Libya's first video art exhibit proved a hit in Tripoli, drawing scores of spectators in a country emerging from 42 culturally barren years under the regime of slain dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

People from all over the capital flocked to the seaside Old City this month following the itinerary charted by "First Glance," an outdoor exhibition organized by The Arete Foundation for Arts and Culture, a Libyan initiative.

Five years ago, as he watched TV images of South Korea's foremost historical treasure being engulfed in flames lit by a lone arsonist, Hong Chang-Won remembers having to turn his head away.

"It was too heartbreaking to see such beautiful architecture being destroyed like that," said Hong, a registered master craftsman who specializes in traditional Korean ornamental painting.

Three armed robbers stormed into the Pretoria Art Museum Sunday and made away with around 15 million rands ($1.8 million) worth of artwork, South African media reported.

"They pulled out a list and said they were looking for so and so painting which is our old masterpieces," Daywood Khans, a museum employee who was held at gunpoint, told radio 702.

Russia on Saturday quietly marked 30 years since the death of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, an enigmatic figure whose era of "stagnation" witnessed repressions and a massive nuclear arms drive.

The burly and chain-smoking World War II veteran served from 1964 until his death in 1982 at a time when Moscow and Washington were churning out weapons of mass destruction and carving up the globe for spheres of influence.

Leading bishops have voiced alarm at a rise in anti-Islamic sentiment in France and admitted that hardening attitudes within the Roman Catholic church are fueling the trend.

In comments that will add to pressure on President Francois Hollande to respond to demands from France's large Muslim community to speak out on the issue, the Bishop of Angouleme, Claude Dagens, said he was profoundly concerned by recent developments.

Italy's parliament has passed a law making it compulsory to teach the national anthem in schools, angering the Northern League federalist party which has long campaigned against national symbols.

"Imposing something is a sign of weakness because it means that it is not felt in the hearts of the people," Northern League boss Roberto Maroni told the party's radio station Radio Padania on Friday after the law passed on Thursday.

The accident-prone British thirty-something Bridget Jones is to return in a third novel next year, her creator Helen Fielding announced on Friday.

Fielding's first two books about Jones, written in the form of diaries chronicling the heroine's failed efforts to find love, lose weight and quit smoking, have sold more than 15 million copies.

A long catastrophic drought led to the collapse of Maya culture, a new study said Thursday, confirming a controversial hypothesis linking its demise to climate change.

The study, published in Friday's issue of the journal "Science," involved an international team of researchers.

Dermot Bolger was commissioned in 1993 by a U.S. museum that holds the original manuscript of James Joyce's famed novel -- which chronicles a day in the life of a Dublin man -- to adapt the book for the stage.

After one performance in the United States, the play was left to languish when EU copyright laws suddenly changed and Bolger gave up hope of persuading the protective Joyce estate to let it be performed.

An erotically charged Picasso oil painting of his mistress alongside tulips and fruit sold Thursday for $41.5 million on an otherwise anemic night for high-end art in New York.

"Nature morte aux tulipes," painted in 1932, was the star of Sotheby's Impressionist and modern art sale in Manhattan. The pre-sale estimate for the work had been between $35 million and $50 million.