Saudi Arabia's government has allocated 800 places to Sierra Leone for hajj pilgrims, lifting a two-year ban imposed due to the Ebola crisis, officials said Friday.

Ethiopia needs to toss out 69 million condoms that were paid for by international donors to fight the spread of AIDS because of their poor quality, local media reported Thursday.

Dutch anti-cigarette campaigners Thursday launched a lawsuit against the government calling for an end to spaces reserved for smokers in cafes and bars.

Global opium production plunged almost 40 percent last year but the world remains awash with heroin, the narcotic that still kills the most people worldwide, the United Nations said Thursday.

"Heroin continues to be the drug that kills the most people and this resurgence must be addressed urgently," said Yury Fedotov, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), in a new report.

Like many autistic children, Julian Brown has trouble reading emotions in people's faces, one of the biggest challenges for people with the neurological disorder.

Now the 10-year-old San Jose boy is getting help from "autism glass" — an experimental device that records and analyzes faces in real time and alerts him to the emotions they're expressing.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called yoga a "people's mass movement" as he took to the mat Tuesday along with millions of others worldwide to celebrate the ancient practice.

Across India, sailors, soldiers, school children and bureaucrats bent and twisted their bodies from early morning at mass outdoor sessions to mark the second International Yoga Day.

DR Congo on Monday declared a yellow fever outbreak in the capital Kinshasa, home to more than ten million people, and in two other western provinces.

The U.N. on Friday said it fears a surge in polio cases among children who have escaped from the jihadist bastion of Fallujah, and has launched a "massive" vaccination campaign.

The Zika virus has been linked to birth defects in the fetuses and babies of six women in the United States who were infected while pregnant, U.S. health officials said Thursday.

Three of the women gave birth to infants with congenital defects such as microcephaly -- an abnormally small head -- and brain damage that are linked to Zika, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said, citing figures as of June 9.

As they mourn friends and partners murdered in the gay nightclub massacre, homosexual men in Orlando are eager to join in the rush of solidarity by donating blood for those victims still clinging to life.

But they are angry and frustrated: federal law imposes strict conditions to guard against HIV transmission. Gay men can only give if they have not had sex with another man for a year.