Pope Francis has looked beyond the usual Vatican circles for new cardinals and overhauled the governance of the Vatican bank at the start of a year that heralds key reforms for the Roman Catholic Church.

Even some measures that appear limited in scope, like the curtailment of the honorific "monsignor" title and a cut in costs for sainthood applications, are being seen as signals of a will to overhaul the Vatican.

German sweet maker Haribo said Friday it had stopped selling some of its liquorice sweets in Sweden and Denmark because certain consumers considered them racist.

The sweets, part of the Skipper Mix salty blend which has been on the market for years, will no longer feature the controversial figures in the future in both Scandinavian countries.

A record-breaking number of people have flocked to a Dutch Old Masters exhibition in New York, fueled by a best-selling novel featuring one of the paintings on display.

The Frick Collection originally billed "Girl with a Pearl Earring," the much-loved masterpiece that inspired a Hollywood film in 2003, as the prime attraction of its October-January show.

Researchers said Friday they may have discovered remains of King Alfred the Great, the 9th-century royal remembered for protecting England from the Vikings and educating a largely illiterate nation.

The University of Winchester said in a statement that a pelvis found in a box of bones in the city's museum is likely to be either from the legendary leader or his son, King Edward the Elder.

"Brokeback Mountain", the Oscar-winning epic about the relationship between two cowboys in the American West, is coming to the stage as an opera, with a world premiere in Madrid this month.

The opera, brought to the screen in 2005 and based on the 1997 short story of the same name by Annie Proulx, opens January 28 at the Teatro Real in the Spanish capital, some six years after it was commissioned.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni views gays as "sick" but does not believe they should be jailed or executed and will block a push by parliament to impose tough penalties, his spokesman said Friday.

"He does not approve of homosexuality but he believes that these people have a right to exist," presidential spokesman Tamale Mirudi told Agence France Presse.

Malaysian Hindu devotee Karthi Gan grimaces while tapping his feet to the beat of ritual drums as two men plunge dozens of sharp hooks into his chest and back.

The painful ritual is Karthi's way of giving thanks to the Hindu deity Muruga as part of the country's colourful annual Thaipusam festival, one of the world's most extreme displays of religious devotion.

A Japanese soldier who hid in the Philippine jungle for three decades, refusing to believe World War II was over until his former commander returned and ordered him to surrender, has died in Tokyo aged 91.

Hiroo Onoda waged a guerilla campaign in Lubang Island near Luzon until he was finally persuaded in 1974 that peace had broken out, ignoring leaflet drops and successive attempts to convince him the Imperial Army had been defeated.

The European Parliament on Thursday "forcefully condemned" laws in nearly 80 countries which criminalize or otherwise discriminate against homosexual men and women.

Some "78 countries consider consensual same-sex relations as a crime," European lawmakers said in a resolution, highlighting the fact that in several nations, such as Nigeria and Saudi Arabia, it carries a possible death penalty.

Renovators who restored pop legend Sting's Tuscan villa and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence were allegedly linked to an organised crime syndicate, Italian media reports said Thursday, citing a police investigation.

GGF and PDP Construction are accused of running an elaborate scam involving 10 million euros' ($13.61 million) worth of fake invoices in a hustle dreamt up by a known crook, the police said.