In the heart of Syria's rebel territory, away from the blasts and bullets of the frontlines, another struggle is playing out: one for a new justice system that could shape the future face of the country should the regime fall.

The struggle is between ex-regime judges and Islamic jihadists, and at stake is whether the courts apply a modified version of existing Syrian law, or switch to strict sharia law.

A British-led excavation team hunting for dozens of rare Spitfires in Myanmar said Wednesday they were confident about recovering the World War II-era planes after finding a crate buried in the ground.

Project leader David Cundall, who has compared the rumored hoard to the 1922 discovery of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun's tomb, said a box found in the Kachin state capital Myitkyina appeared to contain man-made objects.

Polish prosecutors have launched an investigation into a Swedish artist's claims he used the ashes of Holocaust victims in his artwork, an official said Tuesday.

The artist, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, claims he stole ashes from a crematorium at Nazi Germany's Majdanek concentration camp in Poland in 1989 then used them in one of his paintings by mixing them with water.

Finland's capital is aglow with colorful lights and lasers piercing the black winter skies and lighting up downtown buildings providing a much-needed burst of illumination during the darkest days of the year.

Light and sound installations at the Helsinki Lux Festival brought crowds at the city landmarks joined by lanterns hanging in trees along a path of light bordering the frozen Baltic Sea through parks and on city sidewalks, where the shortest period of daylight in midwinter is about five hours long.

A painting by Henri Matisse has been recovered a quarter century after it was stolen from a Swedish museum by a sledgehammer-wielding thief.

The Art Loss Register, which tracks stolen, missing and looted art, says "Le Jardin" was found when a British dealer checked the picture against the group's database before selling it.

Rights groups urged the Indonesian government Tuesday to block a proposed law banning women from sitting astride motorcycles in deeply Islamic Aceh province, where the position is deemed "improper".

The mayor of Lhokseumawe city in Aceh, where sharia law is enforced, circulated a letter Monday explaining the obligation for women to sit side-saddle was "to avoid immoral acts".

Enrique Meneses, the Spanish journalist who scored a historic scoop photographing Fidel Castro and his rebels in the Cuban mountains during their revolution, has died aged 83, his friends said Monday.

Meneses's photographs of bearded Castro and Che Guevara in the Sierra Maestra -- where he camped with them for four months in 1957-1958 -- made the cover of Paris Match magazine and became images of reference for the uprising.

Residents of a small Hungarian town failed to stop a park from taking on the name of the country's Nazi-allied wartime leader, after too few voters turned out for a Sunday referendum.

The park in Gyomro, on the outskirts of Budapest, was named after Miklos Horthy last year following a motion by the far-right nationalist Jobbik party, the third-largest in parliament.

Painted on scraps of clothing with carved soap, cigarette lighters and even syringes, Htein Lin's artworks were his lifeline during years in Myanmar jails -- and the spark for an extraordinary love story.

"These paintings were really dangerous and also precious," said the 46-year-old former student protest leader, who produced more than 200 works during his six-and-a-half years in jail under the junta.

South Korea's low birth rate means the size of its youth population -- those aged between nine and 24 -- will be slashed in half by 2060, a government report warned Monday.

The number of young people peaked at 14 million in 1980, accounting for 36.8 percent of the whole population, census data by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family showed.