Acclaimed author Lung Yingtai felt the force of China's soft power when she spoke in New York this week on her first trip as Taiwan's culture minister aiming to win friends for the isolated island.

Lung, whose best-selling book on China's civil war is banned by the mainland government, had a firewall put around her name on the Chinese Internet almost immediately after she spoke at the Asia Society on Tuesday. She had pleaded, ironically, that culture should not be used as a "weapon."

Hundreds of athletes on Sunday ran a marathon to mark half a century since the arrest of South Africa's democracy icon Nelson Mandela for his anti-apartheid struggle.

The run started on the outskirts of Pietermaritzburg where on March 25, 1961 Mandela gave his last public speech as a free man, and finished at Howick village close to where he was arrested on August 5 the next year.

Germany's president commemorated on Sunday the 20th anniversary of the country's worst post-war racist violence, saying Germans were "duty-bound" remember it and learn from it.

President Joachim Gauck said the riots, which saw a mob of racist extremists mount a five-day siege of a hostel for asylum-seekers was "unfortunately still a stigma today" for the northern city of Rostock.

The Danish city of Aarhus was recommended on Friday by an EU selection panel as one of two European Capitals of Culture to be chosen for 2017.

The panel picked Aarhus to represent Denmark, with either Nicosia or Paphos in Cyprus also to be nominated by European Union governments when a final decision is made in May next year, the European Commission said in a statement.

Historians believe the medieval king, who ruled England from 1483 and is today best known as the villain of a William Shakespeare play, was buried at a church in Leicester, central England, after his death during a battle in 1485.

But the Franciscan friary, known as Greyfriars, was demolished in the 16th century and its exact location was lost.

The British Museum denied Friday that it was considering returning fragments of sculptures from the Parthenon to Greece, as suggested by the director of the Acropolis Museum in Athens a day earlier.

The British Museum said it was "open to discussions regarding a short-term loan of some of the objects but not a permanent return.

When Rudolf Hegewald left East Germany to join fellow Mormons in the U.S. state of Utah more than five decades ago, he could only dream that a member of his faith would one day run for president.

But with Mitt Romney all but certain to receive the Republican nomination next week, Hegewald might even see one of his brethren in the White House.

Global architects like Renzo Piano, Zaha Hadid and Norman Foster are flying into Venice for the Biennale show starting on Wednesday where new designs are in tune with the mood of economic crisis.

The theme of the world's largest architecture festival is "Common Ground" and director David Chipperfield from Britain said it was important that today's architects reflect social concerns and not just go for glory projects.

Canada's leader kicked off Thursday the largest ever search for the ill-fated 1845 Franklin Expedition, lost on a quest for an ice-free shipping route across the Arctic.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper made the announcement after visiting with crew aboard the Martin Bergmann research vessel, which is leading the search for HMS Erebus and HMS Terror.

Could the word for mother prove that Turkey was the birthplace of hundreds of languages as diverse as Hindi, Russian, Dutch, Albanian, Italian and English?

Researchers using a complex computer model originally designed to map epidemics have traced the evolution of the Indo-European language family to find an answer in a study published in the journal Science.