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.

The legal wrangling continues between comedian and condo board president Joan Rivers and a former downstairs neighbor in her luxury New York City building.

Elizabeth Hazan was able to get into a $2 million two-bedroom unit she once occupied Wednesday, despite a judge's ruling the same day that she be denied access until she paid $200,000 in common charges.

Creepy crawlies, in the form of a venomous spider infestation, has forced a school in Britain to close a week before Halloween.

The Dean Academy, a secondary school in southwest England's Gloucestershire, said it was closing Wednesday to get rid of the false widow spiders. The spiders are commonly mistaken for their relative, the black widow spider, whose bite can be fatal.

Doctors now have convincing evidence that they put HIV into remission, hopefully for good, in a Mississippi baby born with the AIDS virus — a medical first that is prompting a new look at how hard and fast such cases should be treated.

The case was reported earlier this year but some doctors were skeptical that the baby was really infected rather than testing positive because of exposure to virus in the mom's blood.

Strokes are increasingly hitting younger people and the incidence of the crippling condition worldwide could double by 2030, warns the first global analysis of the problem.

Though the chances of a stroke jump dramatically with age, the growing number of younger people with worrying risk factors such as bulging waistlines, diabetes and high blood pressure means they are becoming increasingly susceptible.

Japan is scaling down the planned main stadium for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, following an uproar from some prominent architects who think it's too big and expensive.

Hakubun Shimomura, the minister in charge of education, sports and science, told Parliament Wednesday the stadium designed by award-winning British-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid would cost 300 billion yen ($3 billion) to build, and that was "too massive a budget." He says Hadid's design will be used but the project will be scaled back.

A South Korean court says studies conducted to evaluate safety at Samsung chip factories failed to fully examine workplace health hazards.

The finding by the Seoul Administrative Court is part of a ruling on the case of a Samsung worker who died of leukemia in 2009 aged 29.

U.S. obstetricians are getting more precise about exactly what determines a full-term pregnancy.

On average, a pregnancy lasts 40 weeks, counting from the first day of the woman's last menstrual period. That's how a due date is estimated.

Top-ranked Serena Williams breezed past Angelique Kerber 6-3, 6-1 to open her bid for a fourth ATP Championships title on Tuesday.

Williams, the defending champion, had no trouble against Kerber, who also lost to the American 6-4, 6-1 in the round-robin at this event last year. Kerber was the only player to beat Williams last year - in Cincinnati - after the American's first-round ouster at the French Open.

Athletes who fail to clinch gold at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics can take home something else: a $900 smartphone from Samsung.

Samsung Electronics Co. is giving the Galaxy Note 3 smartphone to all athletes competing at the Sochi Games in February.