The need to increase funding for Black feminist organizations is urgent, according to an open letter released from some of philanthropy's most influential organizations including Melinda Gates' Pivotal Ventures, Rihanna's Clara Lionel Foundation, as well as the Ford Foundation and MacArthur Foundation.

"It's time to fund Black feminist movements like we want them to win," supporters of the nonprofit Black Feminist Fund write in the letter to other philanthropists. "Because across our most urgent global challenges – from Colombia to Sudan, Brazil and Nigeria, to the U.S. and France – Black feminists are dreaming and delivering the solutions we need."

The highest-ranking woman at the United Nations has said she used everything in her "toolbox" during meetings with Taliban ministers to try to reverse their crackdown on Afghan women and girls, and she urged Muslim countries to help the Taliban move from the "13th century to the 21st."

Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed, a former Nigerian Cabinet minister and a Muslim, said at a news conference that four Taliban ministers, including the foreign minister and a deputy prime minister, spoke "off one script" during meetings with her delegation last week.

A museum in northwest Spain returned two 15th-century paintings to Polish officials on Wednesday after it was determined that they had been looted by Nazi German forces during World War II.

The paintings "Mater Dolorosa" (Mother of Sorrows) and "Ecce Homo" were handed over to a delegation from Poland's culture ministry. According to Spain's Museum of Pontevedra, the works were originally believed to be by Dieric Bouts, a Flemish master born in the Dutch town of Haarlem, but now they are attributed to a member of his school or group.

The United Nations on Wednesday inscribed a futurist park in cash-strapped Lebanon on its world heritage list.

The UN cultural agency listed the pask as a world heritage site in danger because of "its alarming state of conservation" and the lack of resources in Lebanon to maintain it.

Egypt's top religious institution on Wednesday called on Muslims world over to boycott Swedish and Dutch products over the desecration of Islam's holy book by far-right activists in the two European countries.

The call by Egypt's Al-Azhar, the Sunni Muslim world's foremost religious institution, is the latest in a series of backlashes from the Muslim world over the incidents in Sweden and the Netherlands.

Pope Francis says he hasn't even considered issuing norms to regulate future papal resignations and plans to continue for as long as he can as bishop of Rome, despite a wave of attacks by some top-ranking cardinals and bishops.

In his first interview since the Dec. 31 death of retired Pope Benedict XVI, Francis addressed his health, his critics and the next phase of his pontificate, which marks its 10th anniversary in March without Benedict's shadow in the background.

Dedicated to an Indian goddess as a child, Huvakka Bhimappa's years of sexual servitude began when her uncle took her virginity, raping her in exchange for a saree and some jewelry.

Bhimappa was not yet 10 years old when she became a "devadasi" -- girls coerced by their parents into an elaborate wedding ritual with a Hindu deity, many of whom are then forced into illegal prostitution. 

Five years into the #MeToo movement, French society "remains very sexist in all of its spheres," a government-created equality watchdog said in an annual report Monday that also sounded the alarm about double-digit rates of sexual violence reported by women.

The High Council for Equality between Women and Men called for a national "emergency plan" to combat what it described as "the massive, violent and sometimes lethal consequences" of sexism against women.

A Lutheran church ceremony in Jerusalem has ordained the first Palestinian female pastor in the Holy Land.

Sally Azar will head the English-speaking congregation at the Church of the Redeemer, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land said.

Outrage over a Quran-burning protest in Sweden produced a second day of protests in Turkey, reflecting tensions between the two countries.

Some 250 people gathered outside the Swedish Consulate in Istanbul, where a photo of Danish anti-Islam activist Rasmus Paludan was set on fire. Paludan burned Islam's holy book outside the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm on Saturday, sparking protests in Istanbul and Ankara that night.