Japan is set to hold what organizers are billing as the world's first "Otaku" summit this weekend as the country looks to boost the international fan base for Japanese comic books and anime.

So-called Otaku -- usually translated as "geeks" -- from at least 18 countries and territories will converge on the Otaku Expo from March 28-29 at Tokyo-area convention center, according to organizers.

Maroun Atieh is a Lebanese medicine student who was able to master five different languages and an extensive knowledge in two others at the young age of nineteen, not to mention his drawing and writing skills.

Atieh is enjoying a stay with his family members and friends in Jounieh's Sahel Alma in Lebanon, but it's only a temporary one because the multilingual youth has plans to travel to Germany to complete his studies in medicine and master other languages.

It was intended to celebrate language and diversity. But reading the pledge of allegiance in Arabic at a U.S. high school sparked a furious backlash in upstate New York.

Wednesday's incident at Pine Bush High School, 80 miles (128 kilometers) northwest of New York City, angered students, parents, residents and even those who lost loved ones in Afghanistan.

Japan and the United States held a ceremony Saturday to mark the 70th year since the bloody Battle of Iwojima near the end of World War II.

Japan sent two cabinet ministers to the annual ceremony for the first time: Welfare Minister Yasuhisa Shiozaki and Defense Minister Gen Nakatani.

Pompeii's sumptuous, fresco-adorned Villa of Mysteries reopened fully to the public Friday after two years of painstaking restoration, as Italy promised an era of ruin and decay at the ancient city was over.

After decades of bad publicity as bits of the UNESCO World Heritage Site crumbled away under neglect, Culture Minister Dario Franceschini told journalists "here in Pompeii we're turning over a new leaf".

Puruchuco, an ancient Incan complex, sits at the fast-moving edge of Lima's real estate boom, forcing authorities in the Peruvian capital to get creative as they seek to preserve the archeological treasure.

At first glance, the site looks like an empty hill on the city's east side -- a bald spot surrounded by a slum, a new university and a shopping mall scheduled to open soon.

A 600-year-old album of Ming Dynasty Buddhist art and calligraphy sold for $14 million in New York on Thursday, the highest price for a Chinese painting sold outside Asia, Sotheby's said.

The sutras, which had been valued at $100,000-$150,000, were sold after frantic bidding between four would-be buyers in Asia and the United States that lasted 31 minutes, the auction house said.

A Brazilian museum Thursday received 139 works of art, including a painting by Joan Miro, seized from individuals involved in the corruption scandal rocking state oil giant Petrobras.

Works by Brazilian artists Djanira and Heitor dos Prazeres were among the trove that police delivered to the Oscar Niemeyer Museum in the city of Curitiba.

A French court Friday handed down a two-year suspended sentence to a former electrician and his wife, who hid 271 Picasso works in his garage for close to 40 years.

The court in the French Riviera town of Grasse found Pierre and Danielle Le Guennec guilty of possessing stolen goods, after a trial that made headlines in France and abroad.

Twice as many divorced couples are remarrying in China's financial capital Shanghai as did so before fiscal changes made splitting up a way to avoid property taxes, reports showed Friday.

In 2013 China applied a 20 percent capital gains tax on the profits owners make from selling residential property, as part of efforts to rein in rampant speculation and prices that were soaring at the time.