For 1,300 years, Japanese paper from the tiny town of Ogawa has fulfilled myriad needs -- from the material for Buddhist scriptures to balloon bombs sent to attack the United States.

Now, as Japan prepares to mark the 70th anniversary of its defeat in World War II this summer, a new and altogether more peaceful use has been found for it -- clothes.

A program that teaches university-age women how to avoid rape has shown some success in reducing the numbers of women in Canada who are sexually assaulted, said a study Wednesday.

Previous research has suggested that as many as one in four young women are raped or are victims of attempted rape while attending college.

It's a little-known fact about Napoleon Bonaparte: the French emperor thought about emigrating to the United States after his defeat at Waterloo.

That bid for a fresh start in the New World came together in June 1815 in the wake of Napoleon's loss at Waterloo to the British-Prussian forces and his subsequent abdication. But it came to naught within three weeks when the triumphant allies vetoed it.

Pope Francis has approved the creation of an internal Church tribunal empowered to punish bishops who cover up sex abuse by priests, the Vatican said Wednesday.

Under the reform, bishops suspected of protecting pedophile clerics or of failing to respond promptly to allegations of abuse face being charged with "abuse of episcopal office" under canon law, the Church's internal set of rules.

Two Native American tribes, the Hopi and Acoma, are trying to block an auction taking place in Paris this week of artifacts they consider sacred, despite failing in several similar efforts over past years.

Allied with the U.S.-based Holocaust Art Restitution Project (HARP), the Hopi Tribe Council and Pueblo of Acoma said in a joint statement they were asking France's Board of Auction Sales to suspend the event, taking place on Wednesday.

Watercolor paintings and drawings by Adolf Hitler from about 100 years ago are to go up for auction in southern Germany this month, an auction house said Tuesday.

Some of the works, which date from 1904 to 1922, are signed A. Hitler, the catalogue of Nuremberg-based Weidler auctioneers showed on its website.

Late one balmy spring night during Havana's 12th Biennial, young working-class men and women lounged on a stretch of sand dotted with folding chairs and umbrellas, an artificial beach created as an art installation on the capital's Malecon seaside promenade.

Meanwhile, at Sotheby's auction house in New York, the beach's 40-year-old creator, Arles del Rio, sold another piece featured at the last biennial for $11,875, more than 40 times the annual salary of an ordinary Cuban. The piece, titled "Fly Away," is made of chain-link fence with a hole in the shape of a jet, making it appear the plane flew right through it.

It's 6:00 am but the pickers are already working in Rose Valley, home to Bulgaria's centuries-old rose oil industry, providing a vital ingredient for the global perfumes industry -- and now with EU protection.

"We go out very early as the roses must be picked while there's still dew on them. Then the yield is highest," says Totka Hristova, one of an army of workers on the foot of the Balkan Mountains in the damp cool of the early morning.

Bangladesh must step up efforts to halt an "epidemic" of child marriage throughout the country where nearly one third of girls wed before they turn 15, a rights group said Tuesday.  

Although Bangladesh has cut poverty levels in recent years, numbers of child marriages remain huge, partly because of regular natural disasters that force already struggling families into greater desperation, Human Rights Watch said.

The French have their wine, the British have their tea. For Swedes, it's all about "fika", the de rigueur daily coffee break with a sweet nibble that is a social institution.

Sweden's almost 10 million inhabitants account for one percent of the world's coffee consumption, making it the second-biggest consumer behind Finland.