Auctioneers in Hong Kong sold 10 paintings seized from a South Korean bank that collapsed amid a corruption scandal to raise $2.4 million to help repay depositors, the Associated Presse said Tuesday.

Contemporary paintings by Chinese and Western artists were among the works that went on the block, including works by noted Chinese artists Zeng Fanzhi and Zhang Xiaogang and American Julian Schnabel.

Etihad Airways said on Tuesday that its sales have jumped 28 percent to $989 million so far this year as it pushed ahead with its rapid expansion, the Associated Presse reported.

The Abu Dhabi-based airline's CEO James Hogan said the airline turned a profit in the first three months of 2012. That follows its first year in the black in 2011. He declined to provide quarterly earnings figures.

An 80-year-old woman was able to successfully land a twin-engine airplane in northeastern Wisconsin after her husband became unconscious at the controls and died, the Associated Press said Tuesday.

Door County Sheriff Terry Vogel says the dispatch center was told just after 5 p.m. Monday that a Cessna about 6 miles south of Sturgeon Bay had declared an emergency.

Iranians flocked to parks and orchards to mark Sizdeh Bedar, an ancient festival that predates Islam and goes back thousands of years to the time when Zoroastrianism was the predominant religion of Persia.

Iran's hard-line ruling clerics have discouraged many pre-Islamic rituals, but they've been unable to put Iranians off the Persian New Year, or Nowruz, and its ending celebration of Sizdeh Bedar.

Pickled sharks, a diamond skull, polka dots and butterflies are all on display in a new exhibition devoted to bad-boy British artist Damien Hirst.

The Tate Modern show is Hirst's first major UK retrospective. It ranges from spot paintings and drug cabinets to works like "A Thousand Years" — a rotting cow's head abuzz with flies.

Rights activists say a Palestinian university lecturer has been detained on accusations that her Facebook page insulted President Mahmoud Abbas.

Hadeel Hneiti of the al-Haq rights group said Monday that Palestinian security forces arrested Ismat Abdul-Khaleq after they found writing on her Facebook page accusing Abbas of being a traitor and demanding he resign.

New research suggests that long-term use of any type of hormones to ease menopause symptoms can raise a woman's risk of breast cancer.

It is already known that taking pills that combine estrogen and progestins — the most common type of hormone therapy — can increase breast cancer risk. But women who no longer have a uterus can take estrogen alone, which was thought to be safe and possibly even slightly beneficial in terms of cancer risk.

Hungarian President Pal Schmitt resigned Monday because of a plagiarism scandal regarding a doctoral dissertation he had written 20 years ago.

Schmitt, who was elected to his largely ceremonial office in 2010 for a five-year term, said in a speech to parliament's plenary session that he is stepping down because the controversy is dividing Hungary.

AC Milan and Italy striker Antonio Cassano moved a step closer to playing again following minor heart surgery when a 10-man commission approved his return on Monday.

Milan says a panel of experts gathered by the Italian Sports Medicine Federation judged Cassano's condition to be "favorable."

Booms from rocket launchers and automatic gunfire crackled around Mali's fabled town of Timbuktu, known as an ancient seat of Islamic learning, for its 700-year-old mud mosque and, more recently, as host of the musical Festival in the Desert that attracted Bono in January.

On Sunday, nomadic Tuaregs who descended from the people who first created Timbuktu in the 11th century and seized it from invaders in 1434, attacked the city in their fight to create a homeland for the Sahara's blue-turbanned nomads. Their assault deepens a political crisis sparked March 21 when mutinous soldiers seized power in the capital. The Tuaregs have rebelled before, but never have they succeeded in taking Timbuktu or the major northern centers of Kidal and Gao, which fell Friday and Saturday as demoralized government troops retreated.