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Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of HealthDay:

Japan Science Council Backs Human Embryo Cloning

Japan's top science council has agreed to policy recommendations that would allow for limited cloning of human embryos for research purposes, according to the Associated Press.

The council, headed by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, will now ask the country's ministries to draft specific guidelines.

The recommendations, which were announced Friday, would permit researchers to produce and use cloned human embryos, but only for basic research, said Tomohiko Arai, an official at the Council for Science and Technology Policy. The cloning wouldn't be used for treating human patients. Arai declined to speculate on how long it might take to draft the guidelines, the AP said.

Many scientists back human embryo cloning to obtain stem cells that can be used to reproduce damaged body tissues or organs.

Japan banned human cloning in 2001, but has permitted researchers to use human embryos that aren't produced by cloning. Britain and South Korea allow therapeutic cloning. The United States prohibits any kind of embryo cloning and has lobbied strongly against it, the news service said.

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Flu Vaccine Makers to Produce Extra Doses This Year

Last winter's flu season got off to an early and harsh start, leading to a rush on vaccines that quickly exhausted supplies. Determined to avoid a repeat of that scenario this year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will for the first time stockpile 4 million vaccines for children.

And the two vaccine makers, Chiron Corp. and Aventis Pasteur, say they will produce a combined 100 million doses -- about 17 million more than last year, according to the Associated Press.

Chiron produced 38 million shots last year. But that supply quickly disappeared with the early start to the flu season in October. By December, both manufacturers had run out of vaccines, leaving many Americans unprotected against the flu.

The CDC recommends that about 185 million Americans, including the elderly, children, and those with weakened immune systems, get flu shots. Health officials expect a record number of people to seek vaccinations this year, the AP said.

But vaccine manufacturing involves a fair amount of guesswork, including which flu strains to protect against each year and how many doses to produce, the news service said.

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Judge Blocks Mississippi Law Barring Late Abortions

A federal judge has blocked a Mississippi law that effectively banned abortions after the 13th week of pregnancy, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger reported Friday.

U.S. District Judge Tom Lee extended a preliminary injunction he issued July 2, saying the new law violated the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Jackson Women's Health Organization, one of two abortion clinics in Mississippi, had challenged the law, saying it would effectively bar any woman from getting an abortion after her 13th week.

The law had restricted abortions after that week of pregnancy to licensed hospitals or ambulatory surgical clinics. But no private hospital or clinic now performs abortions in the state, and public hospitals are forbidden to do so unless the pregnancy threatens the mother's health or is a result of rape or incest, the newspaper reported.

Mississippi's abortion laws are already among the most restrictive in the country, the Clarion-Ledger account said. The new legislation had been scheduled to take effect July 1.

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Were Napoleon's Doctors His Final Waterloo?

A new report speculates that the French emperor Napoleon died not of cancer or of poisoning by a former confidante, but because his doctors were too aggressive.

Theories abound about Napoleon's death in exile on the island of St. Helena in 1821. Most historians believe he succumbed to stomach cancer, as did his father. But in recent years, a more sinister theory emerged, according to New Scientist magazine.

According to this, the former confidante, Count Charles de Montholon, carried out a plot to poison Napoleon with arsenic. He was encouraged by French royalists, who feared that he would once again return to the mainland. The theory was carried by evidence that the "Little Corporal" had remains of arsenic in his hair.

The latest theory, according to New Scientist, holds that that "it was medical misadventure that finished Napoleon off." Forensic pathologist Steven Karch of the San Francisco Medical Examiner's Department led a team that discovered that his physicians gave Napoleon an enema every day to relieve his symptoms.

"They used really big, nasty syringe-shaped things," Karch said. They also gave him potassium and high doses of other chemicals to induce vomiting, and the mixture would have given him a deadly heart condition.

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California Reports First West Nile Death

A 57-year-old man who died last month is California's first fatality from the West Nile virus, which has taken its deadly march from coast to coast since it was first detected in New York City five years ago.

The man, who lived in Orange County, checked into a hospital on June 17 with signs of encephalitis, a swelling of the brain, and died a week later. Health officials said the man had other, undisclosed health problems that weakened his immune system, according to the Orange County Register. A state laboratory confirmed Wednesday that he was infected with West Nile.

"This is a sad reminder of the seriousness of this virus," the Register quotes Dr. Richard J. Jackson, public health officer at the California Department of Health Services, as saying.

About 200 people have tested positive for the virus so far this year, the newspaper reports. Four others -- two in Arizona and one each in Texas and Iowa -- have died. Since it first appeared in 1999, the virus has claimed more than 560 lives and infected many thousands more.

Most people who contract West Nile feel either mild, flu-like symptoms or no effects at all. The virus preys on the elderly and those whose immune systems are already susceptible.

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Contraceptive Maker Launches Plan B for Approval

The maker of the so-called "morning-after" pill has reintroduced a plan to make the product available without a prescription, this time limiting over-the-counter sales to females 16 and older, Newsday reported.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration rejected Barr Pharmaceuticals' initial bid in May, saying it didn't have enough evidence of the drug's safety among younger teenagers to allow unregulated use in that age group. Barr's new plan, submitted Thursday, would restrict over-the-counter use to women 16 and older, and would still require a prescription for younger girls.

To the dismay of many women's organizations two months ago, the FDA rejected the initial plan to grant the product over-the-counter status, despite a recommendation to the contrary from the agency's own advisory panel.

The Plan B pill, which contains a higher dose of contraceptive hormones than the normal birth control pill, must be taken within 72 hours of sexual intercourse to prevent pregnancy.

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