Saudi Arabia has agreed to fund the restoration of Cairo's Al-Azhar mosque in recognition of its role as a "beacon of moderate Islam," the Egyptian president's office said Thursday.

The announcement came after talks between President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and visiting Saudi intelligence chief Prince Khaled bin Bandar bin Abdel Aziz on the coalition Washington is building against the Islamic State group (IS) in Iraq and Syria.

The Université Libano-Française is launching a new branch in Metn. Admissions are currently open, with classes to begin in October.

At the origin of this new Institution is a dream: the dream to create a place where students can learn and grow personally and professionally.

Egypt has recovered fragments from the pyramid of Cheops said to have been stolen by Germans, including part of a stone tablet identifying the pharaoh it was named after, state media reported Wednesday.

The Egyptian foreign ministry handed over "samples stolen in the Cheops pyramid" to the antiquities ministry, said the official MENA news agency.

Algeria will impose more government control on training for the country's imams in a bid to fight Islamic extremism, its religious affairs minister said in comments published in local media on Wednesday.

The former French colony in North Africa has a difficult history with religious fundamentalism, having fought hardline Islamists during a bloody civil war in the 1990s that left some 200,000 people dead.

Pope Francis has signed off on Sri Lanka's first saint, bending Vatican rules to bypass confirmation of a miracle.

Francis is expected to canonize the Rev. Giuseppe Baz, a 17th century missionary, during his January visit to Sri Lanka.

King Richard III likely perished at the hands of assailants who hacked away pieces of his scalp and rammed spikes or swords into his brain as the helmetless monarch knelt in the mud.

So suggests a report, published Wednesday, that in dry forensic prose exposes the horrific demise of one of English history's most controversial monarchs.

Budapest's Corvinus University is no hotbed of communist troublemakers and far from nostalgic for the old regime, but students are pining for a cherished bronze of Karl Marx removed last week.

When communism fell in Hungary 25 years ago, so did the many statues of Lenin and other heroes but the monument to Marx remained standing at the prestigious institution in the capital.

American parents will be allowed to adopt Vietnamese children again, authorities said Tuesday, ending a six-year ban imposed after allegations of baby-selling and fraud but with new restrictions.

Two American agencies have been awarded licences but new U.S. adoptions will be limited to children over the age of five, sibling groups and those with special needs, the U.S. State Department said.

Paintings by one of India's most important modern artists go under the hammer in New York on Wednesday, highlights in a booming market for Asian art featured this week.

Three oils on canvas by pioneering Indian abstract artist Vasudeo Santu Gaitonde, who in 1964 based himself in New York, are being offered for auction by Christie's and Bonham's.

Scottish independence campaigners have found an unexpected source of support ahead of a landmark referendum on the fate of the United Kingdom -- Palestinian bagpipers.

In a small hall in the occupied West Bank, far from the tussle over Scotland's future, pipers and stick-twirling drummers burst into action as local scout troop members march up and down for weekly practice.