The secretive street artist Banksy ended his self-announced month-long residency in New York City with a final piece of graffiti, a $615,000 painting donated to charity and a debate: Is he a jerk or a genius?

Banksy, who created a new picture, video or prank every day of October somewhere in the city, spent his last day like thousands of graffiti artists before him: He tagged a building near a highway with his name in giant bubble letters. The twist was that these letters were actual bubbles: balloon-like inflatables stuck to a wall near the Long Island Expressway in Queens.

The Vatican is taking the unusual step of conducting a worldwide survey on how parishes deal with sensitive issues such as birth control, divorce and gay marriage, seeking input ahead of a major meeting on the family that Pope Francis plans next year.

The poll was sent in mid-October to every national conference of bishops with a request from the Vatican coordinator, Archbishop Lorenzo Baldisseri, to "share it immediately as widely as possible to deaneries and parishes so that input from local sources can be received."

Four female lawmakers from Turkey's Islamic-rooted government attended parliament Thursday wearing headscarves for the first time, breaking a long taboo in the staunchly secular country.

Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) lifted on September 30 a decades-old ban on headscarves in the civil service as part of a package of reforms meant to improve democracy and freedoms.

Former French star dancer Manuel Legris will stay on as director of the Vienna Ballet until 2017, having revolutionized the stuffy old institution, the company announced Wednesday.

Legris, who launched a ballet revival in the Austrian capital after arriving here in September 2010, has extended his contract -- initially due to run out in August 2015 -- by two years, the Vienna Opera said in a statement.

Amsterdam will next month stage the traditional arrival of Saint Nicholas and his helper "Black Pete", despite objections that the jolly sidekick is a racist symbol.

"The permit allowing Saint Nicholas' arrival in Amsterdam will not be revoked," the capital's mayor Eberhard van der Laan said in a letter.

"Xiang jiao! Banana!" says Fu Huijuan, beaming as she waves the fruit in front of her three-year-old pupil, Leon, at a Madrid nursery school.

He and his four classmates have barely learned to speak even in their native Spanish, but already they are absorbing Mandarin Chinese -- as are many adult Spaniards concerned for their job prospects.

Qatar has removed the Zinedine Zidane headbutt statue less than a month after it went on display following an outcry by conservatives, who slammed the art work as anti-Islam idolization.

The five-meter (16.4-feet) sculpture which immortalizes the headbutt delivered by the French football legend to Italian player Marco Materazzi in the 2006 World Cup final was put on display on Doha's corniche on October 3.

Marilyn Monroe will be remembered in wax at the Madame Tussauds museum in Washington.

The museum is unveiling its newest wax figure Wednesday. It will be displayed initially at Washington's O Street Museum in The Mansion on O Street.

Germany on Friday will become the first European country to allow babies born with characteristics of both sexes to be registered as neither male nor female.

Parents will be allowed to leave the field for gender blank on birth certificates, effectively creating a category for indeterminate sex in the public register.

On a beach outside Havana stands the crown jewel of Cuba's renowned international program of medical education, training 13,000 students from around the world free of charge.

"Studying medicine was my life's dream. But for a poor family like mine, that was impossible," 18-year-old Merady Gomez of Honduras told Agence France Presse at the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM).