Rare metal stamps used by the Nazis to tattoo prisoners at the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp have surfaced in Poland.

A donor insisting on anonymity handed over the stamps to the memorial museum at the site of the World War II-era camp in Oswiecim, southern Poland.

Art works confiscated from the family of former South Korean dictator Chun Doo-Hwan have been auctioned to pay multi-million-dollar fines imposed for bribes the disgraced military strongman received in office.

Two auction houses said Thursday they had raised 7.2 billion won ($6.7 million) from the sale of 600 art works since December.

The Philippines is to build an elephant monument from the ashes of seized tusks it destroyed in a landmark action against the ivory trade, an official said Thursday.

The ash will be mixed with concrete to build a giant sculpture of a mother elephant protecting her calf, said Josie de Leon, chief of the environment ministry's wildlife division.

The latest novel by the acclaimed Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, "Americanah," has won the National Book Critics Circle prize for fiction.

Sheri Fink's book on Hurricane Katrina, "Five Days at Memorial," won for nonfiction. The biography winner was Leo Damrosch's "Jonathan Swift" and Amy Wilentz's "Farewell, Fred Voodoo" received the autobiography prize.

The United Nations on Wednesday appealed to warring factions in Syria's bloody civil war to protect the country's cultural heritage, warning of widespread looting and damage at historical sites caught up in the conflict.

A joint statement from U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, UNESCO director Irina Bokova and international mediator on Syria Lakhdar Brahimi called on all sides to "halt immediately all destruction of Syrian heritage, and to save Syria's rich social mosaic and cultural heritage."

Three Arab countries have banned the biblical epic movie "Noah" because it contradicts Islam, while three more are expected to follow suit, a studio spokesman said Wednesday.

Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates told Hollywood giant Paramount last week that the film, starring Russell Crowe, will not be released in their countries. Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait are expected to follow suit.

Gambia will drop English as its official language, President Yahya Jammeh said in his latest diatribe against former colonial power Britain.

"We're going to speak our own language," he said, without specifying which of the poor west African country's indigenous tongues would replace English.

Nobel laureates Mo Yan and Elfriede Jelinek are among the finalists for a prize honoring fiction translated into English.

University of Rochester-based Three Percent announced the long list of 25 nominees Tuesday for the Best Translated Book Award. The winning author and translator each will receive $5,000 from Amazon.com.

The only known specimen of the first official banknote issued in Australia, uncovered in Scotland, is expected to fetch at least Aus$250,000 (U.S.$224,000) at an auction in Sydney this month, officials said Wednesday.

The ten shilling note, issued on the order of New South Wales governor Lachlan Macquarie in 1817 by the Bank of New South Wales (now called Westpac) on the day it opened, is expected to attract bids from collectors around the world.

A group of Tunisian prostitutes demanded Tuesday to be allowed back to work, 18 months after their brothel in the resort town of Sousse was attacked by hardline Salafists and closed down.

A delegation handed deputy parliament speaker Meherzia Laabidi, a woman, a petition signed by 120 prostitutes calling for their brothel in the popular coastal resort to be allowed to reopen.