Women in Japan's island chain of Okinawa on Wednesday demanded an apology from an outspoken Japanese politician who suggested U.S. troops there make use of its thriving sex industry.

The comments from Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto came after he said "comfort women" -- who most historians agree were pressed into sexual slavery for the Japanese imperial army during World War II -- served a "necessary" role by keeping soldiers in line.

The Catalonia bookshop in Barcelona survived a civil war and a fire over its 88 years of business -- but nothing could protect it from Spain's recession.

Like bookshops, theaters and cinemas across Spain, it was no longer getting enough punters to survive.

A top judicial panel cleared the way for same-sex marriage in Brazil Tuesday, ruling that gay couples could not be denied marriage licenses.

The National Council of Justice, which oversees the Brazilian judicial system and is headed by the chief justice of the Supreme Court, said government offices that issue marriage licenses had no standing to reject gay couples.

Politicians in northern Australia said Tuesday they were considering putting neglected Aboriginal children up for adoption, sparking fears of a new "stolen generation".

Northern Territory Chief Minister Adam Giles, Australia's first indigenous state or territory leader, said he was advocating the plan on a case-by-case basis to protect vulnerable children.

Britain's famous Oxford University is to honor former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who died last month, with a £100 million ($153 million, 118 million euros) scholarship trust for "future leaders", the Daily Telegraph reported on Tuesday.

The Margaret Thatcher Scholarship Trust, backed by patrons including fellow former prime minister Tony Blair and ex-U.S. president George Bush senior, is aimed at giving young people who have succeeded "against the odds" the opportunity to study at the prestigious institution.

This guitar may not quite gently weep, but it could at least make a well-heeled Beatles fan cry with happiness.

The VOX guitar played both by John Lennon and George Harrison is expected to sell for between $200,000 and $300,000 at auction in New York's Hard Rock Cafe on Saturday.

The Japanese government on Tuesday moved to distance itself from comments by a prominent politician that the so-called "comfort women" of WWII served a "necessary" role by keeping troops in check.

Outspoken Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto said soldiers living with the daily threat of death needed some way to let off steam and the comfort women system provided this outlet.

The exhumation of a Stalinist-era mass grave in the heart of the Polish capital Warsaw believed to contain the remains of around 200 victims of a post-war campaign of communist terror resumed on Monday following a winter break.

"During the first phase of work last summer we managed to exhume the remains of more than 100 victims," Krzysztof Szwagrzk, an official with Poland's Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) overseeing the project told Agence France Presse Monday at the site.

The number of Catholic priests and believers in the world is on the rise, a Vatican report showed on Monday, with gains in Africa and Asia offsetting a slump in Europe and the Americas.

The world's Catholics rose from 1.196 billion to 1.214 billion between 2010 and 2011, an increase of 1.5 percent, according to the Church's annual statistics report.

Descendants of Cape Verde's Jewish community, a diverse, multi-cultural diaspora from around the world, stand in silent homage to the memory of their ancestors in a Catholic cemetery restored by a Muslim king.

The gathering in Praia, the capital of the west African archipelago, is more than just an emotional introduction among newly discovered family and friends. For its organizers, it is a potent symbol of religious tolerance.