A city in China's mainly Muslim Xinjiang region has banned people with large beards or Islamic clothing from travelling on public buses, state media said, prompting outrage from an overseas rights group Wednesday.

Authorities in Karamay banned people wearing hijabs, niqabs, burkas, or clothing with the Islamic star and crescent symbol from taking local buses, the Karamay Daily reported.

At his home in central Romania with hens and turkeys wandering in the courtyard, Vasile Nica welcomes visitors who have come to hear him play a unique stringed instrument that is facing oblivion.

Under the shade of an apple tree with coffee, house wine and cakes laid out on the table, Nica starts to pluck his 80-year-old wooden cobza with a goose quill.

The Yazidi minority faces a struggle for survival in Iraq after their bastion Sinjar was taken over Sunday by Islamic State jihadists, forcing tens of thousands of people to flee.

The existence of the small Kurdish-speaking community on its ancestral land is now critically endangered. Here are a few facts about the Yazidis:

A special performance of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" takes to the stage on Monday at a venue that often seeks to address human tragedy worldwide -- the United Nations.

Shakespeare's Globe Theatre brought its world tour to the U.N.'s New York headquarters for performance on a specially constructed stage inside one of the General Assembly's many committee chambers.

To Scrabble fanatics, big gifts sometimes come in small packages.

The word "te" as a variant of "ti," the seventh tone on the musical scale, is a hardworking little gem among 5,000 words added to "The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary," out Aug. 11 from Merriam-Webster.

It was inaugurated 25 years ago to much pomp on the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution, but Margaret Thatcher no doubt remembered it more as the place where she got stuck in the toilets.

Today, the gigantic Grande Arche on the outskirts of Paris is in a sorry state -- the prized Carrara marble covering parts of the structure is worn down, businesses snub its cramped office space and the entire building is now closed to the public for security reasons.

Feeling dejected and drained, Che Esa consulted not a doctor but her local Malay shaman, who diagnosed a repression of her "angin", a metaphysical "wind" affecting spiritual and emotional health.

Her treatment -- known as "main puteri" -- included Che Esa tussling with two men, enduring pokes, taunts and even slaps from the shaman and, finally, a rousing Malay song and dance performed by about 50 fellow villagers.

Acclaimed Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa, who overcame a battle with cancer, brushed aside the idea of his death Monday as a premier classical music festival was renamed after him.

The Saito Kinen music festival, held every summer since 1992 in the central city of Matsumoto, will be named the Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival from next year to honour the maestro's contribution to the event.

A Solomon Islander who helped save John F. Kennedy when a Japanese destroyer sank the future U.S. president's patrol boat during World War II has died aged 93, his family said Monday.

Eroni Kumana and his fellow islander Buiku Gasa were out in a canoe in 1943 when they came across the injured Kennedy, who was then a naval lieutenant, and members of his crew stranded on a coral atoll.

When the clouds of World War I first gathered, Britain and its empire were less than fully ready to weather the storm.