Teenage girls may prefer the pill, the patch or even wishful thinking, but their doctors should be recommending IUDs or hormonal implants — long-lasting and more effective birth control that you don't have to remember to use every time, the nation's leading gynecologists group said Thursday.

The IUD and implants are safe and nearly 100 percent effective at preventing pregnancy, and should be "first-line recommendations," the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said in updating its guidance for teens.

The nation's largest cancer center is launching a massive "moonshot" effort against eight specific forms of the disease, similar to the all-out push for space exploration 50 years ago.

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston expects to spend as much as $3 billion on the project over the next 10 years and already has "tens of millions" of dollars in gifts to jump start it now, said its president, Dr. Ronald DePinho.

France will seek an immediate EU ban on imports of a genetically-modified corn made by Monsanto if a study linking it to cancer in rats is deemed credible, Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said Thursday.

But the French scientist leading the study said he would not let the European Union's food safety watchdog, EFSA, verify his results because it had approved the NK603 corn in the first place.

A person infected with the mosquito-borne West Nile virus has died in Macedonia and two other people are undergoing treatment in a Skopje hospital, the health ministry said Thursday.

The death was the first of a virus carrier in the Balkans country, but four other people have died in the region since the start of the month.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration may consider new standards for the levels of arsenic in rice as consumer groups are calling for federal guidance on how much of the carcinogen can be present in food.

So far, FDA officials say they have found no evidence that suggests rice is unsafe to eat. The agency has studied the issue for decades but is in the middle of conducting a new study of 1,200 samples of grocery-store rice products — short and long-grain rice, adult and baby cereals, drinks and even rice cakes — to measure arsenic levels.

Switzerland is deeply divided ahead of a vote Sunday on whether to beef up a ban on smoking in indoor workplaces and public spaces, with supporters stressing the health benefits of less second-hand smoke and opponents decrying a "witch-hunt".

Sitting on the terrace of a Geneva cafe, enjoying a smoke in the early autumn sun, court clerk Isabelle Calapez told Agence France Presse she was "totally opposed" to the expanded ban.

Polish authorities said Wednesday that nationwide seizures netted 119,000 bottles of spirits made in the neighbouring Czech Republic, where methanol-tainted bootleg liquor has claimed 21 lives.

"This doesn't mean that the bottles contain methanol, but their sale will be banned for safety reasons until we have the results of tests," Jan Bodnar, spokesman for Poland's national health inspectorate, was quoted as saying by the country's news agency PAP.

Snakes are able to convert their venom back into harmless molecules according to new research published Wednesday that scientists said could have important implications for diseases like cancer.

The joint British-Australian study of venom and tissue gene sequences in snakes showed that venom not only evolved from regular cells but could be turned back into harmless proteins.

A group campaigning against obesity predicts that more than half the people in 39 U.S. states will be obese — not merely overweight, but obese — by 2030.

Mississippi is expected to keep its crown as the fattest state in America for at least two more decades. The report predicts 67 percent of that state's adults will be obese by 2030. That would be an astounding increase from the current 35 percent.

Two Swedish women are hoping to get pregnant after undergoing what doctors are calling the world's first mother-to-daughter uterus transplants.

Specialists at the University of Goteborg said they performed the surgery over the weekend without complications but added that they won't consider it successful unless the women give birth to healthy children.