The equivalent of 125,000 lethal doses of cyanide leaked from a factory in Japan after a snowplough accident, a plant operator said Wednesday.

At least five tons of liquid waste containing sodium cyanide spewed out of a tank after it was hit by a snowplough at a plating factory run by Kurosaka Plating Co. in Hanamaki, northern Japan, on Tuesday, a company official said.

The cost and health benefits of getting people not to smoke and better still, not to start, more than outweigh the taxes the tobacco industry pays to governments, the European Commission said Monday.

Irish Health Minister James Reilly, presenting the EU's new draft tobacco law in the European parliament, said smokers paid some 20 billion euros ($26.4 billion) annually in tax but health costs associated with smoking came to 23 billion euros.

Volunteer work has long been touted as good for the soul, but the practice is also good for your heart, according to a study out Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.

Researchers at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver wanted to find out how volunteering might impact one's physical condition, and discovered that it improves cardiovascular health, said study author Hannah Schreier.

As baby Lili celebrates her first birthday in Australia, far away in India her surrogate mother recalls the day the child was born -- and on whom she never laid eyes.

"I averted my gaze," says Seita Thapa, recounting her experience of giving birth at the Surrogacy Center India clinic in New Delhi last February on behalf of a gay male couple who used an egg donated from another woman.

Walking with wooden crutches because polio robbed him of the use of his legs, Aminu Ahmed Tudun-Wada is determined to prevent superstition and misinformation crippling efforts to vaccinate against the disease.

"If the West wanted to kill you, it doesn't have to be through polio (immunization)," said the 53-year-old head of a polio victims' association in the Nigerian state of Kano.

Pour on the olive oil, preferably over fish and vegetables: One of the longest and most scientific tests of a Mediterranean diet suggests this style of eating can cut the chance of suffering heart-related problems, especially strokes, in older people at high risk of them.

The study lasted five years and involved about 7,500 people in Spain. Those who ate Mediterranean-style with lots of olive oil or nuts had a 30 percent lower risk of major cardiovascular problems compared to others who were told to follow a low-fat diet. Mediterranean meant lots of fruit, fish, chicken, beans, tomato sauce, salads, and wine and little baked goods and pastries.

Swiss food giant Nestle said Monday it had stopped using a Spanish supplier after tests determined there was horse DNA in products supposedly containing pure beef, in the latest development in a Europe-wide food-labeling scandal.

"Tests have shown that one batch, supplied by Servocar, a company from Casarrubios del Monte (Toledo), contains horse DNA above the one-percent threshold likely to indicate adulteration or gross negligence," Nestle said in a statement.

Horsemeat containing a drug potentially harmful to humans has probably entered the food chain, France announced, as Italy became the latest country to be drawn into the contaminated meat scandal.

In Germany meanwhile, a minister suggested giving products mislabeled as beef products but actually containing horsemeat to the poor.

President Vladimir Putin signed a law banning smoking in public places in Russia from June, a cornerstone of the government's bid to improve public health, the Kremlin said Monday.

The law, called "On protecting the health of citizens from the danger of passive smoking and the consequences of the use of tabacco," makes smoking illegal in restaurants, cafes, hotels, trains and a host of other places.

AIDS-ravaged Malawi, where over a tenth of the population is HIV positive, records on average 1,000 new cases weekly, a top government official said Saturday.

"It’s a great concern to us that despite efforts by government to prevent HIV and AIDS, the country continues to register about 1,000 new cases of HIV every week," Edith Mkawa, a senior health ministry secretary in charge of nutrition, HIV and AIDS, told reporters.