In the capital of haute cuisine, fast food is getting complicated. For starters, it's not always fast. At Le Camion Qui Fume, a food truck, the lunch crowd can wait up to an hour to get a made-to-order burger. And in a city where chefs can easily find everything they need to make sophisticated sauces and posh pastries, getting the goods for some fast food isn't so easy.

Quebec’s separatist government released a plan on Tuesday to ban government workers — from judges to day care employees — from wearing “overt and conspicuous” religious symbols. The proposed “Charter of Quebec Values,” which would also require members of the public to uncover their faces when dealing with the government, generated widespread controversy after much of it was leaked to a Montreal newspaper earlier this summer. Critics have called the measure unconstitutional and xenophobic.

Sepp Blatter has admitted FIFA may have made a “mistake” in the initial proposal to hold the 2022 World Cup in Qatar during the summer but stressed that moving the tournament is the governing body’s prerogative. Blatter, the FIFA president, has said on several occasions that he wants his executive committee to move the tournament to the winter as temperatures can reach 50°C in Qatar in June and July. The matter will be discussed at a board meeting on October 3.

The Italian film Sacro GRA became the first documentary to win the top prize at the world's oldest film festival, while Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang was also honoured at the prestigious Venice event. Tsai, a former Golden Lion winner, landed a Grand Jury Prize at the 70th Venice Film Festival for Stray Dogs, the slow-moving story of a homeless father who earns a meagre living as a human billboard while his children wander the streets of Taipei.

On Saturday a throng of 1,200 convened in Taipei to hold a mock wedding banquet in a gesture meant to promote the same-sex marriage bill due to be put to a parliamentary vote soon. The supporters of the bill held a banquet, sitting at tables decorated with cloths bearing the Chinese character for “wedding” as a video featuring local celebrities streamed on a large screen. Live performances were also staged at the improvised hall outside Taiwan’s Presidential Office Building.

Napa and Sonoma have their wine tours, and travelers flock to Scotland to sample the fine single malt whiskies. But in Jamaica, farmers are offering a different kind of trip for a different type of connoisseur. Call them ganja tours: smoky, mystical — and technically illegal — journeys to some of the island's hidden cannabis plantations, where pot tourists can sample such strains as "purple kush" and "pineapple skunk."

“I’ll tell you guys one thing: take me seriously.” That was Dennis Rodman’s gloriously ironic closing remark during a press conference he held on Monday in New York City to announce that he would be training the North Korean national basketball team for the 2016 Olympics. The former NBA star visited Pyongyang for the second time in six months last week and again met with Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, whom he calls his “friend for life.”

At just 28 years old, Askar Baitassov has built the biggest restaurant business in Kazakhstan. Now he wants to introduce high quality Central Asian cuisine to the world. "I always dreamed of becoming rich by the time I was 25, so that I could buy myself a really expensive car," says Mr Baitassov. He is sipping on a blackcurrant drink at one of his numerous restaurants in Almaty, Kazakhstan's largest city and commercial centre.