An online Islamic sex shop selling condoms, massage oils and perfumes has been launched in Turkey, becoming the first of its kind in the predominantly Muslim country.

The "Halal Sex Shop" website presents its products as being "entirely safe," and in compliance with Islamic norms.

Americans are growing more comfortable with online dating, and many are finding a spouse or partner in cyberspace, a survey showed Monday.

The Pew Research Center found 11 percent of Internet users -- or some nine percent of all American adults -- said they have personally used an online dating site.

His 2001 painting "The Last Supper" has just sold for $23 million, but growing up in a working class family during China's Cultural Revolution, Zeng Fanzhi could never have anticipated the path his life would take.

"The notion of the artist didn't exist," he said of his art school days in the central Hubei province.

Writer Khaled Hosseini called for more tolerance for the plight of refugees, as the author of the bestselling "The Kite Runner" spoke to Agence France Presse about his latest book "And The Mountains Echoed".

"There is a kind of fortress mentality in the West," said the Afghan-born American novelist, whose new novel has a complex plot spanning from Kabul to Paris, a Greek island to California.

A political genius, a great reformer, a patron of the arts -- but ancient Rome's first emperor Augustus was also a family man, as highlighted in a new exhibition that opened in Rome this week.

The show marks 2,000 years since the death of the founder of the Roman Empire and the man most associated with the "Pax Romana", a period of immense architectural and artistic achievement.

Alice Munro, 82, winner of the Nobel Literature Prize, will not be able to attend the prize ceremony in Stockholm in December, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy said Friday.

"Her health is simply not good enough," Peter Englund wrote on his blog.

Archaeologists began digging for treasure beneath a 19th century fort in northern India on Friday, after a popular Hindu holy man said a former king appeared to him in a dream and told him of the cache.

The treasure hunt began after Hindu swami Shobhan Sarkar relayed his dream to an Indian government minister who was visiting the swami's ashram last month.

School children in New York are likely to get two extra days off to mark the biggest annual Muslim holidays if the city's next mayor gets his way.

New York schools currently have mandatory holidays for the Christian festivals Easter and Christmas, and the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Passover.

A Jewish family's claim to one of Austria's most famous artworks by Gustav Klimt is shaping up as a test of the country's restitution drive and willingness to right old wrongs.

The 34-meter-long (112-foot) and two-meter-high "Beethoven Frieze", a jewel of Jugendstil art, has been a Vienna tourism highlight since 1986.

Beirut ranked 20 in the list of the world's top tourist destinations, the Ministry of Tourism announced on Thursday.

"Beirut came before Paris, Melbourne, Venice and Barcelona on the list of tourism magazine Conde Nast Traveler,” the ministry said in a released statement, noting that the magazine's annual list is based on “its readers' choices.”