Four boys and two girls have been arrested in Iran for teaching "Western" dance moves including Zumba, a Colombian fitness routine, a local Revolutionary Guards commander said.

One trope in filmmaking that is sure to draw scorn from culturally aware critics is the "Magical Negro" -- a black character whose sole purpose is to help the white protagonist.

From Whoopi Goldberg's psychic Oda Mae Brown in "Ghost" (1990) to Chief Gus Mancuso, played by Laurence Fishburne, in 2016's "Passengers," it is a relatively new device with roots deep in the traditions of American storytelling.

A wildly popular drama likened to "Sex and the City" is breaking ground on China's staid state television with content that strikes at the heart of life today for the nation's urban women.

It is nearly midnight when Tova Saul, an Orthodox Jew, approaches the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem's Old City, carrying two large cases and a variety of contraptions.

Australia will hold a voluntary postal vote on whether to legalise gay marriage if parliament rejects plans for a plebiscite on the contentious issue, the prime minister said Tuesday.

Parliament's upper house, the Senate, last November rebuffed plans for a national plebiscite involving 15 million people, with the Labor opposition, Greens and crossbench MPs arguing it would be expensive and spark divisive debate.

Researchers may have found the home town of Peter and two other apostles of Jesus near the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel, an archaeologist said Monday.

Russian police on Monday detained two members of Pussy Riot after they staged a protest in support of a jailed Ukrainian filmmaker in a Siberian city.

Antoun Tawil, one of Syria's last traditional lute makers, waits in vain in his Damascus workshop for orders of the oud, an instrument his country was once renowned for producing.

Having lost their heads, been pulled from their plinths, smashed and even buried, things are at last looking up for some of the unluckiest statues in Christendom. 

Pakistani high school student Noman Afzal knows "traitorous" Hindus are to blame for the bloodshed that erupted when British India split into two nations 70 years ago. His history textbook tells him so.