A video showing an Iranian policeman shoving a woman protesting against mandatory headscarves off her makeshift podium in a busy Tehran street sparked criticism on social media on Friday.

The French city of Orleans has for the first time named a mixed-race teenager to play folk heroine Joan of Arc for annual festivities, prompting a torrent of racist abuse from far-right social media users.

A German former Catholic priest was Thursday sentenced to eight and a half years in prison for more than 100 cases of child sexual abuse and other offenses.

The 53-year-old will undergo years of therapy in a closed psychiatric institution before starting his prison term, a court in the southeastern city of Deggendorf ruled.

Nails are buffed, blackheads scrubbed and coffee sipped to the sound of clipping scissors inside the "Men's" salon in Pakistan's capital Islamabad, where a growing number of male patrons are set on revamping their style. 

Deeply conservative Pakistan has strict notions of masculinity where men are often expected to be austere and flamboyant styling is to be avoided. 

A Russian court on Thursday slapped a $1,700 fine on a Moscow cinema which screened British comedy "The Death of Stalin" in defiance of an official ban, prompting a police raid.

Reverend Billy Graham, the influential Southern preacher who became a spiritual advisor to several U.S. presidents and millions of Americans via their television sets, died Wednesday. He was 99.

The one-time backwoods minister who eventually became the world's foremost Christian evangelist, spread a message of spiritual redemption at tent and stadium revival meetings, in a career that spanned decades.

Kuwaiti cinemas on Thursday will launch public screenings of "Swarm of Doves", the Gulf state's first feature-length film about the 1990 invasion of the Gulf state by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

The film is "inspired by true events" that occurred during the seven-month occupation, producer Sheikha Intisar Salem al-Ali al-Sabah told AFP during a screening for the press.  

The Spanish Supreme Court has upheld a three-and-a-half-year jail sentence for a rapper for a series of lyrics that glorified terrorism and insulted the crown.

From halal fried chicken to hot springs hotels with prayer facilities, Taiwan is adapting its traditional tourist draws to woo Muslim visitors as Chinese arrivals dwindle.  

"Hungarians! The world is a very dangerous place, a no-go zone!" shouts a highly-strungmustachioed man through a megaphone strapped to his car on the streets of Budapest.