The Church of England has much explaining to do following its failure to vote to allow women to serve as bishops, its leader said Wednesday — and politicians from the prime minister downward are already demanding action or answers.

One legislator even suggested there might be an issue under anti-discrimination laws.

From Mexico's Maya Riviera to ancient sites in Guatemala, the region foresees a tourism bonanza from the fateful December 21 date in the Mayan calendar, but indigenous groups are fed up with the doomsday myth.

With one month to go before the end of the calendar's 5,200-year cycle, tourists will find all-inclusive excursions and religious ceremonies in holy sites across Central America and Mexico.

More than 150 years after the opening salvoes of the American Civil War, the grim reality of the conflict is laid bare in a U.S. exhibit showcasing the pioneering photos and art of the time.

The 1861-1865 war, considered the world's first modern conflict, was the first to be captured from start-to-finish through the new medium of photography.

Zao Wou-ki, the abstract painter who has been described as China's greatest living artist, is at the center of a bitter legal feud between his third wife and his son from a previous marriage.

At the heart of a battle ripping the family apart lies the contested ownership of eight works worth millions of dollars.

A Chinese city has halted a campaign to clear graves for farmland after the demolition of more than two million tombs sparked outrage in a country where ancestors are traditionally held in deep respect.

Zhoukou in the central province of Henan demolished the graves this year as part of a "flatten graves to return farmland" campaign, the Beijing News reported Wednesday.

Benedict XVI has published the third and last volume of his biography of Jesus Christ, a touching and highly personal work written under the pope's own name of Joseph Ratzinger.

The tome devoted to Jesus's childhood is being published in nine languages with a first edition of around a million copies, the Vatican said on Tuesday.

A record 110 countries on Monday backed a resolution voted every two years at a U.N. General Assembly committee calling for the abolition of the death penalty.

The vote tears apart traditional alliances at the United Nations. The United States, Japan, China, Iran, India, North Korea, Syria and Zimbabwe were among 39 countries to oppose the non-binding resolution in the assembly's rights committee. Thirty-six countries abstained.

The Church of England's legislative body will vote Tuesday on whether to introduce women bishops, its biggest and most contentious decision for 20 years.

The 470-member General Synod kicked off a three-day general assembly on Monday, two decades after England's established state Church backed the introduction of women priests.

Twirling his waxed moustache, Salvador Dali's larger-than-life figure was beamed into millions of homes in the 1960s, his televised antics bringing huge fame, but burning his bridges with the art world.

Now a major new Paris exhibit aims to reinstate that legacy, putting Dali's media stunts -- burying himself in banknotes, signing books wired to a brain monitor, even ad campaigns -- on equal footing with his surrealist painting.

Vandals have stolen at least four ancient rock carvings, apparently using cement-cutting circular saws to slice them out of a valuable archaeological site in California, experts said.

The petroglyphs, etched by ancient hunters 3,500 years ago, had survived winds, floods and earthquakes over that time but they were hauled off in a matter of hours, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday.