Ignoring noisy buses and curious onlookers, street dentist Allah Baksh plunges his hands into a patient's mouth to fit a sparkling set of dentures for $12 in the Indian city of Bangalore.

With his plastic stool, mirror and glass cases of teeth on display, Baksh is among hundreds of such dentists frowned upon by their licenced counterparts in rapidly modernising India. 

Islamist rebels on Friday overran a hospital in northwest Syria where at least 150 regime forces and dozens of civilians were trapped for nearly a month, a monitor said.

Al-Nusra Front, which is al-Qaida's affiliate in Syria, and other factions "have taken complete control of Jisr al-Shughur hospital," said Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

A Malawi court has ruled that 11 prostitutes who were forced to take HIV tests by police six years ago will be awarded damages, a court official said Thursday citing a judgement.

The sex workers were rounded up in 2009 in the southern city of Mwanza, hauled to a government hospital for HIV testing without their consent and the results were disclosed in an open court.

A new kind of brain implant senses a patient's intent to move a robotic arm, offering new promise to people who are paralyzed or have lost limbs, researchers said Thursday.

Erik Sorto, 34, is "the first person in the world to have a neural prosthetic device implanted in a region of the brain where intentions are made," said the study in the journal Science.

Was it a UFO? A sign that the end is nigh?

A rainbow-like halo surrounded the sun over Mexico City on Thursday, an optical phenomenon that triggered a social media frenzy of pictures and jokes about the end of the world.

A world of diversity has been discovered in plankton, the tiny plants, viruses and embryonic fish that are a favorite food of whales and supply much of the planet's oxygen, researchers said Thursday.

Plankton are important because they serve as the base of the marine food chain and provide half the oxygen generated on Earth by photosynthesis.

From a distance it could be a scene from Qatar's ancient past, long before the country's modern-day wealth was secured by the discovery of gas and oil.

Several kilometers (miles) off the coast of southern Qatar, five traditional dhow boats bob gently up and down on the becalmed blue-green waters of the Gulf.

The China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) will be operational by the end of this year, prospective founding members said Friday after a three-day meeting in Singapore to discuss policies. 

The chief negotiators' meeting involving the AIIB's 57 prospective members "concluded discussions and finalized the articles of agreement for the AIIB," said a statement by the bank's interim multilateral secretariat. 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Friday there was still a lot of work needed to reach agreement with Greece on its debt bailout, as tortuous talks drag on amid fears Athens could run out of money.

The government of Greek leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is locked in talks to obtain fresh funding with international creditors who are demanding more tough austerity measures in return.

Australia must pour more money into transport systems or risk gridlock in its biggest cities costing more than Aus$53 billion (U.S.$42 billion) a year, an infrastructure audit published Friday found.

Road congestion across Australia's six largest cities, particularly in Sydney, cost the vast country some Aus$13.7 billion in 2011, the Infrastructure Australia report said.