The J. Paul Getty Museum has agreed to return to Greece a Byzantine New Testament manuscript illegally taken from a monastery on Mount Athos over 50 years ago, it said Monday.

The documented was acquired in 1983 as part of a "large, well-documented collection," but recent research indicated that it had been stolen from the Holy Monastery of Dionysiou, said the Los Angeles-based museum.

Four steel plates rise out of Qatar's desert sands like behemoths, symbolizing, according to U.S. artist Richard Serra who created the sculpture, the connection between the wealthy Gulf state's two regions.

The sculpture, East-West/West-East, was unveiled on Tuesday in a desert area around 60 kilometers (37 miles) from the capital Doha, by the sister of Qatar's emir, who has been named by Britain's ArtReview as the most influential figure in the art world.

Thousands of Muscovites and several top international architects have launched an unprecedented campaign to save an elegant steel tower that has loomed over Moscow's skyline since 1922.

The Russian communications ministry says it will dismantle and relocate the Shukhov tower, a masterpiece of design often compared to the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

Derek Kitchen and Moudi Sbeity have become superstars in the gay marriage movement in Utah. Raised in Mormon and Muslim families, they have given speeches at raucous rallies and have appeared in so many media stories that strangers come up to them and thank them for what they've done.

They are one of three gay and lesbian couples who are plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the conservative western U.S. state that led a federal judge to overturn Utah's gay marriage ban in December. More than 1,000 gay and lesbian couples were able to marry after the ruling.

A rare Ming-era wine cup broke the world auction record for any Chinese porcelain on Tuesday, selling in Hong Kong for $36.05 million to Shanghai tycoon Liu Yiqian, Sotheby's auction house said.

The tiny white porcelain cup, decorated with a color painting of a rooster and a hen tending to their chicks, was made during the reign of the Chenghua Emperor between 1465 and 1487.

A court in Egypt sentenced four men to up to eight years in prison on Monday for practicing homosexuality, a judicial official said.

Prosecutors had accused the men of holding "deviant parties" and dressing in women's clothes.

Sarajevo is no stranger to conflict, but while the wounds of the Bosnian war's siege are still raw, the city is seeking to cash in on its historical claim as the place where World War I was ignited.

On June 28, 1914, the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife by 20-year-old Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip was the spark that set off the Great War, and the 100th anniversary of that event will be commemorated in Sarajevo.

Some in Gabon believe the bitter iboga root comes from the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden. Others elsewhere have derided it as a dangerous drug.

Today a growing number of Westerners are travelling to the central African country to sample it themselves as part of an ancestral rite called Bwiti, one of Gabon's official religions.

Best sellers by novelist Donna Tartt and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin are among the finalists for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction.

The fiction nominees are Tartt's "The Goldfinch," Edwidge Danticat's "Claire of the Sea Light" and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's "Americanah."

Oko Afutu knows exactly what will get people flocking into theaters to watch the British horror film "Dog Soldiers": a poster showing a werewolf biting off a man's head.

From his front porch in a suburb of Ghana's capital, Afutu spends his days painting garish movie posters for the films that show at movie theaters around Accra.