Turkish authorities have cancelled a festival celebrating the national drink raki because of complaints by Islamic groups, causing an uproar among secular Turks.

The annual "World Raki Festival" had been scheduled to take place on December 12 and 13 in Adana, a Mediterranean city famous for its Turkish kebab. 

An Apple manager has apologised to six teenagers of African descent after staff kicked them out of an Australian store citing concerns they "might steal something", with a video of the incident going viral on Facebook.

The video, recorded by one of the students from Maribyrnong College in the southern city of Melbourne, has been viewed almost 60,000 times after it was posted on Facebook on Tuesday with the caption "simply racism".

Iran's leaders won't attend events serving alcohol, a diplomat said Wednesday after French media reported that President Hassan Rouhani refused to attend a state dinner in Paris because wine was on the menu.

"According to Islamic values ​​and teachings, officials of the Islamic Republic do not participate in ceremonies where alcohol is served," said the diplomat, who is in charge of protocol at Iran's foreign ministry, according to ISNA news agency.

A taxi driver turned financier, Chinese tycoon Liu Yiqian has stunned the art world with his record-setting purchases, the latest a famed Modigliani nude costing more than $170 million.

"Nu Couche", or "Reclining Nude", painted by the Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani in 1917-18, sold to Liu after a frantic nine-minute bidding war at a Christie's auction in New York on Monday.

A Chinese collector snapped up a sensuous Modigliani nude for $170.4 million in New York, setting a new world record price at auction for the Italian artist in a bumper Christie's sale.

The evening auction also set world auction records for U.S. pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, whose "Nurse" fetched $95.37 million, as well as for 19th century French painter Gustave Courbet.

Tunisia's President Beji Caid Essebsi Monday hailed the Nobel Peace Prize awarded last month to the National Dialogue Quartet, saying it saved the country from "the specter of civil war."

The prize "paid tribute to the value of dialogue and proved that peaceful revolutions are possible," Essebsi said at a ceremony at the Carthage palace in the outskirts of Tunis.

Pope Francis wants to visit Auschwitz when he visits Poland in July 2016, Polish President Andrzej Duda said on Monday after meeting the pontiff.

The Argentinian pope also expressed a desire to visit a celebrated Catholic shrine at Czestochowa when he visits the city of Krakow to mark World Youth Day, Duda told reporters, according to specialist Vatican news agency I-media.

Some of Britain's gloomy Victorian prisons, including the one where Oscar Wilde was held for homosexuality, could be turned into homes for thousands of people under plans announced by the government on Monday.

The looming 19th century red-brick buildings, which were built close to city centers and are now often in desirable locations, are to be broken up into 3,000 homes. New prisons will then be built to house the inmates.

The Danish editor who commissioned the Mohammed cartoons that triggered deadly protests a decade ago said Monday he was leaving the Jyllands-Posten newspaper to focus on his career as an author and political commentator.

"I want to spend more time writing books and participating in the public debate in Denmark and abroad. The growing diversity in Europe has put freedom under pressure," Flemming Rose told the paper.

At home her son still calls her daddy, at work she dresses in a masculine style, but this Chinese person has a "little secret" -- she was born male, but is not any more.

She had long identified as a woman, and suffered from depression after starting a family, opting in the end to have a surgical sex change.