Every weekday afternoon in the picturesque Indian city of Shillong, dozens of men meet to play with bows and arrows, place bets and gamble, keeping a centuries-old tradition alive.

The origins of the game, known simply as Siat Khnam or Shoot Arrow and played by men belonging to northeast India's Khasi tribe, are unclear.

It is a traditional role using skills passed down through the generations, but young unskilled boys with no knowledge of the mountains are flocking to become porters in Nepal's Himalayas.

The lure of comparatively high wages is encouraging the teens to carry packs for tourists during the busy trekking season. But some experts say they are putting both themselves and climbers at risk.

Hundreds gathered in New York over the weekend for a convention celebrating origami, the ancient Asian art of paper folding, as the craft gains increasing recognition as serious art in the West.

Animals, shapes, landscapes and spaceships constructed with astonishing intricacy were on display at OrigamiUSA, all fashioned entirely from uncut paper squares and without a drop of glue.

Japan's Mount Fuji, known for its perfectly cone-shaped volcano, was on Saturday granted World Heritage status, UNESCO said.

Fujisan, the highest mountain in Japan at 3,776 meters (12,460 feet), is one of the country's most recognizable sights. The snow-capped peak "has inspired artists and poets and been the object of pilgrimage for centuries", UNESCO said.

Italy's Mount Etna, one of the world's most "active and iconic" volcanoes, was on Friday granted World Heritage status by UNESCO.

The tallest active volcano on the European continent at 3,300 meters (10,900 feet), Mount Etna has been written about for 2,700 years and has "one of the world's longest documented records of historical volcanism," according to UNESCO.

Wearing gold-sequined Ugg boots, a bright smile and flawless brown skin that belies her 82 years, Faith Ringgold explains her "confrontational art" — vivid paintings whose themes of race, gender, class and civil rights were so intense that for years, no one would buy them.

"I didn't want people to be able to look, and look away, because a lot of people do that with art," Ringgold said. "I want them to look and see. I want to grab their eyes and hold them, because this is America."

Lebanon's renowned Baalbek International Festival, normally held in the town's spectacular Roman ruins, is to move to an alternative venue in the face of a spillover of violence from neighboring Syria, organizers said on Friday.

American soprano Renee Fleming, the festival's headline act, has also cancelled her participation in the festival, one of the Arab world's leading cultural events and a point of pride for Lebanon.

An Italian police chief long celebrated for saving 5,000 Jews during World War II was in fact a Nazi collaborator, an New York-based institute that studies Italian Jewry said Thursday.

Giovanni Palatucci, who died in the Dachau concentration camp in February 1945, aged 36, was regarded as Italy's answer to Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who saved thousands of Jewish workers during the Holocaust.

Belief that so-called honor killings are justified is still common among Jordanian teenagers, a Cambridge University study revealed on Thursday.

The study by researchers from the university's Institute of Criminology found that almost half of boys and one in five girls interviewed in the capital, Amman, believe that killing a daughter, sister or wife who has "dishonored" or shamed the family is justified.

UNESCO on Thursday added six ancient sites in Syria including a fortress of Saladin and a Crusader castle to the endangered World Heritage list, warning that more than two years of civil war had inflicted heavy damage.

"Due to the armed conflict situation in Syria, the conditions are no longer present to ensure the conservation and protection of the Outstanding Universal Value of the six World Heritage properties," a UNESCO document said.