Beating a rock statue of Buddha to wish for a good new year and an abundant harvest, villagers in China's eastern Fujian province have a unique way of worshipping the deity. 

The religious ceremony held Friday in Yuxi village is one of many in the run-up to the traditional Lantern Festival, which falls on February 11 this year.

British musician Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens, met Turkey's leader and thanked the country for its support for a mosque being built in Britain's university town of Cambridge, state media reported Thursday.

Vatican finance chief George Pell Thursday hit out at calls that he return to Australia to assist in a child sex probe into him, railing against "anti-religion" agendas.

Ballet slippers, tinned food and drawings by a sister killed from shelling are found among the objects in a new Sarajevo museum used to tell stories of life during Bosnia's war through the eyes of children.

An unfinished letter, kept safe by a young Bosnian woman for 20 years, was started by her mother who perished when their apartment was shelled in the Balkan country's 1992-1995 civil war.

Palestinian authorities have banned a novel by a local author for indecency, the writer said on Tuesday, calling the decision an "unprecedented" attack on freedom of expression.

Italian police were on the hunt Monday for the authors of anti-pope posters which have been slapped around Rome, amid suspicions the campaign may be linked to an arch-conservative wing of the Catholic Church.

A fire broke out Monday at a cultural center in Kuwait that houses the Gulf state's opera house, the fire department said.

Abdo Shehu sits in an office in Kurdish-majority Qamishli in northeast Syria, surrounded by copies of the first Western novel available in the city in his own language.

The novel is "Snow" by French writer Maxence Fermine, the first fruits of a new project to translate international works of literature into a language that was effectively banned in Syria until recently.

Seven percent of Catholic priests were accused of abusing children in Australia between 1950 and 2010 but the allegations were never investigated, "shocking and indefensible" data showed Monday during an inquiry into paedophilia in the church.

America's LGBT community is watching warily to decipher President Donald Trump's intentions towards them, with many fearing a backlash is in store from the new administration -- despite its efforts to reassure them.

The presence in Trump's cabinet of arch conservatives, with a record of opposing same-sex marriage and other hard-fought LGBT rights, has set the community on edge.