French public television has put a controversial film about the Bataclan massacre on ice "until all of the victims' groups are consulted".

A mall in northern China has installed a larger-than-life canine statue with more than a passing resemblance to U.S. President Donald Trump to welcome the coming Year of the Dog.

At the stroke of midnight on January 1, pot lovers in California may raise a joint, instead of a glass of champagne.

America's wealthiest state is legalizing the growth, sale and consumption of recreational marijuana, opening the door to the world's biggest market.

Saudi Arabia in 2017 laid the groundwork for momentous change next year, defying its conservative reputation for slow, cautious reforms by announcing plans to let women drive, allow movie theaters to return and to issue tourist visas. The kingdom could even get a new king.

King Salman and his ambitious 32-year-old son and heir, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, have upended decades of royal family protocol, social norms and traditional ways of doing business. They bet instead on a young generation of Saudis hungry for change and a Saudi public fed up with corruption and government bureaucracy.

Cable channel FX said on Wednesday it had green-lit "Glee" creator Ryan Murphy's "Pose," a dance-musical series featuring the largest transgender regular cast in U.S. television history.

Amid the gray ruins of Syria's devastated city of Raqa, three boys stopped and stared as two Father Christmases walked by with black sacks slung over their backs.

Iranian police are taking a softer approach to breaches of Islamic rules, opting for education over punishment, Tehran's police chief said on Wednesday. 

New archeological research has shed fresh light on China's first emperor -- creator of the world-famous terracotta army -- and his quest for eternal life, state media reported.

It's the question every good little girl and boy asks on Christmas Eve: When is Santa coming? 

Working at "Hazara", a restaurant in the Pakistani city of Quetta, is a potentially deadly political act: all of the greasy spoon's employees are female members of a Shiite ethnic minority often targeted by extremists.