A new young-adult trilogy to launch in October with "Endgame: The Calling" is at the center of an interactive project that includes a puzzle that leads to a key that leads — at least for one lucky person — to $500,000 in gold coins.

The subsequent two books will have progressively larger payouts, and all will require the use of a website that has not yet gone live, publisher HarperCollins said.

The Vietnamese spirit medium dances in a trance, attacking invisible enemies with a sword as drums beat, musicians chant, and dozens of curious onlookers watch in amazement.

Civil servant by day and practitioner of traditional spiritual possession rituals when the mood takes her, Nguyen Thi Hoa is clad in a richly embroidered red robe as she performs a Len Dong ceremony at a private Hanoi temple.

More than one million pupils in state-funded schools in England -- one in six -- do not speak English as their first language, official figures out Thursday showed.

The number has swelled by a third in the last five years to 1.11 million children, or 16.6 percent, according to the Department for Education statistics for January 2014.

A group of experts confirmed on Wednesday that a Matisse painting found in the possession of the reclusive son of a German art dealer linked to Adolf Hitler was "Nazi loot" taken from a Jewish art dealer in Paris.

Matisse's "Seated Woman" was among a treasure trove of art discovered in the Munich apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt, whose father Hildebrand was tasked by the Nazis with selling artwork stolen from Jewish families in the 1930s and 1940s. 

For the painters, musicians, sculptors and writers who have inspired this art-loving country for centuries, their works are the truest memorials, whether concertos of Antonio Vivaldi still regularly performed in the Venice church where he served as violin master or Michelangelo's masterpieces that pack crowds daily into the Vatican's Sistine Chapel.

As Leonardo da Vinci once said, "A work of art dies not."

Mariam Saleh avoids malls and outdoor markets on the weekends because the low-cut tops, sheer dresses and miniskirts that foreign women wear reveal much more than she would like her impressionable young children to see.

Saleh is part of a campaign in Qatar that was spurred by locals who are fed up with the way many tourists and visitors dress, especially as temperatures soar in the Gulf Arab nation. The campaigners say Qatar is, after all, their country, and they should not be the ones feeling uncomfortable because visitors want to show some skin or dress like they would back home.

A Turkish imam has been allowed to rock on after the country's powerful religious authorities gave him the green light to continue playing in his band after a nine-month investigation. 

Ahmet Muhsin Tuzer, a Muslim religious leader from a tiny hamlet on Turkey's Mediterranean coast was investigated by the Diyanet, the state body in charge of the country's mosques.

A previously unknown painting by French artist Paul Gauguin is expected to fetch £1.2 million ($2 million, 1.5 million euros) when it goes on sale in London later this month.

Auction house Bonhams said that the still-life work, entitled "Bouquet De Roses", was completely unknown before the anonymous seller was contacted.

Leading American portraitist Everett Raymond Kinstler has painted the world's most recognizable faces, including seven U.S. presidents and thousands of luminaries in film and theater.

Now 24 of his portraits — 22 of which have never been offered for sale — are available for purchase on Amazon.

A giant lion roars against the backdrop of a battered Greek flag in wall art covering the side of a school building in a working-class Athens suburb.

The creation is one of many examples of street art across the Greek capital expressing the despair of ordinary people after four years of government belt-tightening at the behest of international creditors.