Syria reopened a wing of the capital's famed antiquities museum on Sunday after six years of closure to protect its exhibits from rebel rocket fire in the civil war.

Officials swung open the large wooden door of the building in central Damascus for the first time since 2012.

Irish voters were deciding Friday whether to repeal a ban on blasphemy -- the latest potential reform distancing the once-devout nation from its Catholic past.

The referendum was being held alongside a presidential election in which incumbent Michael Higgins was expected to secure a new seven-year term in the largely ceremonial post.

Russian police dismiss victims of domestic violence and a recent softening of the law in this area has left women even more vulnerable, a Human Rights Watch report said Thursday.

The report, based on interviews with dozens of victims, details extreme assaults including women being choked, punched and burned by their attackers. Others were pushed off balconies and out of windows.

A treasure trove of some 2,000 gold and silver coins has been found on the Danube riverbed in Hungary thanks to an exceptionally low water level, archaeologists said Thursday.

British fashion industry billionaire Philip Green was named by a member of the House of Lords on Thursday as the businessman who used an injunction to suppress the publication of sexual harassment allegations by five employees.

The allegation against 66-year-old Green -- whose international clothing empire includes the popular Topshop and Topman brands -- was made after media cried foul about being "gagged" by rich and powerful tycoons.

The European Parliament on Thursday awarded the prestigious Sakharov human rights prize to jailed Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, European sources said.

Mexico "absolutely" could follow Canada's lead in legalizing marijuana as a way to reduce violence generated by a war on drugs that "doesn't work," its incoming foreign minister said Tuesday.

The UN Human Rights Committee on Tuesday criticised France's so-called burqa ban, saying the law "violated" the rights of two women who were fined for wearing full-face veils in public.

Leading Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan, charged with raping two women in France, claimed Monday that he had consensual sex with both of them after previously denying any physical contact.

A priest in central France accused of sexually assaulting a minor committed suicide in his church, Catholic authorities said Monday, the second French priest to take his life over abuse claims in a month.