Japanese literary superstar Haruki Murakami is favorite for this year's Nobel Prize in Literature, betting odds showed Friday, after repeatedly being mentioned as a contender for the prestigious global gong.

Online bookmaker Ladbrokes.com was Friday offering odds of 3-1 on the novelist scooping up the prize, which will be announced in Sweden next month.

A collection of over 100 letters, photos, plasters, drawings and personal items that once belonged to Pierre-Auguste Renoir were sold at auction Thursday in New York, despite protests from the Impressionist master's great-grandson.

Sale organizer Heritage Auctions, which billed it as the largest collection of Renoir memorabilia, said the items earned nearly $1.3 million in total -- far short of the hoped-for $3 million.

A man was beheaded and his girlfriend beaten to death in an "honor killing" in northern India after they eloped, police said Thursday.

The woman's mother, father and uncle were arrested after the gruesome murders carried out in a village in the state of Haryana on Wednesday, police said.

Pakistani police have arrested eight people after three men accused of serious crimes were made to walk over hot coals in a 'trial by fire' ritual to prove their innocence.

A jirga, or council of elders, in Mana Ahmadi tribal village in the central province of Punjab ordered two murder suspects and one accused of adultery to undergo the ordeal on Sunday, local police official Saeed Khan Leghari told AFP.

An ivory toothbrush thought to have belonged to Brazil's Emperor Pedro II and a minty toothpaste made by a European chemist for the Portuguese queen are among more than 200,000 pieces dating from the 17th through 19th centuries that archeologists have unearthed from a site in Rio de Janeiro being used for an extension the city's subway lines.

A team of more than two dozen archeologists, historians and others began excavating the plot in northern Rio last March. The plot, once the site of a slaughterhouse, is near the former imperial palace and thought to have once been used as a landfill by the imperial family and others, team members said Wednesday.

The Greek press railed on Thursday over the murder of a leftist musician by an alleged supporter of the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn, amid mounting calls for tighter control of the group.

"The cold-blooded murder of a citizen by a Golden Dawn supporter must awaken everyone," liberal Kathimerini daily said in an editorial.

A "perfect" white diamond which is expected to fetch a record price of up to $35 million when it is auctioned in Hong Kong next month made its first appearance in the city Thursday.

The egg-shaped 118.28-carat "Magnificent Oval Diamond" -- the largest of its kind -- stunned onlookers at a preview and could set a new record for the amount fetched by a white diamond at auction.

Some 143 letters, photos, plasters, drawings and personal items that once belonged to Pierre-Auguste Renoir will be sold at auction on Thursday, despite protests from the Impressionist master's great-grandson.

Heritage Auctions, which has organized the sale, expects the lot, billed as the largest collection of Renoir memorabilia, to bring in some $3 million.

One of New Delhi's most famous monuments, a mausoleum that inspired the Taj Mahal, will be officially unveiled Wednesday after a five-year refit that has seen it restored to its original form.

Humayan's Tomb, completed in 1570 by the Islamic Mughal dynasty that ruled most of northern India for more than three centuries, is a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the biggest draws for visitors to the Indian capital.

A Nigerian woman tearfully prayed and recited Koranic verses as she won a beauty pageant exclusively for Muslim women in the Indonesian capital Wednesday, a riposte to the Miss World contest that has sparked hardline anger.

The 20 finalists, who were all required to wear headscarves, put on a glittering show for the final of Muslimah World, strolling up and down a catwalk in elaborately embroidered dresses and stilettos.