Culture
Latest stories
Study: Native Americans Lived in Bering Strait for Millennia

Early Native Americans spent millenia living on the Bering Land Bridge now buried under water before they appeared in Alaska and the rest of the North America, researchers said Friday.

The finding provides answers to a long-running mystery about where the people who first set foot on the New World survived the last Ice Age after splitting from their Asian relatives 25,000 years ago.

W140 Full Story
Cambodia's Floating Villages Face Uncertain Future

Cambodia's floating villages have adapted to the ebb and flow of Southeast Asia's largest lake for generations, but modernization and a scarcity of fish are now threatening their traditional way of life.

Houses, schools, hairdressers and even dentists -- entire communities bob around on the Tonle Sap, whose waters rise and fall dramatically with the seasons.

W140 Full Story
Myanmar Leader Proposes Interfaith Marriage Law

Myanmar's president has asked parliament to consider an intermarriage law, spearheaded by an extremist monk, that is aimed at "protecting" Buddhists in the former junta-ruled nation.

The move follows several waves of anti-Muslim violence that have coincided with a groundswell of Buddhist nationalism.

W140 Full Story
Greece's Korydallos Prison: A Window on the Country's Recent Past

With each passing generation, the squalid and overcrowded maximum-security Korydallos prison on the outskirts of Athens welcomes a new breed of high-profile criminal -- its roll-call of inmates serving as a window on Greece's tumultuous recent past.

From members of the brutal military junta that ruled the country half a century ago, to left-wing rebels and neo-Nazi thugs -- Korydallos has seen them all.

W140 Full Story
Divorce Debate Challenges Pope Francis

The issue of divorce is stoking a spirited debate between Catholic cardinals and revealing the challenges and expectations for Pope Francis after his promises to put the Church more in touch with modern life.

The question is whether divorcees who re-marry should be allowed to take part in the most sacred point of Catholic mass, Holy Communion, which is forbidden under current rules that in practice are often not observed.

W140 Full Story
Hitler-Signed 'Mein Kampf' Copies Sell for $65,000

Two rare copies of "Mein Kampf" signed by the young Nazi leader Adolf Hitler went under the hammer for $64,850 Thursday in Los Angeles, auctioneers said.

The two-volume set -- a first edition and a second edition -- of the future German Fuehrer's political manifesto had been estimated to go for $20-25,000 in a sale organized by Nate D. Sanders Auctions.

W140 Full Story
Iraq Commemorates 1920 Revolt against Britain in New Museum

Iraq opened a museum in the Shiite pilgrimage city of Najaf on Thursday commemorating a 1920 uprising against British occupation in a building that once housed captured soldiers.

The opening of the Najaf Heritage and 1920 Revolution Museum in the Khan al-Shilan building was attended by Tourism and Antiquities Minister Liwaa Smaisim, as well as tribal leaders and politicians.

W140 Full Story
Media Mogul Widow Donates Two Picassos to Swedish Museum

Stockholm's Museum of Modern Art said Wednesday it had received a donation including two Picasso paintings from the widow of a Swedish media tycoon.

The gift comprises eight artworks donated in the last will of Elisabeth Bonnier, whose husband Gerard Bonnier (1917-1987) was for more than 30 years the head of the Bonnier group, publisher of three of the six national newspapers in the country.

W140 Full Story
Spain Prehistoric Cave Art Gems Reopen to Lucky Few

Some of Europe's most spectacular prehistoric cave paintings reopen for a glimpse to a handful of visitors on Thursday at Altamira in northern Spain after a 12-year closure.

Renowned for vivid paintings of bison and animal-headed humans, the rocky cave closed in 2002 because scientists said the breath from crowds of visitors was damaging the prehistoric paint.

W140 Full Story
YouTube Ordered to Take Down Anti-Muslim Film

A U.S. appeals court ordered YouTube on Wednesday to take down an anti-Muslim film that sparked violent riots in parts of the Middle East and death threats to the actors.

The decision by a divided three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco reinstated a lawsuit filed against YouTube by an actress who appeared briefly in the 2012 video that led to rioting and deaths because of its negative portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad.

W140 Full Story