Greek Cypriots have been authorized to hold a Good Friday mass at a church in the Turkish-held town of Famagusta on divided Cyprus for the first time in decades.

Famagusta mayor-in-exile Alexis Galanos said Friday’s landmark service at Saint George Exorinos church will send a message of reconciliation on one of the most important dates in the Greek Orthodox calendar.

Ancient paintings of fornicating Chinese couples and phalluses made of stone are among items that Dutch art collector Ferdinand Bertholet hopes will help China reconnect with its sexually charged past.

Explicit works spanning from the Han Dynasty (206 BC - 220 AD) to the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) are among more than 100 pieces on display in Hong Kong, drawing surprise and giggles from some viewers unaware of China's ancient relationship with sex.

A Tyrannosaurus rex is joining the dinosaur fossil collection on the National Mall on Tuesday after a more than 2,000-mile (3,200-kilometer) journey from Montana.

For the first time since its dinosaur hall opened in 1911, the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History will have a nearly complete T. rex skeleton. FedEx is delivering the dinosaur bones in a truck carrying 16 carefully packed crates.

Ted Neeley, the original lead in "Jesus Christ Superstar", is back four decades on as the son of God in the hit musical in Rome, and hopes Pope Francis will be in the audience.

The pontiff will be "just down the street and we're hoping he's going to come visit us and see the show. I think he's a wonderful, wonderful man," an enthusiastic 70-year-old Neely told Agence France Presse between rehearsals of the world-famous rock opera.

Tyres "burn" in a corner, gas masks and truncheons hang from the ceiling: as unrest rocks Ukraine, art from Kiev's Maidan is already making its debut in a Vienna museum.

The exhibit is titled "I Am a Drop in the Ocean" after a slogan used by the protesters on the Maidan, or Independence Square.

India's highest court on Tuesday recognized the existence of a third gender that is neither male nor female, in a landmark judgement hailed by transgender people.

"Recognition of transgenders as a third gender is not a social or medical issue but a human rights issue," Justice K.S. Radhakrishnan told the Supreme Court while handing down the ruling.

The Guardian and the Washington Post shared a Pulitzer Prize Monday for reporting on leaks from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that revealed a global surveillance network monitoring millions of Americans and foreigners.

The British and American newspapers won the award for public service journalism handed out by the Pulitzer committee at Columbia University in New York for sparking debate on secretive NSA programs.

Nazi memorabilia that belonged to Adolf Hitler and air force chief Hermann Goering have been withdrawn from a Paris auction following objections from Jewish bodies.

Goering's passport and a wooden chest presented to Hitler emblazoned with swastikas were among the items that were to have gone under the hammer in a sale organised by the Vermot de Pas auction house on April 26.

A lock of Napoleon Bonaparte's hair and other "priceless" artifacts linked to the French emperor have been stolen from a museum in Australia, police said Tuesday.

Burglars broke into the building on Victoria state's Mornington Peninsula, south of Melbourne, in what was believed to be a targeted robbery.

France's main Jewish body on Sunday called for the cancellation of an auction of Adolf Hitler and Nazi air force chief Hermann Goering's personal effects due in Paris next month.

The umbrella organisation CRIF said the sale, planned for April 26, was "a form of moral indecency" and disrespectful to "the victims of Nazi barbarism".