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Bacteria that have evolved to withstand antibiotics kill 700,000 people each year, and ever more powerful strains are spreading around the world. Researchers are worried that we will enter a post-antibiotic age, in which we are infected by bacteria that can defeat every drug medicine has to offer. Next week, the United Nations will convene a high-level meeting to coordinate the global fight against these invisible enemies. (Zimmer, 9/12)

Medical detectives said Friday they are still baffled about how much-feared drug-resistant superbugs infected two people in the U.S. this year, but they have good news: both patients recovered and don't seem to have infected anyone else. ... Scientists fear an E. coli bacteria with the mcr-1 gene could pass it to another superbug with other mutations -- creating a true superbug that resists all known antibiotics. (Fox, 9/9)

This summer, a Pennsylvania woman was found to carry a superbug that is resistant to the antibiotic of last resort, causing alarm about the potential of dangerous drug resistance spreading across the United States. Ever since, health researchers have been looking for where else such germs might be lurking. On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the superbug popped up in a 2-year-old girl in Connecticut. She got sick in June and was found to have a strain of E. coli bacteria with the antibiotic-resistance gene known as mcr-1, making her the fourth human case in the United States identified so far. (Sun, 9/9)