Bill Gates said Wednesday that "with any luck" polio will be eradicated by 2017 in the last two countries where it remains active, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The Microsoft founder, who has donated billions to fight global diseases, was speaking in Doha at the official announcement of a $50 million donation from Qatar to "The Lives and Livelihood Fund".

A Singapore woman who lives as a man has been acquitted of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl because the judge said the law on which the charges were based relates only to men with a penis.

A senior figure in one of Germany's governing parties called Wednesday for a law that would prevent foreign financing of mosques in the country.

Andreas Scheuer, the Christian Social Union's general secretary, argued in an interview with the daily Die Welt that "political Islam" undermines efforts to integrate people in Germany.

A Polish prosecutor has questioned a Polish-American scholar to try to determine if he committed the crime of publicly insulting the nation with a statement on Polish violence against Jews during World War II.

Princeton professor Jan Tomasz Gross told The Associated Press that he was questioned for five hours Tuesday in Katowice but still does not know if he will be charged in the case.

Thais and tourists took to the streets on Wednesday to drench each other in a mass water fight marking the country's new year, as authorities attempted to crack down on alcohol, topless dancers and other "indecencies."

A marine robot deployed in the waters of Scotland's Loch Ness has found the remains of a monster but it turned out to be a prop from a movie shot in 1970.

The robot, belonging to Norwegian offshore oil company Kongsberg Maritime, is drawing up the first high-resolution map of the 230-meter (755-feet) deep lake in a project named "Operation Groundtruth".

Ernest Hemingway and John F. Kennedy never met, but the author's most extensive personal collection is housed at JFK's presidential library and is now on public display.

The exhibition opening this week in Boston includes original manuscripts of some of his most famous literary works; letters to other major literary figures of his time; photographs and other personal mementos.

A surprise awaits beyond a black door adorned with a silver lotus flower at the end of a tangle of alleyways in Gaza's chaotic Old City.

Pakistan's smallest religious minority, the Kalash speak their own language and celebrate their gods through music, dance -- and alcohol, which they brew themselves in Chitral's plunging verdant valleys.

Here, the sexes mingle easily, marriage can be sealed with a dance, and women are free to move on to new loves -- it is a far cry from life in much of the rest of the country, where many adhere to a strict Islamic code forbidding such behaviour. 

It is the literary sensation of the year in France. A first novel by a dyslexic author that has had readers crying -- and laughing out loud -- on the Paris metro.