Huge crowds of black-clad Shiite Muslim pilgrims thronged the Iraqi shrine city of Karbala on Wednesday, weeping and beating their chests in mourning for the seventh century killing of the prophet's grandson.

Shiites in Iraq have come under frequent attack by Sunni extremists of the Islamic State group who regard them as heretics, and some 30,000 security personnel were out on the streets to guard the pilgrims, although attacks in Karbala are rare.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has filed an appeal to contest a decision by German authorities to drop a probe into a TV comic who satirized him, local officials said Monday.

The Council of Europe on Monday awarded its Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize to Iraqi activist Nadia Murad, who was an IS sex slave before becoming the face of a campaign to protect her Yazidi people.

Germany's post-World War II justice ministry was infested with ex-Nazis hellbent on protecting their former comrades, according to a new official study released Monday.

A handful of Muslim transgender women wash their faces, put on white robes and begin to pray, an act of quiet defiance after their study center in Indonesia was shut by hardliners.

It was just for a split second that a male singer cuddled northern Nigerian actress Rahama Sadau in a video, but for the local film industry it was a second too much.

Small mountainous Albania was for decades Europe's most isolated country, but now 26 years after toppling communism it has emerged with the unwanted distinction of being the continent's top marijuana producer.

How far to go in terms of gore and shock value when covering conflict? Capturing violence on camera was hotly debated on the fringes of Bayeux, a major French photography festival.

The first biography of Adolf Hitler which presented him as "Germany's saviour" and compared him to Jesus may have been written by the future dictator himself, a Scottish historian has claimed.

"Adolf Hitler: Sein Leben und seine Reden (Adolf Hitler: His Life and his Speeches)" was the first major profile of Hitler and appeared in 1923, authored by Victor von Koerber.

The head of Syria's White Helmets on Friday congratulated Colombia's president on winning the Nobel Peace Prize, which the rescue force had been widely tipped to receive themselves.