Germany's president commemorated on Sunday the 20th anniversary of the country's worst post-war racist violence, saying Germans were "duty-bound" remember it and learn from it.

President Joachim Gauck said the riots, which saw a mob of racist extremists mount a five-day siege of a hostel for asylum-seekers was "unfortunately still a stigma today" for the northern city of Rostock.

The Danish city of Aarhus was recommended on Friday by an EU selection panel as one of two European Capitals of Culture to be chosen for 2017.

The panel picked Aarhus to represent Denmark, with either Nicosia or Paphos in Cyprus also to be nominated by European Union governments when a final decision is made in May next year, the European Commission said in a statement.

Historians believe the medieval king, who ruled England from 1483 and is today best known as the villain of a William Shakespeare play, was buried at a church in Leicester, central England, after his death during a battle in 1485.

But the Franciscan friary, known as Greyfriars, was demolished in the 16th century and its exact location was lost.

The British Museum denied Friday that it was considering returning fragments of sculptures from the Parthenon to Greece, as suggested by the director of the Acropolis Museum in Athens a day earlier.

The British Museum said it was "open to discussions regarding a short-term loan of some of the objects but not a permanent return.

When Rudolf Hegewald left East Germany to join fellow Mormons in the U.S. state of Utah more than five decades ago, he could only dream that a member of his faith would one day run for president.

But with Mitt Romney all but certain to receive the Republican nomination next week, Hegewald might even see one of his brethren in the White House.

Global architects like Renzo Piano, Zaha Hadid and Norman Foster are flying into Venice for the Biennale show starting on Wednesday where new designs are in tune with the mood of economic crisis.

The theme of the world's largest architecture festival is "Common Ground" and director David Chipperfield from Britain said it was important that today's architects reflect social concerns and not just go for glory projects.

Canada's leader kicked off Thursday the largest ever search for the ill-fated 1845 Franklin Expedition, lost on a quest for an ice-free shipping route across the Arctic.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper made the announcement after visiting with crew aboard the Martin Bergmann research vessel, which is leading the search for HMS Erebus and HMS Terror.

Could the word for mother prove that Turkey was the birthplace of hundreds of languages as diverse as Hindi, Russian, Dutch, Albanian, Italian and English?

Researchers using a complex computer model originally designed to map epidemics have traced the evolution of the Indo-European language family to find an answer in a study published in the journal Science.

When Abdus Sattar built his house in Mahasthangarh village in northern Bangladesh, he used materials that once laid the foundations of one of the world's oldest and greatest cities.

"I just shoveled into the ground, got these bricks and used them in my new house," Sattar, 38, said. "All three rooms of the house were made of the old bricks we found here within the village boundary."

As the battle for Aleppo closes in on the historical center in northern Syria, heritage sites in one of the world's oldest cities are being damaged and experts fear the worst is yet to come.

In Bab al-Nasr neighborhood, a Free Syrian Army rebel pointed to a gaping hole in the base of the delicately chiseled minaret of the 700-year-old Mahmandar mosque.