Colombia's widespread illegal mining is blamed for causing environmental damage and holding workers in slave-like conditions -- and now is also being blamed for a malaria outbreak.

Belgium is to provide iodine pills to its entire population of around 11 million people to protect against radioactivity in case of a nuclear accident, the health minister was quoted as saying Thursday.

The move comes as Belgium faces growing pressure from neighboring Germany to shutter two ageing nuclear power plants near their border due to concerns over their safety.

McDonald's is testing Chicken McNuggets with no artificial preservatives as it works to revive its U.S. business.

The world's biggest hamburger chain says it began testing the new recipe in about 140 stores in Oregon and Washington in March.

Every time 3-year-old Seif wears his new prosthetic legs, the toddler puts up a fight. He has already made peace with walking on his stumps, but there is no dodging his daily rehabilitation session at a prosthetic clinic in southern Turkey.

In a small clinic in the dusty border town of Reyhanli, dozens of wounded Syrians come to be fitted each month with prosthetic limbs, their best shot at restoring a semblance of a normal life.

A French court will on Tuesday rule in the trial against a Dutchman dubbed "the dentist of horror", who is accused of causing severe injuries to dozens of patients.

Jacobus van Nierop, 51, went on trial in March for ripping out healthy teeth and leaving patients with injuries including broken jaws, recurrent abscesses and septicaemia in the small central town of Chateau-Chinon.

The UN's health agency warned Monday of the potential for a "marked increase" in Zika infections, and the spread of the virus to new parts of the world, even as the outbreak declines in Brazil.

Six countries in Africa, the continent where malaria is most widespread, could be free of the disease by 2020, according to a WHO report published Monday to mark World Malaria Day.

Some 600 disease experts from 43 nations will gather in Paris on Monday to pore over scant but increasingly worrisome data emerging about the Zika virus sweeping Latin America and threatening the world.

Mats rolled tightly under their arms, a group of women walk to a secluded Tripoli beach for a seaside yoga session to escape tensions in conflict-stricken Libya.

The suicide rate in the United States has jumped 24 percent in the past 15 years, including a troublesome spike among girls aged 10-14, according to US government statistics out Friday.