A pair of stolen N.C. Wyeth paintings worth up to $500,000 apiece have been recovered and will be displayed in Maine along with four other stolen paintings recouped nearly a year ago in California, officials said Thursday.

The two paintings were recovered last month when a third party surrendered them to a retired FBI agent in the Boston area, Harold Shaw, special agent in charge of the bureau's Boston field office, told reporters at the Portland Museum of Art, where the paintings were on display. No additional arrests have been made, and the investigation is continuing, he said.

Russia plans to unveil a bronze "Wall of Grief" in Moscow next year in its first tangible condemnation of Stalin-era crimes but critics accuse the government of playing a double game.

The national memorial, backed by President Vladimir Putin, comes as authorities play down the horrors of Stalin's purges and revive some of the Soviet Union's ideology and traditions.

US literary great Ernest Hemingway's tender and joyful memoir of 1920s Paris, "A Moveable Feast", has enjoyed a surge in sales since last week's terror attacks in the French capital.

The author of such acclaimed novels as "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and "The Old Man and the Sea" spent time in Paris as a young man honing his writing skills and chronicling the exuberant mood of Paris after World War I.

The family of an Israeli transgender woman is seeking to stop the cremation of her body after her suicide, arguing it offends their ultra-Orthodox beliefs even though it was specified in her will.

The legal battle has highlighted the uneasy relationship between Israel's commitment to gay rights, rare in the Middle East, and its ultra-Orthodox Jews, who abide by a strict religious lifestyle.

Only half of African-American youths are confident of living to 35, said a study Wednesday that lays bare the toll of the racial divide in the United States.

The figure is even lower, at 38 percent, for Mexican-born youths living in the United States, said the study in the December issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.

France declared that the show must go on Monday, with the public urged to go back out to bars, concerts and restaurants in defiance of the terror attacks on Paris.

Culture minister Fleur Pellerin said musicians would "never stop putting on concerts" and claimed that in the face of "barbarism... culture is our biggest shield and our artists our best weapon."

Organizers of France's most celebrated charity wine auction said Sunday that 480,000 euros of the 11 million euros ($11.8 million) raised this year would go to charity, including to victims of the Paris attacks.

The Hospices de Beaune charitable hospital's 155th auction saw bids come in from around the world, enabling this year's event to surpass last year's total of eight million.

Ireland's new same-sex marriage law comes into force from Monday, six months after the country voted to allow gay unions in a historic referendum.

Existing same-sex marriages registered abroad will be immediately recognized in Ireland, while other couples can now submit their intention to marry.

They are not in the room rubbing shoulders with traditional wealthy buyers, instead choosing to remain in the shadows, making their multi-million bids by telephone.

Asian millionaires and billionaires have this week discretely stolen the show at a range of auctions, dishing out record sums for works of art and precious gemstones put on the block.

New York lit One World Trade Center, the tallest building in America, red, white and blue in solidarity with France after attackers killed at least 120 people in Paris.

It was a powerful symbol of U.S. friendship and support for the French, made from the tallest building in the United States, which was built on the site of the 9/11 attacks on New York.