New Zealand censors sparked outrage Monday after banning an award-winning teen novel that includes sex and bullying, making it the first book removed from shelves in more than two decades.

Auckland author Ted Dawe said he was "blindsided" by the ban on his coming-of-age story "Into the River", which won the New Zealand Post children's book of the year in 2013.

A controversial sculpture by artist Anish Kapoor on display in the gardens of France's Palace of Versailles, and which has become known as the "queen's vagina", was vandalized Sunday for the second time.

Officially known as "Dirty Corner," the giant steel funnel that Kapoor himself has described as "very sexual" was covered in anti-Semitic graffiti in white paint, said Versailles president Catherine Pegard.

Pakistan police said Saturday they have arrested and imprisoned a Christian man accused of blasphemy in Punjab. 

Blasphemy is a hugely sensitive issue in Pakistan, with even unproven allegations often prompting mob violence, and acquittals in court are rare.

A U.S. county at the center of a firestorm for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gays handed out its first certificate to a same-sex couple Friday, local television reported.

The reversal comes after the Rowan County clerk in Kentucky was ordered jailed for contempt of court Thursday after refusing to comply with the Supreme Court's June 26 landmark ruling legalizing gay marriage. 

A city at war, the Afghan capital is among the ugliest in the world.

Wide avenues once lined with rose gardens are today gridlocked streets sandwiched by concrete blast walls protecting those inside from the bombs and bullets that form the backbeat of a 14-year insurgency. After recent deadly attacks, the towering walls multiplied almost overnight, appearing in double rows outside government buildings, businesses, embassies and the homes of powerful people.

The Libyan capital once boasted grand movie houses that packed in smartly dressed couples for a special night out, but how times have changed.

Today, the sole major cinema left in Tripoli is a men-only zone stripped of glamour, offering a diet of violence-packed films and blunt warnings that women are not welcome.

An Egyptian court Thursday sentenced two female dancers to six months in jail each for "inciting debauchery," in the second verdict of its kind since June, a judicial source said.

Arrested in July, the dancers known as Bardis and Shakira, were also convicted of "broadcasting obscenities" for appearing in two video clips wearing flimsy clothes and making "suggestive" moves, the source said.

Dating just got harder for Indonesian teenagers in West Java, with a local leader on Thursday threatening to ban late-night trysts and marry off young couples caught out after dark.

If a new regulation goes ahead as planned on October 1, teenagers in Purwakarta, a local district about 100 kilometers from the Indonesian capital Jakarta, will be banned from visiting each other after 9pm.

China kicked off a huge military ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of Japan's defeat in World War II on Thursday, as major Western leaders stayed away.

President Xi Jinping oversaw the event, riding in a black car past thousands of troops and hundreds of tanks and missiles ahead of a parade through Tiananmen Square.

Queen Elizabeth II will become Britain's longest-reigning monarch on Wednesday after over 63 years on the throne.

Here, three Britons talk about their very different views of her, and their lives during her reign: