Vincent van Gogh's "Sunflowers" are losing their yellow cheer and the unsettling apricot horizon in Edvard Munch's "The Scream" is turning a dull ivory.

Some of our most treasured paintings are fading, warn experts who would like more money for the use of sophisticated technology to capture the masters' original palettes before the works are unrecognizable blighted.

A previously unseen letter written by Pablo Picasso, complete with sketches, has gone on display in western France.

The letter, to his friend the French poet Max Jacob, comes from a private collection and is displayed at the fine arts museum in the western city of Quimper.

Devastated by the decades of industrial decline, many living in the run-down Glasgow district of Drumchapel see Scottish independence as a last chance to revive its fortunes, but even here the "No" camp has supporters.

"For most people in Drumchapel it's a very, very hard life," said "Yes" voter Leah Hazard, a mid-wife with the National Health Service (NHS).

Pope Francis on Saturday denounced those who profit from the "madness" of war at a ceremony in the north west of Italy to mark the 100th anniversary of the beginning of World War I.

"In today's world, behind the scenes, there are interests, geopolitical strategies, lust for money and power, and there is the manufacture and sale of arms," he told the crowd of thousands standing in the rain at the Redipuglia cemetery.

A cave in Spain containing some of the world's most precious prehistoric art will stay open for trial visits after decades closed for conservation reasons, officials said Friday.

Experts who launched small trial viewings in February at the Altamira cave to see whether the ancient paintings could withstand the breath and germs of visitors have now decided to extend them, the culture ministry said.

Los Angeles County's Natural History Museum on Friday unveiled the "Blue Moon Diamond," a 12-carat gem described as one of the rarest stones in the world.

Deep blue and intensely radiant, it was found in South Africa's Cullinan mine northeast of Pretoria, where the biggest ever rough diamond was unearthed a century ago.

The hot-button social issue of same-sex marriage is widely expected to come before the United States Supreme Court once more as the court opens its new session.

The following are facts about same-sex marriage in the United States:

Nearly half of all girls in South Asia marry before they turn 18, according to a United Nations report that lays bare what it calls "glaring inequalities".

The report, published by the UN children's agency UNICEF on Thursday, also revealed that more than a million newborn babies still die every year in the region, often due to inadequate healthcare.

Archaeologists inching through a large 2,300-year-old tomb in northern Greece on Thursday uncovered two marble female statues flanking the entrance to one of three underground chambers, in another sign of the unusual attention and expense lavished on the unknown person buried there.

The dig has gripped the public imagination amid non-stop media coverage, which Greek archaeologists say is placing an unfair burden on the excavation team.

Conjuring up the hedonistic world of 1980s New York -- the endless parties, reckless spending, casual sex and drugs -- was the easiest part of US writer Robert Goolrick's latest novel.

The former high-flying advertising executive moved to New York as a young man from small town America and lived out what he saw as a dream.