U.S. President Barack Obama Thursday hailed the love and sacrifice he said was "the true spirit of 9/11" as he inaugurated a searing Ground Zero museum about al-Qaida attacks which killed nearly 3,000 people.

Obama said the museum, in the footprint of the former World Trade Center Twin Towers, would ensure that the horror and heroism of September 11, 2001 would never be forgotten by future generations.

A mass ping-pong match on a giant doughnut-shaped table and the chance to become a citizen of an imaginary country were among the more offbeat interactive works on display as Hong Kong's Art Basel fair opened Wednesday.

The "Ping Pong Go-round" was a literal hit with dozens of guests attending a VIP preview before the event -- which showcases the rapid growth of the Asian art scene -- opens to the public Thursday.

France tackled the fractious legacy of Pablo Picasso on two fronts Tuesday, firing the director of the shuttered museum dedicated to the artist and recommending state protection for the studio where he painted "Guernica."

The reopening of the museum, closed for the past five years for renovations, has been pushed back until September. France's Culture Ministry said Anne Baldassari, who led the renovations and has been head of the museum for a decade, was dismissed because of the need to "reopen under the best conditions, protect the employees and restore confidence between the museum and its partners."

A painting by American Barnett Newman, "Black Fire I," went under the gavel for $84 million Tuesday at Christie's postwar and contemporary art auction in New York, a record price for the artist.

Barnett's black and white piece topped the $80.805 million raked in for Francis Bacon's "Three Studies for a Portrait of John Edwards," a collection of three canvases painted in 1984.

Two oil paintings including one owned by Yale University in the United States have been certified as being the work of Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali, officials said Tuesday.

Art experts from the Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation knew that the two works existed but up until now they had been unable to locate and authenticate them.

A 100-carat yellow diamond sold for 14.5 million Swiss francs ($16.3 million,11.9 million euros) at auction in Geneva on Tuesday.

The 110.09 carat diamond went unsold at first, with the bids too low, before the Sotheby's auctioneer unexpectedly announced that the diamond was going back under the hammer, explaining that there had earlier been some confusion over the currency displayed.

Museum curators made a global appeal Monday for photos and stories about the millions who fought for the British empire in World War I as they launched an ambitious new digital memorial.

The Imperial War Museum in London has put the records of 4.5 million men and more than 40,000 women who served with the British army overseas on a new website, "Lives of the First World War".

The author of a global best-selling Holocaust memoir who later admitted it was pure fantasy has been ordered by a U.S. court to repay $22.5 million to her publisher.

U.S.-based Belgian writer Misha Defonseca's "Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years" told the supposedly true tale of a Jewish girl who was cared for by a pack of wolves and killed a Nazi soldier during World War II.

Even before speaking with Mam Khalil, it is clear he loves photographs -- they cover almost every inch of his cafe in northern Iraq, providing windows into the country's history.

The pictures on the walls go all the way to the ceiling, overlooking patrons as they sip tea, smoke cigarettes or fill their spoons with mastaw, a yogurt-like dish served in bowls with ice.

The number of French Jews emigrating to Israel rose nearly four-fold in the first quarter of the year and could touch a record in 2014, a Jewish organization said Monday.

The Jewish Agency for Israel, a global body responsible for the immigration and absorption of Jews into Israel, said 1,407 people left France for Israel between January and March against 353 people a year earlier.