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Italy's Art Spooks Show off Stolen Masterpieces

Italy's cultural police, who have taken a leading role in the fight against the smuggling of antiquities, put on show a trove of recovered stolen art in Rome from Etruscan funerary urns to Renaissance paintings.

Dozens of works are being displayed in the presidential palace in the Italian capital in a special exhibition also intended to show off a police force that is called in to consult on art thefts around the world.

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Vienna's Old Cinemas Tap Retro Charm to Survive

Buy your ticket to an art house movie, order a glass of wine and kick back on century-old seats: Vienna's half a dozen old picture houses still draw crowds with their retro charm.

At the Bellaria, a cinema founded in 1911 in central Vienna, there is only one screen, no bright lights and no posters of the latest Hollywood action blockbusters or Pixar animated capers.

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UNESCO Jewish Exhibit Delayed for 6 Months

The U.N.'s cultural agency says it's delaying for six months a disputed exhibit on Jewish connections to the Holy Land after objections from Arab countries.

The exhibition, which is called "People, Book, Land — The 3,500 Year Relationship of the Jewish People to the Holy Land," was scheduled to open Monday at UNESCO's headquarters in Paris.

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French Minister Slams Spain's 'Stone Age' Abortion Law

A Spanish plan to tighten abortion laws will take women back to the Stone Age, French Social Affairs Minister Marisol Touraine said Tuesday.

Her broadside came amid a debate on a controversial new abortion law in France that would scrap a requirement for women to prove they are in distress to legally terminate a pregnancy.

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Vatican Monsignor Arrested for Money Laundering

A Vatican monsignor already on trial for allegedly plotting to smuggle 20 million euros ($26 million) from Switzerland to Italy was arrested Tuesday in a separate case for allegedly using his Vatican bank accounts to launder money.

Financial police in the southern Italian city of Salerno said Monsignor Nunzio Scarano had transferred millions of euros in fictitious donations from offshore companies through his accounts at the Vatican's Institute for Religious Works. Police said millions have been seized and that other arrest warrants were also issued.

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Auschwitz Launches Online Holocaust Awareness in Arabic, Farsi

The Auschwitz museum at the site of the former Nazi German death camp in southern Poland said Monday it had launched online Holocaust awareness programs in Arabic and Farsi.

"We want to address groups of people who often have little knowledge of this subject or who even advocate revisionist views," museum spokesman Pawel Sawicki told Agence France Presse.

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Association: Italy Culture Cuts 'Disturbing'

Culture budgets in Italy have been drastically cut back in recent years, with spending on upkeep of monuments falling by more than half since 2008, a damning report said on Monday.

The Federculture association's report said the cash-strapped city of Rome had reduced spending on culture to 2.23 percent of its budget in 2012 from 4.33 percent in 2002 and would cut transfers further by up to 50 percent this year.

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Troubled Bolshoi Presents New Musical Director

The Bolshoi Theatre on Monday presented its new musical director who has been appointed to help restore the tarnished reputation of the scandal-ridden theatre.

Tugan Sokhiev, a 36-year-old conductor who studied in Saint Petersburg, is currently musical director of the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse (ONCT) and of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (DSO Berlin).

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Arab Bloggers Aim to Boost Cyberactivism

Arab bloggers on Monday discussed ways to boost cyberactivism at a meeting in the Jordanian capital, faced with new challenges three years after the start of Internet-fueled revolts in their region.

"Discussions today included digital security and how to defend ourselves through the Internet," Leila Nachawtai, a media coordinator at the launch of the Fourth Arab Bloggers Summit, told Agence France Presse.

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Italy Culture Cuts 'Disturbing'

Culture budgets in Italy have been drastically cut back in recent years, with spending on upkeep of monuments falling by more than half since 2008, a damning report said on Monday.

The Federculture association's report said the cash-strapped city of Rome had reduced spending on culture to 2.23 percent of its budget in 2012 from 4.33 percent in 2002 and would cut transfers further by up to 50 percent this year.

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