An online raffle is offering Picasso lovers a chance to own one of his original works for $135.

The work is titled "Man with Opera Hat." The 12-inch (30.5-centimeter) by 9-inch (23-centimeter) cubist drawing from 1914 is valued at about $1 million.

Organizers of the world's biggest book fair warned Tuesday against the domination of Internet giants as the publishing world grapples to blend old and new forms of reading.

American giants Amazon, Apple and Google -- whose entry into the world of online sales and digital books is threatening the traditional publishing industry -- are "logistics magicians but are not publishers", said Juergen Boos, director of the Frankfurt Book Fair.

The preservation of monuments in Syria and Mali pose some of the biggest challenges on a list of 67 global sites that need protection, a foundation warned Tuesday.

Unveiling its watch list for 2014, the World Monuments Fund (WMF) warned that conflict, catastrophe, lack of resources, development pressures and loss of cultural traditions threaten sites in 41 countries.

Gold and silver pieces as well as bones and pottery from 1,500 years ago were discovered in Lake Titicaca by underwater archaeologists, a researcher said Tuesday.

"We found 2,000 objects and fragments," Christophe Delaere, the Belgian co-director of the Huinaimarca Project that unearthed the items, said at a ceremony in La Paz.

It's no secret humans have been having sex for millennia -- but recently discovered cave art suggests they were doing it in the Americas much earlier than many archeologists believed.

A new exhibit in Brazil showcases artifacts dating as far back as 30,000 years ago -- throwing a wrench in the commonly held theory humans first crossed to the Americas from Asia a mere 12,000 years ago.

In a year with no clear favorites, Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami appears to be the front-runner to win the Nobel Prize for Literature this week.

Murakami, known across the globe for works such as "Norwegian Wood" and "1Q84", heads the list at bookmaker Ladbrokes with 5/2 odds.

Sales of contemporary art rose 15 percent in the year to June as the worldwide market bounced back from the global financial crisis, according to research published on Monday.

Artprice, a French company which tracks art sales worldwide, said the strong performance compared with a 2.4 percent contraction in the overall art market and reflected the growing investment value of works by artists born after 1945.

Even as she lay dying, Edith Piaf carefully controlled the image that made her a star -- and 50 years after her death a legend -- in her native France and around the world.

At 47 and dying of liver cancer, Piaf ruled that only her personal photographer, Hugues Vassal, would be allowed to capture the images of her final days.

Opera maestro Giuseppe Verdi, whose bicentenary is being celebrated on Thursday, is "still alive" in Italy -- especially for the inhabitants of his native village of Busseto.

The world famous composer's family home is surprisingly humble. On a crossroads, the grocery owned by his parents is on just one floor and has a handful of rooms, including a small stable.

A rush of publishing start-ups and ever new ways to lure readers in an industry with Amazon breathing down its neck will be a central theme at the world's biggest book fair, opening in Germany on Wednesday.

Faced with competition from the online giant, publishers face an "imperative to be big", organizers of the Frankfurt Book Fair say, pointing to this year's merger to create Penguin Random House.