Gabriel Barbier-Mueller bought his first samurai armor about 20 years ago from an antiques dealer in Paris, sparking a fascination that helped him create one of the most significant private collections in the world related to the Japanese warriors.

Although the vast majority of the Texas-based businessman's pieces come from auction houses, art dealers and collectors, he still relishes visiting small European antiques stores seeking hidden treasures and strolling flea markets, as he adds helmets, weapons and other samurai artifacts that span the centuries.

U.S. author Mitch Albom has launched a drive to rebuild 10 libraries in Tacloban, a central Philippine city ravaged by Typhoon Haiyan in November.

National Book Store Foundation, his Philippine partner in the project, said Tuesday that Albom has pledged to raise $160,000, starting with his own contribution of $10,000 for the libraries.

A referendum to overturn a California law that gives transgender students protections including the right to use the public school restrooms of their choice will not appear on the November ballot after its backers failed to gather enough voter signatures to qualify the measure, the secretary of state said Monday.

The law's opponents were led by a coalition of religious conservative groups who said it violates the privacy of youngsters who may be uncomfortable sharing facilities with classmates of the opposite biological sex.

An American couple knew adopting four orphans at once from Ukraine would be stressful.

But it wasn't until the bullets started flying and homemade bombs exploded outside the apartment where they were staying in the capital of the eastern European country that David and Lisa Bundy discovered just how stressful it could be.

The Altamira Cave in northern Spain and its well-preserved paintings will again be open to the public from Thursday, albeit to very small groups because of the spread of micro-organisms due to human visitors.

The cave located at Santillana del Mar, in the Cantabria region, was closed in 2002 after damages had been reported to its polychrome prehistoric paintings from the carbon dioxide in the breath of the large number of visitors.

More than 100,000 revelers, many dressed in masks and period costume, packed into St Mark's Square for the "flight of the angel" that marks the traditional opening of the Carnival of Venice.

On the twelfth chime of midday from St Mark's Campanile, fearless 22-year-old student Julia Nasi leapt from the famous bell tower, 80 meters above the huge crowd that had gathered for one of the world's most celebrated carnivals.

Britain's first wedding to be held in a Scientology chapel took place in London on Sunday, the result of the newlyweds' triumphing in the Supreme Court last year.

Dressed in a traditional white wedding dress, bride Louisa Hodkin tied the knot with Alessandro Calcioli, both aged 25, in a Church of Scientology chapel in central London, despite earlier being told the venue was not legally listed as a place of religious worship.

Alice Herz-Sommer, the world's oldest known Holocaust survivor and the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary, has died in London aged 110, her family announced Sunday.

Herz-Sommer, originally from Prague in what is now the Czech Republic, spent two years of World War II in Czechoslovakia's Terezin concentration camp, where she entertained inmates by playing the piano.

Hundreds of items from the estate of the celebrated pianist Van Cliburn are scheduled to go up for auction next month.

The New York auction house Christie's has scheduled a March 4-5 auction of the Van Cliburn collection. The items were left behind in Cliburn's Fort Worth-area mansion when he died a year ago this month.

Art collectors sued Keith Haring's foundation Friday, saying it has cost them at least $40 million by publicly labeling about 90 paintings by the late artist as "counterfeit" and "fake" as it refuses to fully evaluate them.

The lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan portrayed the Keith Haring Foundation Inc.'s approach to authentication as irrational and irresponsible, saying its authentication committee operated for many years "in secret, with little or no explanation, and often without ever physically inspecting the works."