Seven people, most of them elderly women, died after eating pickles contaminated with E. coli in northern Japan, officials said Sunday, in the country's deadliest mass food poisoning in 10 years.

A total of 103 others have been made ill after eating the same lightly pickled Chinese cabbage produced in late July by a company in the city of Sapporo, according to health bulletins issued by the local government.

An outbreak of cholera in Guinea has killed 82 people since February and is showing no signs of letting up, the country's health ministry said Saturday.

"A week ago we counted 60 dead and 2,054 cases ... this week we have recorded 82 dead," Dr. Sakoba Keita of the ministry's infectious diseases department told a press conference, adding that the situation was "alarming".

Health officials in Indiana and Kentucky say they are investigating farms, distributors and retailers after an outbreak of salmonella that has killed two and sickened at least 141 people nationwide was linked to cantaloupe grown in southwestern Indiana.

Officials Friday advised all Indiana residents to discard cantaloupes purchased since July 7.

Groundbreaking work with lab mice has boosted hopes for a male contraceptive pill, researchers in the United States reported on Thursday.

A compound initially sketched as a candidate for blocking cancer has been found to stop sperm generation in mice, they said.

Aircraft have begun spraying pesticide over parts of Dallas, Texas to combat an outbreak of mosquito-borne West Nile Virus blamed for 17 deaths this year, authorities said Friday.

The Texas Department of State Health Services said the aircraft covered 52,000 acres of Dallas County on Thursday night, opening a new front to stop the spread of West Nile Virus.

A proposal to open treatment centers in the Colombian capital for drug addicts is causing a stir in this cocaine-producing Latin American country.

The project, the brainchild of Bogota mayor Gustavo Petro, is aimed at curbing drug-related crime. Petro's office says it is similar to programs in Canada, Portugal, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

Cuban health officials warned Thursday about an increased number of mosquitoes in the country's urban areas that can spread diseases such as dengue fever.

The communist island's 23 largest municipalities are affected by an uptick of the Aedes aegypti mosquito, including the capital Havana, state television reported.

An overwhelming majority of New Yorkers oppose Mayor Michael Bloomberg's unprecedented proposal for banning super-sized sweet drinks and his support for breastfeeding, a poll found Thursday.

The Quinnipiac University poll found that 54 percent of New Yorkers oppose Bloomberg's planned prohibition restricting soda drink servings to no more than 16 ounces (almost half a liter). Some 42 percent of respondents backed the measure that could go into effect next year.

Tobacco use is massively entrenched in developing countries, where one of the biggest worries is the rise of smoking among women, according to a study published on Friday in The Lancet.

A survey of 16 countries that are home to three billion people found that 48.6 percent of all men and 11.3 percent of women are tobacco users, especially in poorer economies, where more girls are starting to smoke early and often at the same age as boys.

The Czech Republic is contemplating a blanket ban on smoking in restaurants, a step that would put the country on par with many of its EU peers, Czech media said Thursday.

"We will submit a new version of the law, the toughest ever here -- a complete ban on smoking in restaurants," the Lidove noviny broadsheet quoted deputy health minister Martin Plisek as saying.