To make the high school cheerleading team 40 years ago, twins Deborah and Sandra Fanelli performed an acrobatic move called "the flying splits."

The memory recently drew a rueful laugh from the once-active sisters, who in recent years have had trouble simply walking.

Haitians have suffered widespread hunger following an unusually active storm season this year and are likely to experience more, according to a study released Friday.

The report, backed by a Rio de Janeiro, Brazil-based think tank, found that rural households in the heavily hit areas of Haiti's west, north and Grand-Anse departments experienced what it termed "severe food shortages" after Hurricane Sandy and an unnamed storm that followed. The two merely brushed the Caribbean nation in October and November but caused major flooding and killed as many as 66 people.

Child poverty has worsened in Canada over the last decade, a U.N. official said Friday as she completed a tour of the country.

"Canada can afford to do better," said Marta Mauras, vice president of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, citing figures from UNICEF that rank the North American country 24th out of 35 industrialized countries.

U.S. government health experts overwhelmingly voted against a stronger version of hydrocodone on Friday, questioning the need for a new form of one of most widely abused prescription painkillers.

The Food and Drug Administration's panel of pain specialists voted 11-2 with one abstention against Zohydro for moderate to severe chronic pain. The drug was developed as a long-acting pain reliever by San Diego-based Zogenix Inc.

Suleiman Jean al-Kettani held a press conference Friday at the Press Club revealing his new organic and pioneering cure for patients with Hepatitis C and HIV, patented by the European Patent Office, and pending patent by the U.S. Patent Office, state-run National News Agency reported.

According to reports by French Hospital Salpetriere Pitie, clinical and lab tests proved a staggering 70% to 90% decrease of virus in blood and up to a 30% increase in immunity, NNA said. 

People preparing food are advised to wash their hands to prevent the spread of disease, yet an unseen threat may well lie on their kitchen knife, a new study says.

Researchers at the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia used new knives and graters on six types of fruit and vegetables that had been smeared with minute doses of hepatitis A virus and a "vomiting" bug called norovirus.

The lower house of Parliament has approved legislation that makes it legal in the Czech Republic to use marijuana for medical treatment.

The bill still needs to be approved by Parliament's upper house.

Scientists in Japan have used ostrich blood vessels to create a viable bypass in pigs, raising hopes of easier and more effective artery transplants for heart patients.

The team found they could harvest blood vessels from the bird's long neck and use them to construct artificial pathways that are up to 30 centimeters (12 inches) long and as little as two millimeters (0.08 inches) in diameter.

An outbreak of mosquito-borne yellow fever which has killed at least 165 people in Sudan's Darfur region is Africa's worst in decades, the World Health Organization said on Thursday.

"Definitely, this outbreak now could be classed as the largest outbreak" since at least 1990, WHO country representative Anshu Banerjee told AFP.

Tests on a daily pill for curing sleeping sickness have started in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and similar trials will shortly follow in the Central African Republic, a campaign group said Thursday.

Researchers will carry out Phase II/III trials of fexinidazole, which targets parasites blamed for two different strains of sleeping sickness, the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) said.