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Murder and Magic as Tanzania Tackles 'Witchcraft' Killings

It was a hyena that killed the boy, but four elderly women got the blame. Villagers slashed them with machetes then set fire to their bodies for casting spells on the wild animal.

"They cut her with machetes," said Sufia Shadrack, the daughter of one of the murdered women in her small village in Tanzania's northern Mwanza district. "Then they took firewood, mattresses, an iron sheet and burned her like you would cook fish or meat."

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Supreme Court Won't Take up Looted Art at Norton Simon

A New York woman who has been fighting for years over ownership of two Renaissance masterpieces seized by the Nazis during World War II won a legal round this week when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to grant a hearing on a California museum's effort to keep her lawsuit from proceeding to trial.

At the center of the fight is "Adam and Eve," a pair of life-sized oil paintings by German Renaissance artist Lucas Cranach the Elder. They have hung in Pasadena's Norton Simon Museum for more than 30 years and were appraised at $24 million in 2006.

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Tintin Comic Cover Stars at Brussels Art Fair

Intrepid boy hero Tintin stars at one of Europe's top art fairs next week when the original cover of his 1942 "Shooting Star" adventures goes on sale for 2.5 million euros.

The yellowing sketch by Belgian creator Herge shows Tintin and his faithful dog Snowy on a barren rocky beach looking in astonishment at a huge mushroom.

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Preservationists Fight to Save Haiti's Gingerbread Homes

It wasn't until the 2010 earthquake devastated Haiti's capital that many people even realized that dozens of the city's grandest old buildings were still standing — its quirky and ornate "gingerbread houses" with their fancy latticework, turrets and spires.

Amid the destruction, some Haitians realized time was running out to save the architectural gems, often hidden behind concrete walls, that had been steadily vanishing to bulldozers and cheap renovations as Port-au-Prince became a sprawling and overcrowded city.

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Beard of Egypt's King Tut Hastily Glued Back On with Epoxy

The blue and gold braided beard on the burial mask of famed pharaoh Tutankhamun was hastily glued back on with epoxy, damaging the relic after it was knocked during cleaning, conservators at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo said Wednesday.

The museum is one of the city's main tourist sites, but in some areas, ancient wooden sarcophagi lay unprotected from the public, while pharaonic burial shrouds, mounted on walls, crumble from behind open panels of glass. Tutankhamun's mask, over 3,300 years old, and other contents of his tomb are its top exhibits.

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Pope Rows Back from 'Rabbits' Comments, Praises Large Families

Pope Francis on Wednesday described large families as a "gift from God", just days after he said Catholics did not need to "breed like rabbits".

In an apparent row back from comments he made on his way back from the Philippines, the Argentinian pontiff argued that an unfair economic system is the primary cause of poverty, rather than overpopulation.

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Saudi Single Women Challenge Tradition in Love and Marriage

Amna Fatani knows she wants a brilliant career and a life different from that of Saudi women of her mother's generation who married early, usually to a husband not of their own choosing.

The 27-year-old, studying for her master's degree at Georgetown University in Washington and hoping to someday become Saudi Arabia's first female labor minister, is part of a growing number of Saudi women choosing to remain single through their 20s and into their 30s as they pursue other ambitions.

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Hong Kong Phooey Takes his Revenge at Sotheby's

A popular piece of street art destroyed by Hong Kong authorities and later re-made has fetched almost HK$2 million ($258,000) at a Sotheby's auction, a new record for its French creator.

The ceramic mosaic of 1970s American cartoon character Hong Kong Phooey -- a mask-wearing dog who is an expert in kung fu -- was recreated by high-profile French street artist Invader after being removed from a city wall last year.

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Turing Manuscript Up for Auction in New York

A hidden manuscript written by British mathematician and code breaker Alan Turing at Bletchley Park is to go on auction in New York in April, Bonhams said Tuesday.

The extraordinary document from 1942, when Turing was working to crack the Nazi's Enigma Code, is expected to fetch at least $1 million, the auction house said.

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Munich Poised to Lift Ban on Holocaust Memorial Project

Ernst Grube, a sprightly 82-year-old Munich native with a ready smile, has had enough.

Seventy years after surviving a Nazi concentration camp and losing several close family members to the gas chambers in German-occupied Poland, Grube said the time had come for relatives to be allowed to choose their own way of remembering their dead.

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