Online retail giant Amazon announced Tuesday it would raise its starting wage for US workers to $15 an hour, amid long-standing criticism of low pay, and advocate for a higher minimum wage nationwide. The pay raise will apply to 250,000 employees, starting November 1, and to the more...

A team of ornithologists in Ecuador has identified a new species of hummingbird: a lovely blue-green creature that lives in a cold, barren highland area and is danger of extinction. Team leader Francisco Sornoza saw one of the birds through binoculars a year ago and had a hunch that it...

The man at the center of a sex-abuse and financial crimes scandal that is tarnishing the academy that awards the Nobel Prize in Literature was convicted Monday and sentenced to two years in prison for a rape in 2011. Jean-Claude Arnault, a major cultural figure in Sweden, had faced two...

The contemporary art market is booming with Chinese artists helping to push prices up by nearly a fifth in the past year, the world's biggest art index said Monday. Rocketing prices for living artists have for the first time become the motor of the market, Artprice told AFP. Nowhere is...