A portrait of Pablo Picasso's lover Marie-Therese Walter sold in London on Tuesday night for £28.6 million ($45.0 million, 33.3 million euros), Southeby's auction house said.

The colourful and curvaceous "Femme assise pres d'une fenetre" (Woman sitting by a window), painted in 1932, was sold at a crowded salesroom to an anonymous telephone buyer, a Sotheby's spokesman said.

A replica of Michelangelo's Renaissance sculpture David that was erected suddenly last summer is unnerving residents of a Japanese town, with some calling for the naked masterpiece to be given underpants.

Okuizumo town in western Shimane prefecture received five-metre (16-foot) replicas of David and of Greek treasure the Venus de Milo, as donations from a businessman who hails from the area.

Parents in education-obsessed South Korea spent 19 trillion won ($17.4 billion) on extra classes for their children last year, seeking any edge in the hugely competitive race for a coveted college place.

The 2012 figure, published by the education ministry on Wednesday, includes cost for after-hour cram schools, private tutoring or online courses, and was equivalent to about 1.5 percent of the country's gross domestic product.

British lawmakers voted in favor of controversial legislation allowing gay marriage on Tuesday despite fierce opposition from members of Prime Minister David Cameron's own party.

The move puts Britain on track to join the ten countries that allow same-sex couples to marry, but Cameron had the embarrassment of seeing half of his Conservative legislators refusing to back him.

A Chinese official demanding a couple pay a fine for violating the country's one-child policy crushed their 13-month-old boy to death with a car, a local spokesman said Tuesday.

Under China's population controls, instituted more than 30 years ago, couples who have more than one child must pay a "social upbringing" fine, while in some cases mothers have been forced to undergo abortions.

A plump, naughty looking winged baby with a bow and arrow: sounds like the illustration on a Valentine's Day card, right? Wrong: it's a two-thousand-year-old statue on show in New York.

A new exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, "Changing Image of Eros, Ancient Greek God of Love, from Antiquity to Renaissance," demonstrates that love as we know it doesn't just last forever -- it's been around forever too.

Israelis and Palestinians rarely demonize each other in their schoolbooks but each side's texts offer children a one-sided view of their conflict, says a joint study released on Monday.

"Dehumanizing and demonizing characterizations of the other are rare in both Israeli and Palestinian books," according to the study funded by the U.S. State Department and carried out by Palestinian, Israeli and U.S. academics.

Disputes on the controversial issue of legalizing civil marriage did not impede more Lebanese youths from taking this step as a new couple, Shaza Khalil and Tony Dagher, decided to tie the knot but in a civil marriage, a step premiered last month by Kholoud Succariyeh and Nidal Darwish.

Shaza, a Muslim, and Tony, a christian, fell in love 11 years ago and have currently decided to get married outside the religious institutions, exclaiming their wish to do that in Lebanon and not in Cyprus as the habit runs for the Lebanese.

A skeleton found under a car park in the English city of Leicester is that of king Richard III, widely regarded as one of history's most notorious villains, scientists confirmed Monday.

The University of Leicester said that DNA from the 500-year-old skeleton, which has battle wounds and a curved spine, matched a 17th generation descendant of the king's sister, Canadian-born carpenter Michael Ibsen.

A U.S.-funded study released Monday said both Israeli and Palestinian schoolbooks largely present one-sided narratives of the conflict between the two peoples and tend to ignore the existence of the other side, but rarely resort to demonization.

The research by Israeli, Palestinian and American researchers, billed as setting a new standard for textbook analysis, tackled a particularly fraught issue — longstanding Israeli claims that the Palestinians teach incitement and hatred of Israel in their schools.