Two boats carrying more than 400 African migrants arrived on the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa on Saturday, the latest in a wave of thousands of undocumented migrants arriving from North African shores.

The boats were intercepted overnight by Italian coast guards in open sea south of the rocky outcrop, which is closer to Africa than to the Italian mainland.

Despite often fierce opposition, the legalization of gay marriage is gaining ground in the West, with France and Britain now expected to join a dozen countries where homosexual couples can legally wed.

For opponents, especially religious conservatives, increasing legal recognition of gay couples is a troubling trend that signals the breakdown of traditional families. Extreme critics have claimed it will open the door to sexual deviance.

Peru has one of Latin America's fastest-growing economies, but Afro-Peruvians are still overwhelmingly mired in poverty.

Those lucky enough to work in unskilled jobs their ancestors had three or four centuries ago -- as pallbearers, hotel bellhops and restaurant wait staff -- hope they may finally be on the cusp of meaningful change.

A ghost town boasting a window onto history rises up out of the punishing, arid desert of northern Chile.

Oddly, this desolate outpost in the Atacama desert born of a frenzy for saltpeter -- a mineral once used to manufacturer gunpowder and fertilizer -- is one of this country's top tourist attractions.

Japan's young people, alienated and outnumbered by a greying population, will barely bother to vote in weekend polls after a campaign that excluded social media and made little effort to engage them.

Opinion polls published Friday show the establishment Liberal Democratic Party -- which draws its support largely from Japan's ageing countryside -- well on its way to victory in Sunday's poll.

A Danish historian says he has discovered what he believes is a previously unknown fairy tale written by Hans Christian Andersen.

Retired historian Esben Brage said Thursday he found the six-page text in early October while searching in the National Archives through boxes that had belonged to wealthy families from Andersen's home-town of Odense in central Denmark.

Las Vegas, land of the quickie wedding, is in the midst of a serious love recession, and chapels in a city accustomed to playing the numbers weren't about to let the latest money-making opportunity pass — Dec. 12, 2012.

They hoped the lure of a wedding license stamped with a once-in-a-century 12-12-12 will help boost revenue. The city's share of the weddings business has fallen by a third since 2004 as cities from New Orleans to New York have gotten into the elopement industry.

Catalans rebelling against plans to reform teaching of their language in schools planned street protests Thursday, the latest outpouring of tension between the region and the Spanish government.

Associations organizing the demonstration, planned for 1700 GMT in Barcelona, branded the reform an attack on the Catalan cultural identity, which pre-dates the formation of the modern Spanish state.

Air raid sirens sounded in the Chinese city of Nanjing Thursday, 75 years after Japanese soldiers embarked on mass killing and rape, with the Asian giants' ties riven over a territorial row.

The two countries -- the world's second- and third-largest economies -- have extensive trade and business links, but the weight of Japan's wartime atrocities still bears heavily on their relationship.

Israeli and Jewish officials in Denmark on Wednesday warned Jews to avoid openly wearing religious symbols and dress when moving about Copenhagen amid rising anti-Israeli sentiment.

"We advise Israelis who come to Denmark and want to go to the synagogue to wait to don their skull caps until they enter the building and not to wear them in the street, irrespective of whether the areas they are visiting are seen as being safe," Israel's ambassador to Denmark, Arthur Avnon, told AFP.