In movie theaters, concert halls or out on the streets, culture in Egypt is faced with increasing curbs as the government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi expands censorship, critics say.

A sea of rainbow flags and glitzy costumes filled downtown Taipei Saturday as tens of thousands marched in Asia's largest gay pride parade, the first since Taiwan's top court ruled in favour of gay marriage.

The island looks set to become the first place in Asia to legalise gay marriage after the constitutional court said in May that laws preventing same-sex unions violated the guarantee of freedom of marriage.

A South African judge on Friday handed down jail terms of 19 and 16 years to two white farmers who filmed themselves forcing a black man into a coffin and threatening to burn him alive.

Zena El Khalil's art exhibit has tapped into wounds that are more than 40 years old in war-scarred Lebanon.

"Sacred Catastrophe: Healing Lebanon" is being hosted in a landmark building in the center of Beirut that is a powerful reminder of the country's 1975-1990 civil war. Pockmarked and riddled with bullet holes, the building stands on the former demarcation line that bisected Beirut into warring sections: east and west, Christian and Muslim.

The European Parliament on Thursday awarded the prestigious Sakharov human rights prize to the beleaguered Venezuelan opposition, calling for a "peaceful transition to democracy" in the crisis-hit country.

Solidarity being a major focus of SGBL's sponsorship policy and as part of its actions of social responsibility, SGBL committed in the project of embellishment of the walls of the schools of Tripoli, North Lebanon, in order to contribute to improve the daily life of the populations of the neighborhood, a press release said.

A Malaysian Taoist medium has died while performing a "human steaming" stunt which involved him sitting on top of a bubbling wok covered by a giant metal lid, police said Wednesday.

Nearly 400 mysterious ancient stone structures have been identified in the Saudi Arabian desert by an Australian researcher using Google Earth.

Armenia plans to increase teaching Russian in schools in a move that has sparked widespread concerns that Moscow's influence is growing in the ex-Soviet state.

Archaeologists and preservation activists in the Gaza Strip have managed to halt the destruction of a Bronze Age site for now, but the future of what remains may still be in jeopardy.