Britain's fertility regulator on Thursday gave the green light for the country to become the first in the world to legally offer "three-parent baby" fertility treatments.

A hospital in northern Italy said Wednesday it had achieved a world first by successfully transplanting a kidney in the place of the spleen in a six-year-old girl.

South Korea said Tuesday it was expanding a major bird flu cull to try and contain a damaging outbreak that has continued to spread during an all-consuming political crisis.

Since the first case of the highly pathogenic H5N6 virus was confirmed in mid-November, another 43 cases have been reported and close to 10 million chickens and ducks have already been slaughtered in farms across the country.

E-cigarette use is exploding among young people and is now "a major public health concern," the U.S. Surgeon General warned Thursday, sparking disagreement from experts in Britain where the devices are seen more favorably.

The battery-powered devices heat a liquid containing nicotine into a vapor that is inhaled, and some experts worry that a new generation of smokers is becoming addicted. 

An Egyptian who is believed to be the world's heaviest woman is to fly to India for weight reduction surgery after the country's foreign minister personally intervened to secure her a visa.

Britain will ban junk food ads aimed at children from both print and social media from next year, the advertising rules watchdog said Thursday, a move welcomed by campaigners against child obesity.

HIV infections among men having sex with men in the Philippines have surged 10-fold in five years, with authorities largely ignoring the problem, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Thursday.

South Korea on Tuesday said it was expanding a cull of chickens and ducks to try to contain a damaging bird flu outbreak.

The H5N6 virus was first confirmed on November 18 at a farm in central South Korea and has since spread to farms around the country, with the total number of cases now standing at 28.

A Dutch long-term alcoholic chose to end his life this year by lethal injection saying he could no longer go on, his brother has revealed in a moving tribute.

Japan has mobilised its military to help with a second mass cull of 230,000 chickens amid a spreading outbreak of a highly contagious strain of avian flu, officials said.

The highly virulent H5 strain was found in chickens at a farm in Joetsu city in Niigata prefecture, the local government said in a statement late Wednesday.