Croatian lawmakers adopted Tuesday a long-awaited law allowing gay couples to register as life partners, enjoying the same rights as their heterosexual peers except on adopting children.

Gay rights activists hailed the legislation in the largely conservative EU member state, which is strongly influenced by the powerful Roman Catholic Church.

Four Romanians behind a spectacular art heist in the Netherlands were ordered Monday to pay 18 million euros, with the fate of the stolen masterpieces by Picasso, Monet, Gauguin and Lucien Freud still a mystery. 

Seven paintings that were temporarily on display at the Kunsthal Museum in Rotterdam were stolen in 2012 in a raid that lasted only three minutes, in what the Dutch media called "the theft of the century".

Nana Mouskouri, one of the best-selling singers of all time, returned to the stage in her native Greece on Monday as part of a tour to celebrate her 80th birthday.

Ahead of a concert at the foot of the Acropolis in Athens, where six years ago she bid goodbye to the music industry, the icon known for her signature black-rimmed glasses and marble-like profile, admitted leaving was a mistake.

Highbrow art house Sotheby's is opening a door to the masses in an alliance with Internet age online marketplace eBay.

The companies touted the tie-up as uniting eBay's global clout with the "iconic international art" expertise of Sotheby's famed auction house.

The Church of England overcame bitter divisions Monday to vote in favor of allowing female bishops for the first time in its nearly 500-year history.

The decision reverses a previous shock rejection in 2012 and comes after intensive diplomacy by Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby.

South African Nobel Prize-winning writer and anti-apartheid activist Nadine Gordimer, who became an icon through her unique insights into the country's social agonies, has died at the age of 90.

Through 15 novels, several volumes of short stories, non-fiction and other works published in 40 languages around the world, Gordimer eviscerated white-minority rule under the apartheid system and its aftershocks once democracy had been achieved in 1994.

Scribbling emotions on walls has been a tradition in Rome going back thousands of years and even the word "graffiti" was first used for markings found in the ruins of Pompeii.

The modern version could be the scrawls seen in maternity wards in the Italian capital: "Get a move on, auntie's waiting!", "Chiara is born!", "Welcome little Mattia!".

The Church of England approved a new baptism service on Sunday with no mention of the devil in an attempt to make the ceremony more accessible.

The simplified wording was written after priests said they often performed the ceremony for families who had little experience of church, and that the traditional service was unnecessarily complex.

On Cape Town's waterfront at the southern tip of Africa, the world's biggest museum of contemporary art from across the continent is being carved from a conglomeration of concrete tubes nine storeys high.

The $50 million (36.7 million euro) project to transform the grim functionality of 42 disused colonial grain silos into an ultramodern tribute to African creativity is driven by an international team of art experts and architects.

Apartment blocks near a mosque and a kindergarten daubed with cartoon characters seem an unlikely place for the slaughter of 27 alleged prostitutes, but in Baghdad death is never far.

Few people in the Iraqi capital's Zayouna district know any details of what happened in their neighborhood late on Saturday, and even fewer want to hazard a guess.