When Neil Brown got high on dangerous chemicals sold as bath salts, he took his skinning knife and slit his face and stomach repeatedly. Brown survived, but authorities say others haven't been so lucky after snorting, injecting or smoking powders with such innocuous-sounding names as Ivory Wave, Red Dove and Vanilla Sky.

Some say the effects of the powders are as powerful as abusing methamphetamine. Increasingly, law enforcement agents and poison control centers say the advertised bath salts with complex chemical names are an emerging menace in several U.S. states where authorities talk of banning their sale.

The U.N. health agency says world leaders will discuss efforts to clamp down on junk food marketing to children when they meet in New York on Sept 19-20.

The World Health Organization says heads of state will use the U.N. General Assembly meeting to talk about limiting the number and type of ads that children are exposed to.

Attention, Walmart shoppers: The food in your cart, from fruit drinks to salad dressing, may soon get healthier.

The nation's largest grocer said Thursday it will reformulate thousands of store-brand products to reduce sodium and sugar and push its suppliers to do the same.

Bedbugs have terrorized homeowners and tourists around the world, but U.S. researchers say their genetic analysis of the beasts may lead to better ways to kill them off.

Entomologists at Ohio State University found genes that appear to be pesticide-resistant, according to their findings published Wednesday in the online Public Library of Science.

U.S. researchers have discovered why fetal stem cell transplants, once considered a promising field for treating congenital defects before birth, were failing: it was all mother's fault.

But mom's cells could also be the solution, according to a study on mice released Tuesday in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Serbian health authorities on Tuesday reported the first death of swine flu caused by the H1N1 virus in the Balkans country this year.

"A first lethal case linked to the flu virus H1N1 was reported. It concerned a person born in 1968 and living in Banat (northern Serbia) who suffered from chronic cardiac illness," the Serbian national health institute said in a statement.

Three shipments of U.S. beef have been pulled from Taiwan's shelves after they were found to contain controversial drugs to promote leanness in animals raised for meat, an official said Sunday.

"Now all the U.S. beef that may contain the residue of the leanness drug Paylean has been removed from the shelves," Chiang Yu-mei, a health official at the Taipei city government, told Agence France Presse.

European scientists have found a way to genetically modify chickens so that they don't transmit bird flu, according to research published Thursday in the journal Science.

Bird flu, also known as H5N1 avian influenza, usually afflicts poultry but can cross over to humans and cause lethal respiratory problems and other complications.

Scientists have found a way to ease chronic ringing in the ears, known as tinnitus, by stimulating a neck nerve and playing sounds to reboot the brain, according to research published Wednesday.

There is currently no cure for tinnitus, which can range from annoying to debilitating and affects as many as 23 million adults in the United States, including one in 10 seniors and 40 percent of military veterans.

DNA in a pregnant woman's blood can reliably show whether her fetus has Down's syndrome, thus hugely reducing the need for invasive test procedures such as amniocentesis, research published on Tuesday said.

Down's syndrome, a major developmental disorder also called trisomy 21, occurs in around one in every 800 live births.