The European Parliament on Thursday awarded the prestigious Sakharov human rights prize to jailed Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, European sources said.

Mexico "absolutely" could follow Canada's lead in legalizing marijuana as a way to reduce violence generated by a war on drugs that "doesn't work," its incoming foreign minister said Tuesday.

The UN Human Rights Committee on Tuesday criticised France's so-called burqa ban, saying the law "violated" the rights of two women who were fined for wearing full-face veils in public.

Leading Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan, charged with raping two women in France, claimed Monday that he had consensual sex with both of them after previously denying any physical contact.

A priest in central France accused of sexually assaulting a minor committed suicide in his church, Catholic authorities said Monday, the second French priest to take his life over abuse claims in a month.

Close to the seafront in Lebanon's Tripoli, giant curves of concrete stand testimony to dreams before the civil war, etchings of an exhibition park never finished but already cracking.

Hindu hardliners blocked intersections, threatened drivers, threw stones at buses and ordered a 12-hour strike on Thursday to successfully bar women from one of India's holiest temples for a second day.

Moscow has promised to defend Orthodox believers in Ukraine while Kiev accuses its neighbor of preparing for "religious war" after the Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarchate's decision to recognize the independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

The world organization of French-speaking nations on Friday elected Rwandan Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo as its new head despite her country's shift to English a decade ago and controversy over its rights record. 

Freddy Vainer was only four years old when he and his family were forced to flee Copenhagen to escape being deported to Nazi concentration camps, but he remembers it like it was yesterday.