Culture
Latest stories
Wall Collapses at Pompei after Flash Storms

Part of an ancient Roman wall has collapsed at the archaeological site of Pompei in southern Italy following flash floods and storms across the country, a spokeswoman said Saturday.

The wall, built with the Roman "opus incertum" technique using irregularly shaped stones and concrete, collapsed on a stretch of the ancient city's external walls, near the Porta di Nola, in an area open to the public.

W140 Full Story
Greek Crisis: What Would The Ancients Say?

More than 200 international philosophers braved strikes and protests to come to Greece this month to join a forum and debate matters of the mind.

Topics on the program included "The Limits of Abstraction: Finding Space for Novel Explanation" and "Partial Realism, Anti-realism and Deflationary Realism: Can History Settle the Argument?"

W140 Full Story
Iraqi Jews Yearn for Lost Homeland

Amer Musa Nasim, one of the last seven remaining Jews in Baghdad, says he finally had to leave violence-stricken Iraq to live a peaceful life even though he loves his country.

"I have always tried to hide my identity to avoid trouble," said Nasim, 38, who arrived in Jordan earlier this year.

W140 Full Story
Meet The Gauls -- Minus The Dolmens

Feisty forest-dwellers in winged helmets, with a fondness for roast boar, strong wine and Roman-bashing. That is the pen portrait of the Gaul as summed up by the pint-sized comic hero Asterix -- and it is wrong from start to finish.

Drawing on three decades of archaeology, "Les Gaulois", an exhibition opening this week at Paris' Cite des Sciences, debunks popular myths about the Celtic tribes, known collectively as the Gauls, who peopled modern-day France before the Roman invasion.

W140 Full Story
Nazi Death Camp Art on Show at Auschwitz Museum

Photos of 20 drawings and other artifacts clandestinely made by inmates at Nazi death camps during World War II are on show at the Auschwitz museum and are to travel next to the United States, an official said Tuesday.

A museum spokesman, Pawel Sawicki, said that the "Forbidden Art" exhibition is on display at the former camp bath building at Auschwitz I, the original, red brick part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.

W140 Full Story
Algeria Issues Stamp to Mark 1961 Killings in Paris

Algeria's post office on Monday issued a new stamp to commemorate the massacre on October 17, 1961, of Algerian-born people in Paris by French police who were breaking up a protest rally.

The stamp, worth 15 dinars ($0.2, 0.15 Euros) shows men beating people to death and throwing bodies into the river Seine, running red with blood, during an incident 50 years ago which is seen as a stain on French history.

W140 Full Story
U.S. Exhibition of 'Lost and Found' Archimedes Text

After more than a decade of restoration and study, the public is getting a glimpse at the oldest surviving copy of works by an ancient Greek mathematical genius at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.

The exhibition, "Lost and Found: The Secrets of Archimedes," which opened Sunday, tells the story of the 1,000-year-old text and the work of dozens of scientists and scholars who uncovered its secrets. After the exhibition closes Jan. 1, the Archimedes Palimpsest will be returned to its anonymous owner.

W140 Full Story
'Arab Spring' Heralds New Era for Publishers

Publishers from Arab countries attending the world's biggest book fair have welcomed a greater freedom of speech ushered in by the fall of repressive regimes but still face challenges.

Thirteen Syrian exhibitors who had registered to attend the Frankfurt Book Fair were absent from the five-day event due to a visa problem, the fair's director of communications Katja Boehne said.

W140 Full Story
Ancient Art Supplies Found in South African Cave

Researchers in South Africa have discovered what may have been the world's earliest artist's studio.

A 100,000-year-old workshop used to mix and store the reddish pigment ochre has been discovered in Blombos Cave on the rugged southern coast near Cape Town. At the same site, scientists have found some of the earliest sharp stone tools, as well as evidence of fishing.

W140 Full Story
'Anne Frank' in Arabic Seeks Publishers

A group which has translated nine books about the Holocaust both into Arabic and Farsi for the first time appealed Thursday for publishers, saying "young people are yearning for this".

Launched in 2009, the Aladdin Project has already translated "The Diary of Anne Frank" and Primo Levi's "If This Is a Man", among others, which can now be downloaded for free from their website.

W140 Full Story