Terminally ill Australians can for the first time apply to end their own life, after new laws went into effect in the state of Victoria Wednesday.  

Angry protests erupted in one of India's poorest states Tuesday over the deaths of more than 100 children from a mysterious brain fever potentially linked to lychees.

The Indian state of Bihar grappled Monday with twin crises, with a brain virus potentially linked to lychees killing almost 100 children and extreme heat leaving 78 people dead.

"Classic chemotherapywas awful... but with this treatment, I feel hope," says French pensioner Jacques Braud, who is undergoing treatment for stomach cancer with a new form of therapy dispersed by aerosol.

The World Health Organization emergency committee will decide Friday whether to declare a raging Ebola epidemic an international threat, after an outbreak that began in Democratic Republic of Congo crossed into Uganda.

The WHO panel, which was formed in 2005, has used the label "public health emergency of international concern" for only four previous epidemics.

At a burial site high in the Pamir Mountains, music from an ancient harp and the smell of burning cannabis and juniper incense fill the air, part of an elaborate ceremony to commune with the divine -- and the dead.

The World Health Organization said Wednesday that a key emergency committee would meet following confirmation that an Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo had spread to neighbouring Uganda. 

At least 31 children have died in northern India in the last 10 days from a deadly brain disease believed linked to a toxic substance found in lychee fruit, health officials said Wednesday. 

No longer at the food fringes, plant-based meats are selling well in supermarkets and emerging as a hot commodity for fast food chains, industrial food companies and Wall Street investors.

A German nurse believed to be the most prolific serial killer in the country's post-war history was handed a life sentence Thursday for murdering 85 patients in his care.