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The UN ends its peacekeeping mission in East Timor Monday after 13 years of boots on the ground in Asia's youngest nation following a bloody transition to independence.

Two centuries after the French people beheaded Louis XVI and dipped their handkerchiefs in his blood, scientists believe they have authenticated the remains of one such rag kept as a revolutionary souvenir.

Hiroshima University said Thursday it would bestow honorary doctorates on three former students from Southeast Asia who survived the 1945 atomic bombing of the Japanese city.

Fifty members of an Indian community believed to be descendants of one of the lost tribes of Israel arrived on Monday in the Jewish state, completing their immigration.

Before the creation of the Earth, there was only silence and darkness, only the sky and the sea until the deities Tepeu and Gucumatz created trees, animals and man -- so says the Mayan holy book.

India condemned North Korea's long-range rocket launch on Wednesday even as it tested one of its own ballistic weapons, which were developed when India was a nuclear pariah itself.

Late Chilean general Augusto Pinochet was well aware of crimes committed by his secret police during the country's military dictatorship.

China's new Communist Party chief Xi Jinping has signalled his commitment to push for economic reforms by visiting the city of Shenzhen, the historic hub of modernisation.

Thousands of years ago, long before Spanish conquistadores raided Mexico, ancient people carved circles, spirals and drawings of bow hunters into volcanic rocks dotting a Pacific beach.

An apparent North Korean claim to have uncovered a "unicorn's lair" that created an Internet storm was partly the result of mistranslation by Pyongyang's much-mocked propaganda machine.

A trial involving almost 800 cases of human rights abuses during Argentina's 1976-1983 military junta got under way Wednesday, chronicling the use of torture and murder during the dictatorship.

More than 140 paintings by Picasso, Van Gogh and other masters which were bought with stolen funds by former Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos remain missing.

A gun used by the brother of notorious Australian outlaw Ned Kelly during their gang's infamous last stand against police in 1880 has sold for Aus$122,000 (US$126,000) at a Melbourne auction.

Twirling his waxed moustache, Salvador Dali's larger-than-life figure was beamed into millions of homes in the 1960s, his televised antics bringing huge fame, but burning his bridges with the art world.

Vandals have stolen at least four ancient rock carvings, apparently using cement-cutting circular saws to slice them out of a valuable archeological site in California.

The ex-Soviet states of Central Asia are engaged in an increasingly bitter standoff over water resources, adding another element of instability to the volatile region neighbouring Afghanistan.

The Soviet Union 50 years ago allowed publication of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's landmark account of life in the Stalin prison camps "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", shocking readers by revealing a hitherto hidden horror.

A 74-year-old painting depicting the Canadian mine that produced uranium for the world's first atomic bomb will go under the hammer in Toronto on November 22, set to fetch up to Can$300,000.

US President Barack Obama swept to re-election Tuesday, creating history again by defying the undertow of a slow economic recovery and high unemployment to beat Republican foe Mitt Romney.

For half a century a single precious copy of a textbook kept the language of Myanmar's Shan people alive for students, forced to learn in the shadows under a repressive junta.
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