Residents of the Saudi Red Sea city of Jeddah are slowly returning to its historic centre, where a Ramadan cultural festival and UN heritage status are giving new life to the old quarter.

Last year the United Nations added Jeddah to its UNESCO global heritage list, acknowledging its distinctive architecture, which evolved from the city's centuries-old role as a global trading hub and the gateway for pilgrims visiting Islam's holiest sites.

Harper Lee's unexpected new novel offers an unexpected and startling take on an American literary saint, Atticus Finch.

"Go Set a Watchman" is set in the 1950s, 20 years after Lee's celebrated "To Kill a Mockingbird," and finds Atticus hostile to the growing civil rights movement. In one particularly dramatic encounter with his now-adult daughter, Scout, the upright Alabama lawyer who famously defended a black man in "Mockingbird" condemns the NAACP as opportunists and troublemakers and labels blacks as too "backward" to "share fully in the responsibilities of citizenship."

It's nearly midnight and in a matter of minutes Greece will leave the euro. Banks are shuttered, TV shows heatedly debate whether salaries will be paid... and Inspector Haritos has a new crime to solve.

The prescient, if fictional, setting for a novel by Greece's "cult" crime writer Petros Markaris was written three years ago and has captured readers' imaginations well beyond Greece's borders -- especially in Germany.

Last year a 600 kilogram (1,300 pound) bull jammed a horn as thick as a man's arm through Bill Hillmann's thigh twice, narrowly missing his femoral artery.

It was his first goring in 10 years of running with the bulls at Spain's famous San Fermin festival, but not the first time he got injured.

Twenty gay and lesbian couples got married in a mass wedding on an Acapulco beach on Friday, one month after Mexico's top court all but legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.

With Guerrero state's governor and wife as witnesses, the 15 male and five female couples exchanged vows as the sun set, surrounded by some 200 people in a celebration that included cake and a mariachi band.

French police officers have been given approval to sport beards and tattoos on the job so long as they respect certain conditions, officials said Friday.

Responding to a police officers' union request, officials said French cops may wear beards on duty "as long as they are clean and well-trimmed," and may indulge in the current male fashion of letting stubble grow two or three days between shaves.

A hoard of gems accrued over 40 years by a collector who "loves sparkly things" is being sold in Britain with a retail value of £8 million ($12.4 million, 11.1 million euros), an auction house said Friday.

Rubies, emeralds, tanzanites and sapphires "ethically sourced" from all over the world are among more than 680 gemstones being sold from the largest collection of its kind in Britain, John Pye Auctions said.

We know this much so far about Harper Lee's new book: Atticus Finch is 72 and suffering from rheumatoid arthritis; Scout is a grown woman who has a suitor most anxious to marry her.

And Scout's older brother, Jem, apparently has died.

Gay couples flocked to civil registries in Chile on Thursday to pick a time to celebrate the first same-sex civil unions since their historic approval earlier this year.

Couples were able to sign up for the Civil Union Agreement (AUC) for free, six months after it was approved by Congress in the religiously conservative country.

One man has become a behind-the-scenes force in the international art world after securing the return of art looted by the Nazis to the descendents of its original Jewish owners.

The return of "Seated Woman" by Henri Matisse to the Rosenberg family was his work.