A leading Roman Catholic commentator and founder of a pro-Catholic media organization has landed a deal to write a "full-scale" biography of Pope Francis.

Publisher Henry Holt announced Wednesday that it has acquired a book by Austen Ivereigh, a British journalist who helped found Catholic Voices, which seeks to improve how the church is presented in the news. Ivereigh also is a former press secretary for the Archbishop of Westminster.

Glued to the wall, young men and women eye each other timidly as a priest circles the room and nudges neighbors together, encouraging them to mingle over cookies and tea.

It is the fifth monthly "mass for singles" at Our Lord's Ascension Church in Warsaw, one of several such initiatives across heavily Catholic Poland at a time when loneliness is on the rise and faith is waning.

New Zealand on Thursday moved to correct a clerical oversight lasting 200 years that meant its two main islands were never officially named.

Universally known as the North and South Islands, the landmasses had never been formally recognized despite appearing on maps since European settlement began in the early 1800s, the New Zealand Geographic Board said.

An online raffle is offering Picasso lovers a chance to own one of his original works for $135.

The work is titled "Man with Opera Hat." The 12-inch (30.5-centimeter) by 9-inch (23-centimeter) cubist drawing from 1914 is valued at about $1 million.

Organizers of the world's biggest book fair warned Tuesday against the domination of Internet giants as the publishing world grapples to blend old and new forms of reading.

American giants Amazon, Apple and Google -- whose entry into the world of online sales and digital books is threatening the traditional publishing industry -- are "logistics magicians but are not publishers", said Juergen Boos, director of the Frankfurt Book Fair.

The preservation of monuments in Syria and Mali pose some of the biggest challenges on a list of 67 global sites that need protection, a foundation warned Tuesday.

Unveiling its watch list for 2014, the World Monuments Fund (WMF) warned that conflict, catastrophe, lack of resources, development pressures and loss of cultural traditions threaten sites in 41 countries.

Gold and silver pieces as well as bones and pottery from 1,500 years ago were discovered in Lake Titicaca by underwater archaeologists, a researcher said Tuesday.

"We found 2,000 objects and fragments," Christophe Delaere, the Belgian co-director of the Huinaimarca Project that unearthed the items, said at a ceremony in La Paz.

It's no secret humans have been having sex for millennia -- but recently discovered cave art suggests they were doing it in the Americas much earlier than many archeologists believed.

A new exhibit in Brazil showcases artifacts dating as far back as 30,000 years ago -- throwing a wrench in the commonly held theory humans first crossed to the Americas from Asia a mere 12,000 years ago.

In a year with no clear favorites, Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami appears to be the front-runner to win the Nobel Prize for Literature this week.

Murakami, known across the globe for works such as "Norwegian Wood" and "1Q84", heads the list at bookmaker Ladbrokes with 5/2 odds.

Sales of contemporary art rose 15 percent in the year to June as the worldwide market bounced back from the global financial crisis, according to research published on Monday.

Artprice, a French company which tracks art sales worldwide, said the strong performance compared with a 2.4 percent contraction in the overall art market and reflected the growing investment value of works by artists born after 1945.