There's a very different feel to Christmas Day at Liverpool this season.

Twelve months ago, Liverpool was top of the Premier League — always a significant milestone in the English game — and playing the most exciting brand of football in the country. With striker Luis Suarez pouring in goals and Brendan Rodgers being hailed for his managerial qualities, the club was gearing up for its first genuine title challenge for years.

The wedding season is in full swing in India, marking what should be the busiest time of year for the traditional brass bands that lead raucous processions announcing the arrival of the bridegroom to the neighborhood.

Dressed in faded military-style uniforms or long silken tunics and turbans, brass bands playing the latest Bollywood tunes have long been a must-have at any Indian wedding.

A struggle for women's rights is brewing within Israel's deeply conservative ultra-Orthodox community, where women, largely shut out of politics, are beginning to demand greater representation in the country's parliament.

More than 20 percent of Israeli lawmakers are female, but not one woman serves from the country's two ultra-Orthodox, or haredi, parties. In haredi communities, women are expected to manage a home, raise children and provide an income for the family, often while the husband studies Torah.

Don't let the powdered wigs and oil paintings fool you: Samuel Adams, John Hancock and the other eventual Americans who changed the course of history were a ragtag band of secretive and sometimes mischievous young radicals.

Just ask Paul Revere, aka actor Michael Raymond-James, who's part of the cast of "Sons of Liberty," a new miniseries premiering in January on the History Channel.

Onlookers at a train station in northern India watched in awe as a monkey came to the rescue of an injured friend — resuscitating another monkey that had been electrocuted and knocked unconscious.

The injured monkey had fallen between the tracks, apparently after touching high-tension wires at the train station in the north Indian city of Kanpur.

The sport of kings is trying to become less elitist by breaking down knowledge barriers.

No longer is British horse racing content with just being at the heart of the social calendar for the aristocracy — as it has been for centuries. The Jockey Club recognizes its future relies on educating the masses about a sport filled with arcane terms and rules.

The widely acclaimed movie "Selma" about the 1965 Civil Rights movement has disappointed at least one moviegoer: a leading historian of President Lyndon B. Johnson.

The director of the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, which hosted a major civil rights summit this year that was headlined by four U.S. presidents, said the film that opens in theaters Thursday incorrectly portrays Johnson as an obstructionist to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Got a nifty little drone for Christmas? If so, fly it carefully. Especially if you are in Britain.

The country's civil aviation authority on Thursday issued a warning that people who fly their drones recklessly face prosecution and a hefty fine.

Officials in Massachusetts say they'll reveal the contents of a time capsule dating to 1795 and believed placed by Samuel Adams and other Revolutionary War luminaries early next month.

The state and the Museum of Fine Arts say the contents of the capsule unearthed at the Statehouse in Boston will be unveiled on January 6.

In Massachusetts, it's not just the treetops that are glistening this holiday season. It's also the jewelry that's being dropped in Salvation Army's red kettles.

The charity says donors dropped wedding and engagement rings into a kettle in Weymouth, south of Boston. And a bracelet, diamond ring and diamond pendant were contributed in the central city of Fitchburg.