Switzerland has given the green light for a new prenatal test for Down's syndrome amid controversy over whether this will lead to more abortions, a Swiss newspaper reported Sunday.

Testing will be available in the country from mid-August following a decision by Swissmedic, the national agency for therapeutic products, the Neue Zuercher Zeitung am Sonntag reported.

Spain's conservative government has provoked a storm among women's groups with plans to tighten abortion laws to make the procedure illegal in cases where the fetus is deformed.

About 100 people took part in a rally in Madrid's central Tirso de Molina square on Sunday to protest against the proposed reform which they argue will take Spain back to the era of the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco.

Inequalities in South Africa are threatening economic growth, with children born into poor families unlikely ever to escape poverty or reap the rewards of living in Africa's largest economy.

The World Bank's sobering assessment released last week found that a child's gender and ethnicity at birth, combined with a lack of education, largely determine that person's chances of success in life -- even 18 years after the end of apartheid.

An outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus that erupted in western Uganda at the start of July has killed 14 people, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Saturday.

The latest outbreak was in the western Kibaale district, around 200 kilometers (125 miles) west of the Ugandan capital Kampala, and around 50 kilometers from the border with Democratic Republic of Congo,

Conjoined 15-month-old twins attached at the pelvis and sharing three legs were successfully separated at a Malaysian hospital in a complex 24-hour operation, reports said Saturday.

The boys, Muaiman and Muaimin Azli, were separated at Hospital Kuala Lumpur in an operation involving a 60-strong medical team, including 19 surgeons and anesthetists, The Star reported.

Former U.S. president Bill Clinton on Friday said donors will continue to fund the response to the world AIDS crisis despite global financial woes and urged greater transparency by all involved.

Clinton, who works to provide low-cost HIV medications to foreign nations through his Clinton Foundation, spoke at the closing ceremony of the 19th International AIDS Conference in the U.S. capital.

The closure of sections of Italy's main steel plant as part of an investigation into health and environmental pollution sparked heated reactions on Friday, as hundreds of workers went on strike.

"In this serious moment for the country's economy, taking actions this traumatic against the biggest steelworks factory in Europe is an unbearable blow," said the head of Italy's manufacturing association Pier Luigi Ceccardi.

New York's John F. Kennedy Airport is a teeming hub for international flight -- and globe-trotting germs, a new study says.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology paper published this week named JFK as the top of a list of "super-spreaders" in contagious diseases.

The German makers of thalidomide were warned of birth defects years before it was withdrawn and Australian distributors used pregnant women as the world's first test subjects, court papers alleged Friday.

Affidavits sworn in the lawsuit of an Australian woman born without limbs after her mother took thalidomide claimed that the drug's maker Grunenthal ignored and covered up claims that it caused birth defects dating back to 1959.

A top Indian minister has proposed projects worth $130 million project to rid India of the scourge of open defecation and clean up a rail system he described as the world's "largest open toilet", reports said Friday.

Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh told a meeting in New Delhi on Thursday that India, where 130 million households are without a latrine, accounted for 60 percent of the global volume of open defecation.