An Australian pub that has a no head wear policy was forced to apologize Monday after ejecting a Sikh man for refusing to take off his turban.

A staff member at the Royal English Hotel in Brisbane barred the man on Sunday.

Whether it's with an explosion of colorful fireworks, a hometown parade or just one burger too many, people across the United States will celebrate Independence Day Monday — each in his own way.

Thousands will camp out near the Washington Monument, eagerly awaiting the festivities there, while others will throw on a Hawaiian shirt and shorts and head for the still-snowy slopes at resorts from California to Colorado. If you're in Boston, the annual Boston Pops concert is a must. But if you're in Akron, Ohio, the Rib, White & Blue Food Festival is enticing. And then, there are Nevada's casinos. They're promising a pyrotechnics extravaganza that could be a gambler's best bet.

A Michigan jail inmate says he's being subjected to cruel and unusual punishment because he can't have pornography.

In a handwritten lawsuit, 21-year-old Kyle Richards claims his civil rights are being violated at the Macomb County Jail. Richards says denying his request for erotic material subjects him to a "poor standard of living" and "sexual and sensory deprivation."

Massachusetts officials have closed a busy public swimming pool after a woman's dead body went unnoticed in the water for two days as people continued to swim, the Boston Globe reported Friday.

The permit for the state-run swimming pool expired six months ago, and a city inspector who examined the site on Tuesday -- just hours before the body surfaced -- did not see the remains because the water was so murky, the newspaper reported.

President Hamid Karzai advised Afghans not to hold extravagant wedding parties saying in his weekly radio address to the nation on Friday that they were "against the national tradition."

Since the fall of the Taliban nearly a decade ago, marriage ceremonies in Afghan cities have often gone from being simple family affairs to lavish parties for up to 1,000 people in neon-clad wedding halls.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Friday gave his Polish counterpart Donald Tusk a 15-litre cask of wine to toast Poland's six-month European Union presidency.

"I have brought with me a cask of wine to drink to the success of the Polish presidency," Orban told reporters as he handed over leadership of the 27-nation bloc to Tusk, together with an EU flag.

A British woman's email rant at her future daughter-in-law became an Internet sensation on Thursday after she accused the bride-to-be of "uncouthness and lack of grace."

In a withering message entitled "your lack of manners", Carolyn Bourne took Heidi Withers to task over her failures of etiquette and recommended she attend a finishing school "with utmost haste."

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin caused jaws to drop last year when he gave an impromptu performance of the Fats Domino classic "Blueberry Hill" at a charity concert.

Now one of the country's best known DJs has remixed Putin's vocals into a six-minute dance track that he says is wowing clubbers around the country, even if he admits that Putin is "not a singer."

Thousands of Bulgarians gathered Friday by the seaside to greet the first July sunrise of the year, celebrated since the communist era as a symbol of summer, freedom and a new beginning.

The popular July Morning sunrise ritual, which first emerged in the 1980s, obtained its name from the Uriah Heep song traditionally played at the moment the first sun rays shine over the Black sea.

A government in northern India is offering prizes including television sets, food processors and even a Tata Nano car for people who agree to undergo sterilisation, a doctor told Agence France Presse on Friday.

"We want to promote sterilisation," Pratap Singh Dutter, the deputy chief medical officer of Jhunjhunu district in the north Indian state of Rajasthan told AFP.