The young Syrian woman walked on stage and began telling the story of her brother's kidnapping in the early years of her country's civil war, wiping away tears as she recalled the 2013 incident that changed her life.

The woman, who identified herself as Mae from a government stronghold in the central city of Homs, said Ihsan's kidnapping in 2013 turned her into a more tolerant person, despite the eight-year conflict that has killed more than 400,000 people and displaced half the country's population.

South African 800m Olympic champion Caster Semenya on Thursday said she was "unquestionably a woman", after the IAAF denied reports that it would argue that she should be classified as a biological male.

Forget romantic dinners and roses, the place to be on Valentine's Day is Zagreb's Museum of Broken Relationships, a paean to personal objects and stories of heartbreak.

A rescue operation to save hundreds of dogs in South Korea from the slaughterhouse began Wednesday, as pressure mounts on the country to end its custom of killing canines for meat.

The traditional brightly embroidered dress of Palestinian women known as the "thobe" was not the type of garment one would expect to become a pop political symbol.

Now it's gaining prominence as a softer expression of Palestinian nationalism, competing even with the classic keffiyeh — the headscarf donned by young stone-throwing Palestinian men protesting Israel's occupation.

Standing before a rapt crowd, Ahmed Adel oozes charm with his passionate performance of an Egyptian classic, evoking a romantic nostalgia for Arabic songs of the past.

Thirty years after Iran called for the killing of Salman Rushdie, the British novelist remains a figure of hate for extremists across the Muslim world, and though the level of outrage has dropped, the issue of blasphemy is as incendiary as ever.

Geneva residents on Sunday voted for a controversial new "secularism law", which will among other things ban elected officials and public employees from wearing visible religious symbols.

A U.S. Muslim man has been executed after the Supreme Court denied a request to halt the sentence over his demand to be accompanied by an imam to the death chamber.

In the religious capital of Iran, the Islamic revolution still holds a powerful sway even as once-unthinkable signs of modernity creep into the city of Qom to challenge the faithful.