New cases of HIV and AIDS fell sharply in South Africa since ten years ago, a testimony to successful treatment, according to a report by the U.N. Aids body released Friday.

In 2004 around 540,000 South Africans contracted HIV, but the number dropped by a third to 370,000 in 2012, UNAIDS said.

South Africa's health minister accused multi-national drug companies of orchestrating a "satanic" and "genocidal" plot to rig patent laws, according to a newspaper interview published Friday.

Commenting on pharmaceutical firm's efforts to scupper patent reforms that would lower the cost of some medicine with generic versions, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi told the Mail & Guardian newspaper it was a conspiracy of "satanic magnitude".

A long-term probe has found that South Africans with highly drug-resistant TB are "systematically" discharged from hospital without being cured, placing themselves and others at risk, its authors said Friday.

"Treatment failure and discharge of such patients into the wider community is occurring systematically on a country-wide level," said Keertan Dheda, a University of Cape Town professor of pulmonology who led the study.

The Google lab known for working on unusual projects like self-driving cars is crafting a contact lens that could help diabetics manage blood sugar levels.

"We're now testing a smart contact lens that's built to measure glucose levels in tears," project co-founders Brian Otis and Babak Parviz said Thursday in a blog post.

China has reported a new death from the H7N9 bird flu virus, state media said Friday, bringing the toll this year to at least four as the disease returns following its 2013 outbreak.

The unnamed patient in Yangjiang in the southern province of Guangdong died on Wednesday from respiratory failure, the official Xinhua news agency said, citing local health authorities.

Smoking cigarettes can cause even more health problems than lung cancer, including blindness, diabetes, erectile dysfunction and liver cancer, said a major U.S. government report on Friday.

The latest Surgeon General's findings on the health consequences of smoking were to be formally announced at the White House, in a ceremony marking 50 years since the first landmark report of its kind warned Americans that cigarettes caused lung cancer.

South Korea on Friday started culling thousands of poultry after a preliminary test indicated the first possible outbreak of bird flu since 2011, officials said.

A suspected case of avian influenza was reported Thursday at a poultry farm in Gochang in North Jeolla Province, some 300 kilometers (187.5 miles) southwest of Seoul, the agricultural ministry said.

Beijing's skyscrapers receded into a dense gray smog Thursday as the capital saw the season's first wave of extremely dangerous pollution, with the concentration of toxic small particles registering more than two dozen times the level considered safe.

The air took on an acrid odor, and many of the city's commuters wore industrial strength face masks as they hurried to work.

Men who consume more than two alcoholic drinks per day while in middle age may speed up their memory loss in later life by up to six years, said a study Wednesday.

However, there were no differences in memory or mental function between non-drinkers and those who drank less than two drinks, or 20 grams per day, said the findings in the journal Neurology.

U.S. regulators said Wednesday they are urging doctors to cease prescribing drugs that contain more than 325 milligrams of acetaminophen per tablet due to concerns over liver damage.

Prescription painkillers such as Vicodin and Percocet, can contain acetaminophen and may be dangerous if taken with other popular pain-relievers, like Tylenol, or with alcohol.