Prime Minister David Cameron was urged to intervene Wednesday after a British Muslim family was prevented from flying to the United States for a visit to Disneyland.

The family of 11 was stopped from boarding their flight to Los Angeles at London's Gatwick airport on Tuesday last week by immigration officials.

Christmas is just around the corner, but there are no tinsel-laden trees or Santa hats in the oil-rich sultanate of Brunei, where celebrations have been banned under a shift towards hardline Islamic law.

The all-powerful Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, one of the world's richest men, announced last year he would push ahead with the introduction of sharia law, eventually including tough penalties such as death by stoning or severed limbs. 

Japan's ruling party on Tuesday launched a study group to review its modern history, amid reports it may take up contentious regional issues including the Nanjing massacre which Tokyo is accused of playing down. 

The group "is aimed at studying historical events after the first Sino-Japanese War", a Liberal Democratic Party spokesman said, referring to a conflict between Japan and Qing dynasty-ruled China in 1894-95.

Israeli anti-racism activists have called for an investigation after a Jewish extremist leader urged a ban on Christmas celebrations in the country and called Christians "vampires."

Benzi Gopstein, who heads the far-right Lehava organization and has been arrested a number of times, made the comments in an article on the ultra-Orthodox Jewish website Kooker.

Madrid city council announced Tuesday it would rename 30 streets that pay tribute to heroes of Francisco Franco's brutal dictatorship, such as a "butcher" general or a military unit that fought for the Nazis.

The Spanish capital's left-wing government announced in July it would enforce a nationwide "historical memory" law passed under the national Socialist government in 2007 that calls for the gradual replacement of symbols relating to Franco's 1939-75 rule.

French surrealist poet Alain Jouffroy, who "revolted against the absence of revolt", has died, his wife said Monday.

He died on Sunday, Fusako Hasae told Agence France Presse. Jouffroy was 87.

A Saudi reformist writer who called his fellow intellectuals "cowards" and his country racist has been jailed for four years and banned from writing, his lawyer and son said Monday.

Zuhair Kutbi "was sentenced to four years prison" and banned from writing for 15 years, lawyer Ibrahim al-Midaymiq tweeted at @imodattorney.

Pope Francis vowed Monday to power ahead with the reform of the Curia, the Church's "diseased" governing body, throwing down the gauntlet to those fostering a climate of intrigue, greed and double-crossing in the Vatican.

His annual address to cardinals, bishops and priests running the Holy See echoed his speech at this time last year, when he suggested the Vatican's administrative hierarchy was beset by a "spiritual Alzheimer's" and a lust for power.

More than 60 percent of Slovenian voters opposed legalism gay marriage in a referendum Sunday marked by low turnout, according to near-complete results from the electoral commission.

The outcome marked a setback for gay rights activists who had hoped to see the largely Catholic nation become Europe's first ex-communist country to give same-sex couples the right to marry and adopt.

In the capital of war-torn Libya, a dwindling Christian community of foreign workers leave their fears and anxieties at the church door as they gather for Christmas carols and laughter.

Lisa, a 47-year-old Filipina nurse, said she had just celebrated the festival of lights "for the tenth consecutive year" at Saint Francis Church, referring to the start of advent and the Christmas season.