Smoking is responsible for nearly half of deaths due to certain types of cancers in 2011, a U.S. study said Monday.

Some 48.5 percent of nearly 346,000 deaths attributed to one of the 12 types of cancer known to be caused by smoking were due to cigarette use, according to the study published online in JAMA Internal Medicine.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is taking nothing more than Tylenol for his broken leg following his low-speed bike accident, he said in an interview published Sunday.

Kerry, who remains deeply engaged in the Iranian nuclear talks that have taken place over the past 18 months, told the Boston Globe that the narcotics doctors prescribed for him were having undesired effects. 

South Korea reported Monday its 16th death and five new cases in the growing outbreak of MERS which has placed more than 5,200 people under quarantine and sparked widespread alarm.

The death of a 58-year-old man put the total number of fatalities from Middle East Respiratory Syndrome at 16 since the outbreak began less a month ago.

Health authorities are repeating the mistakes of the past in combating Ebola, more than a year after its onset in Guinea and Sierra Leone, the international president of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warned Saturday.

Joanne Liu's remarks come a day after Sierra Leone imposed a three-week daytime curfew in the last Ebola-hit areas in a bid to curb a resurgence of the deadly virus, which has killed about 3,900 people in the country.

An Italian neurosurgeon's project to undertake the first human head transplant has received a skeptical welcome in the United States, where he made a pitch to donors and fellow scientists.

Sergio Canavero, who leads the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group, first announced his project in 2013, saying at the time that such a procedure could be possible as soon as 2016. 

South Korea Sunday reported its 15th death from the MERS virus as the growing outbreak that has now infected 145 forced one of the nation's biggest hospitals to suspend most services.

The latest fatality from Middle East Respiratory Syndrome was a 62-year-old man who died Sunday afternoon in the southern port city of Busan, the city council said.

South Korea's outbreak of the deadly MERS virus is "large and complex" and more cases should be expected, a team of World Health Organization (WHO) experts said Saturday.

WHO and South Korean health authorities have conducted a joint mission to review the outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), the largest outside Saudi Arabia.

A South African man who received the world's first successful penis transplant is to become a father just months after undergoing surgery, his doctor said Friday.

Urologist Andre van der Merwe, who led the team that performed the operation, told AFP that the 21-year-old's girlfriend was pregnant.

Ghana has suspended a trial for an Ebola vaccine after complaints that locals were being needlessly used as "guinea pigs" in a country currently free of the deadly disease.

The West African nation had agreed to join other countries in hosting trials to test the safety and effects of two experimental vaccines against a virus that has killed more than 11,150 people, mainly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Eating a Mediterranean diet has long been a byword for healthy living, but the very people who coined it are straying from sun-kissed fruits and legumes and their waistlines are paying the price.

The region is undergoing a "nutrition transition" from traditional, sustainable foods towards more meat and dairy products, a new report by the U.N. and International Center for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies said Thursday.