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Study Casts Light on 'Hook-Up Culture' on U.S. Campuses

Somewhat fewer U.S. college students are having frequent sex, compared to their Generation X predecessors, but those who do are more likely to be getting it on with a casual date or pal.

That's according to a study into so-called "hook-up culture" presented Tuesday by two researchers at the University of Portland in Oregon at a national convention of sociologists in New York.

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Banksy Graffiti Offered at U.S. Auction

Graffiti painted on a gas station wall in Hollywood by British street artist Banksy will be put up for sale at auction in Beverly Hills, Julien's auction house said Tuesday.

Titled "Flower Girl," the stencil in black aerosol paint represents a young girl with a basket standing before an immense plant whose flower has been replaced by a surveillance camera with a rat tail -- a recurrent motif in Banksy's art.

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Swiss Treatment of Asylum Seekers Sparks Outcry

Switzerland, which prides itself on its humanitarian principles, is facing a barrage of criticism over its treatment of asylum seekers, including charges of segregation and inhumane living conditions.

The controversy first broke last week when federal migration authorities said the small northern town of Bremgarten, with 6,500 residents, had been permitted to deny residents of a new asylum center access to certain public spaces.

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Baldacci to Write Fantasy Novel for Young Adults

David Baldacci has decided to enter the fantasy world.

The best-selling thriller writer has a deal with Scholastic Inc. for a young adult novel, "The Finisher." Scholastic, a top U.S. children's publisher, announced Monday that the book is scheduled to come out in March.

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Aging Chinese Apologise for Cultural Revolution 'Evil'

As a teenager radicalized by China's Cultural Revolution, Zhang Hongbing denounced his mother to the authorities. Two months later a firing squad shot her dead.

Now after more than 40 years of mounting guilt, Zhang has ruffled the silence that cloaks China's decade of turmoil with a public confession.

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Dutch Art Heist Trial Adjourned in Bucharest

A Bucharest court on Tuesday opened and then immediately adjourned the trial of six Romanians charged with a spectacular heist from a Dutch museum, some of whose stolen masterpieces by Monet, Picasso and Gauguin are feared to have been burned.

The court president postponed the trial to September 10 to allow time for several legal issues to be examined, including calls for some of the suspects to be released on bail.

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Unusual Bone Tools Found at Neanderthal Site in Europe

Sophisticated leather-working equipment found in a cave in France offer the first evidence that Neanderthals had more advanced bone tools than early modern humans, researchers said Monday.

The four fragments of hide-softening bone tools known as lissoirs, or smoothers, were found at two neighboring sites in southwestern France, according to the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Philosophy Revived in Crisis-Hit Athens

Aristotle, Plato and Socrates have resurfaced in Athens in the midst of Greece's harrowing economic crisis, brought to life by a global philosophy congress in the very locations they once frequented.

"It's very important to find oneself in the place where philosophy was born," said Ivorian professor Tanella Boni, one of over 2,000 philosophers from 105 countries who attended the seven-day event which wrapped this weekend.

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The World's Major Art Thefts

Major art thefts around the world over the past decade, as the trial of six Romanians accused of stealing seven masterpieces from a Dutch museum last October is set to open on Tuesday in Bucharest:

October 16, 2012: Seven masterpieces, including works by Picasso, Matisse, Monet and Gauguin, were stolen in a pre-dawn heist at Rotterdam's Kunsthal museum. Prosecutors say the paintings were worth 18 million euros ($24 million), although experts initially put their collective value at up to 100 million euros.

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Russia Reinstates Imperial Name to St Petersburg Station

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has reinstated the imperial name of a train station outside Saint Petersburg that is used by tens of thousands of tourists visiting the former palaces of the tsars, state media said Sunday.

Medvedev ordered the train station to use its original name of "Tsarskoe Selo" (Tsar's Village), which it lost almost a century ago in 1918 shortly after the Bolshevik revolution and the fall of the Romanov dynasty, according to a government decree.

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