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A New Lease on Life For Italy's Last Cowboys

A few dozen horsemen roam the hills and plains of central Italy as the last of the "butteri" cow herders, proudly holding onto a tradition that has survived for 500 years.

"There aren't many of us left," said Maurizio Magagnini, 46, as he sipped wine and carved a chunk of cheese under a tree in the Monterano reserve of the Lazio region, 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of Rome.

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Cardinals Split as Vatican Internal Rift Widens

Cardinals tasked with deciding the fate of the Vatican bank president amid financial scandals and a struggle for power in the Holy See are struggling to come to an agreement, media reports said Saturday.

The commission of cardinals must decide whether or not to uphold the board's decision to oust Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, who was fired for failing to clean up the institution's image amid accusations of corruption and money-laundering.

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Russia Marks Soviet Massacre of Strikers

Russia on Saturday quietly marked half a century since Soviet forces brutally suppressed a rare protest led by striking factory workers in one of the worst massacres of the USSR's postwar era.

Twenty-six people were killed on June 2, 1962 when Soviet troops fired on the mass protest against working conditions and rising prices in the southern city of Novocherkassk.

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International Film Festival Opens in Transylvanian City

The films of Japan's Daisuke Miyazaki and Norway's August Joachim Trier will be the first among 12 movies in competition to screen Saturday at the Transylvania International Film Festival.

Miyazaki's "End of the Night" and Trier's "Oslo, August 31" will be showcased on the second day of the 10-day Romanian festival, one of the biggest in the Balkans.

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New Media Deployed in Battle to Preserve History

It started with an inflatable pig.

Jeffrey Shaw has always been fascinated by interactivity; having in the 1960s created art he hoped would narrow the gap between viewer and image.

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Mancopy’s 2012 Tour Includes Lebanon

In a unique artistic initiative to collaborate with dancers from the Arab World, and to bring the outcome to audiences all over Lebanon, Danish dance company Mancopy is presenting its new contemporary dance performance “EVERY last BREATH” between the 14th and the 24th of June 2012, before going onto a world tour.

For the past seven years, Jens Bjerregaard, artistic director of Mancopy Dance Company, has been collaborating with artists from around the world, convinced that through international exchange; art finally becomes an instrument of free expression.

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'Paper Tube' Art Venue in Moscow Park

Dasha Zhukova, the partner of Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, presented plans Thursday to move her Moscow art gallery to a structure built of giant paper tubes in historic Gorky Park.

"I think this is a really beautiful pavilion and it's really exciting for Moscow. There hasn't been anything quite like this built here," Zhukova said at a presentation in the park.

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Divers Find Sunken 17th-Century Ship off Swedish Coast

Amateur divers have discovered a sunken ship they believe is a Swedish royal navy vessel that went down off Stockholm in 1660 with a cargo of gold and jewels, they said Thursday.

The divers said they had not found the Resande Man's precious cargo, which the ship was carrying to Poland as a gift from the Swedish government when it sank in the Baltic Sea in November 1660.

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Copenhagen's Iconic Little Mermaid Gets Her Prince

For almost a century, Copenhagen's iconic Little Mermaid statue has perched alone on a rock in the harbor, wistfully pining for the prince she has been promised -- and now she will finally get her man.

The city of Helsingoer, or Elsinore as Shakespeare wrote, will on Saturday unveil a suitable companion to Hans Christian Andersen's fairytale mermaid, in the shape and form of HAN (HIM, in Danish).

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In Modern New York, Ancient Matzo-Making Craft Lives On

In New York City, a centuries-old craft lives on: the making of matzo bread.

Welcome to Streit's, Inc., a 96-year-old family enterprise on Manhattan's Lower East Side that on an hourly basis churns out 1,100 pounds (about 500 kilos) of the unleavened fare traditionally consumed by Jews during Passover.

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