Still stumped for a Christmas present? Then what about an exquisite $1 million Picasso for the living room, yours for just $135 at an online charity raffle.

The perfectly preserved Cubist gouache was bought by an anonymous donor from a New York gallery and given to a charity working to save the ancient city of Tyre in southern Lebanon.

Nigeria's government on Wednesday gave striking university lecturers a temporary reprieve, extending a deadline for them to return to work or be sacked.

Members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), who walked out on July 1 leaving hundreds of thousands of students in limbo, had been given an ultimatum to get back behind their desks by Wednesday or be dismissed.

The century-old home of Egypt's mummies and King Tutankhamun's treasures is trying to make the best out of the worst times of political turmoil. But the Egyptian Museum is taking a hammering on multiple levels, from riots on its doorstep to funding so meager it can't keep up paper clip supplies for its staff.

The museum, a treasure trove of pharaonic antiquities, has long been one of the centerpieces of tourism to Egypt. But the constant instability since the 2011 uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak has dried up tourism to the country, slashing a key source of revenue. Moreover, political backbiting and attempts to stop corruption have had a knock-on effect of bringing a de facto ban on sending antiquities on tours to museums abroad, cutting off what was once a major source of funding for the state.

Egyptian poet Ahmed Fouad Negm, renowned for his revolutionary poetry and outspoken criticism of Arab political leaders, died on Tuesday at the age of 84, friends said.

"Ahmed Fouad Negm passed away. He was 84," publisher Mohammed Hashem told Agence France Presse.

The new novel by literary superstar Haruki Murakami was Japan's biggest-selling book of 2013, the nation's largest distributor said.

The novel, about a man struggling to come to terms with events in his past, beat off competition from the flood of self-help books and how-to manuals published in Japan every year to come top of the list released Monday by Nippon Shuppan Hanbai.

French artist Laure Prouvost on Monday won Britain's Turner prize for contemporary art for her video installation set among a mock-tea party setting, it was announced at a ceremony in Londonderry, Northern Ireland.

"The jury thought her work was outstanding for its complex and courageous combination of images and objects in a deeply atmospheric environment," said an official press release from Tate, the award's partners.

When Sian Davies died after mysteriously falling out of a window in a south London house 16 years ago, her family was stunned — they had not seen her for two decades.

Davies had moved to London as a young woman pursuing a master's degree, but soon she cut off virtually all contact with her family and disappeared from sight. Her relatives gathered that she had gotten tangled up with a cult — a secretive, closely-knit Maoist group whose members lived together in a communist collective. The family knew little else, and was none the wiser even after her death.

At this sprawling desert camp in Jordan, home to thousands of children who fled Syria's civil war, a few found a moment to smile Sunday watching a troop of clowns.

Five European comedians working for Mabsutins, a private circus and clown group in Spain affiliated with the U.S.-based group Clowns Without Borders, performed for some 60 children. More than 100,000 people live at the wind-swept camp, only 16 kilometers (10 miles) from the Syrian border, and for the children lucky enough to see the performance, it helped them forget about the challenges they face.

Dozens of couples were expected to tie the knot early Monday, moments after midnight, when a new law allowing same couples to marry takes effect in Hawaii.

A Waikiki resort was hosting mass ceremonies for anyone wanting to sign up, while a group of clergy who pushed for the new law planned to host a wedding for an openly gay Unitarian minister at a church near downtown Honolulu.

School files detailing the adolescent wrongdoings of "class-clown" John Lennon fetched nearly £8,500 each in an online auction on Sunday.

The pair of detention sheets revealed that the Beatle received punishment for "fighting in class", being a "nuisance", "shoving" and showing "no interest whatsoever" during his time at Quarry Bank High School for Boys in Liverpool, northwest England.