Boasting pristine waters teeming with whales and dolphins, and unspoiled scenery dotted with tropical hibiscus and frangipani flowers, Tonga paints a postcard-like Polynesian scene.

But beneath the idyllic image of the "Friendly Islands" lies a country mired in poverty where thousands face hardship due to lost remittances because of global financial woes.

The objects displayed in Michigan's newest museum range from the ordinary, such as simple ashtrays and fishing lures, to the grotesque — a full-size replica of a lynching tree. But all are united by a common theme: They are steeped in racism so intense that it makes visitors cringe.

That's the idea behind the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, which says it has amassed the nation's largest public collection of artifacts spanning the segregation era, from Reconstruction until the civil rights movement, and beyond.

Sixteen men and women pleaded not guilty Thursday in beard- and hair-cutting attacks against fellow Amish in Ohio.

A feud over church discipline allegedly led to attacks in which the beards and hair of men and hair of women were cut, considered deeply offensive in Amish culture. The Amish believe the Bible instructs women to let their hair grow long and men to grow beards and stop shaving once they marry.

From beautifully staged monochrome fashion photography, to playfully encasing the sun’s orb in a street lamp, immortalizing the shadows caressing a wall, and evoking the desolation of a train station, the memory of a scent or a provocative look, Badr’s images consistently conjure the poetic and precisely illustrate lucid moments with sharp eloquence.

A veritable visual storyteller and a firsthand witness, Badr turned his lens to chronicle a plethora of scenes as overwhelming as the Shivaratri rituals, and the deafening scenes of emotionless public human cremations. He has documented the daily lives of locals in remote and extraordinary places stretching between Azaz on the Syrian/Turkish borders, and all the way to the Himalayas.

U.S. authorities ended a more than 70-year-old art drama Wednesday when they returned a 16th century masterpiece to the heirs of a Jewish man after they sought for years to reclaim the painting wrested away during World War II.

A grandson of Federico Gentili di Giuseppe listened in via teleconference from London as American authorities signed the documents transferring over the Baroque painting titled "Christ Carrying the Cross Dragged by a Rogue."

The objects displayed in the U.S. state of Michigan's newest museum range from the ordinary, such as simple ashtrays and fishing lures, to the grotesque — a full-size replica of a lynching tree. But all are united by a common theme: They are steeped in racism so intense that it makes visitors cringe.

That's the idea behind the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, which says it has amassed the nation's largest public collection of artifacts spanning the segregation era, from Reconstruction until the civil rights movement, and beyond.

Millions of Israelis on Thursday stood silently and all road traffic stopped as sirens wailed for two minutes to remember the six million Jews who were killed during the Nazi Holocaust.

The annual ritual, which is observed at 10 am (0700 GMT), is a central part of Holocaust Memorial Day which began at sundown on Wednesday.

A photographer capturing the "unsafe, dirty" New York City subway for a year circa 1980, shadowed a lone woman, standing on a platform.

"I took the picture and then I approached her, and she said, 'I was aware of you, and I was getting ready to kick you,'" said photographer Bruce Davidson.

Qatar could invest in a new ancient Roman theme park, Italian media reported Wednesday, a day after the Gulf state's emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani met with local officials in the Eternal City.

"We showed the emir several plans. The one that most caught his attention and which he said he wants his people to work on is the idea of a theme park on ancient Rome" the city's mayor, Gianni Alemanno, was quoted as saying.

The Philippines leads the world in the number of people who believe in God, while the elderly across all countries tend to be the most religious, according to a U.S. study out Wednesday.

Belief in God tends to be strongest in the United States and Catholic countries and lowest in Scandinavia and former Soviet states, according to the survey carried out by the NORC research group at the University of Chicago.