Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met Pope Francis on Monday while police enforced a protest ban in central Rome as feelings run high over Turkey's offensive against Kurdish militia inside Syria.

During the 50-minute audience, Pope Francis gave Erdogan a medallion embossed with an angel strangling a "demon of war" -- a symbol of peace and justice.

Palestinians have reacted to Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital with street protests, but one couple have come up with an idea of their own, in the naming of their triplets.

Lebanon's national museum on Friday unveiled five ancient sculptures, including a Phoenician bull's head returned by the United States, that were looted during the civil war.

Tehran police have arrested 29 women for appearing in public without a headscarf as protests against the dress code in force since the Islamic revolution of 1979 intensify, Iranian media reported Friday.

How should Facebook decide what's art and what's pornography? The question comes to a head in a French court case Thursday with the social network accused of censoring a 19th-century painting of a woman's genitals.

Iran's chief prosecutor has played down recent protests by women removing their headscarves in public, saying they were "trivial" and "childish" moves possibly incited by foreigners.

Hundreds of thousands of Hindus across Malaysia celebrated the annual Thaipusam festival on Wednesday, with many piercing their skin with hooks and skewers to show devotion to the deity Murugan.

Greece said on Tuesday it wanted Macedonia to adopt an "untranslatable" name in order to settle a long-running dispute between the two countries.

Greece considers the name "Macedonia" to be part of its own cultural heritage -- it is also the name of a Greek province considered to be the center of the ancient empire of Alexander the Great.

U.S. Senate Democrats blocked a controversial measure Monday that would ban and criminalize abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, scuttling a longtime priority of conservatives in Congress.

When Abdul Karim al-Kafarnah went to check the rainwater gushing down a hole in his garden he was in for quite a shock -- hidden steps led him down to an ancient grave complex.