Fans of Vladimir Putin can now spend "the whole year with the Russian president" as a new 2016 limited edition calendar is released in Russia showing the country's strongman leader in a variety of carefully-crafted poses.

Scores of people are reported killed in an explosion at an industrial gas plant in southern Nigeria.

There are no tinsel-laden trees or Santa hats this year in the oil-rich sultanate of Brunei, where Christmas celebrations have been banned under a recent shift towards hardline Islamic law.

Echoing the recent film The Martian, which sees an astronaut grow potatoes to feed himself after he is stranded on the Red Planet, NASA scientists will experiment with growing potatoes under Mars-like conditions.

These pictures show Peru's ten-foot high Wall of Shame topped with razor wire which divides the rich and poor to stop the less well-off stealing from the wealthy.

At least 200 civilians have been killed in Russian air strikes in Syria, an Amnesty International report says, quoting witnesses and activists.

The Miss Universe contestants have decided to bare all - but not by donning skimpy bikinis.

"I want to prove that the Iraqi woman has her own existence in society"