discovered in multiple US waterways.

And suddenly it became a worldwide phenomenon, with reports of mass die-offs of birds and fish in Sweden, Britain, Japan, Thailand, Brazil and beyond.

The Health Ministry's Director-General, Walid Ammar, reassured the Lebanese on Friday that the H1N1 strain has become similar to seasonal flu saying there were currently some cases in Lebanon but not as much as last winter's levels.

In remarks to Voice of Lebanon radio station, Ammar said illness caused by the virus requires no extraordinary measures and that complications could only arise in pregnant women, children under the age of five and people with chronic diseases.

Britain's food safety watchdog has said that egg tainted with dioxin that has been imported into the country after being contaminated in Germany is not thought to be a risk to health.

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) said they had been informed that affected eggs were sent to the Netherlands and mixed with other non-contaminated eggs to make a pasteurized liquid egg, which was then exported to Britain.