Nigeria's Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of the bestseller "Half of a Yellow Sun", said writing a novel about the civil war which devastated her home region helped people connect with a past that most no longer discussed.

A month after the film based on "Half of a Yellow Sun" premiered, Adichie, 36, reflected on the impact of the book about Nigeria's 1967-1970 Biafra War, which left more than one million people dead after the writer's home southeastern region tried to secede.

Vincent van Gogh's various versions of some of his well-known paintings are featured in the first major exhibit of his artwork in Washington in 15 years at The Phillips Collection.

"Van Gogh Repetitions" opens Saturday to examine some of the artist's familiar paintings, looking at how he repeated certain compositions during his 10-year career. It was organized with the Cleveland Museum of Art, which will host the exhibit in March.

Canada's Alice Munro won the Nobel Literature Prize on Thursday for her short stories that focus on the frailties of the human condition, just the 13th woman to win the coveted award.

The Swedish Academy described Munro, 82, as a "master of the contemporary short story", a genre that has only rarely been honored with the world's most prestigious literary prize.

The Pakistani Taliban Thursday said teenage activist Malala Yousafzai had done "nothing" to deserve a prestigious EU rights award and vowed to try again to kill her.

The European Parliament awarded the Sakharov human rights prize to the 16-year-old, who has become a global ambassador for the right of all children to go to school since surviving a Taliban murder attempt.

Saudi Arabia's appointed advisory body on Thursday rejected a move by three female members to put the ultra-conservative kingdom's unique ban on women driving up for discussion, state media reported.

Its decision came even as activists hailed increasing reports of women getting behind the wheel in defiance of the ban ahead of a nationwide protest they are planning for later this month.

A leading Roman Catholic commentator and founder of a pro-Catholic media organization has landed a deal to write a "full-scale" biography of Pope Francis.

Publisher Henry Holt announced Wednesday that it has acquired a book by Austen Ivereigh, a British journalist who helped found Catholic Voices, which seeks to improve how the church is presented in the news. Ivereigh also is a former press secretary for the Archbishop of Westminster.

Glued to the wall, young men and women eye each other timidly as a priest circles the room and nudges neighbors together, encouraging them to mingle over cookies and tea.

It is the fifth monthly "mass for singles" at Our Lord's Ascension Church in Warsaw, one of several such initiatives across heavily Catholic Poland at a time when loneliness is on the rise and faith is waning.

New Zealand on Thursday moved to correct a clerical oversight lasting 200 years that meant its two main islands were never officially named.

Universally known as the North and South Islands, the landmasses had never been formally recognized despite appearing on maps since European settlement began in the early 1800s, the New Zealand Geographic Board said.

An online raffle is offering Picasso lovers a chance to own one of his original works for $135.

The work is titled "Man with Opera Hat." The 12-inch (30.5-centimeter) by 9-inch (23-centimeter) cubist drawing from 1914 is valued at about $1 million.

Organizers of the world's biggest book fair warned Tuesday against the domination of Internet giants as the publishing world grapples to blend old and new forms of reading.

American giants Amazon, Apple and Google -- whose entry into the world of online sales and digital books is threatening the traditional publishing industry -- are "logistics magicians but are not publishers", said Juergen Boos, director of the Frankfurt Book Fair.