The Vatican on Tuesday launched an unprecedented worldwide consultation on the new realities of family life including gay marriage as part of Pope Francis's efforts to reform the Catholic Church.

A questionnaire has been sent to bishops around the world asking them for detailed information about the "many new situations requiring the Church's attention and pastoral care".

Previously unknown masterpieces by modernist painters Marc Chagall and Otto Dix are among a vast trove of works believed stolen by the Nazis and uncovered in a Munich flat, an art historian said Tuesday.

Breaking two days of silence following the revelation of the spectacular discovery, Meike Hoffmann, the chief expert aiding the investigation, said the Chagall painting, an allegorical scene dating from the mid-1920s, had a "particularly high art-historical value".

In a quiet, tree-lined suburb of New York City sits an unassuming brick ranch house that many musicians consider hallowed ground.

This is where saxophonist John Coltrane composed the epic 1964 jazz masterpiece "A Love Supreme," shortly after moving into the Dix Hills, Long Island, home. Although he only lived there three years — Coltrane died of cancer in 1967 at age 40 — musicians including Carlos Santana and Coltrane's jazz saxophonist son Ravi are among those backing a volunteer effort to turn the dilapidated, four-bedroom house into a museum and learning center.

Justice Minister Tzipi Livni is pushing to change the law in Israel to allow civil unions, including between gays and lesbians, an official said Monday.

The purpose of the ministerial proposal, currently in the form of a memorandum, is "to legislate an official status for the union of couples for joint life, which reflects their will to live together, have a family life and joint household, without marrying according to personal law as applied in Israel."

Turkey's conservative Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has stirred controversy with weekend remarks in favor of single-sex dorms in the mainly Muslim but staunchly secular country.

"Female and male students cannot live in the same house," the head of the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) was quoted as saying by the Turkish press on Monday.

An Israeli parliamentary committee held a heated debate Monday on whether to begin allowing Jews to pray on what they call the Temple Mount, the compound housing Al-Aqsa mosque.

But there was no outcome to the Knesset internal affairs committee's hearing, which was repeatedly disrupted by Arab MPs who were eventually ejected from the room.

Jung Chang says she does not enjoy arguments, but the latest book from the writer whose works are banned in China is proving to be typically contentious.

The "Wild Swans" author has offered a revisionist account of Empress Dowager Cixi, the concubine who ruled behind the scenes from 1861 until her death in 1908.

The discovery in a rubbish-strewn flat in Germany of nearly 1,500 paintings including works by Picasso and Matisse looted by the Nazis sparked urgent calls Monday to hunt for their rightful owners.

The shock find, valued at an estimated one billion euros ($1.3 billion dollars), was reported Sunday by news weekly Focus. Authorities repeatedly declined to comment on the trove apparently uncovered in 2011.

Author Yasmina Khadra said on Saturday that he plans to run as an independent candidate in Algeria's April 2014 presidential election.

"It's official. I am a candidate for the 2014 presidential election," he told Agence France Presse by telephone.

A three-tonne (3,000 kilo) stone has fallen from a wall surrounding a pharaonic tomb outside Cairo but the burial site was not damaged, Egypt's ministry of antiquities said on Saturday.

The incident occurred on Friday morning and work was on to restore the stone to its position, the ministry said, adding that Antiquities Minister Mohammed Ibrahim had visited the site on Saturday.