A bevy of big-screen luminaries including Luc Besson and Arnold Schwarzenegger descended on Beijing recently for a star-studded international film festival, but art-house directors raised the alarm as authorities block a wave of independent cultural events.

Seeking to raise its "soft power" and standing on the world cultural stage, China is pushing its cinema industry with events such as last week's Beijing International Film Festival (BIFF).

Canberra's National Portrait Gallery has taken down an image of Indonesian President Joko Widodo following the execution of two Australian drug smugglers, saying it feared for the artwork's safety.

Andrew Chan, 31, and Myuran Sukumaran, 34, were shot by firing squad in Indonesia on Wednesday over their role in the so-called "Bali Nine" heroin smuggling ring. 

When North Vietnam's tanks smashed through the gates of Saigon's presidential palace 40 years ago, it heralded the end of nearly two decades of war, a humiliating defeat for the United States and reunification with the South.

Here is a timeline of events in the lead-up to the Vietnam War and the taking of Saigon by Northern forces.

A copy of a deeply moving pilot's log, written during the top-secret Enola Gay mission that dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan, was auctioned in New York on Wednesday for $50,000.

Robert Lewis, American co-pilot of the B-29 bomber, made the copy in 1945 at the request of the then-science editor at The New York Times, and it includes a pencil sketch of the mushroom cloud, Bonhams auction house said.

Munich will open a museum on the former site of the Nazi party headquarters Thursday, in a long overdue reckoning with the German city's status as the "home of the movement".

The inauguration coincides with the 70th anniversary of the "liberation" of Munich by U.S. troops at the end of World War II, and of Adolf Hitler's suicide the same day in a Berlin bunker.

The middle of a desert is not the kind of place you'd expect to be able to sit down with a good book, watch a movie or surf the Internet.

But that is exactly what children who have fled the deadly conflict in Syria are now able to do at Azraq refugee camp in Jordan.

The results are in of a battle that pitted London's culture vultures against a Chinese workshop churning out replicas of the world's most famous paintings, revealing a clear victory for the cut-price masters.

For nearly three months, visitors to London's Dulwich Picture Gallery have pored over 270 paintings in its permanent collection, including works by Rembrandt, Rubens and Gainsborough, knowing that there was one $120 (109-euro) fake in their midst.

"Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own" (Crown), by Kate Bolick

Even its opening lines are provocative: "Whom to marry, and when it will happen — these two questions define every woman's existence, regardless of where she was raised or what religion she does or doesn't practice ... Men have their own problems; this isn't one of them."

"Every year it's the same circus," mutters a resident at the sight of dozens of anti-fascist protesters stomping toward a large weatherworn building in the small northern Austrian town Braunau am Inn.

"Nazis out!" chant the demonstrators, many clad in black hoodies and sporting sunglasses despite the rain, their shouts ricocheting off the three-storey residence.

U.N. culture chief Irina Bokova urged the Security Council on Monday to task peacekeepers with protecting cultural sites and to help prosecute those who destroy historical treasures.

International alarm has been growing over the fate of artifacts and monuments in Iraq and Syria after videos surfaced of jihadists destroying priceless works.