A rich Australian state's plan to pay up to Aus$2,000 (US$2,106) to Aboriginal people whose wages were kept from them for decades has been criticized as a "cruel and heartless offer".

Western Australia, a vast and resource-rich state riding a lucrative mining boom, has announced the payments for the "stolen wages" of Aboriginal people born before 1958 whose wages were controlled by the state government.

Vandals scrawled anti-Arab and anti-Christian slogans in Hebrew on a monastery compound and a school in Jerusalem overnight, Israeli police said on Tuesday.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said unknown people sprayed graffiti reading "death to Christians" and "price tag" on the walls of the compound of the Greek Orthodox Monastery of the Cross in west Jerusalem overnight.

Octogenarian Jewish writer Akos Kertesz of Hungary is seeking asylum in Canada because of a "political campaign" against him, sources close to him in this country confirmed Monday.

Kertesz, 80, winner of the Hungary's most prestigious literary prize the Kossuth, arrived with his wife in Montreal last Wednesday. Since then, he has curbed his availability to media so as not to influence his refugee bid, the source also said.

They were on the front line during last year's Arab uprisings, but women now fear for their rights as Islamists reap the fruits of revolt, winning elections in Egypt and Tunisia and gaining influence in Libya.

In Tunisia, the dominant Islamist Ennahda party has said it wants to fortify the personal status code, which bans polygamy and grants Tunisian women unparalleled rights in the region, by making it a basic law.

In her Mumbai shack, Manju Waghekar wonders if she will regret revealing the grim secrets of corruption, alcoholism and death among her friends and family for a searing new book on life in an Indian slum.

Manju, 23, is a central figure in "Behind the Beautiful Forevers", a true story that reviewers have hailed as an instant classic and a ground-breaking account of modern poverty.

A new Turkish blockbuster glorifying the 15th-century Ottoman conquest of Constantinople has taken Turkey by storm at a time when the government is flexing its muscles as a new regional strongman.

"Fetih 1453" -- or Conquest 1453 -- has drawn record crowds since it opened on February 16, recounting what is upheld as one of the most glorious moments in the nation's history.

An official history of the Australian military in the Vietnam War says alcohol abuse was a significant problem for troops who at times were supplied with the equivalent of more than five cans of beer per soldier daily.

Some Australian commanders regarded beer as a lesser evil than the illicit heroin and marijuana gaining popularity with allied U.S. troops fighting in the conflict.

Ancient Chinese Bowl to Go Up for Auction in Hong Kong

A rare Chinese porcelain bowl made almost 1,000 years ago is expected to fetch more than $10 million when it goes under the hammer in Hong Kong next month, Sotheby's auction house said Monday.

Ancient treasure worth an estimated $80 million dollars which was found in a ship that sank off Indonesia 1,000 years ago is up for sale again, the head of the excavation team said Monday.

The "Cirebon treasure" was discovered in a wreck off the port of Cirebon on Indonesia's Java island and contains about 250,000 precious objects, including crystal, pearls and gold.

The whirr of saws and buzz of drills flood buildings better accustomed to the speeches of world leaders as the United Nations' iconic headquarters in New York gets a makeover. Gone are the pneumatic tubes and the toxic asbestos.

And blast-proof panes are replacing the original windows — addressing terrorism concerns in a post-9/11 world.