The organization that handles claims on behalf of Jews who suffered under the Nazis said Wednesday that Germany has agreed to extend compensation to Jewish survivors who endured the World War II siege of Leningrad and two other groups who had not received any monthly pensions from Germany.

The payments will be going to approximately 6,500 survivors around the world, primarily in Israel, North America, the former Soviet Union and Western Europe, according to the New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, also referred to as the Claims Conference.

An estimated 330,000 children were victims of sex abuse within France's Catholic Church over the past 70 years, according to a major report released Thursday that is France's first major reckoning with the devastating phenomenon.

The figure includes abuses committed by some 3,000 priests and other people involved in the church — wrongdoing that Catholic authorities covered up over decades in a "systemic manner," according to the president of the commission that issued the report, Jean-Marc Sauvé.

A Hollywood event that's supposed to be about women's empowerment in the industry and the world was more about how their rights are being imperiled at home and abroad.

Restrictive abortion legislation in the U.S. and the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan took center stage Thursday at the Variety Power of Women event, which honored actor Rita Moreno, singers Katy Perry and Lorde, poet/activist Amanda Gorman, and Channing Dungey, chairwoman of Warner Bros. Television Group.

The Taliban banned barbershops in a southern Afghanistan province from shaving or trimming beards, claiming their edict is in line with Shariah, or Islamic, law.

The order in Helmand province was issued Monday by the provincial Taliban government's vice and virtue department to barbers in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital.

Animal rights groups on Tuesday welcomed the South Korean president's offer to look into banning consumption of dog meat.

Dog meat is neither legal nor explicitly banned in South Korea. Restaurants that serve it are a dwindling business here as younger people find dog meat a less appetizing dining option. But some people oppose a ban as a surrender to Western pressure.

An Aboriginal man is taking Australia's government to court to argue that Indigenous people should have access to their pensions earlier than other Australians because their life expectancy is years shorter.

Dennis Fisher, 64, said on Monday he is taking the action to benefit other Indigenous Australians.

South Korea's President Moon Jae-in raised banning the eating of dogs in the country on Monday, his office said, a traditional practice that is becoming an international embarrassment.

The meat has long been a part of South Korean cuisine with about one million dogs believed to be eaten annually, but consumption has declined as more people embrace dogs as companions rather than livestock.  

Iceland briefly celebrated electing a female-majority parliament Sunday, before a recount produced a result just short of that landmark for gender parity in the North Atlantic island nation.

The initial vote count had female candidates winning 33 seats in Iceland's 63-seat parliament, the Althing, in an election that saw centrist parties make the biggest gains.

Nearly two-thirds of Swiss voters backed the government's plan to introduce same-sex marriage in a referendum held Sunday, with campaigners calling it a historic day for gay rights in Switzerland.

Fossilized footprints discovered in New Mexico indicate that early humans were walking across North America around 23,000 years ago, researchers reported Thursday.

The first footprints were found in a dry lake bed in White Sands National Park in 2009. Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey recently analyzed seeds stuck in the footprints to determine their approximate age, ranging from around 22,800 and 21,130 years ago.