Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei was flying to Germany Thursday on his first overseas trip since he was arrested nearly four years ago, a week after receiving a new passport. 

Ai was expected to arrive on a Lufthansa flight to the southern city of Munich at 1450 GMT, Stephan Urbaschek of his Berlin gallery, Galerie Neugerriemschneider, told AFP.

Psy, Paris Hilton and Queen Elizabeth II all made it, but South Korean President Park Geun-Hye turned down her chance of immortality in the first Asian outpost of France's famous waxwork museum, Musee Grevin, that opened in Seoul Thursday.

The new museum's focus is firmly on the world of entertainment and, in particular, stars of the "Hallyu" or "Korean Wave" of pop songs and TV melodramas that have become the country's most potent cultural export.

More than a century after slavery officially ended in Brazil, DNA tests are giving Afro-Brazilians the intriguing chance to find out who they are beyond mere skin color.

"Above all, slaves lost their names and their identity. With these DNA tests, they can re-establish the connection," said Carlos Alberto Jr, head of "Brazil: DNA Africa," a series of five upcoming documentaries that aim to "restore the links broken by slavery."

Move over Tinder -- a crop of dating apps in smartphone-addicted Asia is offering to recruit friends for group dates or send along a chaperone to steer the course of romance.

While dating apps developed in the West encourage one-on-one, often no-strings-attached meetings, many in Asia are as much about old-school courtship or friendship in a region where meeting a stranger in a bar can still be a taboo.

From adulterous middle-aged marrieds to millennials who say only freaks chat up people in bars, millions of Americans are finding love online as technology corners the market in romance.

New York has a reputation as a party capital of the world, where sex is free and easy and unmarried adults outnumber their married counterparts.

Archaeologists said Tuesday they have identified the remains of four men who were among the leaders of an early English settlement in Virginia's Jamestown.

It took years for scientists to identify the poorly preserved bones belonging to an Anglican priest and three military officials.

One of Japan's best-known contemporary artists is locked in a fight with a public museum over claims it has threatened to pull the plug on works critical of the conservative government.

Makoto Aida said the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo told him to yank the pieces from an exhibit that started last week because they were "not suitable" for kids, but the museum countered that it just asked him to "modify" his creations.

A group of archaeologists have found an adult human tooth dating back around 560,000 years in southwestern France, in what researchers hailed as a "major discovery" Tuesday. 

"A large adult tooth -- we can't say if it was from a male or female -- was found during excavations of soil we know to be between 550,000 and 580,000 years old, because we used different dating methods," paleoanthropologist Amelie Viallet told Agence France Presse.

Hitler sporting a Karl Marx beard and a swastika formed with axes are just some of the provocative pieces starring at the first show ever by Slovenia's shock art collective, NSK.

The show launches as the now cult Slovenian art project again ruffles establishment feathers by staging a pair of unlikely summer concerts in pariah nation North Korea.

Pope Francis opened the registration period for next year's World Youth Day in Poland, using a tablet computer to sign himself up from a window overlooking St. Peter's Square during the traditional Sunday blessing.

The pontiff was joined by two young people as he extended an invitation to the world's Roman Catholic youth to join him in Krakow from July 25-31, 2016.