China's capital seeks to snuff out smoking in indoor public places on Monday with a new ban, unprecedented fines and a hotline to report offenders, but enforcement is doubtful in one of the world's most tobacco-addicted countries.

Seen as the toughest anti-smoking legislation in China's history, the law makes smoking in Beijing locations such as offices, restaurants, hotels and hospitals punishable by fines.

South Korea confirmed three more MERS cases Friday, bringing the total number of patients infected with the potentially deadly virus to 10, including a man who defied a quarantine protocol and travelled to China, health officials said.

The infections were all traced to the original case of a 68-year-old man diagnosed on May 20 after returning from a trip to Saudi Arabia.

Australia said Friday it was confident it had done enough to prevent the United Nations from listing the Great Barrier Reef, the world's biggest coral reef ecosystem, as being 'in danger'.

Amid concerns about planned coastal developments, including ports, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) is set to announce overnight a draft decision on the site, which teems with marine life.

Eureka! After about a century of research, Swiss scientists have finally cracked the mystery of the holes in Swiss cheese.

Despite what you may have been told as a child, they are not caused by mice nibbling away inside cheese wheels.

Researchers have gained new understanding on the workings of amnesia through research that used light to revive lost memories in mice, a study published Thursday reported.

Amnesia remains a controversial subject in the field of neuroscience, with some researchers arguing that it occurs when cells are damaged and memory cannot be stored, while others believe that the memories are simply blocked and cannot be recalled.

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen held talks in Egypt with Al-Azhar that broached the top Sunni Muslim body's "serious concerns" over her party's stance on Islam, it said.

National Front president Le Pen met late Thursday with Ahmed al-Tayeb, grand imam of Al-Azhar, at its Cairo headquarters during which he questioned her organisation's "hostile opinions towards Islam and Muslims", an Al-Azhar statement said.

Belgium has launched an investigation into claims of widespread espionage by Germany, which is accused of helping the U.S. spy on Berlin's closest allies in Europe, a minister said Friday.

"If it should emerge that the reports of wide-scale eavesdropping by the German secret services are correct, Germany will have to provide an explanation," Telecoms Minister Alexander de Croo said on Friday.

Indian authorities urged hospitals to treat heatstroke as an emergency as the toll from a long heatwave topped 1,800 on Friday, making it the deadliest in more than two decades.

Hundreds of mainly poor people die at the height of summer every year in India, but this year's figures are already nearly double the annual average.

A Canadian singer-songwriter was kicked off a United Airlines flight in San Francisco because her two-year-old toddler would not stop crying, triggering outrage from her supporters.

"Just got kicked off a @united flight because my son was crying really loud," Sarah Blackwood from the band Walk Off the Earth wrote Wednesday on Twitter, accusing the airline of hating mothers.

With most of its natural and mineral resources having fallen under rebel control, Syrian state revenues have shrunk, leaving the government dependent on unstable sources of income for its survival.

Four years of conflict have decimated the state coffers.