Some of the finest masterpieces of 20th century art are the highlights of New York's November auction season, poised to set new sales records in a flourishing market.

The sum total of impressionist, modern, post-war and contemporary art being offered by Christie's and Sotheby's is expected to fetch more than $1.5 billion at combined evening and day sales from November 4 to 13.

Classes are overcrowded, curriculums out of date and facilities crumbling. In Egypt, frustrated parents have for decades relied on private tutors as overpopulation and government neglect have eviscerated public education.

And with the Arab world's most populous country plunged into turmoil since 2011, when a popular uprising ousted president Hosni Mubarak, hopes for reform are slimmer than ever as security dominates the political agenda.

Bob Dylan's electric guitar, on which he performed a career-defining set at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, is going under the hammer in New York for $500,000.

Christie's will auction off the 1964 Fender Stratocaster guitar on December 6 with five newly discovered Dylan song lyrics dating back to 1965-66.

The secretive street artist Banksy ended his self-announced month-long residency in New York City with a final piece of graffiti, a $615,000 painting donated to charity and a debate: Is he a jerk or a genius?

Banksy, who created a new picture, video or prank every day of October somewhere in the city, spent his last day like thousands of graffiti artists before him: He tagged a building near a highway with his name in giant bubble letters. The twist was that these letters were actual bubbles: balloon-like inflatables stuck to a wall near the Long Island Expressway in Queens.

The Vatican is taking the unusual step of conducting a worldwide survey on how parishes deal with sensitive issues such as birth control, divorce and gay marriage, seeking input ahead of a major meeting on the family that Pope Francis plans next year.

The poll was sent in mid-October to every national conference of bishops with a request from the Vatican coordinator, Archbishop Lorenzo Baldisseri, to "share it immediately as widely as possible to deaneries and parishes so that input from local sources can be received."

Four female lawmakers from Turkey's Islamic-rooted government attended parliament Thursday wearing headscarves for the first time, breaking a long taboo in the staunchly secular country.

Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) lifted on September 30 a decades-old ban on headscarves in the civil service as part of a package of reforms meant to improve democracy and freedoms.

Former French star dancer Manuel Legris will stay on as director of the Vienna Ballet until 2017, having revolutionized the stuffy old institution, the company announced Wednesday.

Legris, who launched a ballet revival in the Austrian capital after arriving here in September 2010, has extended his contract -- initially due to run out in August 2015 -- by two years, the Vienna Opera said in a statement.

Amsterdam will next month stage the traditional arrival of Saint Nicholas and his helper "Black Pete", despite objections that the jolly sidekick is a racist symbol.

"The permit allowing Saint Nicholas' arrival in Amsterdam will not be revoked," the capital's mayor Eberhard van der Laan said in a letter.

"Xiang jiao! Banana!" says Fu Huijuan, beaming as she waves the fruit in front of her three-year-old pupil, Leon, at a Madrid nursery school.

He and his four classmates have barely learned to speak even in their native Spanish, but already they are absorbing Mandarin Chinese -- as are many adult Spaniards concerned for their job prospects.

Qatar has removed the Zinedine Zidane headbutt statue less than a month after it went on display following an outcry by conservatives, who slammed the art work as anti-Islam idolization.

The five-meter (16.4-feet) sculpture which immortalizes the headbutt delivered by the French football legend to Italian player Marco Materazzi in the 2006 World Cup final was put on display on Doha's corniche on October 3.