Five minutes. That's all it took to make papal history.

Never has a leader of the Roman Catholic Church become as popular in as short a time as Pope Francis did when he humbly asked the crowd gathered in St Peter's Square on March 13 last year to pray for him.

A riot of color greeted Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme the first time he walked into Haitian Corner, an art gallery around the corner from his Manhattan apartment. Instantly transfixed, he left with a $250 painting by Haitian master Wilson Bigaud. The seed was planted.

Demme's appreciation for work by self-taught Haitian painters like Bigaud and Hector Hyppolite flowered into an obsession that he fed with multiple trips to the cash poor but artistically rich island nation, where he learned Creole and shot two documentaries.

Four centuries after his death, Madrid has decided to finance a search for the remains of Spanish Golden Age writer Miguel de Cervantes, author of the emblematic Don Quixote of la Mancha.

Cervantes was buried in April 1616 in the church of the red-brick Convent of Trinitarians in central Madrid.

Egypt has announced that a team of European archaeologists have found a nearly 2-meter- (6 ½-foot-) tall alabaster statue of a pharoanic princess, dating from approximately 1350 B.C., outside the southern city of Luxor.

Minister of Antiquities Mohammed Ibrahim said in in a statement Friday that the statue was once part of a larger statue that was nearly 14 meters (456 feet) tall and guarded the entrance to a temple.

The "holy grail of guitars" is among the hundreds of rare and vintage acoustic guitars going on the auction block in New York next month.

California collector Hank Risan is offering some of his musical instruments for auction by Guernsey's on April 2 and April 3. The 265 pieces from his collection are considered among the finest of vintage guitars to come to auction in terms of rarity, original construction and condition, the auction house says.

A practice battleground complete with opposing sets of trenches used by British soldiers training for World War I has been discovered on the southern English coast, officials said Friday.

The overgrown ditches on Ministry of Defense (MoD) land in Gosport, near Portsmouth, have long been used for military exercises.

It's a city better known for its history and culture, but a new generation of mobile game developers is bringing a slice of Silicon Valley to Pakistan's Lahore.

With open plan offices, mixed gender teams, gourmet catering and an emphasis on a fun atmosphere, the small but growing IT industry worth an estimated $2.8 billion is being led by young entrepreneurs like Babar Ahmed.

Malaysia has banned a translation of an Ultraman comic book after it referred to the popular Japanese superhero as "Allah", authorities said Friday, during an ongoing row over use of the word by non-Muslims.

The home ministry, which is in charge of domestic security and censorship, said the Malay language edition of "Ultraman, The Ultra Power" contains elements that can undermine public order and morals.

Pope Francis is among admirers on Twitter where positive comments about him outweigh negative ones by a ratio of five to one, according to a Pew Research Center study released Thursday.

The Washington-based think tank, in a statement, said it analyzed eight million tweets that made reference to the pope.

Switzerland has finalized a 13-year process of returning more than 4,500 ancient artifacts to Italy that were stolen by a criminal gang, the Swiss justice ministry said Thursday.

The Alpine country this week repatriated the final 68 looted artifacts to its southern neighbor, ending a restitution process that began in 2001, the ministry said in a statement.