At the height of the frenzy of China's Cultural Revolution, victims were eaten at macabre "flesh banquets", but 50 years after the turmoil began, the Communist Party is suppressing remembrance and historical reckoning of the era and its excesses.

Launched by Mao in 1966 to topple his political enemies after the failure of the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution saw a decade of violence and destruction nationwide as party-led class conflict devolved into social chaos.

Italy is set to legalize gay civil unions with a confidence vote in parliament Wednesday on a bill hailed as a historic turning point but criticized as a missed opportunity for greater change.

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi called the vote, which begins at 2:10 pm (1210 GMT) in the lower house, to force the controversial bill through, putting his cabinet on the line in a challenge to the Catholic right and rebels in his own party.

Boots, sneakers and sandals donated by families seeking missing loved ones in a region of Latin America stricken by drug violence are dangling in a new exhibit in Mexico.

Each of the 86 pairs of shoes hanging from the ceiling was donated by a family member to symbolize how far they have walked in their desperate search.

A handwritten journal has been found in the depths of a small Australian bookshop detailing what experts believe are battle plans from the Napoleonic wars.

The diary of British Lieutenant-Colonel John Squire, who served with the Duke of Wellington, was discovered among a pile of books in a cupboard at Cracked and Spineless New and Used Books in the Tasmanian capital Hobart.

Mohamed Al-Subeeh was a senior restorer at Syria's best-known mosaic museum, but as war swept deeper into his province, destroying artifacts and threatening his and his family's lives, he was forced to flee.

The 64-year-old from Idlib province never dreamed that he would ever work in a museum again, certainly not in Germany, to which he had fled in a 23-day journey that involved a rubber boat ride across the Mediterranean, endless bus and train rides and hours of trekking on foot.

The prized art collection of a mafia boss, confiscated by Italian police, has gone on show in Calabria in an exhibition billed as a "victory of the state" over organized crime.

Two paintings by Spanish great Salvador Dali feature in the collection of 125 works seized from mob businessman Gioacchino Campolo, dubbed the "King of Videopoker" after he built up a vast fortune by running tampered slot machines.

Auguste Rodin's "Eternal springtime" marble sculpture of lovers fetched more than $20 million at auction Monday, a record for the French sculptor, at Sotheby's in New York.

The work -- conceived by Rodin in 1884 and sculpted in 1901-1903 -- is just 31.5 inches wide by 26.25 inches tall (80 by 66.7 centimeters).

More than 120 writers, journalists and artists around the world have urged Egypt's president to free a novelist jailed for two years over a sexually explicit scene in a book.

The signatories, who are also demanding that novelist Ahmed Naji be acquitted, include the writers Robert Caro and Philip Roth, film director Woody Allen and composer Stephen Sondheim, said Pen America, an organization that defends freedom of expression.

Four paintings by JMW Turner depicting 18th and 19th century commercial whaling and their possible link to "Moby Dick" are the focus of an exhibit opening Tuesday at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

"Turner's Whaling Pictures" features works done in the 1840s as the Briton Turner was near the end of his career and life.

Egyptian prosecutors have detained a member of a group of satirists that posted a video mocking the government, a prosecution official and his lawyer said Sunday, amid a wide-ranging crackdown on dissidents.