Millions of people in South Asia celebrated Holi, the Hindu festival of colors, on Friday by smearing each other with brightly colored powder, dancing to festive music and feasting on traditional sweets prepared for the occasion.
The raucous spring festival sees Hindus take part in a kaleidoscopic celebration of the end of winter and the triumph of good over evil. The festival is a national holiday in India, while in Nepal it's a two-day event that began Thursday. It's also observed in other South Asian countries as well as among the Indian diaspora.

The mayor of Miami Beach, Florida, wants to terminate a lease and cut financial support for an independent film theater that screened an Oscar-winning documentary about the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis.
Mayor Steven Meiner introduced a resolution describing the film "No Other Land" as antisemitic. City commissioners will discuss the resolution Wednesday during their next meeting.

An iconic reindeer so beloved that he has been in parades, featured on reality TV shows and visited by schoolchildren on field trips in Alaska's largest city is fighting for his life after mysteriously falling ill after someone tampered with his pen.
Ever since, 8-year-old Star has had pneumonia, digestion issues and rapid weight loss. Star's owner, Albert Whitehead, has taken him to a veterinarian every other day to receive care and in hopes of finding a cause for the issues.

Paris has spoken, and fashion's final authority has laid down the law: This coming fall, it's all about power shoulders, enveloping outerwear and a color palette that runs from somber to surreal.
If Milan softened up with romance and New York leaned into Y2K grunge, Paris countered with sartorial surety — a wardrobe built for the sharp, the serious, and the spectacular. Coats are enormous, tailoring is back and drama is dialed up on every front.

By all logic, Chanel should be floundering. A global juggernaut without a captain, the house has been in limbo since the abrupt departure of Virginie Viard, drifting toward an uncertain horizon while awaiting the arrival of Matthieu Blazy in the fall.
Yet against all odds, inside the majestic Grand Palais, Chanel did what it has done for a century: endure. And not just endure. Dazzle.

This ancient form of football has a rule forbidding players from murdering each other.
Every year, thousands of people descend on a small town in the English countryside to watch a two-day game of mass street football that, to the casual observer, could easily be mistaken for a riot.

The aristocrats of the Habsburg royal court who danced in the first of Vienna 's famed balls in the 18th century could never have imagined how the hallmark of the Austrian capital's social and cultural scene would evolve.
Today, teenagers learn to waltz by watching YouTube videos while ladies shed their elbow-length gloves to better swipe on smartphones.

Carnival in the Brazilian city has two sides: the street parties, known as blocos, and the parades at the legendary Sambadrome.
Since Friday afternoon, hundreds of street parties have been roving through Rio's streets, each with its own aesthetic, theme or musical style. They're raucous, rambunctious romps with thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of partygoers.

Smaller movies didn't mean smaller viewer numbers for the Oscars.
An estimated 19.7 million viewers watched Sunday night's 97th Academy Awards ceremony, the biggest audience in five years, according to figures released by ABC on Tuesday.

"No Other Land," the story of Palestinian activists fighting to protect their communities from demolition by the Israeli military, won the Oscar for best documentary on Sunday.
The collaboration between Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers follows activist Basel Adra as he risks arrest to document the destruction of his hometown at the southern edge of the West Bank, which Israeli soldiers are tearing down to use as a military training zone. Adra's pleas fall on deaf ears until he befriends a Jewish Israeli journalist who helps him amplify his story.
