Even death does not provide relief from soaring property prices in Hong Kong, where those seeking a final resting place for a loved one face high costs and a shortage of space.

The squeeze has become so acute that traditional Chinese thinking -- where not having a proper burial or a fixed site at which to remember the dead denies the soul a peaceful resting place -- is eroding in favor of sea funerals.

Lebanese famed choreographer Abdul Halim Caracalla designed the historical musical “The Hero” that was staged at the seaside resort of Sidi Fredj in Algeria Wednesday, as part of the official festivities marking the 50th anniversary of the country’s Independence Day.

The musical brought together 800 actors, singers and ballet dancers and was transmitted live on public television. President Abdulaziz Bouteflika who attended the musical went up onto the stage to congratulate the artistes.

The Vienna State Opera scored a new profit record this season, raking in over 31.3 million euros, with average attendance at over 98 percent, the venerable house announced Tuesday.

A total 588,990 visitors attended over 360 opera, ballet and children's opera performances from September to June, the Vienna Opera said in statement.

Cuts in Italy's culture budget and regional spending have forced two music festivals in the ancient town of Viterbo to merge this summer so that one of them can be saved, organizers said Tuesday.

To enable the famous Viterbo Baroque Festival -- held for the past 41 years -- to go ahead, it will be combined with the Tuscia Operafestival, according to Tuscia's artistic director Stefano Vignati.

"The Lock" by British Romantic painter John Constable on Tuesday sold for £22.4 million ($35.2 million) at a London sale, smashing the world record price at auction for the artist.

The 56 x 47 inch (142.2 x 120.7 cm) oil on canvas, which depicts rural life in Suffolk, east England, went under the hammer at Christie's Old Master and British Paintings Evening Sale.

Seventy-five years after Amelia Earhart disappeared over the Pacific, a research team plans to leave Tuesday on an expedition to solve the mystery over the pioneering aviatrix's fate.

The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) is heading to Nikumaroro Island in Kiribati to try to establish whether Earhart survived the apparent crash of her aircraft three quarters of a century ago.

Thirteen Paris landmarks attracted more than one million visitors last year but the Notre Dame Cathedral was top choice and far ahead of the emblematic Eiffel Tower, the city's tourism office said on Monday.

The Gothic cathedral on a little islet on the River Seine drew 13.6 million tourists, followed by Sacre Coeur -- a basilica perched on a hill in Montmartre overlooking the city -- which attracted 10.5 million.

A restored French Statue of Liberty will be unveiled at a Paris museum Monday in what is the bronze sculpture's first change of address in over a century.

The French Senate voted to relocate the mini-me version of the larger U.S. sculpture from the Luxembourg Gardens after the Orsay museum of 19th century art lobbied for decades to inherit the piece symbolizing Franco-American friendship.

Archeologists in Peru have discovered a sundial, an underground tunnel and a reception room in a complex dating back to the Wari civilization, El Comercio newspaper reported Sunday.

One of the relics is believed to be a precursor to an Incan sundial, while 18 niches painted in white on the walls may have held ancestral mummies, Joseph Ochatoma, leading the excavation, told the newspaper.

It's longer than an Olympic swimming pool, took two-and-a-half years to complete and fulfills a 40-year dream -- a new mega-canvas by one of Uzbekistan's best-known artists, inspired by "One Thousand and One Nights".

Now, the immense painting by Lekim Ibragimov is on its way to Europe, where it will be put on show first in the Czech Republic and then in other European countries.