A new survey from Somalia says the practice of female genital mutilation is on the decline.

The survey released Tuesday by UNICEF and the governments of Somaliland and Puntland found that 25 percent of girls ages 1 to 14 have undergone the practice, compared to 99 percent of women.

His graffiti once plastered Hong Kong, dense black ink calligraphy applied with a brush to any public surface, telling the outlandish story of why he believed the territory belonged to him.

The self-declared "King of Kowloon", Tsang Tsou-choi, lived in poverty but became a local hero and internationally renowned artist, creating around 55,000 outdoor works over five decades on everything from post boxes to flyovers.

There was a time when a constellation of Jewish Egyptian stars shone on the country's arts and music scene, and when streets in Cairo and Alexandria brimmed with Jewish shops.

But by the turn of the 21st century, Egypt's Jews had become a faded memory, their synagogues empty and their old neighborhoods offering scant testimony to a once-thriving community.

Poland's chief rabbi on Sunday unveiled a special prayer case at a new Polish Jews museum, days before its opening on the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

"With the Mezuzah here, it really means we're at home," Rabbi Michael Schudrich said of the case, containing a scroll inscribed with a Hebrew prayer to protect the hearth.

Here's a list "Fifty Shades of Grey" was destined to make: The books most likely to be removed from school and library shelves in the U.S.

On Monday, E L James' multimillion selling erotic trilogy placed No. 4 on the American Library Association's annual study of "challenged books," works subject to complaints from parents, educators and other members of the public. The objections: Offensive language, and, of course, graphic sexual content.

The future of Nigeria's rich theater legacy, built over decades by artists including Africa's first Nobel literature laureate Wole Soyinka, may be found off stage.

Theater has been central to some of the defining campaigns in Nigerian history, including the push for independence in 1960, but it is now a struggling art, with actors warning that their industry is in danger.

Australia paid tribute on Monday to Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who saved thousands of Jews during World War II, by making him the country's first honorary citizen.

"The lives of those he rescued are Mr Wallenberg's greatest memorial and Australia is honored to have survivors he rescued living in Australia today," Prime Minister Julia Gillard said in a statement.

A translation of Biblical psalms that was the first book ever printed in what became the United States goes on auction this November, with an expected price tag of $15-30 million, Sotheby's said Friday in New York.

The book is one of the best of the 11 surviving copies of "The Bay Psalm Book," which Puritan settlers from England printed in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1640 -- before the United States even existed.

Some 70 ceremonial masks originating from Arizona's Hopi tribe were sold for more than 900,000 euros ($1.2 million) on Friday after a legal challenge failed to prevent an auction decried by opponents as "sacrilege".

The sale of the brightly coloured "Kachina" visages and headdresses by the Neret-Minet auction house took place only hours after a court rejected a request for an injunction from representatives of the Native American tribe, who say the objects are sacred and should be returned to them.

A priest in the pope's native Argentina who endorsed the gay marriage law approved here in 2010 has been expelled from the church, his local archbishop's office said Friday.

The offensive against the legislation was led by Jorge Bergoglio, then the archbishop of Buenos Aires and now Pope Francis.