On October 15th 2015, World Monuments Fund officially announced 50 sites to join the 2016 World Monuments Watch at their press conference in New York.

Following its nomination by Save Beirut Heritage, the remarkable yet endangered

After a choppy few weeks for Pope Francis, a strongly denied report that he has a brain tumor has sent Vatican and Italian conspiracy theorists into overdrive.

"The timing chosen reveals the manipulative intention of throwing up a cloud of dust," the Vatican's Osservatore Romano claimed in its first edition after another newspaper, Quotidiano Nazionale, published its "scoop" about the pontiff's health.

Gay people caught having sex in Indonesia's staunchly Islamic Aceh province will from Friday be punished by 100 strokes of the cane, an official said, despite criticism of the "inhumane" law.

Under an Islamic bylaw, anal sex between men and "the rubbing of body parts between women for stimulation" is outlawed. The rule applies to all Muslims including foreigners, provincial sharia chief Syahrizal Abbas told Agence France Presse.

A Japanese Buddhist monk on Wednesday finished a grueling nine-day ritual without eating, drinking, or sleeping as he chanted sutras 100,000 times, reports said.

The 41-year-old Kogen Kamahori's endurance test made him a living form of the Buddha according to his temple's beliefs, the Asahi newspaper reported.

The Islamic State group may dominate headlines about the destruction of heritage sites in Syria, but it is far from the only culprit, new U.S. research warned Wednesday.

The Syrian regime, Kurdishand other opposition forces are also major players in the destruction, according to the study led by a specialist in Middle East archaeology at Dartmouth University.

An unholy row has broken out over the restoration of France's medieval landmark, Chartres Cathedral.

State-funded work to return the interior of the towering 13th-century cathedral to its original creamy white hues has sparked a howl of protest from as far away as the U.S.

The parents of French saint Therese of Lisieux -- dubbed "The Little Flower" -- were raised to sainthood too Sunday, in a move Pope Francis hopes will underscore the importance of the family.

Louis and Zelie Martin were the very picture of charitableness: they helped the sick and dying, gave alms to beggars, ensured hospital care for the very ill and took in a child whose family could not look after him.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry pleaded Sunday for the United States to be re-elected to UNESCO's executive board, pledging to do his utmost to restore U.S. funding to the U.N. cultural body "in full."

The United States and Israel in 2013 lost their UNESCO voting rights in the Paris-based U.N. agency's 195-member assembly, two years after suspending their financial contributions to the organization over Palestinian membership.

University student Santadevi Meghwal has been threatened, harassed, ostracized and even fined by a council of male elders in her village in India.

But the 20-year-old is determined to push ahead with annulling her child marriage, and join a small but growing number of youngsters in northern India rejecting the ancient tradition.

Villagers in northern India beat a Muslim man to death for attempting to smuggle cattle for slaughter, police said Friday, the latest victim of soaring religious tensions in a country where the majority consider cows sacred.

Twenty-year-old Noman, whose full name is not known, and four others were severely beaten before being handed over to police in the north Indian state of Himachal Pradesh on Thursday, according to officials.