Nelson Mandela on Friday faced a seventh day in hospital, where he is undergoing treatment for a lung infection.

Officials said the ageing statesman's doctors continued to see progress in his condition, sparking rumors that he could be promptly discharged.

Nearly one in three highway fatalities in the United States last year stemmed from alcohol consumption, the government said Thursday as it launched a holiday campaign against drunk driving.

In 2011, 9,878 people died in alcohol-related road accidents -- 31 percent of all highway fatalities, the Transportation Department said.

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez experienced "complications," including bleeding, during his cancer surgery, but is showing positive signs of recovery, senior aides said Thursday.

During his treatment, 58-year-old Chavez had suffered "bleeding that required the adoption of corrective measures," Communications Minister Ernesto Villegas said in a television and radio address.

Eli Lilly's experimental Alzheimer's drug has flashed potential to help with mild cases of the disease, but patients and doctors will have to wait a few more years to learn whether regulators will allow the drugmaker to sell it.

Lilly said Wednesday that it will launch another late-stage study of the drug, solanezumab, no later than next year's third quarter. The company's stock slipped in midday trading.

Health officials in the African nation of Gabon say at least 150 people have been sickened by a mosquito-borne illness.

Gabon's Health Minister Marie Josee Ndombi announced Wednesday night in a statement on national television that the patients had been hospitalized with suspected cases of chikungunya fever.

The normally indefatigable, globe-trotting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was Wednesday still laid low by a nasty stomach bug which has kept her out of the public eye since the weekend.

As the rumor mill kept up steam over whether she plans to run for president in 2016, the usually tireless Clinton remained out of sight after falling sick at the end of a tour of Europe.

The Philippines moved closer to a controversial birth control law Thursday as lawmakers passed a version of the bill after a long debate over an issue that has deeply polarized the largely Catholic nation.

The bill paving the way for sex education in schools and the provision of free contraceptives in a country with one of Asia's fastest-growing populations was passed by the lower house of parliament after a five-hour vote.

U.S. doctors say they have saved a seven-year-old girl who was close to dying from leukemia by pioneering the use of an unlikely ally: a modified form of the HIV virus.

After fighting her disease with chemotherapy for almost two years and suffering two relapses, the young girl "faced grim prospects," doctors at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia said.

Brazil, the world's top beef meat exporter, sought Tuesday to calm fears over the discovery of an atypical case of mad cow disease that led Japan to suspend its imports.

The case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy was detected in an animal that died in 2010 in the southern state of Parana.

The United Nations on Tuesday launched a $2.2 billion appeal for a campaign to halt a cholera epidemic in Haiti, widely blamed on U.N. peacekeepers, which has killed more than 7,750 people.

With the number of reported cases exceeding 620,000 since the epidemic started in October 2010, U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon acknowledged the "heavy toll" as he launched the 10-year initiative.