An internationally celebrated South Korean novelist has apologized over a plagiarism scandal that has shocked her country and prompted a publisher to stop printing one of her books, a report said Tuesday. 

Man Asian Literary Prize-winning author Shin Kyung-Sook met with public fury after allegations surfaced last week that she had copied a piece by the famed late Japanese author Yukio Mishima. 

About 5,000 people including Japan's prime minister and the U.S. ambassador to Japan held a memorial service Tuesday to mark the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Okinawa, one of the bloodiest conflicts of World War II.

They observed a moment of silence at Peace Memorial Park in Okinawa, a chain of islands at the southern tip of the Japanese archipelago.

The World Expo in Milan is all abuzz about a giant aluminium hive that hums in harmony with 40,000 bees making honey 870 miles (1,400km) away in Nottingham, England.

Artist Wolfgang Buttress's innovative work is the centrepiece of a bee-themed British pavilion that is pulling in nearly four times as many visitors as anticipated and has become one of the must-sees of the six-month world fair in Italy's economic capital.

Watercolour paintings and drawings by Adolf Hitler from about a century ago were sold at auction in Germany at the weekend for nearly 400,000 euros ($450,000), organisers said.

The most expensive was a painting of King Ludwig II's Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, now a tourist magnet, which went to a buyer from China for 100,000 euros, Nuremberg-based Weidler auctioneers said, quoted by German news agency DPA.

It's been nearly three decades since Haiti's Triomphe cinema shuttered its doors, but the storied theater is back -- and with a bit of Hollywood swag to boot. 

With the red carpet rolled out and an official photographer in place, some of Haiti's top entertainers celebrated Triomphe's grand reopening, a sign for many that things might finally be turning after the devastating earthquake in 2010.

Syria's best-known mosaic museum in the northern rebel-held town of Maaret al-Numan has been seriously damaged in a regime barrel bomb attack, according to archaeological experts.

The Association for the Protection of Syrian Archaeology said the museum "suffered serious damage caused by two explosive-packed barrels dropped on Monday by Syrian army helicopters."

American novelist James Salter -- who long labored with the dubious honor of being "the greatest writer you've never read" -- has died aged 90.

The former U.S. fighter pilot who flew in the Korean War alongside the astronaut Buzz Aldrin -- the second man to walk on the moon -- numbered some of the century's greatest writers among his fans, including Saul Bellow, Philip Roth and Joseph Heller, but he never quite converted critical acclaim into the popularity he craved.

French authorities gave the go-ahead Friday to renovate the iconic former Parisian department store La Samaritaine on the River Seine, ending years of legal wrangling over the historic site.

Perched on the right bank of the Seine, the hulking store occupies some of the most expensive real estate in Paris but was shut down in 2005 when it ran afoul of health and safety regulations.

The sounds of war rang out on the fields of Belgium on Thursday as the Battle of Waterloo was restaged 200 years after the clash that ended Napoleon's imperial ambitions and changed the course of European history.

In what was billed as the biggest re-enactment of its kind, 6,000 history enthusiasts from 52 countries in full costume acted out the July 18, 1815 clash between the French army and the allied British, Prussian and Dutch forces.

Two Moroccan men were jailed for four months Friday for kissing in public, after a string of recent controversies over homosexuality in the conservative Muslim kingdom, said NGO officials who attended the trial.

The men, Lahcen, 38, and Mohsine, 25, were convicted of an "affront to public decency" and of an "unnatural act with a person of the same sex," and also fined 500 dirhams ($52/46 euros), the sources said.