Angola's government on Tuesday denied it had banned Islam and closed mosques in the country, after speculation that sparked outrage among Muslims worldwide.

"There is no war in Angola against Islam or any other religion," said Manuel Fernando, director of the National Institute for Religious Affairs, part of the ministry of culture.

For years, Las Vegas tourists have had no place to pay their respects to one of the glitzy town's founding fathers.

The once wildly popular Liberace museum closed in 2010 after years of declining patronage, and the famously flamboyant entertainer's shimmering artifacts have since languished in storage.

A tiny book of psalms from 1640, believed to be the first book printed in what is now the United States, sold for just under $14.2 million on Tuesday, setting an auction record for a printed book.

The Bay Psalm Book, which was auctioned at Sotheby's in Manhattan, had a pre-sale estimate of $15 million to $30 million. A copy of John James Audubon's "Birds of America" was the previous record-holder, selling for $11.5 million at Sotheby's in 2010.

A ruined fifth century monastery in Istanbul is to be turned into a mosque next year, local media reported Tuesday, amid a row with Greece over possible similar moves for the ancient Hagia Sophia complex.

The plans for the Monastery of Studios, which was dedicated to St John the Baptist and was considered the most important of Constantinople, were revealed by the Hurriyet Daily News.

Archeologists in Nepal say they have unearthed traces of a timber structure in southern Nepal that they say is the oldest Buddhist shrine.

Kosh Prasad Acharya, who teamed with archaeologists from Durham University in Britain, said Tuesday that a dig inside the sacred Mayadevi Temple in Lumbini recovered the traces of the timber structure. The traces were scientifically tested and confirm dating to the sixth century.

Berlin's historic Zoo Palast cinema re-opens Thursday after a major renovation to restore the sparkle to the former Cold War-era theater, once the star-studded cultural boast of the city.

The Zoo Palast, which owes its name to a nearby city-center zoological garden, was built in the mid-1950s out of the ashes of a silent movie theater.

European judges will on Wednesday hear the case of a 23-year-old French woman who claims the country's highly contentious ban on full-face veils violates her rights.

The Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) will hear arguments in the case brought by a plaintiff known only by her initials SAS, with a ruling expected in early 2014.

A rocking chair used by president John F. Kennedy at the White House and two flags from his office drew more than $500,000 from a collector, Heritage Auctions said Sunday.

They were among some 228 items linked to the former president put under the hammer late Saturday in Dallas, Texas, on the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination in that city.

Standing next to a newly refurbished bell tower, priest Aristakes Aivazyan says it needed divine intervention to save Armenia's medieval Haghartsin monastery.

But it also took a lot of money from a very unlikely benefactor -- the Muslim ruler of the resource-rich Arab emirate of Sharjah, Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammed al-Qasimi.

A bird statuette featured in the classic 1941 detective thriller "The Maltese Falcon" is going on sale in New York City.

The black figurine is being offered on Monday at Bonhams auction house, which did not provide a pre-sale estimate.