LISBON (Reuters) – Christie’s auction house canceled the sale of 85 paintings by the Catalan Surrealist Joan Miro on Tuesday after an uproar over whether debt-ridden Portugal, their legal owner, could sell the treasures to buyers abroad. The auctioneers withdr... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – He’ll take ‘Consumer Protection’ for $200, Alex. Richard Cordray, director of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, will appear on Jeopardy! on February 5, about 27 years after he won $45,303 as a contestant on the game show. He... More »
BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany must publish the full list of artworks found in the flat of an elderly recluse last year which are mostly believed to have been looted or extorted by the Nazis, a German court ruled on Friday, citing the need for transparency in a ca... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – This may be the last thing that anyone with a touch of ophidiophobia – fear of snakes – would want to hear: flying snakes have surprisingly good aerodynamic qualities. Scientists studying the amazing gliding proficiency of an Asian speci... More »
JERUSALEM/LONDON (Reuters) – Actress Scarlett Johansson’s very public rift with the charity Oxfam over her endorsement of an Israeli firm operating in the West Bank has thrown a Hollywood spotlight on one of the thorniest issues in Middle East peace talks. Joh... More »
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Actress Scarlett Johansson has quit her role as an ambassador for Oxfam, the charity said on Thursday, after she fell out with group for endorsing an Israeli firm operating in the occupied West Bank. The Hollywood star has become the publ... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – It’s getting harder and harder to take umbrage if someone calls you a Neanderthal. According to two studies published on Wednesday, DNA from these pre-modern humans may play a role in the appearance of hair and skin as well as the risk of ... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – An abstract painting by German artist Gerhard Richter will go on sale for the first time at Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Sale in London, alongside works by Lucian Freud and Andy Warhol, Sotheby’s said on Wednesday. Richter’s “Wand (Wall)”, pai... More »
ROME (Reuters) – The Catholic Church has appealed to thieves to return a reliquary containing the blood of the late Pope John Paul II that disappeared in what it called a “vile and sacrilegious theft”. The gold reliquary was stolen at the weekend from a small ... More »
ROME (Reuters) – Thieves broke into a small church in the mountains east of Rome over the weekend and stole a reliquary with the blood of the late Pope John Paul II, a custodian said on Monday. Dozens of police with sniffer dogs scoured the remote area for clu... More »
MANILA (Reuters) – Luxury boutique hotel chain Nobu will set up its first Asia hotel in a $1.3 billion Philippines gambling complex operated by Melco Crown Entertainment Ltd, mainly targeting wealthy Chinese punters. The Manila-based City of Dreams casino-reso... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Thousands of U.S. anti-abortion activists braved frigid temperatures to rally at the annual March for Life on Wednesday, and a top Republican lawmaker vowed that the House of Representatives would vote soon to end taxpayer-funded abortio... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Christie’s art sales surged to a record high of £4.54 billion ($7.13 billion) in 2013 as new buyers and rising Asian demand contributed to a buoyant art market in a fragile global economy. Sales at the London-based auction house rose 16 perc... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – Scientists are stumped as to how a rock mysteriously appeared in images taken two weeks apart by NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity. The rover, which landed in an area known as Meridiani Planum a decade ago, is exploring the rim ... More »
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – With an oink oink here and a cluck cluck there, animals arrived at the Vatican on Friday to get a blessing. The animals, including pigs, chickens, horses, cats and dogs, were at St. Peter’s Square to mark the feast of St. Anthony the A... More »
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – More than 1,000 rhinos were poached for their horns in South Africa in 2013, a record number and an increase of over 50 percent from the previous year, the country’s department of environmental affairs said on Friday. Rhino hunting is ... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – A celebrated portrait by Francis Bacon of his lover and muse George Dyer could raise up to 30 million pounds ($49 million) on auction in London next month, Christie’s said on Wednesday. A Bacon triptych sold last year set an auction record o... More »
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The insurers of Michael Jackson’s ill-fated “This Is It” London comeback concerts on Wednesday have settled out of court with the late King of Pop’s estate over a $17.5 million policy, the attorney for Jackson’s estate said. The settlem... More »
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Juan Gelman, the celebrated Argentine poet and fierce critic of the South American nation’s “dirty war” against leftists, died Tuesday in Mexico City, Mexico’s national art council said. Gelman, who was born in Buenos Aires but lived in... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – London has a new theatre lit entirely by candles, transporting audiences back 400 years to the kind of performances seen on winter nights in Shakespeare’s time. Constructed mainly of oak, the building sits alongside the established open-air ... More »
MANILA (Reuters) – The Philippines aims to recover three paintings, including one by French Impressionist Claude Monet, that a former aide of Imelda Marcos has been jailed in the United States for trying to sell. Vilma Bautista, 75, a one-time secretary to the... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Imelda Marcos’ former secretary was sentenced on Monday to up to six years in a New York prison for a scheme to sell art that once belonged to the former Philippine first lady, including a Claude Monet water-lily painting that netted $32 m... More »
(Reuters) – U.S. philanthropic foundations have pledged more than $330 million to help preserve the Detroit Institute of Art’s collection and assist in shoring up the cash-strapped city’s employee pensions, the mediators overseeing Detroit’s bankruptcy negotia... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – A Picasso portrait of his lover and eventual wife Jacqueline Roque and a canvas by Belgian surrealist painter Rene Magritte are among the star attractions of February auctions that Christie’s said on Monday could net almost $380 million. Chr... More »
HONG KONG (Reuters) – A life-sized replica of the Titanic will become the centerpiece of a landlocked theme park in China, featuring a museum and a shipwreck simulation to give visitors a harrowing sense of the 1912 disaster. The Chinese version of “the unsink... More »
PARIS (Reuters) – The coming weeks will tell whether Francois Hollande can pick up the pieces of his accident-prone presidency and start to pull the euro zone’s second-largest economy out of decline. It may be his last chance to do so. The new year could hardl... More »
ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (Reuters) – A napkin-size Renoir painting bought for $7 at a flea market but valued at up to $100,000 must be returned to the museum it was stolen from in 1951, a federal judge ordered on Friday. The 1879 Impressionist painting “Paysage Bo... More »
PARIS (Reuters) – A French court upheld a ban on a show scheduled in the central city of Tours for Friday by a comedian accused of insulting the memory of Holocaust victims, the second performance in a nationwide tour to be banned. A lawyer for comedian Dieudo... More »
PARIS (Reuters) – France’s President Francois Hollande on Friday threatened legal action against French celebrity magazine Closer for breach of privacy after it alleged he was having an affair with a film actress. The weekly tabloid, criticized in 2012 for pub... More »
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Bankers across Europe are filling cinema seats for a sneak peek at “The Wolf of Wall Street”, booking out theatres and rolling out the red carpet for clients eager to see a film about excesses in their own high-flying industry. Nordea, th... More »
(Reuters) – England cricketers Matt Prior and Stuart Broad turned Good Samaritans after talking a man out of jumping off a bridge in Darling Harbour, Sydney, media reports said on Wednesday. Wicketkeeper Prior was with fast bowler Broad and England security of... More »
BEIJING (Reuters) – China aims to impose a nationwide ban on smoking in public places this year, as authorities move to stamp out a widespread practice that has taken a severe toll on citizens’ health. China, home to some 300 million smokers, is the world’s la... More »
MADRID (Reuters) – A Spanish judge charged Princess Cristina – younger daughter of King Juan Carlos – with tax fraud and money laundering, possibly paving the way to an unprecedented trial of a member of the royal family, the Superior Justice Tribunal of the B... More »
BEIJING (Reuters) – Former NBA basketball star Dennis Rodman arrived in North Korea on Monday with a team of retired professional basketball players to mark the birthday of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. This marks Rodman’s fourth trip to the North Korean ca... More »
SEOUL (Reuters) – An international media frenzy over reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s uncle had been executed by throwing him to a pack of dogs appears to have originated as satire on a Chinese microblogging website. The story, which spread like ... More »
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – A mission to put humans on Mars that drew 200,000 applicants has selected more than a thousand candidates who will now be tested to come up with a final list of 24 would-be Mars-dwellers. Mars One was set up in 2011 by two Dutch men with ... More »
(Reuters) – When the Metropolitan Opera began its live-to-cinema opera transmissions on December 30, 2006, its then-new general manager Peter Gelb says many people predicted the expensive experiment would fail. “I think there were a lot of people who expected ... More »
BEIJING (Reuters) – Communist Party officials must not smoke in public places or buy cigarettes using public funds, and should encourage their colleagues to quit smoking, a top Chinese government body said in a circular on Sunday evening. China is the world’s ... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – “Good Morning America” co-anchor Robin Roberts publicly acknowledged a same-sex relationship for the first time on Sunday afternoon in a Facebook post reflecting on her recovery from a blood disorder. Roberts, 53, included the information ... More »
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – When Floris Hirschfeld’s mother died two years ago, he had her portrait tattooed on his back to honor her memory. One day he hopes the image, skin and all, will adorn the wall of an art collector’s home. It might sound like a macabre Roal... More »
BEIJING (Reuters) – The widow of late Chinese Communist Party chief Zhao Ziyang, toppled for opposing the 1989 crackdown on democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square, died this week, the family said, leaving a question over what will happen to his unburied rema... More »
BEIJING (Reuters) – China is to more than triple the amount of compensation that some parents get if their only child dies, the health and family planning agency said on Thursday, in the latest sign of a more lenient stand on an uncompromising population polic... More »
ISTANBUL (Reuters) – For his first major show in Turkey, famed Indian-born British sculptor Anish Kapoor brought huge works that have never before been exhibited to a gallery that ripped down walls to accommodate him. Massive slabs of rough-hewn slate, polishe... More »
OLYMPIA, Washington (Reuters) – Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has sold a private island in northwestern Washington state to undisclosed buyers for $8 million, his real estate agent said on Monday. The 292-acre (118 hectare) Allan Island – not named for its f... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Vice President Joe Biden congratulated the wrong man on being elected mayor of Boston and college football star Manti Te’o publicly mourned the death of a girlfriend who never was. While U.S. headlines in 2013 were dominated by the Boston ... More »
INGLEWOOD, California (Reuters) – Hollywood Park is giving horse racing fans a run for their money one last time this weekend, as the 75-year-old track near Los Angeles that was once the playground of movie industry elites closes down amid declining U.S. popul... More »
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Let the holy war begin. The holy war of cricket, that is. The Church of England on Friday formally took up the Vatican’s challenge to settle scores on the cricket pitch nearly 500 years after the two Churches split. Last October, the V... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – The phones of Prince William’s wife Kate Middleton and Prince Harry, Queen Elizabeth’s grandson, were hacked by staff working for Rupert Murdoch’s now-defunct News of the World tabloid, a London court was told on Thursday. Prosecutor Andrew ... More »
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – An Israeli woman appealed to the Supreme Court on Wednesday against a rabbinical ruling that ordered her to circumcise her one-year-old son, the Justice Ministry said, in the first case of its kind. There is no law in Israel making circum... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Ronnie Biggs, a small-time British criminal who became a celebrity during a life on the run after his role in the Great Train Robbery of 1963, died on Wednesday at the age of 84. Biggs gained notoriety 50 years ago as one of a 12-member gang... More »
PRETORIA (Reuters) – A nine-meter (30-foot) bronze statue of Nelson Mandela with his arms outstretched to symbolize unity and reconciliation was unveiled in South Africa on Monday, a day after the nation buried the former president and anti-apartheid hero. The... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama mixed the Christmas spirit and the X-Men movies on Sunday at a taping of a holiday show that included performances from a host of stars from Sheryl Crow to the Backstreet Boys. Obama, his wife Michelle and daughter... More »
(Reuters) – The U.S. Mega Millions jackpot jumped to an estimated $550 million on Friday, after no winning ticket was sold for the multi-state lottery’s second-largest top prize. The next drawing is slated for December 17 at 11 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday (04... More »
ATLANTA (Reuters) – Atlanta Zoo officials said on Friday that twin giant panda cubs, the first to be born and survive in the United States, have both turned out to be female. The zoo, which initially had identified both cubs as male after they were born in Jul... More »
OSLO (Reuters) – Five Picasso designs etched into concrete may face the wrecking ball at government buildings in Oslo that anti-Islam militant Anders Breivik bombed in 2011. Spread across two buildings, including the prime minister’s 17-storey High Block offic... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s Queen Elizabeth was so incensed with royal police officers eating nuts from bowls left out in the corridors of Buckingham Palace that she drew lines on the sides in a bid to catch them out, a London court heard on Thursday. In emai... More »
PRETORIA (Reuters) – Thousands of people queued on Wednesday to say goodbye to Nelson Mandela, whose body was lying in state in Pretoria in the building where the anti-apartheid hero was inaugurated in 1994 as South Africa’s first black president. Foreign dign... More »
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – A fake sign language interpreter took to the stage during the memorial for anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela, gesticulating gibberish before a global audience of millions and outraging deaf people across the world. DeafSA, South Afr... More »
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – American country singer Garth Brooks, the top-selling recording artist of the last 20 years, on Monday said he would return to touring after more than a decade off the road. Brooks, 51, who has sold more than 125 million albums, said he... More »
BRYAN, Texas (Reuters) – Holiday cheer in Texas has become even sweeter thanks to a giant gingerbread house that has broken a world record for confectionary construction. Coming in at 35.8 million calories and covering an area of 2520 square feet, or nearly th... More »
DETROIT (Reuters) – Nearly 50 years after launching its affordable sports car, Ford Motor Co is unveiling a global redesign of the Mustang to try to burnish the U.S. automaker’s image and spur sales of its more expensive models. Top Ford executives, including ... More »
NEW YORK/SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Yum Brands Inc’s KFC website in China trumpets the slogan “Trust in every bite.” That message is part of the company’s new “I Commit” campaign intended to reassure customers in its largest market, who have cut back on visits since... More »
MIAMI (Reuters) – A gleaming addition to Miami’s waterfront will greet the art world elite as they jet into town this week for the 12th edition of Art Basel Miami Beach: a $131 million art museum the city hopes will anchor its burgeoning cultural scene. “Our c... More »
AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – The George W. Bush Presidential Center has joined the holiday festivities, offering for sale a Christmas tree ornament that features a painting by the former U.S. head of state. The ornament, selling for $29.98, is an unsigned Bush pa... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. military website showing Santa Claus delivering his presents while guarded by warplanes has some children’s advocates worried. In a twist to its tradition of tracking an animated version of Santa Claus’ sleigh and reindeer as he f... More »
HONOLULU (Reuters) – Scientists plumbing the Pacific Ocean off the Hawaii coast have discovered a World War Two era Japanese submarine, a technological marvel that had been preparing to attack the Panama Canal before being scuttled by U.S. forces. The 400-foot... More »
SHANGHAI (Reuters) – In a dimly-lit arcade in downtown Shanghai, shopkeeper Xia Zihan holds out a glinting, yellow-glass carving of the fertility goddess Guanyin, a range she says is starting to sell well after China relaxed its single-child policy last month.... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A U.S. animal rights group on Monday filed what it said is the first lawsuit seeking to establish the “legal personhood” of chimpanzees. The non-profit Nonhuman Rights Project asked a New York state court to declare a 26-year-old chimp nam... More »
(Reuters) – Buying a set of the gifts named in the classic holiday carol “The Twelve Days of Christmas” will cost a true love $27,393 this year, up 7.7 percent from the 2012 price tag, according to an annual tongue-in-cheek analysis released on Monday. Prices ... More »
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Performers at Russia’s Bolshoi Theatre made a last-minute plea for leniency on Monday for a dancer accused of ordering an acid attack on its artistic director, praising his “wonderful human qualities” and saying he was incapable of such an a... More »
TOKYO (Reuters) – With his face hidden behind sunglasses and a white surgical mask, the artist is almost as invisible as the radioactive contamination he is protesting against – yet his stickers are graphic reminders of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Known as... More »
DUBLIN (Reuters) – When Toby Gilbert decided to emigrate last year, he did not choose Australia over Dublin for sunshine and sandy beaches. He just wanted a few more free hours to see his wife. Fed up with working punishing hours and barely seeing each other, ... More »
HONG KONG (Reuters) – A haircut and some makeup was all it took for a Hong Kong musician to transform himself into one of the world’s most notorious dictators, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. When Kim inherited power from his dead father, friends teased the A... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Taking a break from weighty matters of state and pitched battles with political foes, President Barack Obama exercised the lighter side of his authority Wednesday by sparing two magnificent turkeys the fate of becoming someone’s Thanksgi... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – The skeleton of a diplodocus dinosaur that roamed what is now the United States some 160 million years ago was sold for 400,000 pounds ($651,100) to an unidentified public institution at an auction in Britain on Wednesday. Misty, as the dino... More »
BUCHAREST (Reuters) – A Romanian court sentenced the ringleader of a gang that stole paintings from a Dutch museum in one of the world’s biggest art heists to six years and eight months in prison on Tuesday. Radu Dogaru and fellow gang member Eugen Darie, both... More »
(Reuters) – When Aimee Brittain’s team hits the stores in a commando-like fashion on Thanksgiving night in search of Black Friday deals, they’ll stand out from the crowd in their matching “very bright blue” shirts. They’ll scatter when they hit the store, and ... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – One of Britain’s longest and most bitter divorce battles culminated on Friday with a High Court judge branding a well-connected millionaire a liar and his ex-wife a conspiracy theorist. Far from being “penniless and hopelessly bankrupt”, as ... More »
BALANGIGA, Philippines (Reuters) – In the devastated coastal Philippine town of Balangiga, a Roman Catholic belfry with a maroon steeple rises from the rubble, a battered symbol of resistance for a people with mixed feelings about the U.S. military now helping... More »
ROCKAWAY, New Jersey (Reuters) – When news of a hidden trove of Nazi-looted art in Munich came to light this month, an 87-year-old man in a quiet retirement community in New Jersey straightened a copy of a Rembrandt self-portrait hanging on his wall, completel... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Television journalist Elizabeth Vargas, a co-anchor on the ABC news show “20/20,” said on Wednesday she was out of rehab and doing well after receiving treatment for alcohol abuse. “Hello everyone! I am home, and so grateful for all your s... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Fossils of two dinosaurs locked in a death match failed to sell at auction on Tuesday despite predictions they would fetch a record $9 million. The top bid for the dinosaur fossils was $5.5 million and did not meet the reserve price, Bonha... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Singer Adam Levine, the frontman of the Grammy Award-winning rock group Maroon 5 and a judge on the hit NBC singing show “The Voice,” was named People magazine’s sexiest man alive, the magazine announced on Tuesday. The 34-year-old singer-... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Award-winning American chef Scott Conant helps home cooks recreate meals from his acclaimed restaurant Scarpetta in his latest cookbook. The American chef, a frequent judge on television cooking shows, opened Scarpetta in New York in 2008 ... More »
SYDNEY (Reuters) – Once considered pet food, kangaroo meat could soon be sold to China as a luxury product, to encourage Chinese consumers to do something few Australians will – eat it. With a booming middle class, China’s appetite for meat is expected to rise... More »
BERLIN (Reuters) – A German court has dropped for the time being an investigation into a Roman Catholic prelate known as the “luxury bishop” over accusations he lied under oath about taking a first-class flight to visit poverty projects in India. State prosecu... More »
BERLIN (Reuters) – A German court has dropped for the time being an investigation into a Roman Catholic prelate known as the “luxury bishop” over accusations he lied under oath about taking a first-class flight to visit poverty projects in India. State prosecu... More »
DUBAI (Reuters) – Turn on a Saudi television and you’ll usually get a diet of religious programming and uncontroversial imported fare. But there’s much more to a “night in” for the average Saudi – they’re also the world’s most avid watchers of YouTube. The pro... More »
BERLIN (Reuters) – Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives and the Social Democrats (SPD) agreed on Monday to introduce legislation requiring German companies to allot 30 percent of their non-executive board seats to women from 2016. Negotiators from the two ... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Road runners and cyclists may dread moving their exercise routines indoors as winter approaches but fitness experts say it could be an opportunity to fine-tune a familiar routine or a chance to discover new skills. Jessica Matthews, a Cali... More »
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The Hollywood film industry recognized Angelina Jolie on Saturday with a humanitarian award for her work with refugees and advocating for human rights through her film career. Actors Angela Lansbury and Steve Martin and costume designer... More »
NICOSIA (Reuters) – Former president Glafcos Clerides, a conservative who ushered Cyprus into the European Union but failed in efforts to heal the island’s decades-old ethnic partition, died on Friday, his doctor said. He was 94. Clerides led Cyprus for two co... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A Fernando Botero reworking of Paul Cezanne’s “The Card Players” and a Rufino Tamayo portrait of women are expected to be the top-selling works in Latin American art auctions next week in New York. Sotheby’s predicts sales of up to $29.6 m... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Eclectic men’s fashion designer Paul Smith, suit maker to Prime Minister David Cameron and footballer David Beckham, kick-started the opening of an exhibition of his work by throwing a pair of his signature stripy socks to the world’s media.... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Fossils of two dinosaurs found in Montana and locked eternally in a fierce death match could fetch a potential record $9 million when they are sold in New York next week, the Bonhams auction house said on Thursday. The Montana Dueling Dino... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Bob Dylan has swapped his guitar for a blowtorch for his latest artistic endeavor, welding massive iron gates from scrap metal that went on show in London on Thursday. The “Mood Swings” exhibition at the Halcyon Gallery in central London mar... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Art collectors dug deep into their pockets on Wednesday and smashed records for a second straight night as Sotheby’s held the biggest auction in its history, led by a record-setting $105 million work by Andy Warhol. The auction of post-war... More »
HONOLULU (Reuters) – Hawaii’s governor signed into law on Wednesday a bill extending marriage rights to same-sex couples, capping 20 years of legal and political rancor in a state regarded as a pioneer in advancing the cause of gay matrimony. The new law, whic... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – The world is losing the battle against diabetes as the number of people estimated to be living with the disease soars to a new record of 382 million this year, medical experts said on Thursday. The vast majority have type 2 diabetes – the ki... More »
TORONTO (Reuters) – Toronto City Council asked embattled Mayor Rob Ford on Wednesday to take a break from his job to deal with “personal issues”, which he admits include both buying illegal drugs and smoking crack cocaine. The nonbinding vote came on a day dur... More »
