Afghanistan's new Taliban rulers say they hope to be able to open all schools for girls across the country after late March, their spokesman told The Associated Press, offering the first timeline for addressing a key demand of the international community.

Since the Taliban takeover in mid-August, girls in most of Afghanistan have not been allowed back to school beyond grade 7. The international community, reluctant to formally recognize a Taliban-run administration, is wary they could impose similar harsh measures as during their previous rule 20 years ago. At the time, women were banned from education, work and public life.

Tens of thousands of devout Hindus, led by heads of monasteries and ash-smeared ascetics, took a holy dip into the frigid waters of the Ganges River in northern India on Friday despite rising COVID-19 infections in the country.

Hindu pilgrims congregated at the Sangam, the confluence of three rivers — the Ganges, the Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati — in Prayagraj city, 200 km (124 miles) northeast of Lucknow, the state capital of Uttar Pradesh, to participate in the Magh Mela festival, one of the most sacred pilgrimages in Hinduism. They bathed in the Ganges waters, a ritual Hindus believe will wash away their sins and free them from the cycle of death and rebirth.

The Dutch king ruled out Thursday using, for now at least, the royal family's "Golden Carriage," one side of which bears a painting that critics say glorifies the Netherlands' colonial past, including its role in the global slave trade.

The announcement was an acknowledgement of the heated debate about the carriage as the Netherlands reckons with the grim sides of its history as a 17th-century colonial superpower, including Dutch merchants making vast fortunes from slaves.

In a Kabul neighborhood, a gaggle of boys kick a yellow ball around a dusty playground, their boisterous cries echoing off the surrounding apartment buildings.

Dressed in sweaters and jeans or the traditional Afghan male clothing of baggy pants and long shirt, none stand out as they jostle to score a goal. But unbeknown to them, one is different from the others.

Power shortages and soaring petrol prices mean many Lebanese university students can neither afford to reach their classes nor study from home, a conundrum that is ravaging a generation's future.

Agnes, a 22-year-old dentistry student from south Lebanon, is among the few still plodding to class in Beirut four days a week.

Pope Francis grew up listening to the opera on the radio, is a fan of Argentine tango and thinks Mozart "lifts you to God."

But it still came as a something of a shock to see the 85-year-old pontiff coming out of a downtown Rome record shop late Tuesday with a CD in hand. He had made an unannounced visit that was caught on camera by a Vatican reporter who happened to be nearby.

A trilogy by award-winning children's author Kwame Alexander that tells the saga of an African family begins this fall with "The Door of No Return."

The book will be published Sept. 27, Little Brown & Company announced Tuesday. According to the publisher, the three books follow the lives of 11-year-old Kofi and his family from pre-colonial Ghana to the "woes and wonders" they face in Europe and America.

Greek officials vowed Tuesday to track the people behind the filming of a gay sex scene on Athens' Acropolis, the country's most important archaeological site, after footage emerged online.

The Beijing Winter Olympics are fraught with potential hazards for major sponsors, who are trying to remain quiet about China's human rights record while protecting at least $1 billion they've collectively paid to the IOC.

That could reach $2 billion when new figures are expected this year. Sponsors include big household names like Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Visa, Toyota, Airbnb, and Panasonic.

It's only the size of a shoebox, carved with the broken-off foot of an ancient Greek goddess.

But Greece hopes the 2,500-year-old marble fragment, which has arrived on loan from an Italian museum, may help resolve one of the world's thorniest cultural heritage disputes and lead to the reunification in Athens of all surviving Parthenon Sculptures — many of which are in the British Museum.