Islamic police in Indonesia's sharia stronghold seized thousands of firecrackers and cardboard trumpets after the city administration banned New Year's Eve celebrations for the first time, an official said Tuesday.
Tattoo artists in France, who were up in arms about a government ban on certain dyes, say the health ministry has reassured them they will be able to keep using coloured ink, attributing the uproar to a misunderstanding of thousands of pages of regulations.
President Evo Morales said Monday he opposed any outright ban on child labor or setting a minimum age for workers in Bolivia -- as a former child worker, himself.
Uganda's parliament on Friday adopted an anti-homosexuality bill that will see repeat offenders jailed for life, sparking an international outcry as lawmakers hailed it as a victory against "evil".
UN chief Ban Ki-moon called on the international community Friday to sanction those responsible for Syrian chemical weapons attacks documented in a newly released report.
German police are touting a new high-tech tool to identify illegal neo-Nazi songs in seconds, dubbed "Nazi Shazam" after popular music identification software.
British pop icon Elton John escaped serious criticism in Russia on Saturday after using a sold-out Moscow concert to challenge a highly contentious law banning the "propaganda of homosexuality" to minors.
Owners of dozens of Toyota spare parts shops that were closed down in the end of November have applied to the Kazakhstan Government asking to permit parallel imports of the original spare parts.
A New York City law banning cigarette sales to people under 21 was signed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Tuesday, the latest move in the Big Apple's war on smoking.
Nearly 17,000 people have been punished for flouting the Chinese Communist Party's "frugality" guidelines, state media said Monday, in the latest sign of efforts to clamp down on corruption.
Turkish parliament has lifted a ban on women lawmakers wearing trousers in the assembly, shortly after a major government reform allowed them to don Islamic headscarves.
The National Gallery of Australia on Thursday blasted Britain's decision to block the export of two historic paintings of a kangaroo and a dingo as depriving the nation of its heritage.
An appeals panel ruled Monday that a Malaysian Catholic newspaper could not use "Allah" to refer to the Christian God, in a case that sparked attacks on places of worship three years ago.
