A major anti-tobacco conference opened in Moscow on Monday aimed at agreeing higher taxes on cigarettes, a move being fiercely opposed by the tobacco industry.   

Russia, which has introduced strict anti-smoking legislation, was hosting a five-day World Health Organization conference that has brought together some 1,500 delegates from signatory countries of the international body's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. 

A major international research group rang alarm bells Monday over the scourge of hidden hunger, also known as vitamin and mineral deficiencies, which affects over two billion people with often devastating consequences.

In its Global Hunger Index report, which identified 16 countries with "extremely alarming" or "alarming" hunger levels, the International Food Policy Research Institute also stressed the challenge of fighting the often overshadowed form of malnutrition that occurs when people do not absorb enough nutrients.

Ugandan health officials said Monday that they are continuing to monitor five people feared to have contracted the Ebola-like Marburg virus, even though all suspected cases so far have tested negative.

A 30-year-old medical technician died from Marburg on September 28, 11 days after falling ill, at the Mengo hospital in the capital where he worked, sparking alarm in the east African nation.

Hundreds of thousands of workers in England's state-run National Health Service went on strike Monday for the first time since 1982 following the government's rejection of a blanket pay rise.

NHS staff including nurses, ambulance crews and midwives stopped working for four hours from 7:00 am (0600 GMT), some forming picket lines.

The World Health Organization called the Ebola outbreak "the most severe, acute health emergency seen in modern times" but also said Monday that economic disruptions can be curbed if people are adequately informed to prevent irrational moves to dodge infection.

WHO Director-General Margaret Chan, citing World Bank figures, said 90 percent of economic costs of any outbreak "come from irrational and disorganized efforts of the public to avoid infection."

A Texas health care worker has become the first person to contract Ebola on American soil, authorities confirmed Sunday, blaming a safety breach for the spread of the deadly disease.

The new Ebola patient, the second person infected outside Africa and the second diagnosed in the United States, had treated a man at a Dallas hospital who died of Ebola last week.

Israeli and Palestinian officials met at the weekend to draw up an action plan to prevent the Ebola epidemic from spreading to the territories they control, the Israeli military said Sunday.

"During the meeting (on Saturday evening), updates were exchanged between the parties, and transfer of information was agreed upon by way of additional meetings to take place in order to further track the issue," said COGAT, the defense ministry unit responsible for Palestinian civilian coordination.

Israeli and Palestinian officials met at the weekend to draw up an action plan to prevent the Ebola epidemic from spreading to the territories they control, the Israeli military said Sunday.

"During the meeting (on Saturday evening), updates were exchanged between the parties, and transfer of information was agreed upon by way of additional meetings to take place in order to further track the issue," said COGAT, the defense ministry unit responsible for Palestinian civilian coordination.

U.S. regulators on Friday approved Harvoni, a daily pill to treat hepatitis C that is simpler to administer than long-standing treatments but that carries a steep price tag.

The combination pill made by California-based Gilead Sciences was shown in trials to cure up to 99 percent of patients within two to three months.

A newlywed U.S. woman with terminal cancer has announced plans online to end her life on November 1 to die with dignity and without debilitating pain.

In January, Brittany Maynard, 29, was given six months to live due to brain cancer, and told her death would be long and painful because of the aggressive nature of the disease.