Mozambique and Angola this year mark four decades of independence from Portugal, with robust economic growth rates buoyed by abundant natural resources giving the southern African nations reason to celebrate.

A prime investment destination following the recent discovery of huge natural gas and coal deposits, Mozambique will be the first to mark its freedom on Thursday.

A Nazi-looted painting that was hidden for decades is being auctioned by Sotheby's Wednesday in a rare sale as investigators work painstakingly to identify the origins of hundreds of other works from the same haul.

Max Liebermann's "Two Riders on a Beach" was found among more than 1,200 works of art in the Munich apartment of German recluse Cornelius Gurlitt when police raided it in 2012, capturing global attention.

IS destroys ancient Islamic mausoleums in Syria's PalmyraIslamic State group fighters have destroyed two ancient Muslim mausoleums in the historic Syrian city of Palmyra, the country's antiquities director said Tuesday.

Maamoun Abdulkarim said IS jihadists blew up the tombs of Mohammed bin Ali, a descendant of the Prophet Mohammed's cousin, and Nizar Abu Bahaaeddine, a religious figure from Palmyra, three days ago. 

Sister Nirmala Joshi, who succeeded Mother Teresa as head of her Missionaries of Charity in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata, died on Tuesday at the age of 81, church officials said. 

Joshi had been suffering from a heart condition and her health had been deteriorating recently, confining her to a Missionaries of Charity home, Archbishop of Kolkata Thomas D'Souza and media reports said.

An internationally celebrated South Korean novelist has apologized over a plagiarism scandal that has shocked her country and prompted a publisher to stop printing one of her books, a report said Tuesday. 

Man Asian Literary Prize-winning author Shin Kyung-Sook met with public fury after allegations surfaced last week that she had copied a piece by the famed late Japanese author Yukio Mishima. 

About 5,000 people including Japan's prime minister and the U.S. ambassador to Japan held a memorial service Tuesday to mark the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Okinawa, one of the bloodiest conflicts of World War II.

They observed a moment of silence at Peace Memorial Park in Okinawa, a chain of islands at the southern tip of the Japanese archipelago.

The World Expo in Milan is all abuzz about a giant aluminium hive that hums in harmony with 40,000 bees making honey 870 miles (1,400km) away in Nottingham, England.

Artist Wolfgang Buttress's innovative work is the centrepiece of a bee-themed British pavilion that is pulling in nearly four times as many visitors as anticipated and has become one of the must-sees of the six-month world fair in Italy's economic capital.

Watercolour paintings and drawings by Adolf Hitler from about a century ago were sold at auction in Germany at the weekend for nearly 400,000 euros ($450,000), organisers said.

The most expensive was a painting of King Ludwig II's Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, now a tourist magnet, which went to a buyer from China for 100,000 euros, Nuremberg-based Weidler auctioneers said, quoted by German news agency DPA.

It's been nearly three decades since Haiti's Triomphe cinema shuttered its doors, but the storied theater is back -- and with a bit of Hollywood swag to boot. 

With the red carpet rolled out and an official photographer in place, some of Haiti's top entertainers celebrated Triomphe's grand reopening, a sign for many that things might finally be turning after the devastating earthquake in 2010.

Syria's best-known mosaic museum in the northern rebel-held town of Maaret al-Numan has been seriously damaged in a regime barrel bomb attack, according to archaeological experts.

The Association for the Protection of Syrian Archaeology said the museum "suffered serious damage caused by two explosive-packed barrels dropped on Monday by Syrian army helicopters."