A decades-long dispute between members of one of India's former royal families over palaces, diamonds and other items worth billions of dollars has been settled, a family member said.

Members of the Gaekwad family Wednesday signed a memorandum of understanding before a judge in the western city of Vadodara over property that includes a palace reportedly four times the size of Britain's Buckingham Palace.

A Facebook petition supporting a Dutch Christmas character called "Black Pete" on Wednesday hit a million 'likes', revealing the liberal nation's attachment to a beloved figure the U.N. has warned may be racist.

Anger over the issue has swept the Netherlands after a U.N. human rights body said it was assessing whether "Zwarte Piet", who accompanies Saint Nicholas during a traditional children's festival before Christmas, is racist.

Saudi female activists are gearing up to test a long-standing driving ban, with more defiant women already getting behind the wheel as the authorities seem to be taking a more lenient approach.

Under the slogan "women's driving is a choice," they have called on social networks for a turn-out on Saturday in a campaign in the world's only country that bans women from driving.

A descendant of Florence's famous Medici family told Agence France Presse on Tuesday that mass tourism was a "threat" to his native city and called for it to be put on a Unesco list of endangered areas.

"There is serious urban degradation, an overuse of the city, an insufficient attention to the artistic heritage of the city," the angry prince, Ottaviano de Medici, said in a statement.

Yoga is moving from the studio mat to a U.S. museum gallery.

The Smithsonian Institution has organized what curators believe is the first exhibition about the visual history and art of yoga, its origins and evolution over time.

The small champagne bar faces the stall selling Afro-Caribbean produce, a stone's throw from the scene of some of London's worst riots. Welcome to Brixton, the once infamous district transformed by gentrification.

Along the roads where hordes of young black men battled police in 1981, wine bars and sushi restaurants have flourished, squats have been cleared and houses are now selling for over £1 million ($1.6 million, 1.2 million euros).

A French court on Tuesday gave the go-ahead for a Franco-Moroccan gay couple to marry, going against a government ruling that homosexuals from Morocco and 10 other countries cannot tie the knot.

France legalized same-sex marriage in May after months of intense and sometimes violent protests, and the couple -- Dominique and Mohammed -- immediately got to work planning their official union for September in the town of Jacob-Bellecombette in the Alps.

From billboards across Nazareth shines the discreet smile of Hanin Zuabi, a controversial Arab woman MP who is hoping voters will chose her as mayor of Israel's largest Arab city.

This 44-year-old former maths teacher, her black hair cut into a sleek bob, is the only woman running for leadership of the sprawling northern city revered by Christians as Jesus' childhood home.

A Romanian man who has admitted stealing masterpieces by Gauguin, Monet and Picasso, wants to pin the blame on the Dutch museum for failing to protect the works, his lawyer said Tuesday.

Radu Dogaru is among six Romanians on trial for the spectacular three-minute heist from the Kunthal museum in Rotterdam in October 2012 which stunned the art world.

The already remarkable life of Holocaust survivor George Horner is about to take another exceptional turn.

The 90-year-old pianist will make his orchestral debut with renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma on Tuesday night at Boston's Symphony Hall. And they'll be playing music composed 70 years ago at the Nazi prison camp where Horner was incarcerated.