The United Nations on Friday called on Pacific leaders to enact laws that protect women as a first step in tackling the endemic levels of domestic violence in the region.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the executive director of U.N. Women, said governments played a key role in changing the regulatory and cultural environments that has seen the Pacific record some of the highest rates of violence against women globally.

A group of Japanese publishers have lashed out at Amazon's new book sale rules, after U.S. and European authors accused the online retailer of using strong-arm negotiating tactics.

Several Tokyo-based publishers said Amazon recently unveiled a four-point system that rates them based on the size of the commission they pay for selling books on the U.S. company's vast website, among other criteria.

India on Thursday began work to restore the dilapidated house where "Animal Farm" and "1984" author George Orwell was born and turn it into a museum.

Orwell was born Eric Arthur Blair on June 25, 1903 in Motihari, a tiny town in the impoverished eastern Indian state of Bihar, near the border with Nepal.

Modern and Contemporary Art Fair dedicated to artists of the ME.NA.SA (Middle East, North Africa, South & South East Asia) region, BEIRUT ART FAIR will hold its 5th edition at the Beirut International Exhibition Leisure Center (BIEL) from September 18 to September 21, 2014, led by Laure d’Hauteville and Pascal Odille, a press release said.

This year, BEIRUT ART FAIR is presenting 46 galleries from 14 countries. Whether renowned artists or artists yet to be discovered, rising stars or established artists in the art market.

A new Chinese dictionary backed by the national language regulator offers a glimpse into the social and environmental concerns of the citizenry, adding nearly 100 phrases to the lexicon, a report said Thursday.

The additions to the third edition of the Standard Dictionary of Modern Chinese "underscore characteristics of the time", publishing house Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press said in a statement.

A work by the British street artist Banksy has saved a struggling youth club from closure after it was sold to a collector for £403,000 ($668,000, 506,270 euros).

The piece -- "Mobile Lovers" -- which shows a couple embracing while gazing at their phones, appeared on the wall of the Broad Plain Boy's Club in April.

Personal conflict, not religion, was the driving motive behind beard- and hair-cutting attacks targeting Amish, an appeals court panel ruled Wednesday in overturning the hate-crime convictions of 16 men and women.

A 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel sided with arguments brought by attorneys for the Amish defendants, who were convicted two years ago in five attacks in 2011. The attacks were in apparent retaliation against Amish who had defied or denounced the authoritarian style of Sam Mullet Sr., leader of the Bergholz community in eastern Ohio.

A team of Myanmar divers claims to have discovered a legendary bell in the murky depths of the Yangon river -- with the help of dragon spirits -- in the latest twist to a 400-year-old drama that has gripped the nation.

Dozens of divers, equipped only with goggles and plastic oxygen hoses, have plunged into the fast-flowing waters in search of the long-lost Dhammazedi bell, in a spectacle that has generated skepticism but also attracted lines of spectators along the riverbank since the search began earlier this month.

A vast U.S. archive of photographs of pre-Holocaust Eastern European Jewish life is being made available to the public and researchers.

The International Center of Photography in New York and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday announced the joint creation of a digital database to facilitate access to photographer Roman Vishniac's archive.

Century-old shop houses, twisting alleyways and temples scented with incense still pulsate with the pursuit of old trades and time-honored rituals of families who have lived in Bangkok's Chinatown for generations. But probably not for much longer.

Jackhammers and cranes are closing in on one of the last historic quarters of Thailand's capital as developers and city authorities aim to carry out plans to modernize the area by building subway lines and high-rises — with little thought to preserving local cultural heritage.