Shinichi Niitsuma enthusiastically shows visitors the attractions of the small town of Namie: its tsunami-hit coastline, abandoned houses and hills overlooking the radiation-infested reactors of the disabled Fukushima nuclear plant.

Five years after the nuclear disaster emptied much of Japan's northeastern coast, tourism is giving locals of the abandoned town a chance to exorcise the horrors of the past.

Poland's human rights commissioner has condemned a "growing number" of attacks on LGBT groups, calling for changes to the law to protect sexual minorities.

The Campaign against Homophobia (KPH) and gay-rights group Lambda say their offices have been targeted with break-ins in recent months, with anti-gay and nationalist slogans left on the doors of the latter.

In response to a surge in reports of anti-Muslim bullying, U.S. schools are expanding on efforts deployed in the past to help protect gays, racial minorities and other marginalized groups.

Civil rights organizations and other advocates have been working more closely with schools since the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, stirred a new backlash that led the U.S. Justice Department and U.S. Education Department to urge vigilance on the bullying of Muslims.

The Vatican Friday defended the Catholic Church's action on pedophile priests, saying popes Francis and Benedict XVI had "courageously" tackled the issue but admitting there was still much to be done in many countries.

Elusive street artist Banksy may have been unmasked — by mathematics.

Scientists have applied a type of modeling used to track down criminals and map disease outbreaks to identify the graffiti artist, whose real name has never been confirmed.

Taekwondo black belt Lina Khalifeh  started teaching self-defense to Jordanian friends in her parents' basement in 2010 after one of them confided that her father and brother hit her -- never expecting it would lead to an invitation to the White House.

Word about her classes quickly spread and two years later, overwhelmed by the demand, Khalifeh opened the country's first women-only martial arts center.

The United States may have seen an unprecedented anti-Muslim backlash in recent months, but one New York museum has challenged perceptions by teaching children about the wealth and diversity of Islamic culture.

The Children's Museum of Manhattan on the Upper West Side has been turned into an indoor playground where children can touch and experiment with artifacts of Muslim culture in a vibrant, colorful exhibition.

Boxing idol Muhammad Ali's gloves from the "most important sporting event in history" and pieces of his childhood home are among the artifacts at an exhibition in London honoring "the greatest".

The vast show opening on Friday at London's 02 Arena traces the story of the boxer from his childhood, through his glittering and brutal career to his elevation as a cultural and political icon.

New York is adding to its glittering portfolio of art museums with a new gallery dedicated to modern and contemporary art -- The Met Breuer, which opens with a retrospective of a little known Indian artist.

The gallery is housed in the modernist icon that Hungarian-born Bauhaus architect Marcel Breuer built in 1966 on Madison Avenue for the Whitney Museum of American Art, which last year moved downtown to a spanking new site.

A man in southern Russia faces a potential jail sentence after he was charged with insulting the feelings of religious believers over an Internet exchange in which he wrote that "there is no God."

Viktor Krasnov, 38, who appeared in court Wednesday, is being prosecuted under a controversial 2013 law that was introduced after punk art group Pussy Riots was jailed for a performance in Moscow's main cathedral, his lawyer Andrei Sabinin told AFP.