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Cambodian Town with Gruesome Past Lures Tourists

Want to see Pol Pot's grave or his broken toilet seat? How about a visit to the house of a feared Khmer Rouge commander known as "The Butcher"?

Welcome to the town of Anlong Veng, a former Khmer Rouge stronghold which hopes to become the next must-see destination on Cambodia's dark tourism trail, but which faces calls not to glorify its role in the country's bloody past.

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Vienna State Opera Told to Tighten Belt

The prestigious Vienna State Opera has been told by the Austrian government to find savings of 10 million euros ($12.3 million), its flabbergasted musical director was quoted as saying Friday.

Franz Welser-Moest said that Finance Minister Maria Fekter had told him -- on holiday -- "to save 10 million euros if possible, which it isn't," he said in a television interview to be broadcast on Sunday.

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Chinese Pianist Lang Lang Scoops Top German Honor

Star Chinese pianist Lang Lang on Thursday won Germany's highest civilian honor in recognition of his "distinguished services" to music.

Torsten Albig, leader of the small northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, said he would present Lang with the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, the country's only federal decoration, on August 24.

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Poland Begins Probe into Victims of Stalinist Terror

Poland has begun digging up a mass grave at Warsaw's military cemetery searching for the remains of victims of a 1948-1956 Stalinist-era campaign of terror, war crimes prosecutors said Thursday.

After more than half a century, the final resting place of key figures in Poland's anti-Nazi and anti-Soviet resistance who perished at the hands of the Stalinist-era secret police is still a mystery.

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UNESCO Urges Protection of Aleppo Heritage Sites

U.N. heritage agency UNESCO on Thursday urged forces fighting in Syria to avoid damage to historically important cultural sites, in particular in the country's second-largest city Aleppo.

"In light of escalated violence in the vicinity of several historic urban areas in Syria, the director-general of UNESCO Irina Bokova reiterates her appeal... to all parties involved in the conflict to protect all Syrian cultural heritage," the agency said in a statement.

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Evita Peron Remembered 60 Years after Her Death

Argentina's iconic first lady Evita Peron was so loved or hated when she was alive that long after her death, passionate arguments about her character drowned out more serious efforts to examine her legacy.

Some historians say that only now, 60 years after Gen. Juan Domingo Peron's firebrand wife succumbed to cancer at the age of 33, are many beginning to consider how much her actions shaped the society they live in today.

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Love It or Hate It, Daring Nepali Film Makes Waves

As the curtain comes down on the most divisive and talked-about film in Nepali cinema history, half the audience stands to applaud while the rest slump bemused in their seats.

The split reaction has been common among packed theatres watching "Highway", a sweeping social commentary hailed by many as a new benchmark for the domestic film industry but dismissed by others as complicated and boring.

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French Archaeologists Unearth Pharaoh Boat

French archaeologists have discovered a roughly 5,000-year-old pharaonic solar boat in an expedition in Abu Rawash, west of the Egyptian capital, the antiquities ministry said on Wednesday.

The antiquities minister, Mohammed Ibrahim, said the boat was up to 5,000 years old. "It goes back to the era of Pharaoh Den, one of the First Dynasty kings," he said in a statement.

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Egypt All-Veiled TV Aims to Cover Women's Needs

A satellite channel run and hosted by fully-veiled presenters aims to break down the barriers for women in niqab who until the revolution that brought Islamists to power were shunned by Egypt's lucrative television industry.

In the studios of Maria TV in Cairo, which were launched on the first day of Ramadan last week, two presenters dressed in stark black, their faces covered but for narrow eye slits and their hands gloved, discuss the editorial content for the day.

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Foreigners Join Fight against 'Apostate' Syria Regime

In restive northwest Syria, the uprising has found an unlikely new partner in the struggle against the regime of President Bashar Assad: foreign Islamists who are joining the fight.

But rather than adopt the revolt's calls for democracy and the fall of a dictatorial regime, such jihadists believe the minority Alawite sect -- an offshoot of Shiite Islam to which Assad's family belongs -- are "apostates" and need to be fought and overthrown.

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