A clay tablet over 3,000 years old that is considered Europe's oldest readable text has been found in an ancient refuse pit in southern Greece, a US-based researcher claimed on Tuesday.

The tablet, an apparent financial record from a long-lost Mycenaean town, is about a century older than previous discoveries, said Michael Cosmopoulos, an archaeology professor at the University of Missouri-St Louis.

One of India's best-known spiritual leaders, famous for his apparent miracles and long list of influential followers, is on life support in a southern hospital, officials said Tuesday.

Satya Sai Baba, 85, who has devotees in more than 100 countries, was admitted to a hospital funded by his organization in the town of Puttaparthi with lung and chest congestion on March 28.

A Palestinian art academy is preparing to spruce itself up for a famous guest: a $7 million Pablo Picasso masterpiece that would be the first displayed in the West Bank. But simply arranging the painting's journey remains a far more difficult work in progress over complications such as finding reliable transport and clearing Israeli checkpoints.

The more than yearlong negotiations and planning — drawing in the Israeli military, Palestinian curators and Dutch museum officials — highlight the obstacles for even ordinary commerce or movement within the West Bank or through the few openings in the separation barrier with Israel.

Bordeaux is spoiled for choice as it unveils the 2010 vintage, its third smash hit in six years, in a week of barrel tastings for wine professionals from around the world.

"It's liquid beauty," said Denis Dubourdieu, a consulting winemaker and director of the Institute of Vine and Wine Sciences (ISVV) at the University of Bordeaux.

U.S. archivists unveiled a new permanent exhibition on Watergate Thursday at the Richard Nixon presidential library, aiming to give a more balanced view of the infamous scandal.

The Watergate Gallery -- which replaces a previous version criticized as a whitewash for Nixon -- aims to help "make sense of the web of personalities, actions and intentions at the heart of the Watergate scandal," said organizers.

Napoleon Bonaparte goes on display in Cuba Friday with the reopening of the Napoleonic Museum of Havana, which boasts the largest collection of French revolutionary and imperial items outside of Europe.

Napoleon never set foot in Cuba but his physician, Corsican-born Francesco Antommarchi, who treated him during his last days in exile on Saint Helen, moved here after the emperor died in 1821, bringing with him the French icon's death mask.

The Getty Museum said Tuesday it is returning a 17th century Dutch painting looted by the Nazis during World War II to the heirs of Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker.

Goudstikker fled the Netherlands just before the Nazis invaded the country in 1940, leaving behind a splendid art collection that included "Landscape with Cottage and Figures," painted around 1640 by Pieter Molijn.

South Africans can perform ritual animal slaughters in urban areas as long as they respect basic hygiene and city ordinances, the national cultural rights commission said Tuesday.

Its ruling came after animal rights activists challenged the traditional ritual of slaughtering cattle to communicate with God and the ancestors for blessings, protection or healing.

Iranian boys in jeans and leather jackets and girls in short dresses lose themselves in the rhythms of their idols, swaying to the beat and mouthing lyrics which are banned in their home country.

Singers who are not allowed to play live in Iran entertain their fans every year at the Sport-Concert Complex in neighboring Armenia -- a relatively liberal Christian country which is attracting increasing numbers of tourists from the Islamic republic during the Persian new year festival of Nowruz.

Nine powerful explosions early Monday shook the city of Sirte as rebels closed in on loyalist troops holding Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's home town, an Agence France Presse journalist reported.

The latest blasts followed two explosions on Sunday evening in the city, blamed by Libyan state television on an air raid by coalition forces.