China will start phasing out its reliance on organs from executed prisoners for transplants early next year as a new national donation system is implemented, a government-appointed expert has said.

Chinese officials acknowledge that a transplantation system that uses mostly organs from death-row prisoners is neither ethical nor sustainable, Wang Haibo said in an interview in the November edition of the World Health Organization's journal Bulletin.

Philippine authorities have ordered the recall of six brands of South Korean noodles from local shops after they were reported to contain a cancer-causing chemical.

The Food and Drug Administration said in a statement dated Thursday that the noodles made by Nongshim Co, "will be off the shelves immediately", and called on the public to report if they were still being sold.

Asia is hit with 30 million cases of malaria a year resulting in 42,000 deaths, a report said Friday as experts called for an urgent response to the disease which stalks billions in the region.

Most international efforts to defeat malaria have so far been concentrated on Africa, where the majority of the 650,000 worldwide deaths occur.

At the end of an unpaved road, in a quiet suburb of a sleepy town in northern Israel, horticultural revolutionaries are growing a strain of cannabis they say relieves symptoms of some chronic illnesses but without the psychotic effects that can accompany regular weed.

Behind the fence at Tikkun Olam -- Hebrew for "fixing the world" -- the green-fingered staff say they have created an Israeli first, by breeding a cannabis plant almost free of THC, tetrahydrocannabinol, the substance that gives smokers their high but can also carry a serious downside.

A drug initially developed to treat some types of cancer now appears to help people suffering from multiple sclerosis (MS), a study said Thursday.

The drug, alemtuzumab, proved effective in patient trials at reducing relapses -- a key feature of MS which sees symptoms appear sporadically.

People with pale skin and red hair may be more prone to developing a deadly form of skin cancer regardless of whether they spend time in the sun or not, a study said Wednesday.

Not only is this group more vulnerable to the sun's ultraviolet (UV) rays, but a study in mice has now shown that the pigment that gives hair a red hue may in itself have cancer-causing effects, said a paper in the journal Nature.

Australian doctors Thursday hailed what they described as a world-first surgical treatment for a boy suffering from a rare disease that sends his blood pressure soaring and triggered a stroke.

Matthew Gaythorpe, 10, has suffered severe hypertension his entire life due to a combination of kidney and liver conditions called autosomal recessive polycystic kidney disease and congenital hepatic fibrosis.

Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk A/S says its net profit grew by 35 percent in the third quarter of 2012, chiefly spurred by strong sales of its diabetes drugs.

The world's biggest insulin maker says net profit during the period rose to 5.67 billion kroner ($983 million) from 4.2 billion kroner a year earlier.

Australia on Wednesday moved to extend punitive refugee policies to any asylum-seeker who lands on its mainland, allowing for them to be banished to remote Nauru or Papua New Guinea for detention.

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen introduced a proposal to expand the government's powers to send boatpeople for indefinite detention in the Pacific across the entire mainland, not just the remote islands where most land.

Drug-resistant malaria is spreading in Asia, experts warned as a high-level conference opened Wednesday with the aim of hammering out an action plan to strengthen the region's response.

Resistance to the drug used everywhere to cure the life-threatening disease has emerged in Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar, said Richard Feachem, director of global health at the University of California, San Francisco.