Members of the "Cambridge Five" ring of spies were regarded by their Soviet minders as hopeless drunks who could not keep secrets, espionage files released Monday showed.
Details on the five men recruited while studying at the University of Cambridge during the 1930s, including Donald Duart Maclean and Guy Burgess, have been released to the public for the first time.
A painting by Henri Matisse stolen more than a decade ago from a museum in Venezuela made its homecoming Monday.
Handlers held the painting up in front of the stairs of the jet it arrived on, like an arriving celebrity, while photographer snapped pictures. Officials said a piece of national heritage has been restored without injury. The artwork, "Odalisque in Red Pants," depicts a topless woman sitting in front of a wall.
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In one fluid motion, Amri Aziz flings his oversized spinning top into the air and with a whip-like crack of rope sends it whirling for the next two hours.
That's when the tea is poured.
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The Salvadoran president's residence, a posh home in an upscale San Salvador district, reopened Sunday as a museum with a focus on welcoming the poor.
New leftist President Salvador Sanchez Ceren -- an ex-rebel commander who has decided to keep living in his family home in a middle-class area of the city -- reopened the building as a place where the socially excluded can come to reflect on their country and its artistic wealth.
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The sun is setting but the party is only just beginning for 29-year-old Merve Kortan, one of the many young Turks who hang out in Istanbul's vibrant Beyoglu district.
New alcohol legislation has made it more expensive and harder to buy or sell alcohol in Turkey, with critics accusing the Islamic-rooted government of imposing a religious agenda in the mainly Muslim but officially secular nation.
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Maestro Riccardo Muti is conducting Verdi's Requiem Mass in northeastern Italy to mark the 100th anniversary of World War I's outbreak in Europe and honor its millions of war dead.
The Italian orchestra conductor has called the musical tribute Sunday night at the Redipuglia monument to WWI dead a "message of reconciliation."
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Traditionalists can rest easy knowing architect Frank Gehry's vision for the Philadelphia Museum of Art does not include wrapping the neoclassical building in his trademark chunky silver swooshes.
But he just might take a chunk out of the famed "Rocky" steps.
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Vast crowds of revelers in high heels, wigs and figure-hugging dresses cavorted in the streets of Madrid on Saturday in what is billed as the biggest gay pride parade in Europe.
Tens of thousands crammed one of the Spanish capital's broad central avenues, the Paseo del Prado, in the early evening to the din of drums and whistles in a parade scheduled to last seven hours.
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Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan chided a promising young footballer on Friday for having a tattoo on his wrist, warning such foreign-inspired body art could give him skin cancer.
The incident occurred when Erdogan visited the Turkish national team's training facilities in Istanbul, where he chatted and shook hands with young players.
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India has banned the import of foie gras, a government notice said, after animal rights activists complained that the method used to produce the duck liver delicacy was cruel.
"Import policy of the item 'foie gras'... is revised from 'free' to 'prohibited'," the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) said in the notice on its website.
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