When her legs ache, this Mexican grandmother rubs them with marijuana-infused alcohol. She is well aware the homemade remedy defies the country's cannabis ban, but her family has used the concoction to treat ailments since she was a child, handing it down the generations.

"I really have a lot of faith in it," said the slender 53-year-old, a housewife and amateur dancer who spoke to AFP about her cannabis use on condition of strict anonymity.

An outbreak of swine flu in Iran has claimed 42 lives since mid-November, including in a province neighboring Tehran, Health Minister Hassan Hashemi said Thursday.

Hashemi, quoted by ISNA news agency, said 33 deaths from the H1N1 virus were recorded in Kerman and five in Sistan-Baluchistan, both provinces in southeastern Iran.

Justin Trudeau raised eyebrows when he admitted to having dabbled in marijuana while a member of parliament, but his pledge as prime minister to legalize pot has been broadly cheered.

He said in a policy speech on Friday that his Liberal government would introduce legislation as early as 2016 to legalize marijuana, making Canada the first in the G7 bloc of industrialized nations to do so, although precise details remain sketchy.

Men taking a treatment for prostate cancer known as androgen deprivation therapy may be almost twice as likely to develop Alzheimer's disease than men not taking ADT, a study has found.

While the research in the December 7 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology stopped short of showing any definitive cause-and-effect between ADT and Alzheimer's, scientists said the association raises concern and merits further study.

Nearly one third of young doctors in training suffer from depression, according to a U.S. study Tuesday that warned the phenomenon may have negative effects on health care.

The analysis in the Journal of the American Medical Association included more than 17,000 physicians in training, going back as far as 1963.

Children born to mothers with a hormonal imbalance run a much higher risk of developing autism, according to a new study released by Sweden's Karolinska Institutet on Tuesday.

The findings, published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, link an imbalance called polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) to autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in children.

An outbreak of swine flu has left 33 people dead in two provinces of southwestern Iran in the last three weeks, the official IRNA news agency reported on Monday.

IRNA quoted Deputy Health Minister Ali Akbar Sayyari as saying there had been 28 deaths in Kerman province and five in Sistan-Baluchistan and warning the H1N1 virus was likely to spread to other areas including the capital Tehran. 

Indian authorities were investigating possible negligence after 18 hospital patients died when rainwaters from massive floods in southern Tamil Nadu state knocked out generators and switched off ventilators.

The patients were in the intensive care unit at MIOT International hospital in the state capital of Chennai when floodwaters seeped into the room with the generators, cutting off power to the building and the ventilators earlier this week, state Health Secretary J. Radhakrishnan said Saturday.

Canada will next year become the first country in the G7 bloc of leading economies to legalize marijuana, the government said Friday in a speech by the governor general.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had promised the move during the recent election campaign that swept his Liberals to power, after two previous administrations failed to follow through on a similar pledge.

Liberia has released its last two known Ebola cases from hospital and started the countdown to being declared free of the virus for a third time, authorities said on Friday.

The patients, released from a treatment unit (ETU) in the capital Monrovia on Thursday, are the father and younger brother of a 15-year-old boy who died on November 23.