The Simon Wiesenthal Center on Monday called for the suspension of a Polish historian who wrote that Jews were also to blame for the Holocaust, weeks ahead of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising's 70th anniversary.

The center that tracks down Nazi war criminals demanded the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN) "suspend antisemitic member" Professor Krzysztof Jasiewicz who insisted that during the Holocaust, "Jews themselves participated in the murder of their own people..." in a recent article.

Michelangelo's art might help deter Italian youths from a life of crime, the interior minister said Monday, praising the loan of a drawing by the Renaissance master to a school in a rough suburb of Naples.

"To fight organised crime, police work is essential, but it is not enough: to win this battle, it is necessary to awaken the conscience," Interior Minister Anna Maria Cancellieri said.

The looming Paris auction of some 70 ceremonial masks originating from the Hopi tribe of Arizona has cast light on the failure to prevent sacred American artifacts being sold overseas.

Dozens of the striking, brightly colored kachina visages and headdresses are due to go under the hammer in the French capital on Friday in a sale being staged by Neret-Minet auction house.

With 3,000 Japanese cherry trees about to burst into full bloom, Washington is in eager anticipation of its annual cherry blossom celebration marking the start of spring.

Thousands of visitors are expected to attend the National Cherry Blossom Festival, cramming the narrow walkways of Washington's Tidal Basin for a peek at the famed pink flowers.

A thousand years ago, a vine that had traveled from the Caspian Sea coast along Asia's Silk Road arrived in Japan, where its fruit was heralded as having unique medicinal purposes.

Now the "Koshu grape" fills terraces on the foothills of Mount Fuji, where those in the know say it makes a pretty decent and uniquely Japanese white wine that industry leaders say they intend to export to the West.

Lithuania's wooden synagogues, the vestiges of a Jewish presence which was wiped out in the Holocaust, are falling into ruin from a lack of funding and support.

Hidden behind a row of houses, the wooden synagogue in the eastern town of Alanta looks more like a barn than a former house of worship.

The family of a prominent Parisian art dealer is demanding that a Norwegian museum return an Henri Matisse painting seized by Nazis under the direction of Hermann Goering, in the latest dispute over art stolen from Jews during World War II.

The painting at the center of the dispute, Matisse's 1937 "Blue Dress in a Yellow Armchair," depicts a woman sitting in a living room. It has been among the highlights of the Henie Onstad Art Center near Oslo since the museum was established in 1968 through a donation by wealthy art collector Niels Onstad and his wife, Olympic figure-skating champion Sonja Henie.

Thousands of members of a hardline Muslim group are rallying in Bangladesh's capital to demand authorities enact an anti-blasphemy law punishing people who insult Islam.

Saturday's rally is taking place amid heightened security in Dhaka and elsewhere after the Hifazat-e-Islam members targeted a group of bloggers who they say are atheists. The bloggers, who deny they're atheists, are seeking capital punishment for those found guilty of war crimes during the nation's 1971 independence war and also want a ban on Jamaat-e-Islami, the country's largest Islamic party.

Spain announced Friday it is raising the minimum age for marriage from 14 to 16 while opening consultations to increase the age for consent to sex, which now lies at just 13, so as to combat child abuse.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's right-leaning government announced its decision to raise the minimum ages for marriage and sex in Spain, which are now among the lowest in the world, after a weekly cabinet meeting.

Capturing the unruly, ever-changing Internet is like trying to pin down a raging river.

But the British Library is going to try.