A letter that scientist Francis Crick wrote to his son about his Nobel Prize-winning DNA discovery was sold to an anonymous buyer at a New York City auction on Wednesday for a record-breaking US$5.3 million.

“Ding Dong! The witch is dead,” as sung by Judy Garland in “The Wizard of Oz,” on Tuesday raced to the top of the Amazon download chart in Britain, a day after the death of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Workers were putting the finishing touches Tuesday on what its backer says is the world's tallest statue of the late Pope John Paul II.

A red bowl with a lotus pattern broke the world record for Chinese Kangxi ceramics on Monday, fetching over US$9 million after a bidding war won by a Hong Kong ceramics dealer at the last day of spring sales for global auctioneer Sotheby's.

Local bans are unlikely to stop bottled water overtaking soda pop as Americans' preferred beverage by the end of the decade, the chairman of Nestle Waters North America said Thursday.

Does the pope have only one lung?

Taiwan's Asustek Computer Inc. and the Taipei City Government unveiled a project Tuesday that will make cloud services accessible to citizens and businesses in Taipei.

An amused U.S. President Barack Obama read a children's book to a gathering of boys and girls at the White House, then peppered them with questions: Had any of them lost a tooth? Had any climbed trees? Had any fallen after climbing?

The April Fool is dead. Or at least the gentle jester of the common folk has metastised into a corporate colossus controlled by global marketing executives, bestriding the Internet to force familiar brands ever deeper into the collective consciousness.

Hoarder, moneylender, tax dodger — it's not how we usually think of William Shakespeare.