With 3,000 Japanese cherry trees about to burst into full bloom, Washington is in eager anticipation of its annual cherry blossom celebration marking the start of spring.

Thousands of visitors are expected to attend the National Cherry Blossom Festival, cramming the narrow walkways of Washington's Tidal Basin for a peek at the famed pink flowers.

A thousand years ago, a vine that had traveled from the Caspian Sea coast along Asia's Silk Road arrived in Japan, where its fruit was heralded as having unique medicinal purposes.

Now the "Koshu grape" fills terraces on the foothills of Mount Fuji, where those in the know say it makes a pretty decent and uniquely Japanese white wine that industry leaders say they intend to export to the West.

Lithuania's wooden synagogues, the vestiges of a Jewish presence which was wiped out in the Holocaust, are falling into ruin from a lack of funding and support.

Hidden behind a row of houses, the wooden synagogue in the eastern town of Alanta looks more like a barn than a former house of worship.

The family of a prominent Parisian art dealer is demanding that a Norwegian museum return an Henri Matisse painting seized by Nazis under the direction of Hermann Goering, in the latest dispute over art stolen from Jews during World War II.

The painting at the center of the dispute, Matisse's 1937 "Blue Dress in a Yellow Armchair," depicts a woman sitting in a living room. It has been among the highlights of the Henie Onstad Art Center near Oslo since the museum was established in 1968 through a donation by wealthy art collector Niels Onstad and his wife, Olympic figure-skating champion Sonja Henie.

Thousands of members of a hardline Muslim group are rallying in Bangladesh's capital to demand authorities enact an anti-blasphemy law punishing people who insult Islam.

Saturday's rally is taking place amid heightened security in Dhaka and elsewhere after the Hifazat-e-Islam members targeted a group of bloggers who they say are atheists. The bloggers, who deny they're atheists, are seeking capital punishment for those found guilty of war crimes during the nation's 1971 independence war and also want a ban on Jamaat-e-Islami, the country's largest Islamic party.

Spain announced Friday it is raising the minimum age for marriage from 14 to 16 while opening consultations to increase the age for consent to sex, which now lies at just 13, so as to combat child abuse.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's right-leaning government announced its decision to raise the minimum ages for marriage and sex in Spain, which are now among the lowest in the world, after a weekly cabinet meeting.

Capturing the unruly, ever-changing Internet is like trying to pin down a raging river.

But the British Library is going to try.

A British police force on Thursday began recording attacks on goths and punks as "hate crimes" similar to those suffered by people targeted because of their race, religion or sexual orientation.

Police in Manchester, northwest England, said the new policy would allow them to better protect goths, easily identified on the streets by their black clothes and pale make-up, and members of other "alternative sub-cultures".

Striking opera house workers at Milan's prestigious La Scala have forced the cancellation of a performance on Sunday of Giuseppe Verdi's "Macbeth" conducted by Russian maestro Valery Gergiev, the theater said in a statement.

The strike was called by the three main trade unions at the opera house and ticket holders were told Thursday they could attempt to change their booking for a later date or seek a reimbursement.

When Assad al-Islam and Laila dreamed of their wedding day, they did not imagine it quite like this -- at a rebel base in Syria's Turkmen mountains, surrounded by members of Assad's fighter brigade.

"We have nothing in common. The only thing that brought us together is the revolution against the regime," the young couple says.