German pharmaceutical giant Bayer AG has challenged a ground-breaking Indian ruling that allowed a local firm to produce a vastly cheaper copy of its patented drug for kidney and liver cancer.

India's patents chief ruled in March the price Bayer charged for the drug, Nexavar, was "exorbitant" and ordered the firm to give a so-called "compulsory license" to make the medicine to Indian company Natco Pharma.

Researchers said Monday they were a step closer to developing a vaccine against the type of meningitis that mostly affects Europe and North America and kills hundreds every year.

A trial in adolescents in Australia, Poland and Spain showed them developing an immune response without serious side-effects, according to a study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases medical journal.

Indian generic drug giant Cipla said Friday it had slashed by up to 76 percent prices of three anti-cancer medicines in what it called a "humanitarian" move and promised to cut the costs of more products.

There are 2.5 million cases of cancer diagnosed in India each year, according to the World Health Organisation, with most patients receiving inadequate treatment as drugs are priced beyond their reach.

Men rarely get breast cancer, but those who do often don't survive as long as women, largely because they don't even realize they can get it and are slow to recognize the warning signs, researchers say.

On average, women with breast cancer lived two years longer than men in the biggest study yet of the disease in males.

Tainted dog food has sickened at least 14 people in the United States, health officials said Friday.

"Humans can become ill by handling pet products contaminated with salmonella, and by coming in contact with pets or with surfaces that have been contaminated," Ohio's health department said in a statement.

Two people were arrested in Britain's second city of Birmingham on Friday after a media report that medics and alternative practitioners had offered to perform female genital mutilation.

West Midlands Police said they had arrested two men aged 55 and 61 on suspicion of offences under the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003, which forbids the cutting of a girl's genitalia unless medically necessary.

A study of 13 industrialized countries released Thursday showed Japan spends the least on health care, while the United States spends the most without providing superior care for the money.

The United States spent nearly $8,000 per person in 2009 on health care services, more than Australia, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden or Switzerland.

More U.S. teenagers are postponing sex than in 1995, and hormonal contraceptive use is up among those who are sexually active, said U.S. health authorities on Thursday.

However, disparities in safe sex practices remain, with white teenagers more likely to regularly use contraception than African-Americans or Hispanics, said the report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Snubbing the outdoors for books, video games and TV is the reason up to nine in ten school-leavers in big East Asian cities are near-sighted, according to a study published on Friday.

Neither genes nor the mere increase in activities like reading and writing is to blame, the researchers suggest, but a simple lack of sunlight.

What if you knew, even before your child was born, that she wouldn't look like everyone else?

Clara Beatty's parents knew.