Having brushed off its dusty old self over the past three years, the Vienna Ballet showed it was prepared to take new risks Saturday, by presenting a string of its own original works.

In a tribute to "Creation and Tradition", the audience was treated to nine pieces, from classical ballet repertoire to ultra modern creations with a hint of "The Matrix."

Five years after it was burned down in an arson attack, South Korea Monday unveiled its newly restored Namdaemun gate, a national treasure painstakingly rebuilt at a cost of millions of dollars.

The cultural jewel in central Seoul will reopen to the public on Saturday, following one of the longest and most expensive restoration projects ever undertaken in South Korea, involving hundreds of highly skilled craftsmen.

The sight of children, the disabled and disadvantaged begging at all hours of the day and night in Pakistan is a grim, constant reminder of the millions who live in abject poverty.

Yet malnourished members of the underclass have to collect not just enough spare change to feed themselves, but to pay off police and gang bosses.

A young Tunisian man given seven years in jail for posting cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed on the Internet has petitioned President Moncef Marzouki for a pardon, his lawyer and relatives said Saturday.

Jabbeur Mejri "prefers to stop court proceedings against him, and hopes instead to be granted a presidential pardon," defense lawyer Ahmed Mselmi told Agence France Presse.

Masterpieces by Vincent van Gogh, including his world-famous "Sunflowers" and "The Potato Eaters", have been returned to the Amsterdam museum that bears the Dutch artist's name ahead of its reopening next week.

The paintings were transferred on Friday to the Van Gogh Museum from another of the Dutch capital's famous museums, the Hermitage, where they had been on display for the last seven months during the renovations.

A leading German hospital said Friday it had handed over the skulls and bones of 33 Aborigines to Australian representatives to be returned for burial.

The Charite hospital in Berlin returned the ancestral remains at an official ceremony after a 2008 agreement with Australia for their repatriation for "a dignified burial".

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby accepted in an interview aired Saturday that he had probably ruffled the British government's feathers with his comments on the bleak state of the economy.

The Church of England's spiritual leader said this week that Britain was in an economic depression and could take a generation to recover.

The pilgrimage to the ancient Ghriba synagogue on Tunisia's resort island of Djerba began on Friday amid tight security, with hundreds of Jewish faithful expected, including Israelis.

The first pilgrims arrived at the sanctuary in the morning, an Agence France Presse journalist reported, for the start of an annual ritual that has seen numbers fall dramatically since an al-Qaida attack in 2002 and instability following Tunisia's 2011 revolution.

With Italy still mired in a long-running government crisis, a show honoring Renaissance politics genius Niccolo Machiavelli opened in Rome this week celebrating his enduring legacy.

The exhibition at the Vittoriano museum celebrates the 500th anniversary of Machiavelli's classic study of leadership "The Prince" and is entitled "The Prince and his Times: 1513 to 2013".

A 16th century religious tapestry which police suspect was stolen by one of Europe's most prolific art thieves from a cathedral in Spain in 1979 has returned to the country after an odyssey that took it to five countries.

Culture Minister Jose Ignacio Wert and Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz presented the wool and silk tapestry, depicting the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus, Thursday at a Madrid news conference a day after it was handed over to Spanish officials from the U.S. customs service.