A Chinese academic study hailed the role of the country's first lady in public diplomacy, reports said Thursday, the latest sign of Beijing's hunger for soft power on the global stage.

Peng Liyuan, the wife of President Xi Jinping, has "enchanted domestic and international media", said the Renmin University study.

France said Wednesday it stood by its choice to send a gay diplomat to the Vatican despite three months of silence from the Holy See over the appointment.

Paris has had no news on whether Laurent Stefanini, an openly gay Catholic, has been accepted to serve as its ambassador to the papal state. 

Under its Media, Peace and Environment program and within the Environmental Media, Peace Building and Conflict Transformation project, Media Association for Peace-MAP organized a training retreat entitled “The Role of Peace Journalism in Environmental Governance and Sustainable Development in Lebanon” in collaboration with the Global Environment Facility (GEF) Small Grants Program (SGP), implemented by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and supported by the European Union (EU). This 4-day retreat took place in the Evangelical Conference Center-Dhour El Choueir from April 6th till April 9th 2015.

More than 15 journalism, media and international affairs students from different Lebanese universities participated in the training that hosted more 15 experts, journalists and researchers in the environmental field.

Holocaust survivor Albert Garih has recounted his traumatic experience during World War II countless times. But as the 76 year old ages, he acknowledges he doesn't have much longer to share his powerful story.

As the world marks the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, these eyewitnesses to history -- some of them volunteers at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum -- are even more acutely aware of their role in keeping the tales alive.

Prominent Lebanese playwright Raymond Jebara passed away on Tuesday at the age of 80, following a battle with illness.

Jebara died at the Bhanness Medical Center in Metn.

The Lebanese Canadian Society of BC (WLCU-Vancouver chapter) in collaboration with the World Lebanese Cultural Union-BC Council will host a presentation on April 17, in Vancouver by Dr. Josyann Abisaab to mark the 103rd anniversary of the 125 Lebanese who lost their lives aboard the Titanic.

The RMS Titanic passenger liner sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in 1912 after colliding with an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton, UK to New York City, U.S.

Germany's Nobel-winning author Gunther Grass said he feared humanity was "sleepwalking" into a world war in the last interview he gave before his death on Monday.

"We have on the one side Ukraine, whose situation is not improving; in Israel and Palestine things are getting worse; the disaster the Americans left in Iraq, the atrocities of Islamic state and the problem of Syria," he told the Spanish newspaper El Pais in the interview published Tuesday.

Michel Dancoisne-Martineau knows that the story of Napoleon's life in exile is timeless -- and irresistible.

The Frenchman is tasked with preserving the property where Napoleon Bonaparte lived after being exiled to the remote South Atlantic island of Saint Helena in 1815 and remained until his death six years later.

Trowels in hand, on their haunches, masons in Timbuktu use traditional techniques to reconstruct precious mausoleums destroyed in an Islamist takeover of northern Mali in 2012.

Al-Qaida-linked insurgents wrecked 16 of the fabled desert city's shrines to Muslim saints that date back to Timbuktu's 15th and 16th century golden age as an economic, intellectual and spiritual center. 

A jihadist fighter slits a man's throat, another brandishes a severed head spiked on his rifle while more militants dump bodies into a trench overflowing with corpses.

This is how painter Ammar Salim depicts the massacres the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group perpetrated against his Yazidi minority in northern Iraq last summer.