A watercolour of the graphic novel hero Corto Maltese has sold at auction for a record 391,800 euros ($485,500), just months after a Tintin strip set a new world high for a comic of 2.65 million euros.

The artwork for a 1979 French edition of Corto Maltese in Africa -- "Corto Maltese – Les Ethiopiques" -- went for more than twice the original estimate, the French auction house Artcurial said Sunday.

Pope Francis canonized six new saints Sunday, including a priest and a nun from the Indian state of Kerala, in a packed ceremony in St. Peter's Square.

The pope said the new saints, four Italians from far-flung provinces and two Indians from the Syro-Malabar Church, one of 22 Eastern rite churches that operates in full communion with Rome, provided examples of service to "the smallest and the poorest."

A Swiss museum said Monday it would accept a German recluse's bequest of a spectacular trove of more than 1,000 artworks hoarded during the Nazi era.

The decision, announced at a press conference in Berlin, covers priceless paintings and sketches by Picasso, Monet, Chagall and other masters that were discovered by chance in 2012 in the Munich flat of Cornelius Gurlitt.

South Korea will undergo a major demographic change next year when, for the first time, women will outnumber men -- the result of a rapidly ageing population.

According to the state data agency Statistics Korea, the number of women in 2015 will reach 25.31 million compared to 25.3 million men.

Nearly 2,000 people gathered in Beirut Saturday to form a giant letter "U" -- standing for unity -- as the country struggles to contain the fallout from neighbor Syria's civil war.

Organised by the Beirut Celebration non-governmental organisation, the event marked Lebanon's 71st Independence Day anniversary.

Thousands of Catholic pilgrims descended on the Indian coastal state of Goa on Saturday to witness the once-a-decade exposition of the relics of a 16th century Spanish missionary.

Devotees from around the world formed a queue of more than one kilometre long to venerate the relics of St Francis Xavier, which are on display until January 4 in the former Portuguese colony.

In the run-up to Thanksgiving, a holiday to celebrate bountiful harvests, Americans are being urged to stop wasting food so much.

Some 34 million pounds (15.4 million kilograms) of food is thrown away in the United States every year, the  Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said Friday.

A magnificent blue diamond has fetched $32.6 million in New York, breaking the world auction record for any diamond of its color, auction house Sotheby's announced.

The stunning 9.75 carat, pear-shaped diamond was bought by a Hong Kong private collector after 20 minutes of competitive bidding on Thursday evening, Sotheby's said.

A relative of late German art collector Cornelius Gurlitt lodged a claim Friday for his inheritance, a Nazi-era art hoard which he has bequested to a Swiss museum, a spokesman said.

The surprise move came just days before the Museum of Fine Arts in Bern is expected to reveal whether it accepts the inheritance of the spectacular trove of more than 1,000 pieces amassed during the Nazi era.

A 100-year-old watercolor of Munich's old city hall is expected to fetch at least 50,000 euros ($60,000) at auction this weekend, not so much for its artistic value as for the signature in the bottom left corner: A. Hitler.

Nuremberg's Weidler auction house says the painting is one some 2,000 painted by Adolf Hitler and is thought to be from about 1914, when he was struggling to make a living as an artist, almost two decades before rising to power as the Nazi dictator.