A Japanese court on Thursday sentenced a South Korean monk to six years in prison for stealing a Buddha statue and a set of scriptures from an island that has long been a historic gateway between the two nations.

Kim Sang-ho, 70, together with four other South Koreans, stole the statue and 360 volumes of Buddhist scripture, worth around 110 million yen ($884,000) in total, according to the ruling by the Nagasaki District Court.

"La Coiffeuse," a cubist work by Picasso worth about $15 million, will be returned to France where it was stolen 17 years ago, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

The painting, whose name means "The Hairdresser," was recovered last year around Christmas, wrapped in parcel paper. 

Even Cubans who don't speak a word of English eat "un cake" on their birthdays.

They wear "los tennis" and "bloomers." Their kids go crazy for Taylor Swift and "The Big Bang Theory." U.S. science fiction master Ray Bradbury has pride of place on their bookshelves beside revolutionary poet Jose Marti.

Before the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech to hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Washington in 1963, he fine-tuned his civil rights message before a much smaller audience in North Carolina.

Reporters had covered King's 55-minute speech at a high school gymnasium in Rocky Mount on November 27, 1962, but a recording wasn't known to exist until English professor Jason Miller found an aging reel-to-reel tape in a town library. Miller played it in public for the first time Tuesday at North Carolina State University.

Determined to rise high enough for their prayers to be heard, climbers defy the stifling summer heat to conquer a summit in Algeria's northern Kabylie region.

They are women desperate for children, youth seeking jobs, and the sick hoping for a cure.

Now 73 and sitting in his Tokyo home, Yohachi Nakajima fights back tears when he thinks of his Chinese adopted mother and the farming village he once called home -- a boy lost inside imperial Japan's crumbling empire.

He was just three years old when Tokyo surrendered on August 15, 1945, ending World War II but also leaving about 1.5 million Japanese stranded in Manchukuo, Tokyo's puppet regime in northeastern China.

Under a soldier's watchful gaze, a group of artists paint a blast wall outside Kabul's presidential palace with a huge pair of eyes in bright, almost psychedelic colors.

Alongside the eyes, a slogan reads: "Corruption cannot be hidden from God or from the people".

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Wednesday his government would remain opposed to gay marriage during the current parliament, but suggested the issue could be put to a popular vote after the next election.

Despite growing public support for same-sex marriage, with a poll last year finding those in favor of equal rights had reached a record high of 72 percent, Australia has not yet legalized marriage equality.

Hundreds of staff at London's National Gallery on Tuesday began an indefinite strike, the latest in a series of walkouts to protest at the outsourcing of some services to the private sector.

Members of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union have staged 56 days of action since February after plans were revealed for privatising certain services, which the gallery said would allow it to "operate more flexibly and deliver an enhanced service".

Driving through parts of northeastern Syria, Vian Khouzy points proudly to dozens of new road signs printed in Kurdish. "It's a dream come true," he says.

The 33-year old works as a taxi driver in areas controlled by the autonomous Kurdish administration in northern and northeastern Syria.