Group of Seven leaders will gather from Sunday in a quintessentially German venue handpicked by Chancellor Angela Merkel, a luxury hotel with a fairytale setting and a tumultuous past.

Elmau Castle, nestled in the Bavarian Alps, is a five-star resort that will be transformed into a fortress for the two-day meeting of the club of rich nations.

The diary of a detective hunting Jack the Ripper and a poison-filled syringe intended for use by the notorious Kray twins are among items at a new crime exhibition in London.

"The Crime Museum Uncovered" show at the Museum of London comprises more than 600 exhibits, including champagne belonging to the Great Train robbers, objects handled by acid-bath murderer John Haigh and various tools used by a post-war Russian spy ring.

Members of Afghanistan's Taliban are in Norway for informal talks with representatives of Afghan society, the Norwegian government said Thursday, in a new sign of a nascent dialogue.

According to Afghan and Norwegian media, the talks were expected to focus on women's rights in Afghanistan.

Two Moroccan men who kissed in public were arrested by authorities in the conservative Muslim kingdom and a Spanish feminist was expelled after a pro-gay protest, officials said on Thursday.

On Tuesday authorities arrested two French members of the controversial feminist campaign Femen after they protested topless in front of a Rabat landmark against Morocco's treatment of gays.

A native American student has won the right to wear an eagle feather at his U.S. school graduation, after a last-minute deal was reached to curtail court action, officials said Wednesday.

Christian Titman had repeatedly asked his school in California to let him display the feather, presented by his father as a mark of his academic achievements, at his graduation Thursday.

Diameter, width, thickness -- nothing is left to chance as Brazilian jewelry designer Ana Suassuna trains Haitian artisans how to shape cow horns into fashionable bracelets.

As sanders whir in the background, Suassuna surveys the work being done in a small studio in the heart of bustling Port-au-Prince.

When Chen Naibao got into the wine business, he left out the pigeon blood and lamb meat that have been hallmarks of vintages in China's Xinjiang region for more than a thousand years.

The animal parts are usually added to enhance flavor and increase the supposed medicinal qualities of museles, a traditional wine raved about in Tang dynasty poetry and long fermented by local Uighurs, despite the prohibition on alcohol of their Muslim religion.

Under the glittering dome of the Invalides military hospital in Paris, where Napoleon lies buried, France's great general continues to divide opinion, 200 years after his historic defeat at Waterloo.

The few French tourists who come to pay their respects bicker among themselves: for Jean-Marie, Napoleon was a "dictator" but his wife Claudine reminds him that he "accomplished great things, including France's legal system".

The government of France has intervened to stop descendants of the country's former royal family from including some heirlooms of historic importance in an auction to take place later this year, Sotheby's said on Wednesday.

Culture Minister Fleur Pellerin on Tuesday slapped "national treasure" designations on three objects among some 200 lots that are due to go under the hammer in Paris on September 29, the U.S.-based auction house said, confirming a report by the newspaper Le Figaro.

Police have arrested two curators of a new Cairo museum for allegedly stealing ancient artifacts and replacing them with replicas, the antiquities ministry said on Wednesday.

Looting of the country's cultural heritage has increased since the popular uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak in 2011 and during the years of political turmoil that followed.