For more than a century he sat in a meditative pose in remote western Mongolia before being thrust into the spotlight by an unscrupulous thief.

The discovery of the near perfectly preserved mummy of a Buddhist monk born almost 200 years ago may have baffled many but it is also shining a light on how the religion venerates relics of holy figures.

Turkey has for the first time introduced a set of criteria for baklava, the sweet pastry made in the country's southeast and known across the world, the standards watchdog said Thursday.

The move is aimed at standardizing the production of the trademark dessert, which is often manufactured with counterfeit ingredients to cut costs, Turkish Standards Institute (TSE) said in a statement.

A Spanish court sentenced a man on Wednesday to 10 years in prison for crimes including the theft of a priceless medieval document considered the first guidebook to Spain's Saint James pilgrimage trail.

Police recovered the unique 12th-century manuscript in July 2012, a year after it was found to have gone missing from a safe in the famous cathedral of the northwestern city of Santiago de Compostela.

Fireworks illuminated the skies across China as millions around Asia ushered in the Year of the Sheep Thursday, kicking off festivities with an annual televised gala that got a thumbs down on social media for heavy Communist Party preaching against corruption.

China officially counts the New Year as starting from January 1 but culturally its citizens place greater importance on the lunar computation of days, reflecting centuries of traditional practice.

Cash-strapped authorities in Rome are to auction off four Mussolini-era public buildings to fund the completion of a long-delayed but eagerly-awaited new conference centre by acclaimed architect Massimiliano Fuksas.

Three museums and a building currently housing state archives will be advertised shortly with the hope of completing the sell-off by the end of the year, said a spokesman for EUR Spa, the state body which currently owns the buildings in the EUR district of the capital.

Princeton University has been gifted an astonishing trove of rare books valued at nearly $300 million that includes the first six printed editions of the Bible and the original printing of the Declaration of Independence.

The Ivy League school in New Jersey said Tuesday that the book-loving philanthropist William Scheide, a Princeton alumnus who died aged 100 in November, had bequeathed the university some 2,500 rare printed books and manuscripts.

The Franciscan friar who brought Christianity to California in the 18th century is on track for sainthood, but for Native Americans, his legacy is anything but holy.

Junipero Serra founded the first nine of what would become 21 Spanish missions stretching from San Diego to San Francisco, giving the Roman Catholic Church a firm foothold in what was then called New Spain.

It's Valentine's Day in the world's most romantic capital and as some couples cosy up in restaurants around Paris, others furtively slip through a purple tinted door for a night of sexual titillation at a libertine nightclub.

One by one accountants, engineers, businessmen and parents are buzzed into the discreet club on the banks of a Parisian canal, where gently flickering lights play across an interior decorated in warm, sensual reds and violets.

An albino toddler has been kidnapped in northern Tanzania, police said late Monday, raising fears he may be killed and his body parts used for witchcraft.

Unknown attackers broke into the house and slashed the child's mother with machetes before snatching the one-and-half-year-old boy in the northern Tanzanian district of Chato late on Saturday.

A Dali-style homage to Rio ahead of the city's 450th birthday, parachutists landing on the piste and a polemic on the funding of an elite samba school paying tribute to Africa marked Monday's carnival parade.

There were highlights aplenty as some 30,000 participants from the final six elite schools strutted down the Sapucai Avenue at a Sambadrome packed with 72,000 flagwaving and gyrating people of all ages.