They were billed as artworks by Pablo Picasso, paintings so valuable that an Australian art museum's decision to display them in an exhibition restricted to women visitors provoked a gender discrimination lawsuit. The paintings again prompted international headlines when the gallery re-hung them in a women's restroom to sidestep a legal ruling that said men could not be barred from viewing them.

But the artworks at the center of the uproar were not really by Picasso or the other famed artists billed as their creators, it emerged this week when the curator of the women-only exhibition admitted she had painted them herself.

At the graduation ceremony of New York University Abu Dhabi this May, a student wearing the traditional Palestinian black-and-white keffiyeh scarf shouted "Free Palestine!" as he crossed the stage to receive his diploma, witnesses say. Days later, he reportedly was deported from the United Arab Emirates.

The incident at the graduation comes as the UAE tries to balance its diplomatic recognition of Israel with the ongoing Israel-Hamas war that's devastated the Gaza Strip. While offering aid to the Palestinians, there have been none of the mass demonstrations that swept the Arab world here in the UAE, a federation of seven emirates that tightly controls speech and where political parties are illegal.

Police in Iran shut down the Turkish Airlines office in the capital of Tehran, Iranian media reported Tuesday, after female employees there apparently refused to wear the mandatory headscarf, or hijab, in an act of defiance of the country's law.

The semi-official Tasnim news agency said police officers went to the Turkish Airlines office in Tehran on Monday to issue what is called a first warning over the "non-observance of hijab" by the company's employees.

Eight years ago, Yuriko Koike became the first woman to lead Tokyo, beating her male predecessor. She won her third term as governor Sunday, and one of her closest rivals was a woman.

Multiple women competing for a top political office is still rare in Japan, which has a terrible global gender-equality ranking, but Koike's win highlights a gradual rise in powerful female officials and a society more open to gender balance in politics. That said, even if a woman eventually becomes prime minister, politics here is still overwhelmingly dominated by men, and experts see a huge effort needed for equal representation.

Participants delighted the crowds as they raced in high heels through Madrid's Chueca neighborhood during Pride Week.

In the heart of the city's gay district, competitors in vibrant footwear elicited cheers and applause Thursday as they crossed the finish line.

The return to Cambodia this week of 14 sculptures that had been looted from the country during a period of war and unrest is like welcoming home the souls of ancestors, Cambodia's culture minister said Thursday.

The items repatriated from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Ar t arrived Wednesday and were displayed to journalists and VIPs on Thursday at the National Museum in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh.

Pope Francis will preside over an interfaith meeting in a mosque in the world's largest predominantly Muslim country during a four-nation Asian visit in September that will be the longest and most complicated foreign trip of his pontificate.

The Vatican on Friday released the itinerary for Francis' Sept. 2-13 trip to Indonesia, East Timor, Papua New Guinea and Singapore. The packed schedule makes clear that the 87-year-old pontiff, who has battled health problems and is increasingly reliant on a wheelchair, has no plans to slow down.

Seemingly every afternoon in Iran's capital, police vans rush to major Tehran squares and intersections to search for women with loose headscarves and those who dare not to wear them at all.

The renewed crackdown comes not quite two years since mass protests over the death Mahsa Amini after she was detained for not wearing a scarf to the authorities' liking. A United Nations panel has found that the 22-year-old died as a result of "physical violence" wrought upon her by the state.

Despite war-time restrictions, Ukrainians marked midsummer with festivals that featured frenetic folk dancing, flower decoration and jumping over bonfires.

The festival of Ivana Kupala on Sunday was held as Ukrainians start their third summer at war, with Kyiv and other cities hit by regular blackouts and remaining under nightly curfew.

Janette Navarro's 1996 Volkswagen Beetle roars as it barrels up a steep hill overlooking concrete houses stacked like boxes on the outskirts of Mexico City.

She presses her foot on the pedal, passes a lime green Beetle like hers, then one marked with red and yellow, then another painted a bright sea blue.