WORLD

France MPs will Tuesday discuss a proposal which calls for the ban and criminalisation of prostitution in France.

The United Nation's has called on the Vietnamese government to close down rehabilitation centres for drug users and sex workers, calling them "counter-productive."

In unprecedented scenes, thousands of young Russians gathered in the streets Monday night, accusing Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's party of manipulating this weekend's parliamentary election.

The current nude magazine controversy goes hand-in-hand with the new publicity shoots of the fourth season of television show "Swayamvar 4" featuring Veena Mailk in "Veena Ka Vivaah" (Veena Malik's marriage).

A suicide bomber has attacked a shrine in Afghan capital Kabul during the Shia holy day of Ashura.

The blast, which happened at 7.30 GMT, occurred at the Abul Fazel shrine in the Murad Khani area of the capital, a BBC report has said.

The installations of the 44-year-old artist have fetched Boyce one of the most prestigious and controversial contemporary art awards.

According to the police, the burglars killed the pet after they had ransacked the flat and found nothing worth to steal.

The alleged incident took place at the Aerodrome hotel in Croydon, South London, where the County footballers were staying overnight for their match the subsequent day.

Hamas is making contingency plans for the potential fall of the Syrian regime, Reuters reported Sunday.

Russian websites monitoring reports of election violation have allegedly been hacked by pro-Putin cyber criminals. It is believed that the majority of the world's most sophisticated and effective cyber attacks originate in Russia.

The day of Ashura is marked by the entire Muslim community but for Shia Muslims it represents a major religious festival.

Gone are the days when an act of war meant dropping bombs, shooting the enemy and marching thousands of troops across borders. Now the battle is taking place online and it is the computer geniuses in their bedrooms, rather than the battle-hardened soldiers in tanks, that are keeping governments awake at night.

While this year will be remembered as the year of the hacktivist, it was in South America that cyber activists sprang up to protest against human rights violations, corruption and restrictions on internet freedoms.

Read through the International Business Times hind-sight look at hacktivism in the year 2011, as it runs through the key points that changed Anonymous from a "hacktivist" collective into a global political movement.

A man, wearing just tennis shoes, jeans and a jacket, survived 60-hours stuck in snow in his pickup truck.

Italian welfare minister Elsa Fornero broke down in tears at the weekend as she anounced pension reforms as part of the country's new austerity measures.

Laurent Gbagbo, the former Ivory Coast president is expected to make his first appearance at the International Criminal Court where he faces four counts of crimes against humanity.

The Israeli government has dropped an advertising campaign by the Ministry of Absorption warning expatriate Israelis against assimilation into American society.

Syria's state-run media says the army test-fired missiles while the air force and ground troops conducted exercises "similar to a real battle," over the weekend in the latest sign of defiance of Damascus.

Haunting images of four women's final moments on death row have appeared on the internet eight years after their excecution in China for drug smuggling.

Egyptians headed to the polls for the run-off of the first round of parliamentary elections since Hosni Mubarak was ousted as leader.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange can appeal to the Supreme Court to overturn his extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over alleged sex crimes, a High Court judge ruled on Monday

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicholas Sarkozy are meeting in Paris Monday in an eleventh-hour bid to save the euro from total collapse.

"I worry about my heart, so I don’t want to go through those things," the Associated Press has quoted Lenore Zimmerman as saying.

The Prime minister of Singapore is the highly paid political leader among his contemporaries.

A prominent American-Syrian blogger and activist was arrested at the weekend while she was crossing the Jordanian-Syrian border.

A pastor at a small Kentucky church that recently voted to exclude interracial couples has overturned the decision.

According to the Sun, the latest video depicts a hapless pet being tapped to a broom and lowered into the water by a woman.