French President Francois Hollande on Wednesday presented France's highest honor, the Legion of honor, to World Jewish Congress chief Ronald Lauder, praising him as "a man of peace, culture and commitment".

"Since 2007, you have been the president of the World Jewish Congress, which brings together representatives of Jewish communities from 100 countries, you criss-cross the world and you carry a message of tolerance and peace," Hollande said in a ceremony at the Elysee Palace in Paris, where he bestowed the medal on the American.

Hundreds of millions of people across China are squeezing into packed train carriages and buses to travel home for the Lunar New Year, in the world's largest annual movement of people.

A total of 3.4 billion trips will be made over the holiday period, official media estimates, including hundreds of millions of migrant workers in booming cities who journey to the countryside to spend the season with their families.

U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Maura Connelly visited Tyre yesterday to promote the protection of cultural property and visit project sites under the Ambassador’s Fund for Cultural Preservation, the U.S. embassy said on Wednesday.

During her visit, she met with the Mayor of Tyre, Hasan Dbouq, the head of the Union of Tyre Region Municipalities, Abdul Mohsen al-Husseini, Dr. Ali Khalil Badawi, Director of Antiquities for South Lebanon with the Ministry of Culture, and members of the Tyre Municipal Council.

The writers of the Beat Generation, who shocked America with their bohemian lifestyles and upended literature half a century ago, are celebrated in a new photo exhibit by one of their most famous members, Allen Ginsberg.

The New York exhibition, "Beat Memories, the photographs of Allen Ginsberg," comes just after the release of the movie "On the Road," which has received generally good reviews for its dramatization of Jack Kerouac's famous 1957 book of the same name.

A portrait of Pablo Picasso's lover Marie-Therese Walter sold in London on Tuesday night for £28.6 million ($45.0 million, 33.3 million euros), Southeby's auction house said.

The colourful and curvaceous "Femme assise pres d'une fenetre" (Woman sitting by a window), painted in 1932, was sold at a crowded salesroom to an anonymous telephone buyer, a Sotheby's spokesman said.

A replica of Michelangelo's Renaissance sculpture David that was erected suddenly last summer is unnerving residents of a Japanese town, with some calling for the naked masterpiece to be given underpants.

Okuizumo town in western Shimane prefecture received five-metre (16-foot) replicas of David and of Greek treasure the Venus de Milo, as donations from a businessman who hails from the area.

Parents in education-obsessed South Korea spent 19 trillion won ($17.4 billion) on extra classes for their children last year, seeking any edge in the hugely competitive race for a coveted college place.

The 2012 figure, published by the education ministry on Wednesday, includes cost for after-hour cram schools, private tutoring or online courses, and was equivalent to about 1.5 percent of the country's gross domestic product.

British lawmakers voted in favor of controversial legislation allowing gay marriage on Tuesday despite fierce opposition from members of Prime Minister David Cameron's own party.

The move puts Britain on track to join the ten countries that allow same-sex couples to marry, but Cameron had the embarrassment of seeing half of his Conservative legislators refusing to back him.

A Chinese official demanding a couple pay a fine for violating the country's one-child policy crushed their 13-month-old boy to death with a car, a local spokesman said Tuesday.

Under China's population controls, instituted more than 30 years ago, couples who have more than one child must pay a "social upbringing" fine, while in some cases mothers have been forced to undergo abortions.

A plump, naughty looking winged baby with a bow and arrow: sounds like the illustration on a Valentine's Day card, right? Wrong: it's a two-thousand-year-old statue on show in New York.

A new exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, "Changing Image of Eros, Ancient Greek God of Love, from Antiquity to Renaissance," demonstrates that love as we know it doesn't just last forever -- it's been around forever too.