AFP Features

MOSCOW (AFP) - As students scribble in notebooks, a lecturer draws on a flipchart in what might look like any regular night class -- except these are budding reporters picking up tips from the editor of Russia's most muck-raking tabloid.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Treasury Department and Federal Reserve Board delayed for six months on Friday the enforcement of new rules designed to crack down on Internet gambling.

BAGHDAD (AFP) - At 10:20 am on October 25, postman Mussa Sallus delivered letters to a bank at the ministry of justice in Baghdad. Five minutes after leaving the building, a shock wave blew him off his feet.

SAVAR, Bangladesh (AFP) - Like many Chinese teenage boys, Xu Chun Yang had dreams of becoming a great basketballer like NBA player Yao Ming, but two years ago he learnt about a "slow game" and fell in love.

WARSAW (AFP) - Poland's president Lech Kaczynski gave a final seal of approval Friday to a law confining gambling to casinos and phasing out slot machines in gaming arcades, cafes, clubs, shops and service stations.

TOKYO (AFP) - There are many reasons Japan's population is headed for a sharp decline, but one of them is that for working women giving birth usually spells the death of their careers.

PARIS (AFP) - Top French chefs this week pledged to keep bluefin tuna and other threatened fish species off the menu, whatever the cost.

PARIS (AFP) - Blessed by the privilege of wealth, birth or both, 24 teenage girls on Saturday descend on Paris' debutantes ball, an aristocratic tradition that survived France's guillotining of royalty over 200 years ago.

BUENOS AIRES (AFP) - A gay man tying the knot next week in Latin America's first same-sex marriage predicted Thursday that his ground-breaking wedding will inspire other homosexual couples to follow suit.

HONG KONG (AFP) - Michelin has added a cheap restaurant category to its new Hong Kong and Macau guide unveiled Thursday, after critics accused the culinary bible of ignoring the cities' food-stall culture.

SYDNEY (AFP) - Australia said Thursday it would not overturn laws allowing the first same-sex civil unions, in a surprise move that enshrined gay "marriages" in the country.

TOKYO (AFP) - Forget the Transformers and Astroboy: Japan's latest robots don't save the world -- they cook snacks, play with your kids, model clothes, and search for disaster victims.

PARIS (AFP) - France this year returned to its position as the world's top wine producer with an estimated output of 45.7 million hectolitres, the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) said Thursday.

LONDON (AFP) - More than a quarter of drinkers in England who exercise regularly do so in an attempt to make up for bingeing on alcohol, according to a survey published on Thursday.

TEMUCUICUI, Chile (AFP) - In his prison cell in Concepcion, a town 600 kilometers (400 miles) south of the Chilean capital Santiago, an indigenous leader dreams of recovering his "ancestral lands".

AL-ZUHOOR, Iraq (AFP) - Squeezed between a rubbish dump and a dry riverbed, Al-Zuhoor has no clean water or electricity and the gypsies who live here are at the margins of the new, ultra-conservative Iraq.

OSTROVANY, Slovakia (AFP) - Lucia Kucharova never cared much about the view from her window until its main feature became a wall separating her and more than 1,000 other Roma from the rest of their village.

KATHMANDU (AFP) - Nepal's first international fast-food restaurants opened in the capital Kathmandu on Wednesday, reflecting the country's cautious attempts to attract more investment from Western companies.