The Justice Department said Friday it is going to allow members of federally recognized American-Indian tribes to possess eagle feathers, although that's a federal crime.

This is a significant religious and cultural issue for many tribes, who were consulted in advance about the policy the department announced.

In a landmark ruling Botswana's High Court on Friday affirmed women's inheritance rights for the first time, up-ending a male-dominated system that had prevailed in the thriving African nation.

The court ruled that local customary laws -- giving a son preferential rights to inherit the family home -- are not in line with the country's constitution, which guarantees gender equality.

Vienna's city council said Friday that it planned to erect a monument to remember the thousands of people executed by the Nazis for deserting or refusing to serve in the military during World War II.

"The location is a worthy one, aimed at remembering -- in the city center, right next to the chancellery and the presidency -- those who risked their lives not to serve in the Nazi Wehrmacht and those murdered at the hands of Nazi military justice," said city councilor for culture Andreas Mailath-Pokorny.

U.S. poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 93, has turned down a literary award partly funded by the Hungarian government due to concerns about human rights in the central European country, his publisher said Friday.

The Janus Pannonius International Poetry Prize was set up in 2012 by the Hungarian PEN Club, a branch of the worldwide PEN writers' associations.

A new collection of plays by Mo Yan will be released next week following the Chinese author's Nobel Literature Prize success, a report said, citing the work's publisher.

The new work, "Our Jing Ke", consists of three plays, according to Chen Liming, from publisher Beijing Genuine and Profound Culture Development Company, state news agency Xinhua reported late Friday.

An off-duty Italian border patrol diver has uncovered the well preserved wreck of an 18th-century Spanish galleon in waters off the coast of Sicily where a famous battle took place in 1718.

The diver first spotted a cannon protruding from the sand near Capo Passero, after which he called in his colleagues who found more cannons and the wooden remains of the ship, the border patrol said in a statement on Thursday.

Chinese dissidents assailed Mo Yan's Nobel literature prize as a disgraceful vindication of the Communist Party's control of creative expression Friday, accusing the author of being a stooge of officialdom.

While China continued to bask in the prize with an outpouring of pride that contrasted with the fury that greeted previous awards linked to the country, opponents of China's government branded it a shameful validation of state controls on publishing.

Mo Yan, one of China's leading writers of the past half-century, on Thursday won the Nobel Literature Prize for his writing that mixes folk tales, history and the contemporary, the Swedish Academy announced.

"Through a mixture of fantasy and reality, historical and social perspectives, Mo Yan has created a world reminiscent in its complexity of those in the writings of William Faulkner and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, at the same time finding a departure point in old Chinese literature and in oral tradition," the academy said.

Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday marked the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council — the church meetings he attended as a young priest that brought the Catholic Church into the modern world but whose true meaning is still hotly debated.

Benedict celebrated Mass in St. Peter's Square, accompanied by patriarchs, cardinals, bishops and a dozen elderly churchmen who participated in the council, and later will greet the faithful, re-enacting the great procession into St. Peter's that launched the council in 1962.

Dressed in mini skirts barely covering their hips, the two girls took to the neon-lit stage and moved vigorously to the loud, pumping pop music. Their job: to appease the wandering spirits.

As the temple facade in the background changed color from the fireworks lighting up the Taiwanese night sky, the show climaxed with pole-dancing and striptease in front of an audience consisting of men, women and children.