A Chinese detergent maker has apologized for an advertisement which shows a black man stuffed into a washing machine and transformed into a fair-skinned Asian, just a day after dismissing critics as too sensitive.

Gripping a monkey-faced chess piece, Thein Zaw swipes his hand across the chequerboard and topples an advancing demon, demonstrating an ancient form of the game that Myanmar traditionalists are battling to revive.

Sittuyin, as Myanmar's unique chess is called, is similar to the modern game but has distinctive pieces as well as moves that echo a time when warriors used it to fine tune real fighting strategies.

In high-rise, high-priced Hong Kong, even millionaires don't always have room to store their fine wine collection at home, but a converted British war bunker offers space-crunched oenophiles the perfect solution.

Built by Her Majesty's government in the 1930s to hold munitions, the "Little Hong Kong" bunker complex was the last Allied position to fall to the invading Japanese on 27 December 1941 -- two days after the surrender of the British governor.

In a Silicon Valley culture known for brilliant ideas boiling up in coffee shops, Gaurav Chawla is pouring his heart into chai.

Chawla was on a break from his job as an engineering manager at San Francisco-based cloud-computing star Salesforce when he began lamenting how tough it was to find a cup of chai as good as he makes it at home.

French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will on Sunday stand shoulder to shoulder on the battlefield of Verdun to remember those killed 100 years ago in one of the bloodiest episodes of World War I.

To mark the centenary, Hollande and Merkel will lay wreaths at cemeteries holding the dead of both sides in the northeast French town.

Thousands of Muslim worshipers descended Saturday on Istanbul's world famous Hagia Sophia, the towering former Byzantine church that is now a museum, to demand the right to pray there, Turkish media reported.

Austria's government submitted Friday a law to seize the house where Hitler was born, in a bid to stop the building becoming a neo-Nazi shrine.

The large corner house in the quaint northern town of Braunau am Inn near the German border where the Nazi dictator was born in 1889 has been owned by the family of a local woman for more than a century.

No Label NGO launched Talks with No Label, under the theme "Make a Change. Follow your Dreams.”

This event was a chance to learn from people who made a change in their community by following their dreams and passion towards success, as they shared their stories and inspired others to do the same.

Eleven U.S. states sued President Barack Obama's administration Wednesday to try to overturn federal guidelines demanding that public schools allow transgender students to access the bathroom of their choice.

In the joint filing in U.S. District Court in Wichita Falls, Texas, the states accused the federal government of trying to rewrite laws by "executive fiat."

Indonesia's president Wednesday approved tough new punishments for child sex offenders, including a maximum penalty of death and chemical castration, after the brutal gang-rape and murder of a schoolgirl.