Five paintings by French impressionist Claude Monet, including his famous 1908 "Le Grand Canal" view of Venice, sold for a total of $84 million (73 million euros) in a London auction on Tuesday.

"Le Grand Canal", a hazy blue-and-green view of the banks of the Italian city painted at the peak of Monet's career, sold for $35.6 million (31.4 million euros).

The autobiography of "Little House on the Prairie" author Laura Ingalls Wilder has become a surprise publishing hit in America, with buyers rushing to snap up the candid account of pioneer life.

First published in November by the tiny South Dakota Historical Society Press, "Pioneer Girl" depicts an unglossed view of the 19th century Midwest, a marked departure from the bucolic imagery of the "Little House" series.

On a freezing night three years ago, 13-year-old Susmita Kami sneaked out of her husband's house and didn't stop running until she reached her parent's doorstep in Nepal's remote northwest.

Her escape from a forced marriage -- a tradition many teenage girls from the Himalayan nation's Dalit community are expected to uphold -- was soon under threat.

Pope Francis on Tuesday approved a decree declaring slain Salvadoran archbishop Oscar Romero a martyr for the church.

The cleric, a defender of the poor and vocal critic of the military in El Salvador, was shot dead in 1980 while celebrating mass.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas has ordered an investigation into a drawing of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed which appeared in a West Bank newspaper, local media reported Tuesday.

The cartoon, which appeared Sunday in al-Hayat al-Jadida, depicted what appeared to be a giant Mohammed standing on top of the world, sprinkling grains of love and acceptance from a heart-shaped satchel.

The only two surviving bronzes by Italian Renaissance master Michelangelo are thought to have been identified with the help of a tiny clue in a 500-year-old sketch, British researchers said Monday.

The bronzes, "Bacchants Riding On Panthers", date from 1506-08 and show a muscular pair of nude male revellers, arms raised in triumph to the sky, astride snarling panthers.

More than a million Hindus thronged temples throughout Malaysia on Tuesday to celebrate Thaipusam, a colorful annual religious festival in which many display their devotion by piercing their bodies with hooks and skewers.

Celebrations in the capital Kuala Lumpur centered, as they have for 125 years, on the spectacular Batu Caves complex on the city's outskirts, which many Hindus walked up to ten hours to reach in an annual pilgrimage.

A senior European commissioner warned Monday about rising levels of  extremism and intolerance across the 28-nation bloc, targeting Jews, Muslims, homosexuals and even women. 

"There is rising anti-Semitism, there is rising Islamophobia, there is rising homophobia," Frans Timmermans, deputy to European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told parliamentarians from EU states meeting in Latvia's capital Riga. 

Two sculptures that languished in obscurity for more than a century may be the only surviving bronze works by Michelangelo, researchers announced in Britain on Monday.

The international research team led by Britain's University of Cambridge and the Fitzwilliam Museum uncovered new evidence linking the two nude works to Michelangelo, whose famed works include the painted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Programming at a pan-Arab news channel owned by Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal was unavailable on Monday, hours after its first transmission from Bahrain.

The satellite feed of Alarab News Channel showed only promotional material, and an Alarab executive declined to comment.