A record 110 countries on Monday backed a resolution voted every two years at a U.N. General Assembly committee calling for the abolition of the death penalty.

The vote tears apart traditional alliances at the United Nations. The United States, Japan, China, Iran, India, North Korea, Syria and Zimbabwe were among 39 countries to oppose the non-binding resolution in the assembly's rights committee. Thirty-six countries abstained.

The Church of England's legislative body will vote Tuesday on whether to introduce women bishops, its biggest and most contentious decision for 20 years.

The 470-member General Synod kicked off a three-day general assembly on Monday, two decades after England's established state Church backed the introduction of women priests.

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.

Now a major new Paris exhibit aims to reinstate that legacy, putting Dali's media stunts -- burying himself in banknotes, signing books wired to a brain monitor, even ad campaigns -- on equal footing with his surrealist painting.

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

The petroglyphs, etched by ancient hunters 3,500 years ago, had survived winds, floods and earthquakes over that time but they were hauled off in a matter of hours, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday.

The wine-red walls of the Brueghel exhibition hall at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art are now bare, like the crime scene of a daring art heist.

Tel Aviv's leading art museum, spooked by rocket attacks on Israel's cultural capital, moved nearly 200 works Friday into a rocket-proof safe the size of an auditorium — including some 100 works painted by relatives of Flemish Renaissance master Pieter Brueghel the Elder.

Officially at least, America still calls this Southeast Asian nation Burma, the favored appellation of dissidents and pro-democracy activists who opposed the former military junta's move to summarily change its name 23 years ago.

President Barack Obama used that name during his historic visit Monday, but he also called Burma what its government and many other people have been calling it for years: Myanmar.

The city of Rome unveiled a revamped statue of Pope John Paul II on Monday after the first one was pilloried by the public and the Vatican.

Artist Oliviero Rainaldi said he was pleased with the final product, saying it matched his original vision. He blamed workers for a botched assemblage the first time around.

Tens of thousands of Croatians gathered in the eastern city of Vukovar Sunday to commemorate one of the bloodiest episode of the Balkan nation's 1990s war for independence.

Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic and President Ivo Josipovic attended the memorial ceremony, which drew about 50,000 people.

Thousands of Catholics and other opponents of French government plans to legalise gay marriage and same-sex adoption marched in Paris on Sunday, a day after more than 100,000 turned out across France for the cause.

The rally, organised by conservative Catholic group Civitas, was marred by accusations that protesters had roughed up journalists and topless counter-protesters partially dressed as nuns.

Thanksgiving, the last U.S. holiday undisturbed by mass commercialization, is now victim to the ever advancing Christmas shopping season, with stores welcoming shopaholics before the family turkey can be taken from the oven.

Thanksgiving was long that rare day when stores closed and families gathered for long, uninterrupted meals. Unlike at Easter, Christmas or Hanukkah there was no merchandising -- other than for the unfortunate birds.