"Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own" (Crown), by Kate Bolick

Even its opening lines are provocative: "Whom to marry, and when it will happen — these two questions define every woman's existence, regardless of where she was raised or what religion she does or doesn't practice ... Men have their own problems; this isn't one of them."

"Every year it's the same circus," mutters a resident at the sight of dozens of anti-fascist protesters stomping toward a large weatherworn building in the small northern Austrian town Braunau am Inn.

"Nazis out!" chant the demonstrators, many clad in black hoodies and sporting sunglasses despite the rain, their shouts ricocheting off the three-storey residence.

U.N. culture chief Irina Bokova urged the Security Council on Monday to task peacekeepers with protecting cultural sites and to help prosecute those who destroy historical treasures.

International alarm has been growing over the fate of artifacts and monuments in Iraq and Syria after videos surfaced of jihadists destroying priceless works.

Marooned on a naval base in northwest Germany, pinned down by advancing Allied forces and Adolf Hitler dead, the last leader of the Third Reich hammered out the surrender order.

Seventy years later the telex will go on auction in New York, the flimsy sheet of pink paper valued at $20,000 to $30,000, and an incredibly rare relic from the world's deadliest conflict.

Forty years after it won the war, the Communist Party still rules Vietnam with an iron fist. But with crony capitalism, corruption and inequality now rife, many claim its victory was a hollow one.

From a shattered society plagued by poverty and food shortages, to a middle-income country and World Trade Organization member, Vietnam's authoritarian socialist regime has overseen huge change since Saigon fell to communist troops four decades ago.

First went the fancy banquets, then the lavish gift-giving. Now, China's ruling Communist Party has set its sights on a new target in its anti-corruption drive: art and literary prizes.

China's proliferation of cultural awards has raised alarm among the party's much-feared anti-corruption investigators, who worry that government officials are using them as a means of improving their clout, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

A French artist has completely covered a derelict Los Angeles motel -- palm trees and all -- with a dazzling coat of white paint to create an enormous, ghostly artwork.

Called "Projections," the piece by Vincent Lamouroux was publicly unveiled Sunday in LA's trendy Silver Lake neighborhood, and instantly became a local attraction, with fascinated passersby stopping to snap images of the motel.

As he smooths a gold plaque on the glistening flank of Myanmar's most prestigious Buddhist pagoda, a merchant pays his ancestors the highest honour -- and contributes to a bumper year of donations to re-gild the sacred site.

The Shwedagon Pagoda, which rises in a stately conical tower above downtown Yangon, has been at the heart of Buddhism in Myanmar for hundreds of years, as well as providing a luminous arena for political resistance in the former junta-run nation's more recent turbulent history. 

New Zealanders turned out in record numbers at dawn services on Saturday to honour their war dead in emotional tributes on the 100th anniversary of the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign.

Tens of thousands of people gathered at war memorials around the country for services, which will also be held in Australia and Turkey, to mark the landing of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) on Turkish soil on April 25, 1915.

An exhibition teaming works by British artist Tracey Emin -- many of them new -- and Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele, who died aged 28 in 1918, opened in Vienna on Friday.

The show at the city's Leopold Museum incorporates around 50 of Emin's often highly sexualised works alongside around 15 similar, if tamer, drawings and poems by Schiele.