Archaeologists drawing on a wide range of tools said on Wednesday they had pinpointed the crucial time in world history when Egypt emerged as a distinct state.

Experts have wrangled for decades as to when turbulent upper and lower Egypt were brought together under a stable, single ruler for the first time.

More than 200 languages have vanished in India over the last 50 years, a new study says, blaming urban migration and fear among nomadic tribes of speaking their traditional tongues.

The extensive study, conducted throughout the country over four years and released this week, has found 230 languages have "elapsed" while another 870 have survived the test of time in richly diverse but rapidly modernizing India, home to a vast number of indigenous or tribal peoples.

For the Egyptian musician Hind and her group, the night-time curfew in Cairo has turned into an opportunity to jam until the sun comes up.

When the curfew comes into force from 11:00 pm to 6:00 am, Hind and her group play traditional Egyptian music throughout the night.

It's deep underground, dubbed "the world's longest art exhibition", shows everything from Roman torsos to giant tulips and, if you live in Stockholm, can be seen everyday on your way to work.

Welcome to the Swedish capital's metro system, where 150 artists have exercised their talent on some 100 stations along the 110-kilometre (68-mile) network to distract, amuse or intrigue the tens of thousands of commuters who ply the route daily.

A shiver down the spine is one way of keeping cool during summer in Japan -- traditionally viewed as a time when the spirit world makes its presence felt.

August sees millions of Japanese return to their home towns for the Obon season, in which relatives gather to temporarily welcome back the spirits of their dead forebears.

A film about the life of Pope Francis, the first pontiff from the Americas, is in the pipeline in his native Argentina, Variety reported Monday.

The film, to be entitled "Historia de un cura" ("A priest's tale"), will be directed by Alejandro Agresti and star Rodrigo de la Serna as the pope, who was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires.

Magdy Tahami looks in disbelief at what remains of Egypt's tiny Mallawi museum.

The ground is littered with glass from the display cabinets, which once housed its precious collection, after a mob attacked and looted the building, during a nationwide crackdown on Islamist protesters.

A two-metre high statue of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin has been daubed with paint less than a day after it was put up in a town in eastern Georgia, local authorities said Monday.

Local authorities in the town of Telavi, some 100 kilometres east of Tbilisi, said the monument to the Georgian-born Communist dictator was erected without permission by local residents on Sunday and could be torn down.

An infamous Papua New Guinea cult leader known as "Black Jesus" was castrated by an angry mob after being hacked to death for killing young girls as sacrifices, reports said Monday.

Steven Tari, a convicted rapist who was suspected of cannibalism, was killed in a remote PNG village last week, with gory details of his death emerging.

An Italian local politician has alleged the Doge's Palace in Venice was damaged to install an air-conditioning system demanded by a French museum for a rare Manet exhibition that closed on Sunday.

Franco Rocchetta, a former junior foreign minister, has filed a formal police complaint over the exhibition which included the Musee d'Orsay's "Olympia" on its first trip away from Paris since 1890.