Iran's volleyball triumph has created a dilemma for the state broadcaster, which is struggling to tailor its coverage of matches, attended by scantily dressed women, to the moral guidelines of the Islamic republic.

Competing for the first time in the FIVB Volleyball World League, Iran is seen as the underdog.

One of China's rarest stamps sold for HK$6.9 million ($890,000) at auction in Hong Kong, the auctioneers said Wednesday.

With just 32 recorded copies, the Qing Dynasty "1897 Red Revenue Small One Dollar" stamp is "China's rarest regularly-issued stamp", Interasia Auctions said in a press release.

Few people have been photographed more often than Kate Moss, and some of the most famous images of the supermodel are going under the hammer at a Christie's auction this fall.

The sale, announced Wednesday, includes a shot of Moss encased in bronze glitter by Allen Jones and images by well-known photographers including Annie Leibovitz, Bruce Weber, Mario Testino, Sam Taylor-Wood and Irving Penn.

Closed to the public since Superstorm Sandy slammed into New York last October, the Statue of Liberty will once again welcome tired and huddled masses -- of tourists -- on July 4.

About 15,000 people are expected to flock to the landmark for a day of festivities including a morning ribbon-cutting ceremony with Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Interior Secretary Sally Jewell.

The controversial renovation of the historic area around a key monastery in the Tibetan capital has been completed, Chinese state media said on Tuesday.

The 1.5 billion-yuan ($240 million) project in downtown Lhasa around the Jokhang Temple, a UNESCO World Heritage site, has raised concerns that commercialization would harm old structures and local religious traditions.

Alarm bells are ringing once more over the upkeep of Italy's historic monuments, from the Roman city of Pompeii to the Colosseum, with budget cuts hampering repairs and UNESCO issuing a stern rebuke.

"Over the last five years, the culture budget has been reduced by two thirds," Culture Minister Massimo Bray complained in an interview on Monday published in Italian newspapers.

Over a hundred "burial jars" and a dozen coffins arranged on a ledge in remote Cambodian jungle have for centuries held the bones -- and secrets -- of a mysterious people who lived alongside with the Angkor era.

Why the bones were placed in jars on a cliff some 100 meters (320 feet) high in the Cardamom Mountains, or indeed whose remains they are, has long puzzled experts.

Sri Lanka has banned the latest issue of Time magazine over its cover story on Myanmar's Buddhist-Muslim clashes, which it said could hurt religious sentiment on the island, an official said Tuesday.

Customs department spokesman Leslie Gamini said they held the July 1 issue because it carried a photo of a prominent Myanmar monk under the headline: "The Face of Buddhist Terror".

The famed Baalbek International Festival, normally held in the town's spectacular Roman ruins, will be held this year in the Northern Metn district of Jdeideh near the capital Beirut, the festival's organizing committee said on Monday.

La Magnanerie, a former silk factory that dates back to the nineteenth century, will be this year's venue, the committee announced in a statement.

Confederate flags are a hot-button issue in the United States almost a century and a half after the end of the American Civil War.

Case in point: to celebrate this coming week's 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, Virginia asked Minnesota to loan it such a flag seized during that turning point in the war, which concluded in 1865.