Barefoot, with sweat pouring down their naked chests, 50 men slave in the depths of the Central African forest digging for diamonds in a sandy pit half the size of a football pitch.

They all share the same desperate hope -- that one day they will find a diamond that will change their miserable lives forever. 

Takashi Sakai is a healthy 41-year-old heterosexual man with a good job and a charming smile. But he's never had sex, one of a growing number of middle-aged Japanese men who are still virgins.

Sakai has never even had any kind of relationship with a woman, and says he has no idea how he might get to know one.

Threatened by disease and deforestation, the world's last isolated tribes in the Amazon are on a collision course with modern society like never before, experts say.

Entire cultures of people are the verge of being wiped out in Peru and Brazil, according to a series of papers published this week in the journal Science.

Visitors coming to Philadelphia to see the pope this September will also be able to view treasured art from the Vatican.

"Vatican Splendors" opens Sept. 19 at the Franklin Institute. It will include artwork by Michelangelo, embroidered silk vestments, religious relics and bone fragments of Saints Peter and Paul, and a touchable cast of Pope John Paul II's hand.

A replica of the Hermione, the French ship that transported General Lafayette to America in 1780 to rally U.S. rebels battling for independence, arrives Friday in the Virginia town where British forces eventually surrendered.

The three-masted tall ship is expected to dock at roughly 8:00 am (1200 GMT) in Yorktown for its first official stop in the United States.

A first edition of "The Hobbit" accompanied by a handwritten note in Elvish by British author J.R.R. Tolkien was sold by Sotheby's at auction on Thursday for £137,000 (187,000 euros, $211,000).

The book was a gift from the author and is dedicated to Miss Katherine ("Kitty") Kilbride, one of his first students at Leeds University in the 1920s.

Paris, Milan, New York and London may reign in world fashion, but Asian and South American cities are ones to watch, according to an exhibition at one of the world's best design schools.

Dubbed "Around the world in 80 Items" by Style.com, the museum at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology is charting a new generation of fashion-forward cities eying global prominence.

For believers, the Bosnian town of Medjugorje is as sacred as Lourdes or Fatima, a place where the Virgin Mary appeared to children that decades on has become a huge pilgrimage site.

And ahead of Pope Francis' visit to the capital Sarajevo on Saturday, the Catholics who flock to this small town hope the Vatican may finally recognize its controversial shrine, as it does the "official" ones in France and Portugal.

Group of Seven leaders will gather from Sunday in a quintessentially German venue handpicked by Chancellor Angela Merkel, a luxury hotel with a fairytale setting and a tumultuous past.

Elmau Castle, nestled in the Bavarian Alps, is a five-star resort that will be transformed into a fortress for the two-day meeting of the club of rich nations.

The diary of a detective hunting Jack the Ripper and a poison-filled syringe intended for use by the notorious Kray twins are among items at a new crime exhibition in London.

"The Crime Museum Uncovered" show at the Museum of London comprises more than 600 exhibits, including champagne belonging to the Great Train robbers, objects handled by acid-bath murderer John Haigh and various tools used by a post-war Russian spy ring.