The Titanic was more than just the most advanced ship of its time. It was the paragon of turn-of-the-century style and luxury, when languid meals, dinner suits and fine china were de rigueur.
Like the steel and steam engines that made the liner an engineering wonder, the Titanic's more perishable finery now lies 12,400 feet (3,780 meters) down in the darkness of the North Atlantic.

It's a game that every Ukrainian knows about: The "Death Match" of 1942, when top Kiev football players trounced a team of Nazi occupiers and reportedly paid for it with their lives.
But Ukrainian authorities on Tuesday froze the release of a movie depicting that Soviet defiance of Nazi Germany because of concerns it could ignite explosive emotions just weeks before Ukraine co-hosts the 2012 European Championship.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul has signed into law a controversial education bill which extends access to religious schools and has infuriated secularists, NTV television reported Wednesday.
The bill was approved by parliament last month after fierce debates between lawmakers from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's moderate Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) and opposition deputies.

The naked body in Arab art is the theme of a new Paris exhibit meant to broaden views of Arab culture, spotlighting the many artists willing to break taboos and depict nudity in all its forms.
"The Body Uncovered" at Paris' Arab World Institute aims to "challenge the stereotypes usually associated with the Arab world that reduce it to the single image of religious fanaticism," said the institute's chairman Renaud Muselier.

A century after its sinking the Titanic haunts this Canadian port where some 150 victims are buried, but has helped spur a tourist boom as it readies to commemorate the somber anniversary.
The Titanic is everywhere here.

A website published more than 200,000 documents on Monday relating to the sinking of the Titanic, to mark the disaster's 100th anniversary.
The collection, published by British family history website Ancestry.co.uk, includes a list of passengers as well as the wills of Edward Smith, the doomed liner's captain, and US tycoons Benjamin Guggenheim and John Jacob Astor.

A century after the Titanic sank on its maiden voyage; Belfast is counting on a new visitor attraction about the iconic ship to put the city that built it back on the tourist map.
The Northern Irish capital hopes the Titanic Belfast complex will entice holidaymakers to spend time -- and, crucially, money -- in the British province.

Sri Lanka ordered a probe Saturday into the attacks on the statues of Indian independence icon Mahatma Gandhi and Britain's founder of the Scout movement Robert Baden-Powell, the foreign ministry said.
There had been no claim of responsibility for Friday's destruction, which occurred amid anti-Western protests after the UN human rights council adopted a US-led resolution urging Sri Lanka to probe alleged war crimes by its troops.

Thousands of Christians gathered near Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulcher for Easter Saturday and marched in processions brimming with tradition, taking turns to pray in the site where they believe Jesus was slain and buried.
Easter Saturday is a day of reflection and waiting for many Christians, who believe Jesus was crucified on Friday and rose from the dead on Sunday.

The Iranian deputy culture minister on Saturday hailed German Nobel literature laureate Gunter Grass's poem in which he accused Iran's nemesis Israel of plotting its annihilation, local media reported.
In a letter addressed to "Distinguished author Dr. Gunter Grass," Deputy Culture Minister Javad Shamaqdari was quoted as saying: "I read your literary work of human and historical responsibility, and it warns beautifully."
