AP - Tobacco companies are targeting the half billion young people in the Asia Pacific region by linking smoking to glamorous and attractive lifestyles, the U.N. World Health Organization said Friday.

AP - Appeals courts in New Jersey and Texas on Thursday scrapped verdicts against the drugmaker Merck & Co. Inc. stemming from some of the earliest trials involving its once popular painkiller Vioxx.

AFP - US researchers hailed promising advances in cancer treatment but lamented the decreasing amount of federal money devoted to finding a cure, ahead of the world's largest cancer conference this week.

AP - The percentage of American children who are overweight or obese appears to have leveled off after a 25-year increase, according to new figures that offer a glimmer of hope in an otherwise dismal battle.

Reuters - A new imaging technique that relies on naturally occurring baking soda in the body could help pinpoint cancer earlier and quickly gauge if drugs to kill tumors are working, British researchers said on Wednesday.