The Turkish government announced it was lifting a ban on female students wearing the Islamic headscarf at high schools, in a move denounced by opponents as undermining the basis of the country's secular society.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who co-founded the ruling Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP), has long been accused by opponents of eroding the secular values of the modern Turkish state.

Even before Sigmund Freud fled Hitler on the Orient Express from Vienna in June 1938, the father of psychoanalysis and his ideas about sex, dreams and cocaine divided opinion in the Austrian capital.

And even now, 75 years after his death in London on September 23, 1939, Freud and the groundbreaking theory of mind that he fathered still lack the recognition they achieved elsewhere.

The curtain has gone up on a Shakespearean playhouse with an ultra-modern twist in Poland's port city of Gdansk, built on the very spot where four centuries ago English actors performed masterpieces by the Great Bard, albeit on a more humble stage.

The new 22-million euro ($28-million) venue, which opened this weekend with a performance of Hamlet by the world-renowned Shakespeare's Globe company, already boasts Britain's Prince Charles among its most ardent fans.

Down a concrete path, between rail tracks that buzz with each approaching train and a river choked by plastic and raw sewage, Asih Binti Arif cradles her baby and reflects on dreams gone dark.

Five years ago, Arif and her husband left impoverished Madura Island, joining the stream of migrants from across the vast Indonesian archipelago seeking a better life in its capital.

Two grandiose elephant tusks guard the doors of a palace built to celebrate the cultural heritage of Africa's Bantu tribes, which gradually settled across much of the continent, but beyond them the huge building is a ruin.

"Welcome to the Ciciba!" a young boy in rags hailed visitors outside, using the French acronym for the International Center of the Bantu Civilizations, built in Gabon's capital Libreville three decades ago.

For more than 5,000 years, numerous civilizations have left their mark on upper Mesopotamia — from Assyrians and Akkadians to Babylonians and Romans. Their ancient, buried cities, palaces and temples packed with monumental art are scattered across what is now northern Iraq and eastern Syria.

Now much of that archaeological wealth is under the control of extremists from the Islamic State group. The militants have demolished some artifacts in their zealotry to uproot what they see as heresy, but they are also profiting from it, hacking relics off palace walls or digging them out to sell on the international black market.

The United Nations agency promoting equality for women is launching a global campaign to get 100,000 men and boys involved in the fight to achieve gender equality.

U.N. Women said the campaign, spurred by the unfulfilled U.N. goal of achieving gender equality by 2015, will begin Saturday when Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon activates an online map to track the progress of countries in promoting equality of the sexes. Ban will be accompanied by British actress Emma Watson, a goodwill ambassador for the agency who played Hermione Granger in the "Harry Potter" films.

When retail mogul Leslie Wexner peers at one of the Picassos, Dubuffets or Giacomettis in the personal art collection he and his wife Abigail have amassed over the years, he feels a range of emotions that often include gratitude, defeat and exhilaration.

"I find it inspiring in a way — that tangible creativity you find in painting or performance," says the philanthropist and chairman of L Brands, the company behind Victoria's Secret, Limited and Henri Bendel.

A collection of letters John F. Kennedy sent to the family of a lost PT-109 crewmate sold for $200,000 at an auction.

RR Auction, a Boston-based auction house, said the sale happened Thursday during a two-day auction at the Omni Parker House that also saw the sale of a collection of letters that Kennedy's younger brother, Robert F. Kennedy, wrote to a classmate at what is now the Portsmouth Abbey School in Rhode Island.

Saudi Arabia has agreed to fund the restoration of Cairo's Al-Azhar mosque in recognition of its role as a "beacon of moderate Islam," the Egyptian president's office said Thursday.

The announcement came after talks between President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and visiting Saudi intelligence chief Prince Khaled bin Bandar bin Abdel Aziz on the coalition Washington is building against the Islamic State group (IS) in Iraq and Syria.