Iceland briefly celebrated electing a female-majority parliament Sunday, before a recount produced a result just short of that landmark for gender parity in the North Atlantic island nation.

The initial vote count had female candidates winning 33 seats in Iceland's 63-seat parliament, the Althing, in an election that saw centrist parties make the biggest gains.

Nearly two-thirds of Swiss voters backed the government's plan to introduce same-sex marriage in a referendum held Sunday, with campaigners calling it a historic day for gay rights in Switzerland.

Fossilized footprints discovered in New Mexico indicate that early humans were walking across North America around 23,000 years ago, researchers reported Thursday.

The first footprints were found in a dry lake bed in White Sands National Park in 2009. Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey recently analyzed seeds stuck in the footprints to determine their approximate age, ranging from around 22,800 and 21,130 years ago.

A 3,500-year-old clay tablet discovered in the ruins of the library of an ancient Middle Eastern king, then looted from an Iraqi museum 30 years ago, is finally headed back to Iraq.

The $1.7 million cuneiform clay tablet was found in 1853 as part of a 12-tablet collection in the rubble of the library of Assyrian King Assur Banipal. Officials believe it was illegally imported into the United States in 2003, then sold to Hobby Lobby and eventually put on display in its Museum of the Bible in the nation's capital.

The girls on Afghanistan's national soccer team were anxious. For weeks, they had been moving around the country, waiting for word that they could leave.

One wants to be a doctor, another a movie producer, others engineers. All dream of growing up to be professional soccer players.

Six Native American tribes sued Wisconsin on Tuesday to try to stop its planned gray wolf hunt in November, asserting that the hunt violates their treaty rights and endangers an animal they consider sacred.

The Chippewa tribes say treaties give them rights to half of the wolf quota in territory they ceded to the United States in the mid-1800s. But rather than hunt wolves, the tribes want to protect them.

Pope Francis has acknowledged his increasingly vocal conservative critics, saying their "nasty comments" were the work of the devil and adding that "some wanted me dead" after his recent intestinal surgery.

Francis made the comments during a Sept. 12 private meeting with Slovakian Jesuits soon after he arrived in the Slovak capital of Bratislava during his just-finished visit. A transcript of the encounter was published Tuesday by the Jesuit journal La Civilta Cattolica, which often provides after-the-fact accounts of Francis' closed-door meetings with his fellow Jesuits when he's on the road.

Latinos are perpetually absent in major newsrooms, Hollywood films and other media industries where their portrayals — or lack thereof — could deeply impact how their fellow Americans view them, according to a government report released Tuesday.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus asked the U.S. Government Accountability Office to investigate last October.

Angela Merkel, Germany's first female chancellor, has been praised by many for her pragmatic leadership in a turbulent world and celebrated by some as a feminist icon. But a look at her track record over her 16 years at Germany's helm reveals missed opportunities for fighting gender inequality at home.

Named "The World's Most Powerful Woman" by Forbes magazine for the last 10 years in a row, Merkel has been cast as a powerful defender of liberal values in the West. She has easily stood her ground at male-dominated summits with leaders such as former U.S. President Donald Trump or Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The "Karama - Beirut Human Rights Film Festival" fifth edition kicks off on 23 September 2021, at 7 PM at Sunflower Theater, in Tayyouneh, Beirut.

The festival, organized by NGO “Art Factory 961” under the theme “Occupy the Void,” is held this year in cooperation with the United Nations Information Centre in Beirut (UNIC Beirut), with the support of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Lebanon, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Foundation and “Taawon” NGO.