Nikolaus Harnoncourt, one of the most highly regarded classical music conductors of recent times and a pioneer in early music, has announced his retirement.

"My bodily strength requires me to cancel my future plans," the Austrian said in a hand-written farewell letter to the audience of the hallowed Musikverein concert hall in Vienna on Saturday.

An angry brother shot his elder sister dead because she voted in Pakistani local elections after he had forbidden her to do so, police said Wednesday. 

The murder occurred in the town of Taxila 25 kilometers (15 miles) west of Islamabad on Tuesday, according to officials.

A war of words has erupted between privacy-advocating librarians and a newspaper after it published a snapshot of the high-school reading habits of Japan's foremost literary son Haruki Murakami.

Leaked library borrowing cards from half a century ago revealed the teenage Murakami -- nowadays a perennial contender for the Nobel literature prize -- checked out several titles by French writer Joseph Kessel.

Scans in King Tutankhamun's tomb in Egypt's Valley of the Kings point to a hidden chamber, the country's antiquities minister said Saturday, possibly heralding the discovery of Queen Nefertiti's resting place.

"We can now say that we have to find behind the burial chamber of King Tutankhamun another chamber, another tomb," Mamduh al-Damati said at a press conference, speaking in English.

"Are these the people with bullets who took my papa away?" two-year-old Sabiha Ahmad asked her mother anxiously when AFP visited her family, members of Pakistan's persecuted Ahmadi minority, who are currently living in hiding.

The toddler's family have had little contact with anyone since they were forced to flee for their lives on November 20 when hundreds of people torched a factory in the eastern city of Jhelum after rumors spread workers were burning copies of the Koran.

A century and a half after first being published, the surreal classic "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" still fascinates readers and inspires artists with its eerie and iconic fantasy world.

An exhibition in the British Library traces how the story and its characters quickly took on a life of their own after the publication of the book in 1865, inspiring spin-off merchandising, music and early film.

The United Nations launched Wednesday in Lebanon the 16 Days of Activism, part of a global campaign aimed at promoting action to end violence against women and girls and to empower them.

During visits to a women's center in the Palestinian refugee camp of Bourj al-Barajneh and later to a center in Choueifat, Sigrid Kaag, the United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon, emphasized the importance of the empowerment of women and girls through education, as one of “the pathways to ensure greater protection from violence.”

Police in Greece on Wednesday said they had arrested a 36-year-old Cuban suspected of masterminding a massive art heist at the Havana National Museum of Fine Arts.

A police statement said the man was arrested on Monday in Koropi, a rural area near Athens, in the home of a 40-year-old Greek.

Late Russian leader Boris Yeltsin's "nuclear button" briefcase went on display Wednesday as a major new museum devoted to the legacy of Russia's first president opened in the Urals.

Russian President Vladimir Putin -- whom an ailing Yeltsin anointed as his heir on New Year's Eve 1999 with the words "Take care of Russia" -- unveiled the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center in the former leader's home city of Yekaterinburg in the Ural mountains.

Chinese state-run media called Wednesday for children born outside the country's one-child policy to be given crucial household registration documents, an issue that has left as many as 13 million in legal limbo.

A "hukou" registration is essential in China to obtain basic social services such as schooling, healthcare and housing.