A play by author Michel Houellebecq -- whose book imagining a Muslim-governed France stirred controversy -- will be staged as planned at a Croatian arts festival despite calls for its cancellation over security fears, the culture ministry said Wednesday.

The Dubrovnik Summer Festival announced earlier this month it would have to cancel Houellebecq's drama "The Elementary Particles" ("Les Particules elementaires") after the interior ministry deemed it a "security risk".

It was not until late on her wedding day that Aygul told her parents she was even in a relationship. And they were furious.

A year later, her Uighur father was still so angry she had chosen a Han husband he beat her up in a Beijing train station, stamping on her throat as he hurled insults.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott Wednesday promised a "full and frank" debate on gay marriage in response to an opposition-backed push for reform, but said the issue was not a priority for his conservative government.

The opposition Labor Party said late Tuesday it would bring a private member's bill before parliament next week which could force a vote on gay marriage later in the year, following Ireland's successful referendum on the matter.

The United States on Tuesday officially returned 25 artifacts looted over the decades from Italy, including Etruscan vases, 1st-century frescoes and precious books that ended up in U.S. museums, universities and private collections.

Italy has been on a campaign to recover looted artifacts, using the courts and public shaming to compel museums and collectors to return them, and has won back several important pieces.

From stylish, manicured creations to small vegetable plots, gardens are taking to the rooftops of the South Korean capital Seoul -- bringing dashes of spontaneity and color to the skyline of one of the world's most densely populated cities.

With help from the municipal government, otherwise largely drab buildings are being crowned with flower beds, allotments and trees, where the scent of fresh blossoms in the springtime can briefly mask the fumes from the traffic below.

Pope Francis' finance chief Wednesday said he was ready to give evidence at a child abuse inquiry in his native Australia, as the nation's most notorious paedophile priest insisted the pair had little to do with each other.

Cardinal George Pell -- formerly the top Catholic cleric in Australia and now a senior Vatican official -- was accused by a victim during the hearings last week of trying to bribe him to keep quiet.

The title of the menu, "Long live Junta", and its Hitler-like caricatures of Vladimir Putin are some of the more benign gags at a new bar in Kiev packed nightly with crowds.

Opened this month, the Karatel bar, whose name translates as "The Punisher", offers a tongue-in-cheek gastronomical take on all the main cliches of Russian propaganda about Ukraine's conflict with pro-Moscow separatists in the east.

Some Native Hawaiians disapprove of the name of a movie filmed and set in Hawaii, saying that titling it "Aloha" is a disrespectful misappropriation of culture and simplifies a word that's rich with meaning.

The Cameron Crowe film starring Bradley Cooper, Rachel McAdams and Emma Stone, opens Friday, with a screening in Honolulu three days before. The concerns are based largely on a trailer that depicts a military-themed love-story that appears devoid of a genuine connection to Hawaiian culture.

Malaysia has been a sort of promised land for Rohingya Muslims fleeing persecution in Myanmar. The tens of thousands who endured perilous journeys to get here find more work opportunities than in Indonesia and a more Muslim-friendly environment than in Thailand.

But in the 25 years since Hamid Hussein Abul Khair arrived, that promise has been worn away by the statelessness and poverty that have never left him.

In a small beige building in a leafy Stockholm suburb, Maria Sjodin bustles around her design studio putting the finishing touches on her sleek fashions for an unexpected clientele: female clergy.

One of the pioneers in the industry, Sjodin creates sophisticated, tailored garments for women pastors and ministers that feature a discreet flair: form-fitting black tops and dresses with three-quarter or trumpet sleeves, or a pronounced architectural cuff.