When Rudolf Hegewald left East Germany to join fellow Mormons in the U.S. state of Utah more than five decades ago, he could only dream that a member of his faith would one day run for president.

But with Mitt Romney all but certain to receive the Republican nomination next week, Hegewald might even see one of his brethren in the White House.

Global architects like Renzo Piano, Zaha Hadid and Norman Foster are flying into Venice for the Biennale show starting on Wednesday where new designs are in tune with the mood of economic crisis.

The theme of the world's largest architecture festival is "Common Ground" and director David Chipperfield from Britain said it was important that today's architects reflect social concerns and not just go for glory projects.

Canada's leader kicked off Thursday the largest ever search for the ill-fated 1845 Franklin Expedition, lost on a quest for an ice-free shipping route across the Arctic.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper made the announcement after visiting with crew aboard the Martin Bergmann research vessel, which is leading the search for HMS Erebus and HMS Terror.

Could the word for mother prove that Turkey was the birthplace of hundreds of languages as diverse as Hindi, Russian, Dutch, Albanian, Italian and English?

Researchers using a complex computer model originally designed to map epidemics have traced the evolution of the Indo-European language family to find an answer in a study published in the journal Science.

When Abdus Sattar built his house in Mahasthangarh village in northern Bangladesh, he used materials that once laid the foundations of one of the world's oldest and greatest cities.

"I just shoveled into the ground, got these bricks and used them in my new house," Sattar, 38, said. "All three rooms of the house were made of the old bricks we found here within the village boundary."

As the battle for Aleppo closes in on the historical center in northern Syria, heritage sites in one of the world's oldest cities are being damaged and experts fear the worst is yet to come.

In Bab al-Nasr neighborhood, a Free Syrian Army rebel pointed to a gaping hole in the base of the delicately chiseled minaret of the 700-year-old Mahmandar mosque.

A barber in rural Pakistan was left fighting for his life after being horrifically mutilated over a relationship with a married woman from an influential local family, police said Thursday.

Officers said Yousaf Khan, 32, was kidnapped by seven members of a landowning family who gouged his eyes out with a knife before cutting off his ears, nose, lips and tongue.

Part of an early 19th-century wall near a panoramic terrace overlooking an ancient square in Rome has collapsed.

No one was injured when about 9 meters of the Pincio wall fell over above Piazza del Popolo before dawn on Wednesday. Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno inspected the damage and promised the wall would be repaired in two weeks.

A member of the U.S. Navy SEAL team that killed Osama bin Laden has written a firsthand account of the operation, triggering more questions about the possible public release of classified information involving the historic assault of the terror leader's compound in Pakistan.

U.S. military officials say they do not believe the book has been read or cleared by the Defense Department, which reviews publications by military members to make sure that no classified material is revealed.

India has threatened to take action against micro-blogging website Twitter over content alleged to have inflamed ethnic tensions against migrants from the northeast, reports said Thursday.

Internet posts, phone text messages and fake video clips are blamed for spreading rumors that Muslims would attack students and workers from India's northeastern region living in Bangalore and other southern cities.