A team of Egyptian and French archaeologists have found five heads of royal statues from the pharaonic era, officials from the antiquities ministry said on Saturday.

"The heads, which had crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt and were made from limestone, were discovered" south of Luxor, Antiquities Minister Mohammed Ibrahim said in a statement.

Egypt unveiled Friday a multimillion dollar renovation project for Cairo's famed Egyptian Museum, including plans to demolish a scorched building that stands between it and the Nile, in a bid to draw tourists back and restore a sense of normalcy after more than two years of unrest.

Organizers said they want to return the dusty 111-year-old museum to its former glory by painting the walls and covering the floors in their original colors and patterns.

More than two dozen sculptures by Fernando Botero are being restored in the Colombian city of Medellin, the renowned artist's hometown.

Situated in parks or along streets, the 27 works of amply proportioned people and animals are showing signs of weather damage and vandalism.

A New York court has ordered that a 3,000-year-old gold tablet must be returned to the Berlin museum which lost possession of it during World War II, drawing a line under a protracted legal saga over the precious artifact.

The estate of Holocaust survivor Riven Flamenbaum had long argued that the former Auschwitz inmate had obtained the ancient Assyrian relic after trading cigarettes with a Russian soldier at the end of the war.

Shocking, intimate and often bemusing to outsiders, the modern art produced by a small group of young Afghans would come as a surprise to connoisseurs who stalk the galleries of New York, London and Tokyo.

At work in small studios and spare rooms in Kabul, they make pieces that seem far away from the harsh, practical world outside where many Afghans focus on surviving the bloody 12-year insurgency.

Germany will catalogue online from next week 590 artworks thought to have been looted by the Nazis, part of a vast art treasure trove found in a garbage-strewn flat.

Publishing images of the paintings, watercolors, drawings and prints on www.lostart.de aims to help identify the rightful owners of the masterpieces from the spectacular find of more than 1,400 works.

Work is finally set to begin on Athens' first mosque, 13 years after plans were first announced, the Greek government announced on Thursday.

A Greek consortium has been chosen, the infrastructure ministry said, after five previous attempts to find a business group to lead the project failed.

"The Kennedy Curse Strikes Again," British newspaper the Independent declared when a daughter-in-law of Bobby Kennedy committed suicide last year.

It was a nod to the idea that the most closely-watched American family -- sometimes likened to American royalty -- have been struck by enough calamities that they could star in a Greek tragedy.

Technology has given readers new ways to curl up with a good book, but the latest trend in Washington is surprisingly old-school: "little libraries," stuffed with paperbacks, cropping up on front lawns.

There's no card catalogue or late fees. The informal lending libraries work under a simple principle: "take a book, return a book."

For centuries, the Malay royal title "Datuk" -- Malaysia's equivalent of "Sir" -- was a high honor that unlocked doors to the elite. But Datuks like K. Basil don't feel so special these days.

"Just throw a stone in the street and you'll hit a Datuk," complains Basil, a policeman-turned-politician and one of many who feel the awarding of the coveted titles has got out of hand in a status-obsessed Malaysian society.