The publisher that bought the German rights to a novel for a song before learning that the author was Harry Potter writer J.K. Rowling said Sunday it was eyeing a windfall.

Munich-based Blanvalet Verlag snapped up the rights in February to "The Cuckoo's Calling", a purported debut novel by a certain Robert Galbraith about a private detective who investigates a model's suicide, its editor Anja Franzen told news weekly Focus.

Sixty years ago, as the Iron Curtain sealed off Eastern Europe, Teodor Stanca was among millions sentenced to jail, death or forced labor for opposing Communist rule.

Today, as survivors of this dark page of history are getting older and fewer, 80-year-old Stanca says he hopes a Romanian jail-turned-museum will remind future generations that "freedom needs eternal vigilance".

An Italian woman who suffered from severe hypertension was cured after visiting Lourdes in 1989, the 69th such miracle to take place at the fabled French shrine, a Catholic official said Sunday.

Giovanni Giudici, bishop of Pavia, where Danila Castelli lives, recognized the event as a miracle last month, but flooding at the religious site in southwest France prevented the Lourdes sanctuary from publishing the news earlier.

Sunni Muslim extremists and Shiite Zaidi rebels in Yemen are waging a battle for the control of mosques, in a spillover of the sectarian face-off rattling the Middle East.

The showdown was previously confined to the northern province of Saada, stronghold of Zaidi Ansarullah rebels who have since last year frequently clashed with supporters of the Sunni Islamist party Al-Islah.

Some 7,500 gay rights supporters and activists marched through the French port of Marseille on Saturday at the start of Europride 2013.

Under a banner proclaiming "Europe marches towards equality", they made their way from the city's old port to the beach amid celebrations for the beginning of the 10-day festival devoted to the lesbian and gay cause.

Tribal elders and Islamic clerics in northwest Pakistan have barred women from shopping in bazaars without a male relative, elders and an official said Saturday.

The decision was taken on Friday in the Karak district of conservative Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders the restive tribal areas along the Afghan border.

The white sands of Copacabana beach typically draw millions of sun-worshippers, New Year's Eve revelers and fans for free concerts by the likes of Stevie Wonder and the Rolling Stones. In the coming week, the star of the show is infinitely less flamboyant than Mick Jagger, but he promises to stir up just as much passion among devotees.

Pope Francis, the 76-year-old Argentine who became the church's first pontiff from the Americas in March, will turn the crescent-shaped shoreline into a giant stage for his first international trip as pope, returning to the embrace of Latin America to preside over the Roman Catholic Church's World Youth Day festival.

An original copy of the list of Jews Oskar Schindler saved from the Holocaust is up for sale on eBay, with the starting bid set at $3 million dollars, a Los Angeles auctioneer said Friday.

The 14-page typewritten list, bearing the names of 801 men, originated with the German industrialist's right-hand man Itzhak Stern, Gary Zimet of momentsintime.com told Agence France Presse.

From a painting hung high on a blood-red wall, Adolf Hitler peers down on young students eating schnitzel and slurping German beer in Indonesia's Nazi-themed cafe.

The SoldatenKaffee ("The Soldiers' Cafe") opened its doors in the western Javanese city of Bandung in 2011, named after the popular hangout for soldiers in Germany and occupied Paris during World War II.

An art dealer who allegedly duped two top New York top galleries into buying counterfeit paintings she presented as works by Modernist masters has been indicted for fraud, money laundering and tax evasion.

Prosecutors said Glafira Rosales, 56, will be arraigned in a Manhattan court Friday on charges of selling more than 60 fake works of art between 1994 and 2009 for a total of $33.2 million.