Ursula K. Le Guin, the science fiction and fantasy writer widely celebrated as a visionary and compelling storyteller, is receiving an honorary National Book Award.

The National Book Foundation, which presents the awards, announced Tuesday that Le Guin was receiving the 2014 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Previous winners include Toni Morrison, Norman Mailer and Elmore Leonard. Le Guin, 84, is known for such novels as "The Left Hand of Darkness" and "The Farthest Shore," which in 1973 won the National Book Award for young people's literature.

Canada has located the remains of one of two British explorer ships lost in the Arctic in 1846, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced Tuesday, hailing the find as historic.

South America's Guarani people played a football-like game two centuries before the modern sport emerged, the Paraguayan government says in a new documentary based on Jesuit texts.

Teenagers under 17 who use cannabis daily are 60 percent less likely to complete high school or get a degree than peers who have never taken the drug, researchers said on Wednesday. 

France's summer is fast becoming a memory, and so is one of its iconic beach sights: the topless woman.

As few as 2 percent of French women under 35 now say they want to bare their breasts, according to an Elle magazine poll this summer. It's a far cry from the once-ubiquitous scenes of semi-nudity on the French Riviera, epitomized by 1960s blond bombshell Brigitte Bardot.

Emperor Hirohito, the demi-god at the apex of the Japanese state when it waged bloody war across Asia, cautioned against conflict but celebrated military success, according to the long-awaited official history of his reign, released Tuesday.

Just like Ernest Hemingway used to do, two of his grandsons sailed into the fishing town of Cojimar on Monday, marking 60 years since the iconic U.S. author won the Nobel prize.

John and Patrick Hemingway sailed in from the Ernest Hemingway International yacht Club west of Havana, through the Gulf waters where "Papa" used to fish, with a group of 16 that arrived Sunday.

Two stunning caryatid statues have been unearthed holding up the entrance to the biggest ancient tomb ever found in Greece, archaeologists said.

The two female figures in long-sleeved tunics were found standing guard at the opening to the mysterious Alexander The Great-era tomb near Amphipolis in the Macedonia region of northern Greece.

Cheered by tens of thousands, a life-size replica of the Hermione, the French navy frigate that shipped General Lafayette to America to rally rebels fighting British troops in the US war of independence, began its maiden voyage on Sunday.

Spectators lined the port in Rochefort in southwestern France to see the reproduced vessel, which took 17 years to build, set sail.

Egypt has arrested seven men accused of debauchery for taking part in a "gay marriage" video that spread on social media networks, state news agency MENA reported.