India's highest court on Tuesday recognized the existence of a third gender that is neither male nor female, in a landmark judgement hailed by transgender people.

"Recognition of transgenders as a third gender is not a social or medical issue but a human rights issue," Justice K.S. Radhakrishnan told the Supreme Court while handing down the ruling.

The Guardian and the Washington Post shared a Pulitzer Prize Monday for reporting on leaks from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that revealed a global surveillance network monitoring millions of Americans and foreigners.

The British and American newspapers won the award for public service journalism handed out by the Pulitzer committee at Columbia University in New York for sparking debate on secretive NSA programs.

Nazi memorabilia that belonged to Adolf Hitler and air force chief Hermann Goering have been withdrawn from a Paris auction following objections from Jewish bodies.

Goering's passport and a wooden chest presented to Hitler emblazoned with swastikas were among the items that were to have gone under the hammer in a sale organised by the Vermot de Pas auction house on April 26.

A lock of Napoleon Bonaparte's hair and other "priceless" artifacts linked to the French emperor have been stolen from a museum in Australia, police said Tuesday.

Burglars broke into the building on Victoria state's Mornington Peninsula, south of Melbourne, in what was believed to be a targeted robbery.

France's main Jewish body on Sunday called for the cancellation of an auction of Adolf Hitler and Nazi air force chief Hermann Goering's personal effects due in Paris next month.

The umbrella organisation CRIF said the sale, planned for April 26, was "a form of moral indecency" and disrespectful to "the victims of Nazi barbarism".

A pair of rhinestone earrings Marilyn Monroe wore to a 1955 Hollywood film premiere have sold at auction for $185,000.

Julien's Auctions said in a statement Sunday that the actress wore the jewelry when she attended the opening of "The Rose Tattoo."

Valparaiso, the Chilean port city of 270,000 ravished by fire, is a UNESCO world heritage site once dubbed "the jewel of the Pacific" by visiting sailors navigating around South America.

The port city is visited by thousands of tourists every year who marvel at the historic center with its cobbled streets and colored houses dating from the city's glory days from the mid-19th century to the early 20th.

While he may not be widely known internationally, pope John XXIII holds a special place in the heart of many Italians and nowhere more so than in his homeland of Bergamo where he was born into a farming family.

But locals say the man nicknamed "Good Pope John" for his down-to-earth personality -- similar to that of Pope Francis -- should be remembered as a driving force behind reforms in Catholicism still relevant today.

Before selfie-snapping Francis, there was John Paul II, the charismatic Polish pope who made a name for himself by circling the globe and talking to anyone and everyone.

"He broke protocol. I know that security had trouble keeping an eye on him. He sometimes wandered off when he felt like it," Warsaw sociologist Pawel Boryszewski said of the soon-to-be saint who died in 2005.

Comedian and writer Carol Leifer has something serious to say in her new book, "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Crying."

Why listen to a comic? First, it's important to remember that with show business, the accent is on "business." If Leifer could make it in that unforgiving industry, she may be able to help others make it anywhere.