Maya Angelou, the beloved African-American author and civil rights activist renowned for a searing memoir charting her childhood in the racially segregated South, died Wednesday. She was 86.

Angelou was best known for the first installment of her memoirs "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," the first non-fiction best-seller by an African-American woman.

Gold icons and expressionist paintings from one of Russia's top art museums will go on permanent show in an old tobacco factory in Spain, officials said Wednesday.

The southern Spanish city of Malaga, home to thousands of Russian expats, has signed an agreement to host the first overseas branch of Saint Petersburg's State Russian Museum.

Tracey Emin's unmade bed artfully littered with condoms, cigarette packs and underwear is expected to fetch around £1 million (1.2 million euros, $1.7 million) at auction.

The work, called simply "My Bed", cemented Emin's notoriety when it was shortlisted for the 1999 Turner Prize, although the British artist eventually lost out to future Oscar winner Steve McQueen, who directed "12 Years a Slave".

Three years ago, guest speaker Mindy Kaling joked that publishing's annual national convention, BookExpo America, resembled "a high school reunion where all the jocks were killed in a plane crash, and all the minorities, too."

Little seems to have changed.

Widely eclipsed by the horror of the Nazi era, World War I seems to have found its way back into the minds of many Germans with a slew of new books ahead of the centenary of the war's outbreak.

Chancellor Angela Merkel commented recently that the 1914-18 war featured more prominently in the collective memories of Britons or the French -- both countries refer to it as the "Great War" -- than in Germany.

The Archbishop of Canterbury met church leaders in Pakistan Tuesday as he began a visit that comes amid concerns about the plight of the country's beleaguered Christian minority.

Justin Welby, the leader of the world's Anglicans, will meet Muslim leaders and senior government officials during his stay, part of a week-long tour that will also take in India and Bangladesh.

A three-months pregnant Pakistani woman was beaten to death with bricks by members of her own family Tuesday for marrying the man of her choice, police said.

Farzana Iqbal, 25, was attacked outside the Lahore High Court by more than two dozen people including her brother and father, senior investigator Rana Akhtar told Agence France Presse.

Myanmar is considering restrictions on religious conversion, according to a draft bill released in state media Tuesday, the first of several controversial proposals stemming from a rising tide of Buddhist nationalism.

The proposed legislation, put forward by the ministry of religion and yet to be debated in parliament, would require people who want to change their faith to get approval from a specially-created local authority.

A group of students discovered a 7,000-year-old mummy during a trip to northern Chile, local media reported Monday.

La Tercera newspaper reported that the find was made by chance Saturday during a visit to the Morro de Arica site by local students.

Russia has refused to permit the release of a film about the mass deportations of entire ethnic groups on Stalin's orders during World War II, calling it anti-Russian and a falsification of history.

The historical drama shot in Chechnya details how the Soviets forcibly deported the whole Chechen nation and the related Ingush group -- half a million people -- from their homeland in the North Caucasus to Central Asia in the winter of 1944, accusing them of lacking loyalty to the state.