'Nixon in China', an opera inspired by the first visit to Beijing by a U.S. president, gets a facelift this month in Paris at the hands of Chinese-born director Cheng Shi-Zheng, who still remembers the 1972 trip as the first time he ever saw the picture of an American.

The new production, on stage at the Chatelet Theatre in Paris to April 18, comes on the 40th anniversary of the politically ground-breaking visit which opened Red China to the West, and on the 25th anniversary of the creation of the opera, written by U.S. composer John Adams.

At sea and on land Sunday, wreaths were cast, memorials unveiled and people stood in silence to remember the 1,500 people who died in the sinking of the Titanic ocean liner a century ago.

In Belfast, the city that built the Titanic, a memorial garden containing the first-ever monument to list all the victims' names was unveiled during a commemorative service attended by about 300 members of the public.

Waxworks museum Madame Tussauds opened a branch in Sydney on Monday with Australian personalities Cate Blanchett and Nicole Kidman sharing the stage with Barack Obama and Lady Gaga.

The world-famous London attraction set up shop in tourist precinct Darling Harbor after 56,000 hours of work creating the 70 figures on display.

Ella Fitzgerald has given concerts there. So have Sarah Vaughn, Aretha Franklin, Duke Ellington, James Brown, and Miles Davis.

The Howard Theatre, the first concert hall for blacks, is reborn this week from its ashes, more than a century after it opened in Washington DC.

Thousands of Christian pilgrims are gathering in Jerusalem for an ancient fire ritual that celebrates Jesus' resurrection.

They have crowded Saturday into the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where many Christian traditions hold that Jesus was crucified, buried and resurrected.

Chaos and man's attempts to tame it are at the heart of a spectacular new show at Paris' museum of tribal arts that pits voodoo and shamanic artifacts alongside the work of contemporary artists.

By the entrance to the show stands a voodoo talisman meant to ward off evil spirits -- a colorful female statue with a calabash at its center, and covered with grasses, fabric, palm oil and scraps of animal horn.

Tibetan herder Gatou used to live a nomadic life on the grasslands of the Tibetan plateau before he was rehoused under a controversial Chinese government scheme.

Now he inhabits one of scores of small brick houses that have sprung up in incongruously neat rows in the rugged and mountainous terrain of the Guoluo Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in northwest China.

His LSD-inspired heroes, rampant sex and frontal assaults on political correctness made comic artist Robert Crumb an icon of U.S. counter-culture, but why on earth, he wonders, put his work on show in a museum?

Crumb's cult universe, from hippy-era characters like "Fritz the Cat" to his cartoon take on the Bible, is on show -- uncensored -- until August at Paris' Museum of Modern Art, hosting the largest-ever retrospective of his work.

After the death of their spiritual leader, more than 2,000 Egyptian Copts have poured into the Holy Land for the Easter holidays, defying a ban he imposed on visiting Jerusalem and other Israeli-controlled areas.

The influx — after decades when Egyptian pilgrims were a rarity — adds a new element to the already diverse mix of languages and faiths in Jerusalem's Old City during the holy season. The pilgrims are clearly distinguished by the Egyptian accent of their Arabic and long cotton robes worn by many of the men.

Wafts of perfume thrill visitors as soon as they set foot in the frescoed halls of the Santa Maria Novella pharmacy in Florence, a perfumer to poets, film stars and noblewomen through the ages.

The perfumer actually traces its roots back to 1221 by Dominican friars who cultivated medicinal herbs to make potions and balms and the company is housed in mediaeval halls with spectacular views on a cloister in the city center.